There is a small, low cape-there, where the moon Breaks o'er the shatter'd and now shapeless stone; The waters, as a rude but fitting boon,

Weeds and small shells have, like a garland, thrown

Upon it, and the wind's and wave's low moan, And sighing grass, and cricket's plaint, are heard To steal upon the stillness, like a tone Remember'd. Here, by human foot unstirr'd, Its seed the thistle sheds, and builds the ocean-bird. Lurks the foul toad, the lizard basks secure Within the sepulchre of him whose name Had scatter'd navies like the whirlwind. Sure, If aught ambition's fiery wing may tame, "Tis here; the web the spider weaves where Fame Planted her proud but sunken shaft, should be To it a fetter, still it springs the same, Glory's fool-worshipper! here bend thy knee! l'he tomb thine altar-stone, thine idol Mockery: A small, gray elf, all sprinkled o'er with dust Of crumbling catacomb, and mouldering shred Of banner and embroider'd pall, and rust Of arms, time-worn monuments, that shed A canker'd gleam on dim escutcheons, where The groping antiquary pores to spy

A what? a name-perchance ne'er graven there; At whom the urchin, with his mimic eye, Sits peering through a skull, and laughs continually.

THE MOUNTAIN-GIRL.

THE clouds, that upward curling from
Nevada's summit fly,

Melt into air: gone are the showers,
And, deck'd, as 't were with bridal flowers,
Earth seems to wed the sky.

All hearts are by the spirit that

Breathes in the sunshine stirr'd;
And there's a girl that, up and down,
A merry vagrant, through the town,
Goes singing like a bird.

A thing all lightness, life, and glee;
One of the shapes we seem
To meet in visions of the night;
And, should they greet our waking sight,
Imagine that we dream.

With glossy ringlet, brow that is
As falling snow-flake white,
Half-hidden by its jetty braid,
And eye like dewdrop in the shade,

At once both dark and bright;
And cheek whereon the sunny clime
Its prown tint gently throws,
Gently, as it reluctant were
To leave its print on thing so fair—
A shadow on a rose

She stops, looks up-what does she see?
A flower of crimson dye,
Whose vase, the work of Moorish hands,
A lady sprinkles, as it sands

Jpon a balcony:

High, leaning from a window forth,
From curtains that half-shroud
Her maiden form with tress of gold,
And brow that mocks their snow-white fold
Like DIAN from a cloud.

Nor flower, nor lady fair she sees—

That mountain-girl-but dumb
And motionless she stands, with eye
That seems communing with the sky:
Her visions are of home.

That flower to her is as a tone

Of some forgotten song,

One of a slumbering thousand, struck
From an old harp-string; but, once woke,
It brings the rest along.

She sees beside the mountain-brook,
Beneath the old cork tree

And toppling crag, a vine-thatch'd shed,
Perch'd, like the eagle, high o'erhead,
The home of liberty;

The rivulet, the olive shade,

The grassy plot, the flock;
Nor does her simple thought forget,
Haply, the little violet,

That springs beneath the rock.

Sister and mate, they may not from

Her dreaming eye depart;

And one, the source of gentler fears,
More dear than all, for whom she wears
The token at her heart.

And hence her eye is dim, her cheek
Has lost its livelier glow;
Her song has ceased, and motionless
She stands, an image of distress :-
Strange, what a flower can do!

THE FALL OF THE OAK.

A GLORIOUS tree is the old gray oak: He has stood for a thousand years, Has stood and frown'd

On the trees around,
Like a king among his peers;
As round their king they stand, so now,
When the flowers their pale leaves fold,
The tall trees round him stand, array'd
In their robes of purple and gold.

He has stood like a tower
Through sun and shower,
And dared the winds to battle;
He has heard the hail,

As from plates of mail,

From his own limbs shaken, rattle;

He has toss'd them about, and shorn the tops
(When the storm had roused his might)
Of the forest trees, as a strong man doth
The heads of his foes in fight.

The autumn sun looks kindly down,
But the frost is on the lea,

And sprinkles the horn

Of the owl at morn,

As she hies to the old oak tree.

Not a leaf is stirr'd;

Not a sound is heard

But the thump of the thresher's flail,
The low wind's sigh,

Or the distant cry

Of the hound on the fox's trail.

The forester he has whistling plunged Wh his axe, in the deep wood's gloom, That shrouds the hill,

Where few and chill

The sunbeams struggling come: His brawny arm he has bared, and laid His axe at the root of the tree,

The gray old oak,

And, with lusty stroke,

He wields it merrily:-

With lusty stroke,-

And the old gray oak,

Through the folds of his gorgeous vest
You may see him shake.
And the night-owl break
From her perch in his leafy crest.

She will come but to find him gone from where
He stood at the break of day;

Like a cloud that peals as it melts to air,
He has pass'd, with a crash, away.

Though the spring in the bloom and the frost in golċ
No more his limbs attire,

On the stormy wave

He shall float, and brave
The blest and the battle-fire!

Shall spread his white wings to the wind,
And thunder on the deep,

As he thunder'd when
His bough was green,

On the high and st my steep.

TO A YOUNG MOTHER.

WHAT things of thee may yield a semblance meet,
And him, thy fairy portraiture? a flower
And bud, moon and attending star, a sweet
Voice and its sweeter echo. Time has small power
O'er features the mind moulds; and such are thine,
Imperishably lovely. Roses, where

They once have bloom'd, a fragrance leave behind,
And harmony will linger on the wind;

And suns continue to light up the air, When set; and music from the broken shrine

Breathes, it is said, around whose altar-stone His flower the votary has ceased to twine :

Types of the beauty that, when youth is gone, Beams from the soul whose brightness mocks decline.

SPRING.

Now Heaven seems one bright, rejoicing eye,
And Earth her sleeping vesture flings aside,
And with a blush awakes as does a bride;
And Nature speaks, like thee, in melody.
The forest, sunward, glistens, green and high;
The ground each moment, as some blossom
springs,

Puts forth, as does thy cheek, a lovelier dye,

And each new morning some new songster brings. And, hark! the brooks their rocky prisons break, And echo calls on echo to awake,

Like nymph to nymph. The air is rife with wings, Rustling through wood or dripping over lake. Herb, bud, and bird return-but not to me With song or beauty, since they bring not thee.

NOBILITY.

Go, then, to heroes, sages if allied,

Go! trace the scroll, but not with eye of pride, Where Truth depicts their glories as they shone, And leaves a blank where should have been you

own.

Mark the pure beam on yon dark wave impress'd So shines the star on that degenerate breastEach twinkling orb,that burns with borrow'd fires,— So ye reflect the glory of your sires.

THE late JAMES GORDON BROOKS was born at Red Hook, near the city of New York, on the third day of September, 1801. His father was an officer in the revolutionary army, and, after the achievement of our independence, a member of the national House of Representatives. Our author was educated at Union College, in Schenectady, and was graduated in 1819. In the following year he commenced studying the law with Mr. Justice EMOTT, of Poughkeepsie; but, though be devoted six or seven years to the acquisition of legal knowledge, he never sought admission to the bar. In 1823, he removed to New York, where he was for several years an editor of the Morning Courier, one of the most able and influential journals in this country.

Mr. BROOKS began to write for the press in 1917. Two years afterward he adopted the signature of "Florio," by which his contributions to the periodicals were from that time known. In 1828, he was married. His wife, under the signature of Norna," had been for several years a

etry after the appearance of this work.

In 1830 or 1831, he removed to Winchester. in Virginia, where, for four or five years, he edited a political and literary gazette. He returned to the state of New York, in 1838, and established himself in Albany, where he remained until the 20th day of February, 1841, when he died.

The poems of Mr. BROOKS are spirited and smoothly versified, but diffuse and carelessly written. He was imaginative, and composed with remarkable ease and rapidity; but was too indifferent in regard to his reputation ever to rewrite or revise his productions.

GREECE-1832.

LAND of the brave! where lie inurn'd
The shrouded forms of mortal clay,
In whom the fire of valour burn'd,

And blazed upon the battle's fray:
Land, where the gallant Spartan few
Bled at Thermopyla of yore,
When death his purple garment threw
On Helle's consecrated shore!

Land of the Muse! within thy bowers
Her soul-entrancing echoes rung,
While on their course the rapid hours
Paused at the melody she sung-
Till every grove and every hill,

And every stream that flow'd along,
From morn to night repeated still
The winning harmony of song.
Land of dead heroes! living slaves!

Shall glory gild thy clime no more?
Her banner float above thy waves

Where proudly it hath swept before? Hath not remembrance then a charm

To break the fetters and the chain, To bid thy children nerve the arm,

And strike for freedom once again? No! coward souls, the light which shone On Leuctra's war-empurpled day, The light which beam'd on Marathon Hath lost its splendour, ceased to play;

And thou art but a shadow now,
With helmet shatter'd-spear in rust-
Thy honour but a dream--and thou
Despised-degraded in the dust!

Where sleeps the spirit, that of old
Dash'd down to earth the Persian plume,
When the loud chant of triumph told

How fatal was the despot's doom ?— The bold three hundred-where are they, Who died on battle's gory breast? Tyrants have trampled on the clay

Where death hath hush'd them into rest.

Yet, Ida, yet upon thy hill

A glory shines of ages fled;
And fame her light is pouring still,
Not on the living, but the dead!
But 'tis the dim, sepulchral light,

Which sheds a faint and feeble ray,
As moonbeams on the brow of night,
When tempests sweep upon their way

Greece! yet awake thee from thy tranca,
Behold, thy banner waves afar;
Behold, the glittering weapons glance
Along the gleaming front of war!
A gallant chief, of high emprize,
Is urging foremost in the field,
Who calls upon thee to arise
In might-in majesty reveal'd.

In vain, in vain the hero calls-
In vain he sounds the trumpet loud!
His banner totters--see! it falls

In ruin, Freedom's battle-shroud :
Thy children have no soul to dare

Such deeds as glorified their sires; Their valour's but a meteor's glare,

Which gleams a moment, and expires.

Lost land! where Genius made his reign,
And rear'd his golden arch on high;
Where Science raised her sacred fane,
Its summits peering to the sky;
Upon thy clime the midnight deep

Of ignorance hath brooded long,
And in the tomb, forgotten, sleep

The sons of science and of song.

Thy sun hath set-the evening storm
Hath pass'd in giant fury by,
To blast the beauty of thy form,

And spread its pall upon the sky!
Gone is thy glory's diadem,

And freedom never more shall cease To pour her mournful requiem O'er blighted, lost, degraded Greece!

TO THE DYING YEAR.

THOt desolate and dying year!

Emblem of transitory man, Whose wearisome and wild career,

Like thine, is bounded to a span; It seems but as a little day

Since nature smiled upon thy birth, And Spring came forth in fair array, To dance upon the joyous earth.

Sad alteration! now how lone,

How verdureless is nature's breast,
Where ruin makes his empire known,
In autumn's yellow vesture dress'd;
The sprightly bird, whose carol sweet
Broke on the breath of early day,
The summer flowers she loved to greet;
The bird, the flowers, O! where are they?

Thou desolate and dying year!
Yet lovely in thy lifelessness

As beauty stretch'd upon the bier,

In death's clay-cold and dark caress; There's loveliness in thy decay,

Which breathes, which lingers on thee still, Like memory's mild and cheering ray Beaming upon the night of ill.

Yet, yet the radiance is not gone,

Which shed a richness o'er the scene, Which smiled upon the golden dawn, When skies were brilliant and serene; O! still a melancholy smile

Geams upon Nature's aspect fair, To charm the eye a little while,

Ere ruin spreads his mantle there!

Thou desolate and dying year!

Since time entwined thy vernal wreath, How often love hath shed the tear,

And knelt beside the bed of death; How many hearts, that lightly sprung

When joy was blooming but to die, Their finest chords by death unstrung, Have yielded life's expiring sigh,

And, pillow'd low beneath the clay,

Have ceased to melt, to breathe, to burt The proud, the gentle, and the gay,

Gather'd unto the mouldering urn; While freshly flow'd the frequent tear For love bereft, affection fled: For all that were our blessings here, The loved, the lost, the sainted dead!

Thou desolate and dying year'

The musing spirit finds in thee Lessons, impressive and serene, Of deep and stern morality;

Thou teachest how the germ of youth, Which blooms in being's dawning day, Planted by nature, rear'd by truth, Withers, like thee, in dark decay.

Promise of youth' fair as the form

Of Heaven's benign and golden bow,
Thy smiling arch begirds the storm,
And sheds a light on every wo;
Hope wakes for thee, and to her tong re
A tone of melody is given,
As if her magic voice were strung

With the empyreal fire of heaven.
And love which never can expire,

Whose origin is from on high, Throws o'er thy morn a ray of fire,

From the pure fountains of the sky; That ray which glows and brightens stili Unchanged, eternal and divine; Where seraphs own its holy thrill,

And bow before its gleaming shrine.
Thou desolate and dying year!
Prophetic of our final fall;
Thy buds are gone, thy leaves are seat,
Thy beauties shrouded in the pall;
And all the garniture that shed
A brilliancy upon thy prime,
Hath like a morning vision fled

Unto the expanded grave of time.

Time! Time in thy triumphal flight,

How all life's phantoms fleet away; Thy smile of hope, and young delight, Fame's meteor-beam, and Fancy's ray They fade; and on the heaving tide,

Rolling its stormy waves afar,

Are borne the wreck of human pride, The broken wreck of Fortune's war.

There, in disorder, dark and wild,

Are seen the fabrics once so high; Which mortal vanity had piled As emblems of eternity!

And deem'd the stately piles, whose forms Frown'd in their majesty sublime, Would stand unshaken by the storms

That gather'd round the brow of Time.

Thou desolate and dying year!

Earth's brightest pleasures fade like thine; Like evening shadows disappear,

And leave the spirit to repine. The stream of life, that used to pour Its fresh and sparkling waters on. While Fate stood watching on the shore. And number'd all the moments goneWhere hath the morning splendour flown, Which danced upon the crystal stream. Where are the joys to childhood known,

When life was an enchanted dream? Enveloped in the starless night

Which destiny hath overspread; Enroll'd upon that trackless flight

Where the death-wing of time hath sped!

! thus hath life its even-tide
Of sorrow, loneliness, and grief;
And thus, divested of its pride,

It withers like the yellow leaf:
O! such is life's autumnal bower,
When plunder'd of its summer bloom;
And such is life's autumnal hour,

Which heralds man unto the tomb!

TO THE AUTUMN LEAF.

THOU faded leaf! it seems to be

But as of yesterday,

When thou didst flourish on the tree
In all the pride of May:
Then t'was the merry hour of spring,
Of nature's fairest blossoming,

On field, on flower, and spray;

It promised fair; how changed the scene
To what is now, from what hath been!

So fares it with life's early spring;
Hope gilds each coming day.
And sweetly doth the syren sing

Her fond, delusive lay:

Then the young, fervent heart beats high
While passion kindles in the eye,

With bright, unceasing play;
Fair are thy tints, thou genial hour,
Yet transient as the autumn flower.
Thou faded leaf! how like to thee

Is beauty in her morning pride,
When life is but a summer sea,

And hope illumes its placid tide:
Alas! for beauty's autumn hour,
Alas! for beauty's blighted flower,

When hope and bliss have died!
Her pallid brow, her cheek of grief,
Have thy sad hue, thou faded leaf!
Autumnal leaf! thus honour's plume,

And valour's laurel wreath must fade; Must lose the freshness, and the bloom

On which the beam of glory play'd;

The banner waving o'er the crowd,
Far streaming like a silver cloud,
Must sink within the shade,
Where dark oblivion's waters flow
O'er human weal and human wo.
Autumnal leaf! there is a stern

And warning tone in thy dec
Like thee must man to death return
With his frail tenement of clay
Thy warning is of death and doom,
Of genius blighted in its bloom,
Of joy's beclouded ray;
Life, rapture, hope, ye are as brief
And fleeting as the autumn leaf!

THE LAST SONG.

STRIKE the wild harp yet once again!
Again its lonely numbers pour;
Then let the melancholy strain

Be hush'd in death for evermore.
For evermore, for evermore,

Creative fancy, be thou still;
And let oblivious Lethe pour
Upon my lyre its waters chill.
Strike the wild harp yet once again!
Then be its fitful chords unstrung,
Silent as is the grave's domain,

And mute as the death-moulder'd tongue,
Let not a thought of memory dwell
One moment on its former song;
Forgotten, too, be this farewell,

Which plays its pensive strings along!
Strike the wild harp yet once again!
The saddest and the latest lay;
Then break at once its strings in twain,

And they shall sound no more for aye:
And hang it on the cypress tree:

The hours of youth and song have pass' Have gone, with all their witchery; Lost lyre! these numbers are thy last.

JOY AND SORROW.

Joy kneels, at morning's rosy prime,
In worship to the rising sun;
But Sorrow loves the calmer time,
When the day-god his course hath n
When Night is on her shadowy car,
Pale sorrow wakes while Joy doth sleep,
And, guided by the evening star,
She wanders forth to muse and weep.
Joy loves to cull the summer-flower,
And wreathe it round his happy brow
But when the dark autumnal hour

Hath laid the leaf and blossoms low;
When the frail bud hath lost its worth,
And Joy hath dash'd it from his crest,
Then Sorrow takes it from the earth,
Te wit er on her wither'd breast.