But other ties, and dearer far than all,
Bind fast my heart to thee.

Who can forget the scenes, in which the doubtful ray
Of reason, first dawned o'er him? Can memory e'er
Forsake the home where friends, where parents dwell?
Close by the mansion where I first drew breath,
There stands a tree, beneath whose branching shade
I've sported oft in childhood's sunny hours;

A lofty elm; I've carved my name thereon;

There let it grow, a still increasing proof,
That time cannot efface, nor distance dim
The recollection of those halcyon days.
My father too; I've grieved his manly heart,
Full many a time, by heedless waywardness;
While he was laboring with a parent's care,
To feed and clothe his thoughtless, thankless boy.
And I have trembled, as with frown severe
He oft has checked me, when perhaps I meant
To do him pleasure, with my childish mirth;
And thought how strange it was, he would not smile.
But oh my mother! she whose every look
Was love and tenderness, that knew no check;
Who joyed with me; whose fond maternal eye
Grew dim, when pain or sorrow faded mine.
But time is speeding; and the billowy waves.
Are hurrying me away. Thy misty shores.
Grow dim in distance; while yon setting sun
Seems lingering fondly on them, as 't would take
Like me, a last adieu. I go to tread
The western vales, whose gloomy cypress tree
Shall haply soon be wreathed upon my bier :
Land of my birth! my natal soil, FAREWELL!

THE LITTLE STAR.

I WOULD I were on yonder little star,
That looks so modest in the silver sky,
Removed in boundless space so very far,
That scarce its rays can meet the gazer's eye,
Yet there it hangs all lonely, bright and high.

O could I mount where fancy leads the way,
How soon would I look down upon
the sun,
Rest my
tired wing upon his upward ray,
And go where never yet his beams have shone,
Light on that little star and make it all my own.

Love dwells not with us, in some happier sphere,
It makes its angel heaven to innocence so dear:
There is beyond this sublunary ball,

A land of souls, a heaven of peace and joy,

Whose skies are always bright, whose pleasures never cloy.

And if to souls released from earth 'tis given,
To choose their home through bright infinity,

Then yonder star shall be my happy heaven,
And I will live unknown, for I would be
The lonely hermit of Eternity.

THE WANDERER.

THE sun was set, and that dim twilight hour,
Which shrouds in gloom whate'er it looks upon,
Was o'er the world: stern desolation lay

In her own ruins; every mark was gone,
Save one tall, beetling monumental stone.

Amid a sandy waste it reared its head,

All scathed and blackened by the lightning shock,

That many a scar and many a seam had made,

E'en to its base; and there with thundering stroke, Erie's wild waves in ceaseless clamor broke.

And on its rifted top the wanderer stood, (ƒ)
And bared his head beneath the cold night air,

And wistfully he gazed upon the flood:

It were a boon to him, (so thought he there,) Beneath that tide to rest from every care.

And might it be, and not his own rash hand

Have done the deed, (for yet he dared not brave,

All reckless as he was, the high command,

Do thyself no harm,) adown the wave

And in the tall lake-grass that night had been his grave.

Oh! you may tell of that philosophy,

Which steels the heart 'gainst every bitter wo: 'Tis not in nature, and it cannot be ;

You cannot rend young hearts, and not a throe Of agony tell how they feel the blow.

He was a lone and solitary one,

With none to love, and pity he disdained: His hopes were wrecked, and all his joys were gone; But his dark eye blanched not; his pride remained: And if he deeply felt, to none had he complained.

Of all that knew him few but judged him wrong:
He was of silent and unsocial mood:

Unloving and unloved he passed along:

His chosen path with steadfast aim he trod, Nor asked nor wished applause, save only of his God.

Oh! how preposterous 'tis for man to claim

In his own strength to chain the human soul!

Go, first, and learn the elements to tame,

Ere you would exercise your vain control

O'er that which pants and strive for an immortal goal.

Yet oft a young and generous heart has been

By cruel keepers trampled on and torn;

And all the worst and wildest passions in

The human breast have roused themselves in scorn, That else had dormant slept, or never had been born.

Take heed ye guardians of the youthful mind, That facile grows beneath your kindly care: 'Tis of elastic mould, and, if confined

With too much stress shoots madly from its sphere,' Unswayed by love, and unrestrained by fear,

Oh! tis a fearful blasting sight to see

The soul in ruins, withered, rived, and wrung, And doomed to spend its immortality

Darkling and hopeless, where despair has flung Her curtains o'er the loves to which it fondly clung.

So thought the wanderer: so, perhaps, he felt :
(But this is unrevealed :) now had he come
To the far woods, and there in silence knelt

On the sharp flint-stone in the rayless gloom,
And fervently he prayed to find an early tomb.

Weep not for him: he asks no sympathy
From human hearts and eyes; aloof, alone,
On his own spirit let him rest, and be

By all his kind forgotten and unknown,
And wild winds mingle with his dying groan.

And in the desert let him lie and sleep,

In that sweet rest exhausted nature gave:
Oh! make his clay-cold mansion dark and deep,
While the tall trees their sombre foliage wave,
And drop it blighted on the wanderer's grave.