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MYRTLE CREEK,

A BEAUTIFUL STREAM IN SPENCERTOWN, NEW YORK.

A GENTLE STREAM unknown to song,

Yet Beauty is its dower;

It floweth through the meadows green,
Where many a fragrant flower

Bends o'er it, with loving eye,

In the still, noon-tide hour.

A crystal stream whose waters flash
In morning's golden ray;
Now dancing like a frolic child,
Then stealing slow away,
As if amid these sylvan scenes,
They fain would longer stay.

It windeth through a quiet vale;
It turns a rustic mill;

On either side are harvest-fields;

Above, a wood-crowned hill ;
While near, is seen a graceful spire,
A hamlet, fair and still.

In morning hour, or noontide ray,
In the soft twilight gleam,
Steals gently on the list'ning car,

The murmur of that stream;
Blent oft with leaf-notes from its banks,
Like music of a dream.

TO LILLIE.

WHERE is the lily now?
Lily, sweet and fair!
Blossoms it 'neath forest bough,
Shedding fragrance there?
Doth the zephyr's softest kiss
Touch its petals sweet?

Would that I were woodland bough!

Or the zephyr fleet!

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Edward Payson Weston.

THE TWO HANDS.

WRITTEN AFTER ILLNESS.

Thy hand, O God, in ministry of pain,

Was laid on burning cheek and aching brow,

And the quick pulses, calmed in mercy now,

Poured a fast fever's tide thro' every vein,

And wild unrest through throbbing limb and brain, And yet, O God, another hand in thine,

Lent by thy goodness to this need of mine,
With gentle soothing hath restored again
Calm days of health and nights of sweet repose.
And through that dear hand's angel ministry,
I upward guide my trembling faith to see,
What pain forgets, what reason scarcely knows,
That God's own chastening hand itself must be
Like the dear hand of love his love bestows.

EDWARD PAYSON WESTON.

AGE, 35 YEARS.

EDWARD P. WESTON is a son of Rev. Isaac Weston, and was born at Boothbay, Lincoln County, on the nineteenth day of January, 1819. His father was then located there as a settled minister. He was educated at Bowdoin College, from which he graduated in 1839, and has since that time been engaged in teaching. For the past seven years he has been Principal of the Maine Female Seminary, at Gorham, which is undoubtedly, the best and most popular Female School in this State. In 1840, Mr. Weston edited a volume of poems from the Students and Graduates of Bowdoin College, under the title of Bowdoin Poets,' among which were, Longfellow, McLellan, Thatcher, Walter, Claude L. Hemans, a son of Mrs. Hemans, the poetess, Cutter, Soule, Fuller, Flagg, and others, including himself, each of whom contributed several poems. This volume was published by Joseph Griffin, Brunswick, and was well received, the first edition being entirely exhausted soon after it was published, and the publisher has since issued a second and enlarged edition, which has had a wide circulation, but no wider than its merit deserves. It gives evidence of a superior poetical discrimination on the part of the editor, whose selections are characterized by a perfect knowledge of what genuine poetry consists of. Mr. Weston's poem, entitled 'A Vision of Immortality,' published in the papers anonymously, was received as Bryant's, owing to the opening lines,

'I, who essayed to sing in earlier days

The Thonatopsis, and The Hymn to Death,
Wake now the Hymn to Immortality.'

and as such it was bountifully praised by the leading journals, and copied throughout the entire country, also in France and England.

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