NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

[Born in 1807, died in 1867. While still at college, he acquired a showy but unstable reputation by certain Scripture Sketches in verse; and continued producing various metrical and more numerous prose compositions, of a light and miscellaneous kind for the most part. He travelled in England and in Europe; making numerous acquaintances, some friends, and not a few enemies, by his social talents and his pen].

THE CONFESSIONAL.

I THOUGHT of thee-I thought of thee,
On ocean many a weary night,
When heaved the long and sullen sea,
With only waves and stars in sight.
We stole along by isles of balm,

We furled before the coming gale,
We slept amid the breathless calm,
We flew beneath the straining sail,-
But thou wert lost for years to me,
And day and night I thought of thee!

I thought of thee-I thought of thee,
In France, amid the gay saloon,
Where eyes as dark as eyes may be

Are many as the leaves in June:
Where life is love, and e'en the air

Is pregnant with impassioned thought,
And song and dance and music are

With one warm meaning only fraught.
My half-snared heart broke lightly free,
And, with a blush, I thought of thee!

I thought of thee-I thought of thee,
In Florence, where the fiery hearts
Of Italy are breathed away

In wonders of the deathless arts;
Where strays the Contadina down
Val d'Arno, with a song of old;
Where clime and women seldom frown,
And life runs over sands of gold.

I strayed to lonely Fiesole

On many an eve, and thought of thee.

1

I thought of thee-I thought of thee,
In Rome, when, on the Palatine,
Night left the Cæsars' palace free

To Time's forgetful foot and mine.
Or on the Coliseum's wall,

When moonlight touched the ivied stone, Reclining, with a thought of all

That o'er this scene hath come and gone, The shades of Rome would start and flee Unconsciously-I thought of thee.

I thought of thee-I thought of thee,
In Vallombrosa's holy shade,
Where nobles born the friars be,

By life's rude changes humbler made.
Here Milton framed his Paradise;
I slept within his very cell;
And, as I closed my weary eyes,

I thought the cowl would fit me well;
The cloisters breathed, it seemed to me,
Of heart's-ease-but I thought of thee.

I thought of thee-I thought of thee,
In Venice, on a night in June;
When, through the city of the sea,

Like dust of silver, slept the moon.
Slow turned his oar the gondolier,
And, as the black barks glided by,
The water, to my leaning ear,

Bore back the lover's passing sigh;
It was no place alone to be;
I thought of thee-I thought of thee.

I thought of thee-I thought of thee
In the Ionian isles, when straying

With wise Ulysses by the sea,

Old Homer's songs around me playing; Or, watching the bewitched caique

That o'er the star-lit waters flew,
I listened to the helmsman Greek,
Who sung the song that Sappho knew:
The poet's spell, the bark, the sea,
All vanished as I thought of thee.

I thought of thee-I thought of thee,
In Greece, when rose the Parthenon
Majestic o'er the Egean sea,

And heroes with it, one by one;
When, in the grove of Academe,
Where Lais and Leontium strayed
'Discussing Plato's mystic theme,

I lay at noontide in the shade—
The Egean wind, the whispering tree,
Had voices-and I thought of thee.

I thought of thee-I thought of thee,
In Asia, at the Dardanelles,
Where, swiftly as the waters flee,

Each wave some sweet old story tells;
And, seated by the marble tank

Which sleeps by Ilium's ruins old.
(The fount where peerless Helen drank,
And Venus laved her locks of gold),
I thrilled such classic haunts to see,
Yet even here I thought of thee.

I thought of thee-I thought of thee,
Where glide the Bosphor's lovely waters,

All palace-lined from sea to sea :

And ever on its shores the daughters

Of the delicious east are seen,

Printing the brink with slippered feet,

And O the snowy folds between,

What eyes of heaven your glances meet! Peris of light no fairer be;

Yet, in Stamboul, I thought of thee.

I've thought of thee-I've thought of thee, Through change that teaches to forget;

Thy face looks up from every sea,
In every star thine eyes are set.
Though roving beneath orient skies,
Whose golden beauty breathes of rest,
I envy every bird that flies

Into the far and clouded west;

I think of thee-I think of thee!
O dearest! hast thou thought of me?

THEODORE S. FAY.

[Born in 1807. Became a barrister; settled in Europe in 1833, and has for the most part resided there since then, having been appointed Minister to Switzerland in 1853. His chief poem is named Ulric, or the Voices, 1851-55: but he is better known as a writer of prose fiction].

SONG.

A CARELESS simple bird, one day

Fluttering in Flora's bowers,

Fell in a cruel trap which lay

All hid among the flowers,

Forsooth, the pretty, harmless flowers.

The spring was closed; poor silly soul,
He knew not what to do,
Till, pressing through a tiny hole,
At length away he flew;

Unhurt at length away he flew.

And now, from every

fond regret

And idle anguish free,

He singing says, "You need not set

Another trap for me,

False girl! another trap for me."

THOMAS WARD.

[Born in 1807. Adopted the medical profession; but eventually quitted it for literature and general studies. Passaic, a Group of Poems touching that River, published in 1841, is his leading work in verse].

TO AN INFANT IN HEAVEN.
THOU bright and star-like spirit,
That, in my visions wild,
I see mid heaven's seraphic host-
Oh canst thou be my child?

My grief is quenched in wonder,
And pride arrests my sighs;
A branch from this unworthy stock
Now blossoms in the skies!

Our hopes of thee were lofty,
But have we cause to grieve?
Oh could our fondest, proudest wish
A nobler fate conceive?

The little weeper tearless,

The sinner snatched from sin;
The babe, to more than manhood grown,
Ere childhood did begin.

And I, thy earthly teacher,

Would blush thy powers to see;

Thou art to me a parent now,

And I a child to thee!

Thy brain, so uninstructed

While in this lowly state,

Now threads the mazy track of spheres,
Or reads the book of fate.

Thine eyes, so curbed in vision,

Now range the realms of space

Look down upon the rolling stars,

Look up to God's own face.