And oft, mid musings sad and lone,

At night's deep noon, that thrilling tone Swells in the wind, low, wild, and clear, Like music in the dreaming air.

When sleep's calm wing is on my brow, And dreams of peace my spirit lull, Before me, like a misty star,

That form floats dim and beautiful; And, when the gentle moonbeam smiles On the blue streams and dark-green isles, In every ray pour'd down the sky, That same light form seems stealing by.

It is a blessed picture, shrined

In memory's urn; the wing of years Can change it not, for there it glows, Undimm'd by "weaknesses and tears;" Deep-hidden in its still recess, It beams with love and holiness, O'er hours of being, dark and dull, Till life seems almost beautiful.

The vision cannot fade away;

"Tis in the stillness of my heart, And o'er its brightness I have mused In solitude; it is a part

Of my existence; a dear flower

Breathed on by Heaven: morn's earliest hour
That flower bedews, and its blue eye
At eve still rests upon the sky.

Lady, like thine, my visions cling

To the dear shrine of buried years;

The past, the past! it is too bright,
Too deeply beautiful for tears;

We have been bless'd; though life is made
A tear, a silence, and a shade,

And years have left the vacant breast
To loneliness-we have been bless'd!

Those still, those soft, those summer eyes,

When by our favourite stream we stood,
And watch'd our mingling shadows there,
Soft-pictured in the deep-blue flood,
Seem'd one enchantment. O! we felt,
As there, at love's pure shrine, we knelt,
That life was sweet, and all its hours
A glorious dream of love and flowers.

And still 'tis sweet. Our hopes went by
Like sounds upon the unbroken sea;
Yet memory wings the spirit back
To deep, undying melody;
And still, around her early shrine,
Fresh flowers their dewy chaplets twine,
Young Love his brightest garland wreathes,
And Eden's richest incense breathes.

Our hopes are flown-yet parted hours Stil in the depths of memory lie, Like night-gems in the silent blue

Of summer's deep and brilliant sky; And Love's bright flashes seem again To fall upon the glowing chain Of our existence. Can it be That all is but a mockery?

SLEEP on, sleep on! above thy corse
The winds their Sabbath keep;
The waves are round thee, and thy breast
Heaves with the heaving deep.
O'er thee mild eve her beauty flings,
And there the white gull lifts her wings,
And the blue halcyon loves to lave
Her plumage in the deep blue wave.

Sleep on; no willow o'er thee bends
With melancholy air,

No violet springs, nor dewy rose

Its soul of love lays bare;
But there the sea-flower, bright and young,
Is sweetly o'er thy slumbers flung,
And, like a weeping mourner fair,
The pale flag hangs its tresses there.

Sleep on, sleep on; the glittering depths
Of ocean's coral caves
Are thy bright urn-thy requiem

The music of its waves;
The purple gems forever burn
In fadeless beauty round thy urn,
And, pure and deep as infant love,
The blue sea rolls its waves above.

Sleep on, sleep on; the fearful wrath
Of mingling cloud and deep
May leave its wild and stormy track
Above thy place of sleep;

But, when the wave has sunk to rest,
As now, 't will murmur o'er thy breast,
And the bright victims of the sea
Perchance will make their home with thee.

Sleep on; thy corse is far away,

But love bewails thee yet;

For thee the heart-wrung sigh is breathed,
And lovely eyes are wet:

And she, thy young and beauteous bride.
Her thoughts are hovering by thy side.
As oft she turns to view, with tears,
The Eden of departed years.

SABBATH EVENING.

How calmly sinks the parting sun!
Yet twilight lingers still;

And beautiful as dream of Heaven

It slumbers on the hill;

Earth sleeps, with all her glorious things,
Beneath the Holy Spirit's wings,
And, rendering back the hues above,
Seems resting in a trance of love.

Round yonder rocks the forest-trees

In shadowy groups recline,

Like saints at evening bow'd in prayer

Around their holy shrine;

And through their leaves the night-winds blow
So calm and still, their music low
Seems the mysterious voice of prayer,
Soft echo'd on the evening air.

And yonder western throng of clouds,

Retiring from the sky,

So calmly move, so softly glow,

They seem to fancy's eye
Bright creatures of a better sphere,
Come down at noon to worship here,
And, from their sacrifice of love,
Returning to their home above.

The blue isles of the golden sea,
The night-arch floating by,

The flowers that gaze upon the heavens,
The bright streams leaping by,
Are living with religion-deep
On earth and sea its glories sleep,
And mingle with the starlight rays,
Like the soft light of parted days.

The spirit of the holy eve

Comes through the silent air
To feeling's hidden spring, and wakes
A gush of music there!

And the far depths of ether beam
So passing fair, we almost dream
That we can rise, and wander through
Their open paths of trackless blue.

Each soul is fill'd with glorious dreams,
Each pulse is beating wild;

And thought is soaring to the shrine
Of glory undefiled!

And holy aspirations start,

Like blessed angels, from the heart,

And bind-for carth's dark ties are rivenOur spirits to the gates of heaven.

TO A LADY.

I THINK of thee when morning springs
From sleep, with plumage bathed in dow,
And, like a young bird, lifts her wings
Of gladness on the welkin blue.
And when, at noon, the breath of love

O'er flower and stream is wandering free, And sent in music from the grove,

think of thee-I think of thee.

I think of thee, when, soft and wide,
The evening spreads her robes of light,
And, like a young and timid bride,

Sits blushing in the arms of night.
And when the moon's sweet crescent springs
In light o'er heaven's deep, waveless sea,
And stars are forth, like blessed things,
I think of thee-I think of thee.

I think of thee;—that eye of flame,
Those tresses, falling bright and free,
That brow, where "Beauty writes her name,"
I think of thee-I think of thee.

WRITTEN AT MY MOTHER'S GRAVE

THE trembling dew-drops fall Upon the shutting flowers; like souls at rest The stars shine gloriously: and all Save me, are blest.

Mother, I love thy grave!

The violet, with its blossoms blue and mild, Waves o'er thy head; when shall it wave Above thy child?

"T is a sweet flower, yet must

Its bright leaves to the coming tempest bow;
Dear mother, 't is thine emblem; dust
Is on thy brow.

And I could love to die:

To leave untasted life's dark, bitter streamsBy thee, as erst in childhood, lie,

And share thy dreams.

And I must linger here,

To stain the plumage of my sinless years, And mourn the hopes to childhood dear With bitter tears.

Ay, I must linger here,

A lonely branch upon a wither'd tree, Whose last frail leaf, untimely sere, Went down with thee!

Oft, from life's wither'd bower,

In still communion with the past, I turn,
And muse on thee, the only flower
In memory's urn.

And, when the evening pale

Bows, like a mourner, on the dim, blue wave, I stray to hear the night-winds wail Around thy grave.

Where is thy spirit flown?

I gaze above-thy look is imaged there;
I listen-and thy gentle tone
Is on the air.

O, come, while here I press

My brow upon thy grave; and, in those mild
And thrilling tones of tenderness.
Bless, bless thy child!

Yes, bless your weeping child;

And o'er thine urn-religion's holiest shrineO, give his spirit, undefiled,

To blend with thine.

MR. PALMER is descended from a Puritan ancestor who came to America in the next ship after the May Flower. His father was a youthful soldier in the Revolution, and one of the latest, if not the last, of the survivors of the Jersey prison ship. Having acquired a competency as the captain of a New York merchantman, he retired from the sea early in the present century, to Stockbridge, Berkshire county, Massachusetts, where he spent the remainder of his days, in that sunshine of love and respect which has gilded the declining years of so many men of our heroic age. There, on the twenty-second of February, 1805, our poet was born, and named in honour of the great orator whose claims to gratitude are recognised among us in a thousand living monuments which bear the name of WILLIAM PITT.

In his native county, Mr. PALMER has told me, the first and happiest half of his life was spent on the farm, in the desultory acquisition of such knowledge as could then be obtained from a New England common school, and a "college" with a single professor. The other half has been chiefly passed in New York, as a medical student, teacher, writer for the gazettes, and, for several years, clerk in a public office.

Mr. PALMER is a man of warm affections, who finds a heaven in a quiet home. He is a lover of nature, too, and like most inhabitants of the pent-up city, whose early days have been passed in the country, he delights in recollections of rural life. Some of his poems have much tenderness and delicacy, and they are generally very complete and pol shed.

LIGHT.

FROM the quicken'd womb of the primal gloom
The sun roll'd black and bare,

Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast,
Of the threads of my golden hair;
And when the broad tent of the firmament
Arose on its airy spars,

I pencill'd the hue of its matchless blue,
And spangled it round with stars.

I painted the flowers of the Eden bowers,
And their leaves of living green,

And mine were the dyes in the sinless eyes
Of Eden's virgin queen;

And when the fiend's art, on her trustful heart,
Had fasten'd its mortal spell,

In the silvery sphere of the first-born tear
To the trembling earth I fell.

When the waves that burst o'er a world accursed
Their work of wrath hath sped,

And the Ark's lone few, the tried and true,
Came forth among the dead;

With the wondrous gleams of my braided beams
I bade their terrors cease;

As I wrote on the roll of the storm's dark scroll
GoD's covenant of peace.

Like a pall at rest on a pulseless breast,
Night's funeral shadow slept,

Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains
Their lonely vigils kept;

When 1 flash'd on their sight the heralds bright Of heaven's redeeming plan,

As they chanted the morn of a Saviou bornJoy, joy to the outcast man!

Equal favour I show to the lofty and low,
On the just and unjust I descend;
E'en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness
and tears,

Feel my smile the best smile of a friend: Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced, As the rose in the garden of kings;

As the chrysalis bier of the worm I appear,
And lo! the gay butterfly's wings!

The desolate Morn, like a mourner forlorn,
Conceals all the pride of her charms,
Till I bid the bright Hours chase the Night from
her bowers,

And lead the young Day to her arms;
And when the gay rover seeks Eve for his lover,
And sinks to her balmy repose,

I wrap their soft rest by the zephyr-fann'd west, In curtains of amber and rose.

From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep,
I gaze with unslumbering eye,
When the cynosure star of the mariner

Is blotted from the sky;

And guided by me through the merciless sca,
Though sped by the hurricane's wings,
His compassless bark, lone, weltering, dark,
To the haven-home safely he brings.

I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers,
The birds in their chambers of green,

And mountain and plain glow with beauty again,
As they bask in my matinal sheen.
O, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth
Though fitful and fleeting the while,

What glories must rest on the home of the bless'd,
Ever bright with the DEITY's smile!

LINES TO A CHRYSALIS.

MUSING long I asked me this,
Chrysalis,

Lying helpless in my path,
Obvious to mortal scath
From a careless passer by,
What thy life may signify?
Why, from hope and joy apart,
Thus thou art?

Nature surely did amiss,

Chrysalis,

When she lavish'd fins and wings
Nerved with nicest moving-springs,
On the mote and madripore,
Wherewithal to swim or soar;
And dispensed so niggardly
Unto thee.

E'en the very worm may kiss,
Chrysalis,

Roses on their topmost stems
Blazon'd with their dewy gems,
And may rock him to and fro
As the zephyrs softly blow;
Whilst thou lyest dark and cold
On the mould.

Quoth the Chrysalis, Sir Bard,
Not so hard

Is my rounded destiny
In the great Economy:

Nay, by humble reason view'd,
There is much for gratitude
In the shaping and upshot
Of my lot.

Though I scem of all things born
Most forlorn,

Most obtuse of soul and sense,
Next of kin to Impotence,
Nay, to Death himself; yet ne'er
Priest or prophet, sage or seer,
May sublimer wisdom teach

Than I preach.

From my pulpit of the sod,

age

Like a god,

I proclaim this wondrous truth, Farthest is nearest youth, Nearest glory's natal porch, Where with pale, inverted torch, Death lights downward to the rest Of the blest.

Mark yon airy butterfly's

Rainbow-dyes!
Yesterday that shape divine
Was as darkly hearsed as mine;
But to-morrow I shall be
Free and beautiful as she,

And sweep forth on wings of light,
Like a sprite.

Soul of man in crypt of clay! Bide the day

When thy latent wings shall be Plumed for immortality,

And with transport marvellous Cleave their dark sarcophagus, O'er Elysian fields to soar Evermore!

THE HOME VALENTINE.

STILL fond and true, though wedded long,
The bard, at eve retired,
Sat smiling o'er the annual song

His home's dear Muse inspired:
And as he traced her virtues now
With all love's vernal glow,

A gray hair from his bended brow,
Like faded leaf from autumn bough,
Fell to the page below.

He paused, and with a mournful mien
The sad memento raised,
And long upon its silvery sheen
In pensive silence gazed:
And if a sigh escaped him then,

It were not strange to say;
For fancy's favourites are but men;
And who e'er felt the stoic when
First conscious of decay?

Just then a soft check press'd his own
With beauty's fondest tear,

And sweet words breathed in sweeter tone
Thus murmur'd in his ear:

Ah, sigh not, love to mark the trace

Of time's unsparing wand!

It was not manhood's outward grace,
No charm of faultless form or face,
That won my heart and hand.
Lo! dearest, mid these matron locks,
Twin-fated with thine own,

A dawn of silvery lustre mocks

The midnight they have known:
But time to blighted cheek and tress
May all his snows impart;
Yet shalt thou feel in my caress
No chill of waning tenderness,
No winter of the heart!

Forgive me, dearest Beatrice!
The grateful bard replied,
As nearer and with tenderer kiss
He pressed her to his side:
Forgive the momentary tear

To manhood's faded prime;

I should have felt, hadst thou been near, Our hearts indeed have nought to fear From all the frosts of time!

Born 1805

THE Reverend GEORGE W. BETHUNE, D.D. is a native of New York. When twenty one years of age he entered the ministry of the Presbyterian church, from which, in the following year, he passed to that of the Dutch Reformed church. After residing at Rhinebeck, and Utica, in New York, he in 1834 removed to Philadelphia, where he re

Died 1801.]

mained until 1849, in which year he became pastor of a church in Brooklyn. There are in the American pulpit few better scholars or more eloquent preachers. He has published several volumes of literary and religious discourses, and in 1847 gave to the public a volume of graceful and elegant poems, entitled "Lays of Love and Faith."

TO MY MOTHER.

Mr mother!-Manhood s anxious brow
And sterner cares have long been mine;
Yet turn I to thee fondly now,

As when upon thy bosom's shrine

My infant griefs were gently hush'd to rest,
And thy low-whisper'd prayers my slumber bless'd.

I never call that gentle name,

My mother! but I am again
E'en as a child; the very same

That prattled at thy knee; and fain
Would I forget, in momentary joy,
That I no more can be thy happy boy;-
The artless boy, to whom thy smile

Was sunshine, and thy frown sad night,
(Though rare that frown, and brief the while
It veil'd from me thy loving light;)

. For well-conn'd task, ambition's highest bliss,
To win from thine approving lips a kiss.
I've loved through foreign lands to roam,
And gazed o'er many a classic scene;
Yet would the thought of that dear home,
Which once was ours, oft intervene,
And bid me close again my weary eye

To think of thee, and those sweet days gone by.

That pleasant home of fruits and flowers,

Where, by the Hudson's verdant side
My sisters wove their jasmine bowers,
And he, we loved, at eventide

Would hastening come from distant toil to bless
Thine, and his children's radiant happiness.
Alas, the change! the rattling car

On flint-paved streets profanes the spot,
Where o'er the sod, we sow'd the Star
Of Bethlehem, and Forget-me-not.
Oh, wo to Mammon's desolating reign!
We ne'er shall find on earth a home again'

I've pored o'er many a yellow page

Of ancient wisdom, and have won,
Perchance, a scholar's name-but sage

Or bard have never taught thy son
Lessons so dear, so fraught with holy truth,
As those his mother's faith shed on his youth.

If, by the Saviour's grace made meet,
My GoD will own my life and love,

Methinks, when singing at His feet,

Amid the ransom'd throng above,

Thy name upon my glowing lips shall be,
And I will bless that grace for heaven and thee.
For thee and heaven; for thou didst tread

The way that leads me heavenward, and
My often wayward footsteps led

In the same path with patient hand; And when I wander'd far, thy earnest call Restored my soul from sin's deceitful thrall. I have been bless'd with other ties,

Fond ties and true, yet never deem That I the less thy fondness prize;

No, mother! in my warmest dream Of answer'd passion, through this heart of mine One chord will vibrate to no name but thine.

Mother! thy name is widow-well

I know no love of mine can fill
The waste place of thy heart, or dwell
Within one sacred recess: still
Lean on the faithful bosom of thy son,
My parent, thou art mine, my only one!

NIGHT STUDY.

I AM alone; and yet

In the still solitude there is a rush
Around me, as were met

A crowd of viewless wings; I hear a gush
Of utter'd harmonies-heaven meeting earth,
Making it to rejoice with holy mirth.

Ye winged Mysteries,

Sweeping before my spirit's conscious eye,
Beckoning me to arise,

And go forth from my very self, and fly
With you far in the unknown, unseen immense
Of worlds beyond our sphere-What are ye
Whence?

Ye eloquent voices,

Now soft as breathings of a distant flute,
Now strong as when rejoices,
The trumpet in the victory and pursuit;
Strange are ye, yet familiar, as ye call
My soul to wake from earth's sense and its thrall

I know you now-I see

With more than natural light-ye are the good The wise departed-ye