THE INCOGNITA OF RAPHAEL.*

LONG has the summer sunlight shone

On the fair form, the quaint costume;
Yet nameless still, she sits unknown,
A lady in her youthful bloom.
Fairer for this! no shadows cast

Their blight upon her perfect lot;
Whate'er her future, or her past,

In this bright moment matters not. No record of her high descent

There needs, nor memory of her name: Enough that RAPHAEL'S colours blent

To give her features deathless fame! 'Twas his anointing hand that set

The crown of beauty on her brow; Still lives its earlier radiance yet,

As at the earliest, even now.

"Tis not the ecstasy that glows

In all the rapt CECILIA'S grace;
Nor yet the holy, calm repose,

He painted on the Virgin's face.
Less of the heavens, and more of earth,
There lurk within these earnest eyes,
The passions that have had their birth,
And grown beneath Italian skies.

What mortal thoughts, and cares, and dreams,
What hopes, and fears, and longings rest,
Where falls the folded veil, or gleams

The golden necklace on her breast. What mockery of the painted glow

May shade the secret soul within; What griefs from passion's overflow, What shame that follows after sin ! Yet calm as heaven's serenest deeps

Are those pure eyes, those glances pure; And queenly is the state she keeps, In beauty's lofty trust secure.

And who has stray'd, by happy chance, Through all those grand and pictured halls, Nor felt the magic of her glance,

As when a voice of music calls?

Not soon shall I forget the day-
Sweet day, in spring's unclouded time,
While on the glowing canvass lay

The light of that delicious clime

I mark'd the matchiess colours wreathed
On the fair brow, the peerless cheek,
The lips, I fancied, almost breathed

The blessings that they could not speak.
f'air were the eyes with mine that bent
Upon the picture their mild gaze,
And dear the voice that gave consent
To all the utterance of my praise.

• The portrait to which these verses refer is in the Pitti Palace at Florence. It is one of the gems of that admirable collection.

Oh, fit companionship of thought;

Oh, happy memories, shrined apart; The rapture that the painter wrought, The kindred rapture of the heart!

UHLAND.

IT is the poet UHLAND, from whose wreathings
Of rarest harmony I here have drawn,
To lower tones and less melodious breathings,
Some simple strains, of youth and passion born.

His is the poetry of sweet expression,

Of clear, unfaltering tune, serene and strong; Where gentlest thoughts and words, in soft procession,

Move to the even measures of his song. Delighting ever in his own calm fancies, He sees much beauty where most men see naught, Looking at Nature with familiar glances, And weaving garlands in the groves of thought. He sings of youth, and hope, and high endeavour, He sings of love-O crown of poesy!Of fate, and sorrow, and the grave, forever The end of strife, the goal of destiny. He sings of fatherland, the minstrel's glory, High theme of memory and hope divine, Twining its fame with gems of antique story, In Suabian songs and legends of the Rhine; In ballads breathing many a dim tradition,

Nourish'd in long belief or minstrel rhymes, Fruit of the old Romance, whose gentle mission Pass'd from the earth before our wiser times. Well do they know his name among the mountains, And plains, and valleys, of his native land; Part of their nature are the sparkling fountains Of his clear, thought, with rainbow fancies spann'd.

His simple lays oft sings the mother cheerful
Beside the cradle in the dim twilight;
His plaintive notes low breathes the maiden tearful
With tender murmurs in the ear of night.

The hillside swain, the reaper in the meadows,
Carol his ditties through the toilsome day;
And the lone hunter in the Alpine shadows
Recalls his ballads by some ruin gray.

O precious gift! O wondrous inspiration!
Of all high deeds, of all harmonious things,
To be the oracle, while a whole nation
Catches the echo from the sounding strings.
Out of the depths of feeling and emotion
Rises the orb of song, serenely bright,
As who beholds, across the tracts of ocean,
The golden sunrise bursting into light.

Wide is its magic world-divided neither
By continent, nor sea, nor narrow zone:
Who would not wish sometimes to travel thither
In fancied fortunes so forget his own

THE Reverend HENRY W. PARKER is a native of Danby, New York, and was born in 1825. His mother is a niece of the late NOAH WEBSTER, and his father, the Reverend SAMUEL PARKER, of Ithaca, travelled in Oregon, and published in 1837 an account of his tour, a very interesting book, in which the practicability of a railroad through the Rocky Mountains was first suggested.

Mr. PARKER passed his early years in Ithaca, a place of singular beauty, at the head of Cayuga Lake, and was graduated at Amherst College in 1843. He subsequently studied divinity, and is now pastor of a Presbyterian church in Brooklyn.

VISION OF SHELLEY'S DEATH.

THE wind had darkly touched the outer bay,
A looming storm shut out the sultry day,
And whiter grew the distant billows' play.
The nearer calm a single sail beguiled,
And at the helm, with features fair and mild,
Sat one whom men have called the Eternal Child.
A breath--a breeze-the tempest strikes the sail;
It fills, it stoops, and, swift and free as frail,
It flies a broad-winged arrow from the gale.
A precious boat! may angels speed it right!
The world, in shell so thin and form so slight,
Hath all its hold upon a mind of might.
He lay reclined in noonday dreams no more,
He gazed no longer at the purple shore,
Nor mused on roofing skies, and ocean's floor.
The wizard storm invoked a truer dream-
Had kindled in his eye its proudest gleam,
And given his eagle soul a grander theme.
No sign of craven fear his lips reveal;
He only feels the joy that heroes feel,
When lightnings flash and jarring thunders peal.
The boat dipt low; his foot was on the helm;
The deck a throne, the storm his genial realm,
He dared the powers that nature's king o'erwhelm.
The gentle eye that turned from man away,
Now flashed in answer to the flashing spray,
And glanced in triumph o'er the foaming bay.
And as aloft the boat a moment hung,
Then down the plunging wave was forward flung,
His own wild song, "The Fugitives," he sung:
Said he, "And seest thou, and hearest thou?"
Cried he, "And fearest thou, and fearest thou?
A pilot bold, I trow, should follow now."
The sail was torn and trailing in the sea,
The water flooded o'er the dipping lee,
And clomb the mast in maddest revelry.
It righted, with the liquid load, and fast
Went down; the mariners afloat were cast,
And louder roared and laughed the mocking blast.

His wife, to whom he was married in 1852, is the author of a work entitled "Stars of the Western World," and he has himself written much in "The North American Review" and other periodicals, besides a volume of "Poems," published at Auburn, in 1850, and "The Story of a Soul," a poem read before the literary societies of Hamilton College, in 1851.

Mr. PARKER has a luxuriant fancy, a ready apprehension of the picturesque in nature, a meditative tenderness, and uncommon facility of versification. In some of his pieces there is humor, but this is a quality he does not seem to cherish.

A moment, and no trace of man or spar
Is left to strew the path that, near and far,
Is whirled in foam beneath the tempest's car. ....
A moment more, and one pale form appeared,
And faintly looked the eyes; no storm careered,
And all the place with mystic light was sphered.
Around him slept a circling space of wave;
It seemed the crystal pavement of a cave,
And all about he heard the waters rave.
He saw them waving like a silken tent-
Beheld them fall, as rocks of beryl rent,
And rage like lions from a martyr pent.
A sudden life began to thrill his veins;
A strange new force his sinking weight sustains,
Until he seemed released from mortal chains.
He looked above-a glory floating down-
A dazzling face and forma kingly crown-
With blinding beauty all his senses drown.
As tearful eyes may see the light they shun,
As veiling mists reveal the clear-shaped sun,
He knew the crucified, transfigured ONE.
In that still pause of trembling, blissful sight,
He woke as from a wild and life-long night,
And through his soul there crept a holy light.
A blot seemed fading from his troubled brain,
A doubt of GOD-a madness and a pain-
Till upward welled his trustful youth again;
Till upward every feeling pure was drawn,
As nightly dews are claimed again at da.vn,
And whence they gently come are gently gone
He gazed upon those mercy-beaming eyes,
Till recognition chased away surprise,
And he had faith from heaven to slowly rise-
To rise and kneel upon the glassy tide,
While down the Vision floated to his side,
And stooped to hear what less he said than sighed
"Oh Truth, Love, Gentleness! I wooed and won
Your essences, nor knew that ye are ONE;
Oh crowned Truth, receive thine erring son!"
The gentle one, whose thought alone was wrong-
The Eternal Child amidst a cherub throng,
Was wafted to the Home of Love and Song.

THE DEAD-WATCH.

EACH saddened face is gone, and tearful eye
Of mother, brother, and of sisters fair;
With ghostly sound their distant footfalls die
Thro' whispering hall, and up the rustling stair.
In yonder room the newly dead doth sleep;
Begin we thus, my friend, our watch to keep.
And now both feed the fire and trin the lamp;
Pass cheerly, if we can, the slow-paced hours;
For, all without is cold, and drear, and damp,

And the wide air with storm and darkness lowers;
Pass cheerly, if we may, the live-long night,
And chase pale phantoms, paler fear, to flight.
We will not talk of death, of pall and knell
Leave that, the mirth of brighter hours to check;
But tales of life, love, beauty, let us tell,

Or of stern battle, sca, and stormy wreck; Call up the visions gay of other daysOur boyhood's sports and merry youthful ways. Hark to the distant bell!-an hour is gone! Enter yon silent room with footsteps light; Our brief, appointed duty must be done

To bathe the face, and stay death's rapid blight: To bare the rigid face, and dip the cloth That hides a mortal, "crushed before the moth." The bathing liquid scents the chilly room;

How spectral white are shroud and vailing lace On yonder side-board, in the fearful gloom!

Take off the muffler from the sleeper's faceYou spoke, my friend, of sunken cheek and eyeAh, what a form of beauty here doth lie! Never hath Art, from purest wax or stone, So fair an image, and so lustrous, wrought; It is as if a beam from heaven had shown

A weary angel in sweet slumber caught!The smiling lip, the warmly tinted cheek, And all so calm, so saint-like, and so meek! She softly sleeps, and yet how unlike sleep;

No fairy dreams flit o'er that marble face, As ripples play along the breezy deep,

As shadows o'er the field each other chase; The spirit dreams no more, but wakes in light, And freely wings its flashing seraph flight. She sweetly sleeps, her lips and eyelids sealed; No ruby jewel heaves upon her breast, With her quick breath now hidden, now revealed, As setting stars long tremble in the west; But white and still as drifts of moonlit snow, Her folded cerements and her flushless brow. Oh, there is beauty in the winter moon,

And beauty in the brilliant summer flower, And in the liquid eye and luring tone

Of radiant Love's and rosy Laughter's hour; But where is beauty, in this blooming world, Like Death upon a maiden's lip impearled! Vail we the dead, and close the open door; Perhaps the spirit, ere it soar above, Would watch its clay alone, and hover o'er The face it once had kindled into love; Commune we hence, oh friend, this waket l night, Of death made lovely by so blest a sight

SONNETS.

SUMMER LIGHTS.

NO MORE the tulips hold their torches up,
And chestnuts silver candelabra bear.
The spring, dethroned, has left her festive cup
Of honey-dew, and other blossoms flare
To light another feast with tinted glare.
Summer has ta'en the sceptre, and the trees,

In low obeisance bow their weight of green; The locusts bloom with swarms of snowy bees Each snow-ball bush with full-blown moons is hung, That make the fragrant branches downward lean; And all around, like red suns setting low, Large peonies shed a burning crimson glow, While, worlds of foliage on the shoulders swung Of Atlantean trunks, the orchards darkly grow.

SUMMER'S ESSENCE.

A TIDE of song and leaf, of bloom and featherA sea of summer's freshest, fullest splendor, Has come with June's serenely crystal weather.

Whate'er of beauty, mornings clear and tender And golden eves and dewy nights, engender, 1 as met in one bewildering bliss togetherDelicious fragrance, foliage deep and massy, Infolding roses, silver locust flowers,

And darkling silences of waters glassy, Soft crescents, loving stars and nightly showers, Rich shades and lemon lights in vistas grassy, And sweetest twitterings through all the hours, And opal clouds that float in slumber bland, And distances that soften into fairy-land.

A STREET.

By day, soft clouded in a twilight gloom,
And letting sunlight through its arches pour,
The street is like a lofty banquet room,
And every sunny leaf a golden bloom,

And sunny spots upon the level floor,
As if with tiger-robes 't were covered o'er.
By night, the gas-lights half in foliage hid,
Seem birds of flame that flutter silver wings
And shake in concert with the katydid.
It is a leafy palace made for kings
To meet their thousand lords in festivals-
A temple with its wreathed and pillared walls-
A street that slowly grew a Mammoth Cave
Stalagmited with trunks through all the nave.

SNOW IN THE VILLAGE.

NOT thus on street and garden, roof and spire, The snow, for ages, here was yearly spread; It tipt the Indian's plume of bloody red, And melted, hissing, in his council-fire;

It gave an impress to the panther's tread, And all the monster feet that filled the wood.

But now the snow of whiter towns and faces Has drifted o'er the glorious solitude; And death and silence, like a winter, brood

Upon the vanished brute and human races. So let oblivion come, till it effaces, Oh weary soul, thy summer's maddest mood, Thus o'er thy woes let silence softly fall, And Winter, with a holy beauty, vail them all

The trumpet dies, a distant roar,

The drum becomes a murmuring voiceNo more in battle I rejoice, But fall to dreaming as before

Of other skies and greener trees,

And mountain peaks of purple gloom — And of the dim and shadowy tomb, Where that great spirit rests in peace.

IV.

The sunset died that tender day,

Across the mountains bright and pure,
And bathed with golden waves the shore
Of evening, and the fringed spray,
And stately ships which glided by,

With whitest sails toward the dim
Untravelled seas beyond the rim
Of peaks that melted in the sky.
He sat upon the trellised porch,

And still the conversation ranged
From olden things all gone or changed,
To grand, eternal Truth-a torch

That spread around a steady light,

And mocked the strength of hostile hands And pointed man to other lands Of hope beyond Thought's farthest flight. That noble forehead, broad and calm,

Was flushed with evening's holy ray,
His eye gave back the light of day-
His words poured out a soothing balm;

His low sweet tones fell on the ear
Like music in the quiet watch

Of midnight, when the spirits catch
At golden memories, ever dear.

And now recalling that dim eve,

And him who spake those noble words. Though trembling still in all its chords, My heart is calmed, and I believe.

V.

I thought to pass away from earth
And join thee, with that other heart
Loved even more than thee, a part
Of other worlds, through heavenlier birth-
Of whom I do not speak my thought
So dear she is, because the eye
O'erflows with wo, and with a cry
I tear the symbols I have wrought.
No word shall be of that one grief,

Because it lies too deep for words,
And this sad trifling which affords
Some respite, could be no relief.

VI.

Come from the fields, thy dwelling place,
Oh spirit of the Past! and steep
My wounded soul in dreamy sleep,
And fit its sandals for the race
Of flashing, hurrying life; and spread
A soft oblivion o'er the ills

With which the fainting bosom fills, And calm the throbbing heart and head:

So shall I gather strength again

To stem the tide of worldly strife, To bear the weariness of life, And feel that all things are not vain.

CLOUDS.

I KNOW not whither past the crimson zone
Of evening sail those ships of snow and gold-
The beauteous clouds that seem to hover and fold
Their wings-like birds that having all day flown
Against the blue sky, now at set of sun

Play for a moment gayly on their soft
And burnished pinions wide: then from aloft
Sink down below the horizon and are gone!
I know not where they fold their shining winga
In very truth; nor what far happy land
They come together in-a radiant band,
The brightest, purest, of all earthly things!
But well I know that land lies broad and fair
Beyond the evening: Oh! that I were there!

MAY.

HAS the old glory passed
From tender May-
That never the echoing blast
Of bugle horns merry, and fast
Dying away like the past,
Welcomes the day?

Has the old Beauty gone
From golden May-
That not any more at dawn
Over the flowery lawn,

Or knolls of the forest withdrawn,
Maids are at play?

Is the old freshness dead

Of the fairy May ?— Ah! the sad tear-drops unshed! Ah! the young maidens unwed! Golden locks-cheeks rosy red! Ah! where are they?