end approaching, in the joyful exclamation of the apostle the night is far spent.-the day is at hand,' the bright and beautiful morning of eternity! "If we should regard it as an evil, still it is wisdom's part to look steadily upon it, for all evils may be mitigated by foresight and preparation. It is true that we may not avert this; it is the certain, the inevitable doom of all; we may each apply to ourselves the simple lines of the poet "To think of Summer yet to come, To think a weed is yet to bloom, And we may take an enlarged view of it, we may see the mighty hand of our Maker brushing away from the face of the earth an entire generation, and then, calling out to the succeeding race, Come again, ye children of men;' and so shall wave after wave of mankind roll on, and roll away, until its last heave is lost in the bosom of Eternity! EUREKA. BY MARY G. WELLS. "I have found it!" quoth the child In the evening's gentle hush "I have found it" breathes the maiden, "Love, life's sweetest bliss is mine:" The flush of triumph on his brow, "I have found it!" cries the bard, "I have found it!" cries the king, And the sceptre to his heart, "I have found it!" says the sage, And uplifts his care-dim eyes VOL. XV-37 "I have found it!" with a sigh "I have found it!" he can say Disclosing heaven to his view, THE NEW PYTHAGOREAN. CHAPTER FOURTH.-DELOS. If Athens was, as the great bard called it, the eye of Greece, the little island of Delos may, with quite as much justness of metaphor, be called the heart of Greece. Not that its soil was the richest of Greece, or its people the most warlike, its fortresses the most impregnable, or its citadel the most defensible. But that island, "longe clarissima, cycladum media, templo Apollinis et mercatu celebrata," was the organ, as it were, of some of the strangest social feelings of the Athenian confederacy with which it was joined. It was their treasury, their Congressional city, the Bethlehem of their purest deities, the Mecca of their pilgrimages; the spot which they purified when their fortunes were, and their deities seemed, adverse; the altar to which they sent their most sacred and mysterious offerings by their fairest and noblest messengers; the port from which the sacred bark must return before even such enemies as Melitus and Lycon and Anytus would compel the hemlock to the lips even of so dangerous a prisoner as Socrates; the sacred isle which Cicero tells us, was safe without walls-sine muro nihil timebat-when the pirates were swarming in the Greek and Italian seas, which Polycrates of Samos spared when he was irresistible on the ocean, and which even the Persians themselves dared not violate in a war which laid Athens in ruins. That island we would see, in whatever sense the vision may be won. Yet a vision of Delos as it lies in the past is the only one which is worth having. As the island now is, there is no voice of glory heard in it save the voice of the memory of far remote centuries. Like Milton's Eden after the deluge, it is but "the haunt of seals and orcs, and seamew's clang." The whole island has been rented as pasture-ground for twenty crowns with its crowd of Ionian islanders who came a year! there with their spirits steadfastly gazing forward into the then very imperfectly explored realms of human art and intellectual beauty, its bands of Ionian maidens at length collected on the day and at the place for which their highest odes and Poetry sees and shows and sings Delos rising from the depths of the ocean, drifting in the Ægean sea, and at length fixed in its place, at a critical period, as a receptacle for that unpopular courtezan of the gods, the unwedded mother the sweetest melodies of their voices had been of Apollo. But the sterner pages of Herodotus and Thucydides exhibit scenes in Delos, in more sober colors, and more sober times, which we would rather have toiled to some high place to to witness, than even the emergence of the seeming leviathan, and the smack of the perturbed waves against the sands of Rhenea and Myconos, and the drifting about of the unsteady float, and the air-borne Latona alighting upon it, trembling lest so frail a floor should yet careen with her weight, and again go down; the stroke of Lothario Jupiter's sceptre which made it fast; the relinquished pursuit of foiled Juno, and the scene beneath the sacred olive-tree which gave Apollo and Diana to Greek adoration. Let us rather look upon the Delos of historic times. reserved, on the occasion of their purest worship offered to those of their divinities for whom, alone of all the pantheon, the purest cheeks among them need not blush. Suddenly there is a pause in their measured tread. They incline their ears to catch a new voice breathing through the song, as wild souls stricken with the music of the spheres are fabled to incline their ears to the stars at night, and listen to catch more surely the strange melody-and in their own partial silence it is now distinctly audible "new as if brought from other spheres," sweet as if from the lips of Apollo himself, easily confessed to be the voice of a prince of singers. Rather than any secrets of the Hyperborean mysteries on which Herodotus so expatiates, we would have heard the voice There was an annual day, in later times, when of that question-it was doubtless one of the the trailing-tuniced Ionians with their children most queenly of the island maidens who uttered and their modest spouses, from many an Ægean it "who can this prince of singers be, who was island, assembled at Delos in great, joyous, bust-announced here as a poor stranger?" Rather ling festal crowds, for contests of pugilism and orchestry and song ;* when, among others things which awoke the spirits and gave light to the eyes of the assembly, choirs of the brightest maidens of the islands, arrayed in the most imposing forms of Greek dress, walked in graceful order through the crowd, and uttered the purest sentiments of Greek imagination in tones of the wildest and richest music of the Greek islands. It was on one of such days-we have a hint of it from the chief actor himselff-while these bands of the fairest maidens were moving through the great crowd with measured step and voice, that suddenly a voice was heard which was none of theirs, blending with their notes, and a half joy and half surprise arose among them, and looks of enquiry and wreathed smiles were exchanged, and one said to another among them: Delos on another day within the light of as"O girls, what prince of singers is this man who sured history would be worth seeing. It is a has come among us here?" And when they scene reminding us of the visions of the beings have seen from whence the voice comes: “This of the world above, which came to the Hebrew man was announced as a poor stranger and we patriarchs of old, and the significant names and are all so delighted with his singing!" And monumental places connected with those viswhen no answer is returned to the enquiry, and ions-their Nissi, their Bethel, their Mahanaim. the stranger himself has heard the gossip of the It seems a visible motion, among the mysteries merry maidens, he answers for himself: "A of this life, of a spirit greater than human, greatblind man and he dwells in rugged Chios."- er than Apollo, or Jupiter, or Fate. Rather than any of the scenes of a cloudy mythology, we would see the assembly of that day, *Thucydides, lib. iii, 104. + HOMER'S Hymn to Apol., 165–176. than the blazing wheat-straw of the Hyperborean mysteries themselves, we would see that óñokρívuole e¿Pńμws," that courteous, artful, smiling evasion of the others of the choir, as if they would make sign that the strange voice itself must answer; and more than all, the pausing step and voice and the reverting head of the blind man of Chios himself, his sightless eye-balls upturned, and their lost cunning transferred to the portals of the keen ear, while, with half sad, half smiling face, and in the same gentle kind voice which had called forth the question, he answers: "A blind old man, and he dwells in rugged Chios." That scene did linger in the spirit of him who was the jewel of it-HOMERalthough it reached him only through the portals of the ear. It was not lawful either to be born or to die in Delos. Both were held impure. The couch of Latona might be the couch of no one else; in the birth-place of Apollo and Diana, no one else might be born. Those who were approaching 1 THE MESSAGE TO THE DEAD. BY GRETTA. either of the two forbidden events were to em- the minds of the Attic statesmen, that all is not bark immediately for the neighboring island of right between themselves and the Immortal ImRhenia, which had been devoted to these purpo- personations of truth and purity. They are puses by a solemn bond. Death and burial in De- rifying this soil, that they may thus purify the los had been sometimes winked at when fortune spirit of the Attic confederacy, and prepare it to smiled on the Athenians and adverse fate seemed enter with firm heart into the struggle for existafar off. Pisistratus had undertaken to purify ence with proud Sparta. They stand in the the island before the Peloponessian war, but Ana-sight of all future ages testifying by the singular nias-like, he had deceived the Latoides, and done and significant action in which they are employthe work but partially. He had disinterred and ed that there is an innate moral sense in man, removed only the dead bodies which were buried bearing reference to his weal or his woe, distribwithin reach of the eye from the Temple. The uted by Invisible Powers above. So let every conscience of Attic Greece was only partially nation purify its Delos. purified. Thucydides tells us,* that when the Peloponessian war broke out, there was a headlong rush to arms on both sides, each seizing their sharpest weapons, because there were many youths both at Athens and at Sparta who had never seen war, and thought of it only in the hues of its romantic glory, not in those of its crimsoned battle-fields. But at that time a prodigy occurred which checked even the martial fury of the Athenian warriors. Delos was shaken by an earthquake!—as it had not been, in the memory of man, and as it had been supposed that the stroke of Jupiter's trident secured it from ever being. This shook the hearts of the Athenians. Delos then was not acceptable to the gods. The conduct of Pisistratus came into remembrance. Delos was not perfectly purified! And rashly as they were rushing to battle, this earthquake, together with a "certain oracle" to the same effect, arrested their steps, and they sent a solemn deputation to purify the soil of Delos of all the dead who had been permitted there to sleep in the dust of the earth. Perhaps classic antiquity hardly presents another scene in which the mysteries of the moral life of the Greeks stand out so palpably, as on that strange day of resurrection at Delos. It is not summer; the forests are bare except the gloomy cypresses; the fields are not waving with ripe grain, that these groups of men which appear in them, should be thought to be Delian harvesters. Nor are they sportsmen; the precincts are too sacred to permit the rude revelry of field sports. Nor are they funeral processions employed in those solemn ceremonies of respect for the dead, which will release their manes from an hundred years of vagrancy on the hither shore of the Styx. They are not indeed Delians at all; but Attic men, reversing funeral obsequies, disinterring the dead, taking away from this island the odor of death which may offend those Immortal Powers who preside over the destinies of men; obeying the dictate of last summer's earthquake, complying with that deep and strange conviction which has seized on • 11-8. I heard a lovely legend. It had birth To try their new-born strength. Then when each heart Sudden was loosed, and lo! to the far heaven And thou my ardent soul What message would'st thou give the white-winged dove If far away to yon eternal goal In hope and yearning love, He might go forth with thy fond burden laden To the bright dwellers in the distant Aiden? Go tell the aged there (Now in the vigor of immortal youth But whose brows here were white with hoary hair)Their wisdom and their truth The lights from heaven with which our paths they bless'd Have still been with us, now they are at rest. Go tell the sons of song, They are not dead, that even on this earth The music deep and strong Of their great strains immortal from their birth, Still stirs our hearts, and all the songs we raise Are but faint echoes of their mightier lays! Tell them that lovely things Born of their breathings linger still around; That in the wood, and by the gushing spring, Shapes of bright beauty, angels may be found Which they drew down, and all the starry night Is holy with their visions of delight. Go tell the Brave Who battled in the council or the field, No son of freemen now can be a slave. Tell them they cannot yield. That they can die to save or to deliver Tell him, Columbia's sage, Who turned indignant from the proffered crown, The proudest record on his country's page Is that which shows, which proves his fame our own, And though foul discord every bosom claimed, Brother would brother clasp, if he were named. Tell him his home has grown, Fanned by the northern and the southern breeze, That here wing'd Liberty has made her throne Wash'd by the billows of two subject seas, And they her vassals sounding night and day Bear her free notes to distant isles away. And now forgetful heart! Hast thou no message for thy gentler dead, Those whom Fame knew not; but whose holy part In silent faith was acted? Those who led My infant footsteps. Those who made earth bright Once to my eyes as Eden's holy light! Yes yes I send to thee Thou youthful dweller by the heavenly streams. Oh! how we miss thy beauty and thy glee, Thy ringing laugh, thy smile like moonlight gleams, Thou whose soft eyes could charm us like a spell, Thou the bright angel one, the golden-haired Estelle ! Then on and softly sing, Oh! gentle bird, and seek amid those bowers A little, lovely, laughing, fairy thing, Who fell asleep one day among the flowers, Beneath whose bloom we laid her. Go, thou dove! And find that spotless one, in yonder land of love. And shall I name thee now, Thou whose dear memory moves me like a spell; Oh how I must have loved thee, though my brow Was youth's glad throne, and childhood's citadel. For every look of thine, and every tone Is graven on the heart, for thee now lone. Long years have passed, But yet I cannot "cannot make thee dead." The deep entrancing love around thee cast, Has not my parent with thy spirit fled. Nay, seek him not beyond Life's distant bourn For my heart's yearning cry would be "return!" Cease my too trusting soul. No messenger is thine to speed away With thy vain wishes to the eternal goal. A little while in hope and faith yet stay, And thou earth-freed, and wearing wings of light, May take thine onward, upward, heavenly flight. Baltimore, 1849. MARGINALIA. BY EDGAR A. POE. If ever mortal "wreaked his thoughts upon expression," it was Shelley. If ever poet sangas a bird sings-earnestly-impulsively-with utter abandonment-to himself solely-and for the mere joy of his own song-that poet was the author of "The Sensitive Plant." Of Artbeyond that which is instinctive with Geniushe either had little or disdained all. He really disdained that Rule which is an emanation from Law, because his own soul was Law in itself. His rhapsodies are but the rough notes-the stenographic memoranda of poems-memoranda which, because they were all-sufficient for his own intelligence, he cared not to be at the trouble of writing out in full for mankind. In all his works we find no conception thoroughly wrought. For this reason he is the most fatiguing of poets. Yet he wearies in saying too little rather than too much. What, in him, seems the diffuseness of seen the noblest poem which, possibly, can be one idea, is the conglomerate concision of many: composed. In my ballad called "Lenore" I have these raise Mr. William W. Lord, author of " "Niagara," &c., has it thus: -They, albeit with inward pain, Who thought to sing thy dirge, must sing thy Pean. The commencement of my "Haunted Palace" is as follows: In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, (Radiant palace !) reared its head. Never seraph spread a pinion Mr. Lord writes On the old and haunted mountain and this species of concision it is, which renders him obscure. With such a man, to imitate was out of the question. It would have served no lines: purpose; for he spoke to his own spirit alone, which would have comprehended no alien tongue. Avaunt! to night my heart is light. No dirge will I upThus he was profoundly original. His quaint-But waft the angel on her flight with a Pean of old days. ness arose from intuitive perception of that truth to which Bacon alone has given distinct utterance :-"There is no exquisite Beauty which has not some strangeness in its proportions." But whether obscure, original, or quaint, Shelley had no affectations. He was at all times sincere. From his ruins, there sprang into existence, affronting the Heavens, a tottering and fantastic pagoda, in which the salient angles, tipped with mad jangling bells, were the idiosyncratic faults of the original-faults which cannot be considered such in view of his purposes, but which are monstrous when we regard his works as addressed to mankind. A "school" arose—if that absurd term must still be employed-a school-a system of rules-upon the basis of the Shelley who had none. Young men innumerable, dazzled with the glare and bewildered by the bizarrerie of the lightning that flickered through the clouds of "Alastor," had no trouble whatever in heaping up imitative vapors, but, for the lightning, were forced to be content with its spectrum, in which the bizarrerie appeared without the fire. Nor were mature minds unimpressed by the contemplation of a greater and more mature; and thus, gradually, into this school of all Lawlessness,— of obscurity, quaintness and exaggeration-were interwoven the out-of-plate didacticism of Wordsworth, and the more anomalous metaphysicianism of Coleridge. Matters were now fast verThis is a thin pamphlet of thirty-two pages; ging to their worst; and at length, in Tennyson each containing about a hundred and forty words. poetic inconsistency attained its extreme. But The hero, Alla-Ad-Deen, is the son of Alladdin it was precisely this extreme (for the greatest of wonderful lamp memory; and the story is in truth and the greatest error are scarcely two the "Vision of Mirza” or “Rasselas" way. The points in a circle) which, following the law of all design is to reconcile us with evil on the ground extremes, wrought in him (Tennyson) a natural that, comparatively, we are of little importance and inevitable revulsion; leading him first to con- in the scale of creation. This scale, however, temn, and secondly to investigate, his early man- the author himself assumes as infinite; and thus ner, and finally to winnow, from its magnificent his argument proves too much : for if evil is to be elements, the truest and purest of all poetical regarded by man as unimportant because, comstyles. But not even yet is the process complete; paratively, he is so, it must be regarded as unand for this reason in part, but chiefly on account of the mere fortuitousness of that mental and moral combination which shall unite in one person (if ever it shall) the Shellyan abandon and the Tennysonian poetic sense, with the most profound Art (based both in Instinct and Analysis) "The Dream of Alia-Ad-Deen, from the Romance of and the sternest Will properly to blend and rigo-Anastasia.' By Charles Erskine White. D. D. "Charles rously to control all-chiefly, I say, because such combination of seeming antagonisms will be only a "happy chance"-the world has never yet (There in dreams I dared to climb,) important by the angels for a similar reason— and so on in a never-ending ascent. In other words, nothing is proved beyond the bullish proposition that evil is no evil at all. Erskine White" is Laughton Osborn, author of "The Vis ion of Rubeta," "Confessions of a Poet," "Adventures of Jeremy Levis," and several other works—among which I must not forget "Arthur Carryl.” |