Be it my present office to display Still does the charm, the infernal spell, allure; The demon laughs: his prey is now secure. "The solid earth presents too small a space To bound the enterprise of Adam's race: "No more the thorns and thistles in thy A hardy race of men shall spring from thee ground Whose only residence an ark shall be. Shall raise their martial points to fence thee For, lo! astonished Ocean shall survey In future times, though distant now the round That sad and mournful family that shun day, Such wonders as have never reached his ken: His empire humbled by the sons of men, Arks beyond number, borne by heavenly breath, But in its stead thy hand the vine shall Shall dare the surface of the roaring death. plant The fruitful vine-and, while thou joyest to know How full and dark its clustering honors grow, More shalt thou joy to hear what God enjoins: Thy progeny shall far exceed the vine's. "But, ah! thou little knowst what depth of sin, What idiot frenzy, dwells the grape within Vain does he fret and climb the heights of air Like some proud steed that scorns his lord to bear; In vain he foams and rears, for human skill "Ocean's proud giant sees the roaring main Usurped by man, and flies-but flies in vain O'er liquid mountains horrible to name. game; In vain the monster trembles, and retreats He tastes the victim knows not when to The persecutor, anxious for his prey, stop, Though frantic demons poison every drop: In vain may sacred friendship, weeping there, Waits his return unto the beams of day; And seeks the dark recesses of the main; still; Lashes the foaming surge, then sinks to The plant is nourished by a bloody dew. death; His native element is no retreat: He pours his life-blood at his conqueror's feet. "Would that his life alone might ocean stain! Ah, no! the spirit of departed Cain "I hear the thunder roar, the dying shriek, The raven flap, the terrors of his beak: He sees the tumult in his airy way, He scents the carnage, and he stoops for prey. O righteous Heaven! why is almighty love So long delayed? why lingers yet my dove? Henceforth shall rise and walk the earth The earth shall mourn, and desolate with again. In vain may suppliant mercy intercede : How many Abels shall be doomed to bleed! More wonders still thy race, by vengeance driven, Shall seize and hurl the thunderbolt of heaven; grief, And rue the absence of the olive-leaf. Refrain, my sons—this dreadful deed refrain : Let not the tears of Mercy plead in vain! "The eagle, towering in his pride of place, Shall see some venturous son of Adam's race, Yea, the dread lightning, by divine com- Mounted on wings, with balance just and mand, Shall flash hereafter in a human hand. true, Scouring with him the firmament of blue; Oh, while ye grasp the bolts of heaven, for- Such wonders shall be known in future times. bear The life of brother! man, in pity spare! "Vain is the wish: the man in future days. Shall claim the high reward, his country's praise; For all the varied misery that appears Unterrified, from cloud to cloud he climbs, He sees a subjugated world below. gaze Pursue this sailor of the solar blaze. "The time shall come-so speaks almighty | The human form, beneath her magic shock, doomBreaks from the rude recesses of the rock; When human art shall triumph o'er the The frowning quarry that no tempest fears, tomb: The body formed with such transcendent art, Such nicety of skill in every part, Shall, though the seat of an immortal mind, Vanish from earth and leave its shade behind. Thy tame obsequious shadow in thy way, That humble offspring of the solar ray, Lives to proclaim this truth to all thy line: A sunbeam boasts a longer date than thine. Go worship at Ambition's bloody fane Till even Rapine would its rage restrain ; Beyond where even eagles dare to soar; Then, son of Adam, count thy mighty gains: Thy cold insensate shadow still survives: Of human grandeur and thy hopes of fame. That bears the brunt of heaven for endless years, When touched by Art and fashioned by her skill Dissolves in female beauty at her will. Behold, enrapturing every heart and hand, Cold and serene the marble virgin stand! What harmony, what symmetry, what grace, Move o'er each limb and languish on the face! How loose, how lovely, all the tresses flow Upon that bosom's pure and lustrous snow! She frowns each bold intruder to reprove: Ah! why does not the lovely vision move? Wherefore this silence? why this steadfast air? Rouse from thy slumber! speak, thou lovely fair! Alas! how vain is all this blaze of skill! The breath, the almighty breath, is wanting still. Stay, and this lovely prodigy behold: To gain possession of this beauteous block; sweet That even listening angels might repeat; From distant nations pilgrims still shall come “Still, Art shall triumph with the conqueror's And gaze till Admiration's self be dumb: wreath, 'Tis still bereft of an almighty breath, And teach the rugged marble how to breathe; And stands a steadfast monument of death. Unconquered man, by Science guided far, We spoke of distant countries Of perfumed lamps on the Ganges "This conquest, purchased by no bloody And the dark and silent Brahmins, stains, Among thy kindred no distinction gains; If Carnage does not consecrate the deed." The angel paused. Her face, so fair to view, Looked lovelier in the drops of sorrowing dew; The patriarch gazed: the Vision sunk in air, But Mercy's tears were still remaining there. PAUL ALLEN. Who worship the lotus-flower; Of the wretched dwarfs of Lapland— Broad-headed, wide-mouthed and smallWho crouch round their oil-fires, cooking, And chatter and scream and bawl. And the maidens earnestly listened Till at last we spoke no more; Translation of CHARLES G. LELAND. THE FLYING HEAD. A LEGEND OF SACONDAGA LAKE. "The great God hath sent us signs in the sky; we have heard uncommon noise in the heavens, and have seen heads fall down upon the earth!"-Speech of Tuhayadoris, a Mohawk sachem, at Albany, October 25, 1689. T It hath telltale tongues-this casing air That walls us in-and their wandering breath That clings to that ruthless deed of death, Will open to blast the parricide. a refuge in that mountain-region. The evil shapes that were formerly so troublesome to the red hunter seem in these later days to have become less restless at his presence, and, whether it be that the day of their power has gone by or that their vindietiveness has relented at witnessing the fate which seems to be universally overtaking the people whom they once delighted to persecute, certain it is that the few Indians who now find their way to this part of the country are never molested. HE country about the head-wa- | grounds in quest of the game that still finds ters of the great Mohegan as the Hudson is sometimes called-though abounding in game and fish, was never, in the recollection of the oldest Indians living, nor in that of their fathers' fathers, the permanent residence of any one tribe. From the black mountain-tarns where the eastern fork takes its rise to the silver strand of Lake Pleasant, through which the western branch makes its way after rising in Sacondaga Lake, the wilderness that intervenes and all the mountains round about the fountain-heads of the great river have from time immemorial been infested by a class of beings with whom no good man would ever wish to come in contact. The young men of the Mohawk have, indeed, often traversed it when in years gone by they went on the warpath after the hostile tribes of the North, and the scattered and wandering remnants of their people, with an occasional hunting-party from the degenerate bands that survive at St. Regis, will yet occasionally be tempted over these haunted The Flying Head, which is supposed to have first driven the original possessors of these hunting-grounds, whosoever they were, from their homes, and which, as long dition runneth back, in the old day before the whites came hither, guarded them from the occupancy of every neighboring tribe, has not been seen for many years by any credible witness, though there are those who insist that it has more than once appeared to them, hovering, as their fathers used to describe it, over the lake in which it first had its birth. The existence of this fearful monster, however, has never been disputed. Rude representations of it are still occasion |