"INNOCENT CHILD AND SNOW-WHITE
FLOWER."

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INNOCENT child and snow-white flower!
Well are ye paired in your opening hour.
Thus should the pure and the lovely meet,
Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.

White as those leaves, just blown apart,
Are the folds of thy own young heart;
Guilty passion and cankering care

Never have left their traces there.

Artless one! though thou gazest now

O'er the white blossom with earnest brow,
Soon will it tire thy childish eye;

Fair as it is, thou wilt throw it by.

Throw it aside in thy weary hour,

Throw to the ground the fair white flower;

Yet, as thy tender years depart,

Keep that white and innocent heart.

TO THE RIVER ARVE.

SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN AT A HAMLET NEAR THE FOOT OF
MONT BLANC.

NoT from the sands or cloven rocks,
Thou rapid Arve! thy waters flow;
Nor earth, within her bosom, locks
Thy dark unfathomed wells below.
Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream
Begins to move and murmur first
Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam,
Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.

TO COLE, THE PAINTER, DEPARTING FOR EUROPE.
Born where the thunder and the blast
And morning's earliest light are born,
Thou rushest swoln, and loud, and fast,
By these low homes, as if in scorn:
Yet humbler springs yield purer waves;
And brighter, glassier streams than thine,
Sent up from earth's unlighted caves,

With heaven's own beam and image shine.

Yet stay; for here are flowers and trees ;/
Warm rays on cottage-roofs are here;
And laugh of girls, and hum of bees,

Here linger till thy waves are clear.
Thou heedest not-thou hastest on;
From steep to steep thy torrent falls ;
Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone,
It rests beneath Geneva's walls.

Rush on—but were there one with me
That loved me, I would light my hearth
Here, where with God's own majesty

Are touched the features of the earth.
By these old peaks, white, high, and vast,
Still rising as the tempests beat,

Here would I dwell, and sleep, at last,
Among the blossoms at their feet.

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TO COLE, THE PAINTER, DEPARTING FOR
EUROPE.

THINE eyes shall see the light of distant skies;

Yet, COLE! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand
A living image of our own bright land,

Such as upon thy glorious canvas lies;

Lone lakes-savannas where the bison roves—

Rocks rich with summer garlands-solemn streams— —
Skies, where the desert eagle wheels and screams-

Spring bloom and autumn blaze of boundless groves.
Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest-fair,
But different-everywhere the trace of men,
Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen
To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air.
Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight,
But keep that earlier, wilder image bright.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.

THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

HYMN OF THE CITY.

THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER.

WILD was the day; the wintry sea

Moaned sadly on New-England's strand, When first the thoughtful and the free, Our fathers, trod the desert land.

They little thought how pure a light,

With years, should gather round that day; How love should keep their memories bright, How wide a realm their sons should sway.

Green are their bays; but greener still

Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, And regions, now untrod, shall thrill

With reverence when their names are breathed.

Till where the sun, with softer fires,

Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep,

The children of the pilgrim sires

This hallowed day like us shall keep.

HYMN OF THE CITY.

NOT in the solitude

Alone may man commune with Heaven, or see,

Only in savage wood

And sunny vale, the present Deity;

Or only hear his voice

Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice.

Even here do I behold

Thy steps, Almighty !—here, amidst the crowd
Through the great city rolled,

With everlasting murmur deep and loud—
Choking the ways that wind.

'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind.

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Thy golden sunshine comes

From the round heaven, and on their dwellings lies And lights their inner homes;

For them thou fill'st with air the unbounded skies, And givest them the stores

Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores.

Thy Spirit is around,

Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along;

And this eternal sound

Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng-u Like the resounding sea,

Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of Thee.

And when the hour of rest
Comes, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine,
Hushing its billowy breast-

The quiet of that moment too is thine;
It breathes of Him who keeps
The vast and helpless city while it sleeps.

THE PRAIRIES.

THESE are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name-
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness.

In airy undulations, far away,

Lo! they stretch,

As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless forever.-Motionless?—
No-they are all unchained again. The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;