THE maiden name of Mrs. HEWITT was MARY ELIZABETH MOORE, and she is a native of Malden, a country town about five miles from Boston, in which city she resided until her removal to New York, in 1829, about two years after her marriage with Mr. James L. Hewitt, now of that city.
Mrs. Hewitt's earlier poems appeared in The Knickerbocker Magazine and other periodicals, under the signature of "Ione," and in 1845 she published in Boston a volume entitled Songs of our Land and other Poems, which confirmed the high opinions which
THE SONGS OF OUR LAND.
YE say we sing no household songs,
To children round our hearths at play;
No minstrelsy to us belongs,
No legend of a bygone day-
No old tradition of the hills-
Our giant land no memory fills:
We have no proud heroic lay.
Ye ask the time-worn storied page-
Ye ask the lore of other age,
From us, a race of yesterday!
Of vore, in Britain's feudal halls,
Where many a storied trophy hung With shield and banner on the walls,
The Bard's high barp was sternly strung
In praise of war-its fierce delights-
To "heroes of a hundred fights."
The lofty sounding shell outrung!
Gone is the ancient Bardic race :
Their song hath found perpetual place
Their country's proud archives among.
The stirring Scottish border tale
Pealed from the chords in chieftain's hall, The wild traditions of the Gael
had been formed of her abilities from the fugitive pieces that had been popularly attributed to her. Her compositions in this collection show that she has a fine and wellcultivated understanding, informed with womanly feeling and a graceful fancy, and they are distinguished in an unusual degree for lyrical power and harmony as well as for sweetness of versification.
The wandering harper's lays recall. Bold themes, Germania, fire thy strings; And when the Marseillaise outrings, With patriot ardor thrills the Gaul : All have their legend and their song, Records of glory, feud, and wrongOf conquest wrought, and foeman's fall. Fond thought the Switzer's bosom fills When sounds the "Rans des Vaches" on high: A race as ancient as their hills
Still echoes that wild mountain cry.
He springs along the rocky height,
He marks the lammergeyer's flight,
Among the more recent productions of Mrs. Hewitt are some elegant translations, which illustrate her taste and learning and fine command of language.
The startled chamois bounding by; He snuffs the mountain breeze of morn; He winds again the mountain horn,
And loud the wakened Alps reply! Our fathers bore from Albion's isle
No stories of her sounding lyres: They left the old baronial pile
They left the harp of ringing wires. Ours are the legends still rehearsed, Ours are the songs that gladsome burst
By all your cot and palace fires: Each tree that in your soft wind stirs, Waves o'er our ancient sepulchres,
The sleeping ashes of our sires!
They left the gladsome Christmas chime,
The yule fire, and the misletoe;
They left the vain, ungodly rhyme,
For hymns the solemn paced and slow;
They left the mass, the stoled priest,
The scarlet woman and the beast,
For worship rude and altars low:
Their land, with its dear memories fraught,
They left for liberty of thought-
For stranger clime and savage foe. And forth they went-nerved to forsake
Home, and the chain they might not wear And woman's heart was strong to break
The links of love that bound her there:
Here, free to worship and believe,
From many a log-built hut at eve
Went up the suppliant voice of prayer.
Is it not writ on history's page,
That the strong hand grasped our heritage?
Of the lion claimed his forest lair!
Our people raised no loud war songs,
The shouted no fierce battle cry-
A burning memory of their wrongs
Lit up their path to victory:
With prayer to God to aid the right,
The yeoman girded him for fight,
To free the land he tilled, or die.
They bore no proud escutcheoned shield,
No blazoned banners to the field-
Naught but their watchword "Liberty!”
Their sons-when after-years shall fling
O'er these, romance-when time hath cast
The mighty shadow of his wing
Between them and the storied past—
Will tell of foul oppression's heel,
Of hands that bore the avenging steel,
And battled sternly to the last
By their hearth-fires-on the free hill-side:
So shall our songs, o'er every tide,
Swell forth triumphant on the blast!
E'en now the word that roused our land
Awake!"
Is calling o'er the wave, "
And pealing on from strand to strand,
Wherever ocean's surges break:
Up to the quickened ear of toil
It rises from the teeming soil,
And bids the slave his bonds forsake.
Hark! from the mountains to the sea,
The old world echoes "Liberty!"
Till thrones to their foundations shake.
And ye who idly set at naught
The sacred boon in suffering won,
Read o'er our page with glory fraught,
Nor scoff that we no more have done :
Read how the nation of the free
Hath carved her deeds in history,
Nor count them bootless every one-
Deeds of our mighty men of old,
Whose names stand evermore enrolled
Beneath the name of Washington!
Oh, mine own fair and glorious land!
Did I not hold such faith in thee,
As did the honored patriot band
That bled to make thee great and free-
Did I not look to hear thee sung,
To hear thy lyre yet proudly strung,
Thou ne'er had waked my minstrelsy:
And I shall hear thy song resound,
Till from his shackles man shall bound,
And shout, exultant, "Liberty!"
THE TWO VOICES.
A VOICE went forth throughout the land,
And an answering voice replied
From the rock-piled mountain fastnesses
To the surging ocean tide.
And far the blazing headlands gleamed
With their land-awakening fires;
And the hill-tops kindled, peak and height,
With a hundred answering pyres.
The quick youth snatched his father's sword,
And the yeoman rose in might;
And the aged grandsire nerved him there
For the stormy field of fight:
And the hillmen left their grass-grown steeps,
And their flocks and herds unkept;
And the ploughshare of the husbandman
In the half-turned furrow slept.
They wore no steel-wrought panoply,
Nor shield nor morion gleamed;
Nor the flaunt of bannered blazonry
In the morning sunlight streamed.
They bore no marshalled, firm array-
Like a torrent on they poured,
With the firelock, and the mower's scythe,
And the old forefathers' sword.
And again a voice went sounding on,
And the bonfires streamed on high;
And the hill-tops rang to the headlands back,
With the shout of victory!
So the land redeemed her heritage,
By the free hand mailed in right,
From the war-shod, hireling foeman's tread,
And the ruthless grasp of might.
THOU Conqueror of the wilderness,
With keen and bloodless edge-
Hail to the sturdy artisan
Who welded thee, bold wedge!
Though the warrior deem the weapon
Fashioned only for the slave,
Yet the settler knows thee mightier
Than the tried Damascus glaive.
While desolation marketh
The course of foeman's brand,
Thy strong blow scatters plenty
And gladness through the land:
Thou opest the soil to culture,
To the sunlight and the dew;
And the village spire thou plantest
Where of old the forest grew.
When the broad sea rolled between them
And their own far native land,
Thou wert the faithful ally
Of the hardy pilgrim band.
They bore no warlike eagles,
No banners swept the sky;
Nor the clarion, like a tempest,
Swelled its fearful notes on high.
But the ringing wild rëechoed
Thy bold, resistless stroke,
Where, like incense, on the morning
Went up the cabin smoke:
The tall oaks bowed before thee,
Like reeds before the blast;
And the earth put forth in gladness
Where the axe in triumph passed.
Then hail! thou noble conqueror,
That, when tyranny oppressed,
Hewed for our fathers from the wild
A land wherein to rest:
Hail, to the power that giveth
The bounty of the soil,
And freedom, and an honored name,
To the hardy sons of toil!
A THOUGHT OF THE PILGRIMS.
How beauteous in the morning light,
Bright glittering in her pride,
Trimountain, from her ancient height,
Looks down upon the tide :
The fond wird woos her from the sea,
And ocean clasps her lovingly,
As bridegroom clasps his bride.
And out across the waters dark,
Careering on their way,
Full many a gallant, home-bound bark
Comes dashing up the bay:
Their pennons float on morning's gale,
The sunlight gilds each swelling sail,
And flashes on the spray.
Not thus toward fair New England's coast,
With eager-hearted crew,
The pilgrim-freighted, tempest-tost,
And lonely May Flower drew:
There was no hand outstretched to bless,
No welcome from the wilderness,
To cheer her hardy few.
But onward drove the winter clouds
Athwart the darkening sky,
And hoarsely through the stiffened shrouds
The wind swept stormily;
While shrill from out the beetling rock,
That seemed the billows' force to mock,
Broke forth the sea-gull's cry.
God's blessing on their memories!
Those sturdy men and bold,
Who girt their hearts in righteousness,
Like martyr saints of old;
And mid oppression sternly sought,
To hold the sacred boon of Thought
In freedom uncontrolled.
They left the old, ancestral hall
The creed they might not own;
They left home, kindred, fortune, all-
Left glory and renown:
For what to them was pride of birth,
Or what to them the pomp of earth,
Who sought a heavenly crown?
Strong armed in faith they crossed the flood:
Here, mid the forest fair,
With axe and mattock, from the wood
They laid broad pastures bare;
And with the ploughshare turned the plain,
And planted fields of yellow grain
And built their dwellings there.
The pilgrim sires!-How from the night
Of centuries dim and vast,
It comes o'er every hill and height-
That watchword from the past!
And old men's pulses quicker bound,
And young hearts leap to hear the sound,
As at the trumpet's blast.
*Boston--built upon three hills-was originally named, by the early settlers, "Trimountain."
And though the Pilgrim's day hath set, Its glorious light remains-
Its beam refulgent lingers yet
O'er all New England's plains.
Dear land! though doomed from thee to part,
The blood that warmed the Pilgrim's heart
Swells proudly in my veins!
Go to the islands of the sea,
Wherever man may dare-
Wherever pagan bows the knee,
Or Christian bends in prayer-
To every shore that bounds the main,
Wherever keel on strand hath lain-
New England's sons are there.
Toil they for wealth on distant coast,
Roam they from sea to sea:
Self-exiled, still her children boast
Their birthplace 'mong the free;
Or seek they fame on glory's track,
Their hearts, like mine, turn ever back,
New England, unto thee!
CROWNED with the hoar of centuries,
There, by the eternal sea,
High on her misty cape she sits,
Like an eagle-fearless, free.
And thus in olden time she sat,
On that morn of long ago;
Mid the roar of Freedom's armament,
And the war-bolts of her foe.
Old Time hath reared her pillared walls,
Her domes and turrets high:
With her hundred tall and tapering spires,
All flashing to the sky.
Shall I not sing of thee, beloved?
My beautiful, my pride!
Thou that towerest in thy queenly grace, By the tributary tide.
There, swan-like crestest thou the waves That, enamored, round thee swellFairer than Aphrodité, couched
On her foam-wreathed ocean shell.
mid this restless hum
Resounding from the street,
Of the thronging, hurrying multitude,
And the tread of stranger feet-
My heart turns back to thee-mine own!
My beautiful, my pride!
With thought of thy free ocean wind,
And the clasping, fond old tide-
With all thy kindred household smokes,
Upwreathing far away;
And the merry bells that pealed as now
On my grandsire's wedding-day:
To those green graves and truthful hearts,
Oh, city by the sea!
My heritage, and priceless dower,
My beautiful, in thee!
THE SUNFLOWER TO THE SUN.
HYMETTUS' bees are out on filmy wing,
Dim Phosphor slowly fades adown the west,
And Earth awakes. Shine on me, oh my king!
For I with dew am laden and oppressed.
Long through the misty clouds of morning gray
The flowers have watched to hail thee from yon
Sad Asphodel, that pines to meet thy ray, [sea:
And Juno's roses, pale for love of thee.
Perchance thou dalliest with the Morning Hour,
Whose blush is reddening now the eastern wave;
Or to the cloud for ever leav'st thy flower,,
Wiled by the glance white-footed Thetis gave.
I was a proud Chaldean monarch's child!*
Euphrates' waters told me I was fair-
And thou, Thessalia's shepherd, on me smiled,
And likened to thine own my amber hair.
Thou art my life-sustainer of my spirit!
Leave me not then in darkness here to pine;
Other hearts love thee, yet do they inherit
A passionate devotedness like mine?
But lo! thou lift'st thy shield o'er yonder tide:
The gray clouds fly before the conquering Sun;
Thou like a monarch up the heavens dost ride-
And, joy! thou beamst on me, celestial one!
On me, thy worshipper, thy poor Parsee,
Whose brow adoring types thy face divine-
God of my burning heart's idolatry,
Take root like me, or give me life like thine!
THE LAST CHANT OF CORINNE.
By that mysterious sympathy which chaineth
For evermore my spirit unto thine;
And by the memory, that alone remaineth,
Of that sweet hope that now no more is mine;
And by the love my trembling heart betrayeth,
That, born of thy soft gaze, within me lies;
As the lone desert-bird, the Arab sayeth,
Warms her young brood to life with her fond eyes:
Hear me, adored one! though the world divide us,
Though never more my hand in thine be pressed,
Though to commingle thought be here denied us,
Till our high hearts shall beat themselves to rest;
Forget me not, forget me not! oh, ever
This one, one prayer, my spirit pours to thee;
Till every memory from earth shall sever,
Remember, oh, beloved! remember me!
And when the light within mine eye is shaded,
When I, o'erwearied, sleep the sleep profound,
And like that nymph of yore who drooped and faded,
And pined for love, till she became a sound;
My song, perchance, awhile to earth remaining,
Shall come in murmured melody to thee:
Then let my lyre's deep, passionate complaining,
Cry to thy heart, heloved-" Remember me!"
Clytia, daughter of Orchamus, king of Babylon, was beloved by Apollo; but the god deserting her, she pined away with continually gazing on the sun, and was changed to the dower denominated from him, which turns as he moves, to look at his light.
GREEN PLACES IN THE CITY.
YE fill my heart with gladness, verdant places,
That mid the city greet me where I pass;
Methinks I see of angel-steps the traces
Where'er upon my pathway springs the grass.
I pause before your gates at early morning,
When lies the sward with glittering sheen o'er-
spread;
And think the dewdrops there each blade adorning,
Are angels' tears for mortal frailty shed.
And ye, earth's firstlings, here in beauty springing,
Erst in your cells by careful Winter nursed-
And to the morning heaven your incense flinging,
As at His smile ye forth in gladness burst-
How do ye cheer with hope my lonely hour,
When on my way I tread despondingly,
With thought that He who careth for the flower,
Will, in his mercy, still remember me!
Breath of our nostrils-Thou! whose love embraces,
Whose light shall never from our souls depart,
Beneath thy touch hath sprung a green oasis
Amid the arid désert of my heart.
Thy sun and rain call forth the bud of promise,
And with fresh leaves in spring-time deck the tree;
That where man's hand hath shut out Nature from
We, by these glimpses, may remember Thee! [us,
HERCULES AND OMPHALE.
RECLINED enervate on the couch of ease,
No more he pants for deeds of high emprise;
For Pleasure holds in soft, voluptuous ties
Enthralled, great Jove-descended Hercules.
The hand that bound the Erymanthian boar,
Hesperia's dragon slew, with bold intent-
That from his quivering side in triumph rent
The skin the Cleonæan lion wore,
Holds forth the goblet-while the Lydian queen,
Rob'd like a nymph, her brow enwreath'd with vine,
Lifts high the amphora, brimmed with rosy wine,
And pours the draught the crowned cup within.
And thus the soul, abased to sensual sway,
Its worth forsakes its might forgoes for aye.
TITYOS CHAINED IN TARTARUS.
OH, wondrous marvel of the sculptor's art!
What cunning hand hath cull'd thee from the mine,
And carved thee into life, with skill divine!
How claims in thee Humanity a part-
Seems from the gem the form enchained to start,
While thus with fiery eye, and outspread wings,
The ruthless vulture to his victim clings,
With whetted beak deep in the quivering heart.
Oh, thou embodied meaning, master-wrought!
Thus taught the sage, how, sunk in crime and sin,
The soul a prey to conscience, writhes within
Its fleshly bonds enslaved: thus ever, Thought,
The breast's keen torturer, remorseful tears
At life, the hell whose chain the soul in anguish
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TIs Saturday night, and our watch below-
What heed we, boys, how the breezes blow,
While our cans are brimmed with the sparkling flow:
Come, Jack-uncoil, as we pass the grog,
And spin us a yarn from memory's log."
Jack's brawny chest like the broad sea heaved,
While his loving lip to the beaker cleaved;
And he drew his tarred and well-saved sleeve
Across his mouth, as he drained the can,
And thus to his listening mates began:
When I sailed a boy, in the schooner Mike,
No bigger, I trow, than a marlinspike-
But I've told ye the tale ere now, belike?"
"Go on!" each voice reëchoed,
And the tar thrice hemmed, and thus he said:
A stanch-built craft as the waves e'er bore-
We had loosed our sails for home once more,
Freighted full deep from Labrador,
When a cloud one night rose on our lee,
That the heart of the stoutest quailed to see.
And voices wild with the winds were blent,
As our bark her prow to the waters bent;
And the seamen muttered their discontent-
Muttered and nodded ominously—
But the mate, right carelessly whistled he.
Our bark may never outride the gale—
Tis a pitiless night! the pattering hail
Hath coated each spar as 't were in mail;
And our sails are riven before the breeze,
While our cordage and shrouds into icicles freeze!'
Thus spake the skipper beside the mast,
While the arrowy sleet fell thick and fast;
And our bark drove onward before the biast
That goaded the waves, till the angry main
Rose
up
and strove with the hurricane.
Up spake the mate, and his tone was gay-
'Shall we at this hour to fear give way
We must labor, in sooth, as well as pray :
Out, shipmates, and grapple home yonder sail,
That flutters in ribands before the gale!'
Loud swelled the tempest, and rose the shrick—
'Save, save! we are sinking!-A leak! a leak!'
And the hale old skipper's tawny cheek
Was cold, as 't were sculptured in marble there,
And white as the foam, or his own white hair.
The wind piped shrilly, the wind piped loud—
It shrieked 'mong the cordage, it howled in the
shroud;
And the sleet fell thick from the cold, dun cloud :
But high over all, in tones of glee,
The voice of the mate rang cheerily―
'Now, men, for your wives' and your sweethearts'
Cheer, messmates, cheer!-quick! man the brakes!
We'll gain on the leak ere the skipper wakes;
And though our peril your hearts appal
Ere dawns the morrow we 'll laugh at the
squall.'
He railed at the tempest, he laughed at its threats,
He played with his fingers like castanets:
Yet think not that he, in his mirth, forgets
That the plank he is riding this hour at sea,
May launch him the next to eternity!
The white-haired skipper turned away,
And lifted his hands, as it were to pray;
But his look spoke plainly as look could say,
The boastful thought of the Pharisee-
"Thank God, I'm not hardened as others be!'
But the morning dawned, and the waves sank low,
And the winds, o'erwearied, forbore to blow;
And our bark lay there in the golden glow-
Flashing she lay in the bright sunshine,
An ice-sheathed hulk on the cold, still brine.
Well, shipmates, my yarn is almost spun-
The cold and the tempest their work had done,
And I was the last, lone, living one,
Clinging, benumbed, to that wave-girt wreck,
While the dead around me bestrewed the deck.
Yea, the dead were round me everywhe、e!
The skipper gray, in the sunlight there,
Still lifted his paralyzed hands in prayer; [leapt,
And the mate, whose tones through the darkness
In the silent hush of the morning, slept.
Oh, bravely he perished who sought to save
Our storm-tossed bark from the pitiless wave,
And her crew from a yawning and fathomless grave:
Crying, Messmates cheer!' with a bright,glad smile,
And praying, Be merciful, God!' the while.
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True to his trust, to his last chill gasp,
The helm lay clutched in his stiff, cold grasp―
You might scarcely in death undo the clasp:
And his crisp, brown locks were dank and thin,
And the icicles hung from his bearded chin.
My timbers have weathered, since, many a gale;
And when life's tempests this hulk assail,
And the binnacle lamp in my breast burns pale,
Cheer, messmates, cheer" to my heart I say,
We must labor, in sooth, as well as pray!"
IMITATION OF SAPPHO.
Ir to repeat thy name when none may hear me,
To find thy thought with all my thoughts inwove;
To languish where thou 'rt not-to sigh when near
Oh, if this be to love thee, I do love!
If when thou utterest low words of greeting,
To feel through every vein the torrent pour;
Then back again the hot tide swift retreating,
Leave me all powerless, silent as before:
If to list breathless to thine accents falling,
Almost to pain, upon my eager ear—
And fondly when alone to be recalling
The words that I would die again to hear:
If 'neath thy glance my heart all strength forsaking.
Pant in my breast as pants the frighted dove:
If to think on thee ever, sleeping-waking-
Oh! if this be to love thee, I do love!
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