Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour

The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain,

The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, design'd,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,
And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern, rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:

What sorrow was thou bad'st her know,

And from her own she learn'd to melt at others' woe.

Here is a beautiful passage by AKENSIDE, written in the last year of his life—

O ye dales

Of Tyne, and ye most ancient woodlands; where,
Oft as the giant flood obliquely strides,
And his banks open and his lawns extend,
Stops short the pleasèd traveller to view,
Presiding o'er the scene, some rustic tower
Founded by Norman or by Saxon hands;
O ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook
The rocky pavement and the mossy falls
Of solitary Wensbeck's limpid stream!
How gladly I recall your well-known seats,
Beloved of old, and that delightful time
When, all alone, for many a summer's day,
I wandered through your calm recesses, led
In silence by some powerful hand unseen.

Nor will I e'er forget you; nor shall e'er
The graver tasks of manhood, or the advice
Of vulgar wisdom, move me to disclaim
Those studies which possessed me in the dawn

Of life, and fixed the colour of my mind.
For every future year; whence even now
From sleep I rescue the clear hours of morn,
And, while the world around lies overwhelmed
In idle darkness, am alive to thoughts
Of honourable fame, of truth divine
Or moral, and of minds to virtue won

By the sweet magic of harmonious verse.

There are some noble thoughts in the celebrated Ode by SIR WILLIAM JONES, the Orientalist.

Here are some of the lines :—

What constitutes a State?

Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound,

Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;

Not bays and broad-armed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starr'd and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.

Men who their duties know,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain;
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain:
These constitute a State.

Bishop BERKELEY'S memorable lines, prophetic of planting the arts in the New World, are of enduring interest to us; these are the closing stanzas:—

There shall be sung another golden age,

The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.
Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
Such as she bred when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
By future poets shall be sung.
Westward the course of empire takes its way ;
The first four acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama of the day;

Time's noblest offspring is the last.

This poem was written when the author was residing at Newport, Rhode Island. To prove that the prophecy has been in great measure verified, we need but refer to the record of noble names in science, history, philosophy, and song, which adorn our American annals. Among the earlier American poets were BARLOW, TRUM

bull, Freneau, and ALLSTON, who was also a renowned painter. While residing in Europe, Allston enjoyed the friendship of Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb; as well as of Washington Irving, who expresses a reverence and affection for his pure and noble character, no less than for his genius. While referring to IRVING, we cannot refrain from adding to the world's applause our humble but grateful tribute of regard, as well for the memory of his beautiful character as for his imperishable productions. His name ought undoubtedly to be classed in the category of poets, since much of his charming prose is essentially poetry. He rarely wrote in verse; but there is a little waif of his extant, which he improvised at the instance of his friend Stuart Newton, to accompany his picture of an old philosopher reading from a folio to a young beauty asleep on a chair opposite. Here it is, quaint and characteristic:

Frostie age, frostie age! vain all thy learning;
Drowsie page, drowsie page evermore turning.
Young head no lore will heed,

Young heart's a reckless rover;

Young beautie, while you read

Sleeping, dreams of absent lover.

ALLSTON'S principal poem is his Sylphs of the Seasons; but his lines on Boyhood are short and sweet :—

Ah, then how sweetly closed those crowded days!
The minutes parting one by one, like rays

That fade upon a summer's eve.
But, oh! what charm, or magic numbers,
Can give me back the gentle slumbers
Those weary, happy days did leave?

When by my bed I saw my mother kneel,
And with her blessing took her nightly kiss;
Whatever Time destroys, he cannot this-

E'en now that nameless kiss 1 feel.

His noble Address to England, which was first printed in Coleridge's Sibylline Leaves, 1810, commences with this stanza :

All hail, thou noble land! our fathers' native soil!
Oh, stretch thy mighty hand, gigantic grown by toil,
O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore!

For thou with magic might

Canst reach to where the light

Of Phoebus travels bright
The world o'er.

The poem thus ends :-
:-

While the manners, while the arts, that mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,-between let ocean roll,
Our joint communion breaking with the sun:

Yet still from either beach

The voice of blood shall reach,

More audible than speech

We are one!

DANA's principal poem, The Buccaneer, is considered a fine production it is a tale of crime and remorse.

are finely descriptive :—

The opening stanzas

The island lies nine leagues away; along its solitary shore,
Of craggy rock and sandy bay, no sound but ocean's roar,

Save where the bold, wild sea-bird makes her home,

Her shrill cry coming through the sparkling foam.

But when the light winds lie at rest, and on the glassy, heaving sea,
The black duck, with her glossy breast, sits swinging silently,
How beautiful! no ripples break the reach,

And silvery waves go noiseless up the beach.