Then pure, immortal, sinless, freed, SONNET. WHAT art Thou, mighty One? and where thy seat? The rolling thunders and the lightnings fleet; Thou guid'st the northern storm at night's dread noon, Dost Thou repose? or in the solitude Of sultry tracts, where the lone caravan Hears nightly howl the tiger's hungry brood? Vain thought! the confines of his throne to trace, FAITH. Lo! on the eastern summit, clad in gray, Night's watchman hurries down. The pious man In this bad world, where mists and couchant storms The earth's fair breast, that sea whose nether face LINES WRITTEN ON A SURVEY OF THE HEAVENS. YE many twinkling stars, who yet do tread And sagely comprehend. Thence higher soaring, Of boundless space, above the rolling spheres, Th' angelic hosts, in their inferior heaven, Oh! 'tis this heavenly harmony which now !" What e'en are kings, when balanced in the scale And in thy boundless goodness wilt impart Oh! when reflecting on these truths sublime, The gauds, and honors of the world, appear! Say, foolish one, can that unbodied fame, JOHN PIERPONT, THE author of the "Airs of Palestine," is a native of Litchfield, Connecticut, and was born on the sixth of April, 1785. Having embarked in business which resulted disastrously, in 1816 he sought a solace in literary pursuits, and in the same year published "The Airs of Palestine." Soon afterwards he entered seriously upon the study of theology, first by himself, in Baltimore, and afterwards as a member of the theological school connected with Harvard College. He left that seminary in October, 1818, and in April, 1819, was ordained as minister of the Hollis-street Unitarian Church, in Boston, as successor to the Rev. Dr. Holley, who had recently been elected to the presidency of the Transylvania University, in Kentucky. In 1835 and 1836, in consequence of impaired health, he spent a year abroad, passing through the principal cities in England, France, and Italy, and extending his tour into the East, visiting Smyrna, the ruins of Ephesus, in Asia Minor, Constantinople, and Athens, Corinth, and some of the other cities of Greece; of his travels in which, traces will occasionally be found in some of the short poems which he has written since his return. Many of his hymns, odes, and other brief poems, are remarkably spirited and melodious. Several of them, distinguished alike for energy of thought and language, were educed by events connected with the moral and religious enterprises of the time. Mr. Pierpont-now sixty-three years of age is settled in Troy, New York. MY CHILD. I CANNOT make him dead! His fair sunshiny head Is ever bounding round my study chair; Yet, when my eyes, now dim The vision vanishes-he is not there! I walk my parlor floor, I hear a footfall on the chamber stair; To give the boy a call; And then bethink me that he is not there! I thread the crowded street; A satchelled lad I meet, With the same beaming eyes and colored hair: Follow him with my eye, I know his face is hid Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead; O'er it in prayer I knelt; Yet my heart whispers that he is not there! I cannot make him dead! When passing by the bed, So long watched over with parental care, My spirit and my eye Seek it inquiringly, Before the thought comes that he is not there! When, at the cool, gray break Of day, from sleep I wake, With my first breathing of the morning air My soul goes up, with joy, To Him who gave my boy, Then comes the sad thought that he is not there! When at the day's calm close, Before we seek repose, I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer, I am, in spirit, praying For our boy's spirit, though-he is not there! Not there!-Where, then, is he? The form I used to see Was but the raiment that he used to wear. The grave, that now doth press Upon that cast-off dress, Is but his wardrobe locked ;-he is not there! |