Broad banners float along the evening sky; "Where now their aid? Before them rolls the flood; Where jewels glisten, and where coral grows; With faltering steps, while surges topple o'er their head. "The cloudy pillar, reddening into light, Blazed in their van through that eventful night, As on they pressed till midway o'er the flood, Betwixt the hosts that fearful portent stoodO'er Israel's pathway cast a rosy smile, And clouds and darkness o'er their foes, the while. That gloom was rayless, till a sudden light Bid freedom's anthem swell, till sea and plain rejoice." "Idolatry had spread, and reared a fane Glory to God! peace and good will to men!' "In Bethlehem's babe, the promised one behold, Saw ye, where foiled, the serpent Tempter spread When Jesus broke the subtle toils of hell, Spread for that sin by which earth's Father fell?” The sufferings and the resurrection and death of the Son of God, are thus described: "Heard ye the plaintive prayer-the melting tonesThe rending sighs-the agonizing groans As in Gethsemane, the Saviour bore "Now resting in mid Heaven the harvest moon In majesty triumphant o'er his foes, hurled-That wrapped the grave, and broke Death's iron spear; Who formed earth, sea, and heaven, was all unknown. The rites were idle, and the worship vain. When Heaven's great bell has o'er creation tolled; "The risen God breathed on his followers round, The spread of the Gospel, and triumph of the Church of "When in the Church was quenched the lamp of light, The crescent rose where waved the scimetar, "The sword no more extends the Koran's reign! And Neitha's unraised veil shrouds Isis' prostrate head. "No more the Augur stands in snowy shroud, Has dimly traced his name upon the mouldering stone. "O'er other lands has dawned immortal day, Where spirit-voices called to join the feast of shells. "O'er Indian plains and ocean-girdled isles, And cries less frequent come from Ganges' waves, Where giant god-trees rear their temples dim. "Still speed thy truth! still wave thy spirit sword! And here, Oh God! where feuds thy church divide- The last great drama, the winding up of the vast machinery of time, the dissolution of our Globe-" Our God in grandeur and our world on fire,"- -are thus thrillingly brought in, and appropriately close the work. "Lo! now descending, where the heavens are bowed; A mighty angel, girdled with a cloud! A rainbow gleams, his circled brows upon, His feet are flame-his face a fiery sun; And as the seven-fold thunders cease to roll, With threatening hand, he lifts to heaven his scroll, His footsteps planted on the sea and shore, And swears with awful voice, that time is now no more. "Through nature peals the sound. Stunned by the blow, "Lo! 'mid this darkness of chaotic night, "The Judge is seated. Hill and mountain flee Upborne by winged winds, in robes of snow, Then soar above, while Earth's last flames are curled, We have not attempted to write a critical review of the work, but merely to call attention to the style and spirit of the performance. Perhaps the critic may find here and there a few errors, such as a syllable or two more in one line than in its corresponding one-but these are the errors of a mind, it can be perceived, so intent upon the loftiness of its theme, as to lose sight for a moment of metrical harmony. Our space forbids us saying anything more on the subject. SPARKS THAT MAY KINDLE. THE SCHOLAR'S INHERITANCE. Not gold and gems;-not meadows and pastures, fat flocks and waving grain;-not deeds, bonds, mortgages, and stocks-such things seldom fall to the scholar's lot. If he have a thatched cottage, a shady elm, a musical brook, a maple dish with his books and a clear mind, he may well be content, and deem himself rich withal. Often is he poorer than this; but weighs not a scanty wardrobe and the uncertain meal, in comparison with sure knowledge. Yet is the scholar heir to a worthier inheritance, measured out by no metes and bounds, weighed in no earthly balances, and of a value assignable by no ordinary calculus. It embraces every pebble, every spire of grass, every flashing wave, the depths One speaker in this Congress of huge whales; of the sea, the caverns of the earth. It compasses | Before a fish had risen to remark— To this inheritance he is always welcome. In the regions of thought no one will hinder his entrance. There, are no barring clauses, no writs of ejectment. Nature receives her child heartily, and with good cheer. The heart of the world is open to him who carries a true heart within him. Science throws open all her stores to him who would enjoy them; his own rudeness only, and want of skill detain him from the complete fruition. This inheritance is everlasting. His title to it lies in no bond nor lease, but deep in his own immortal being. No earthly law can divest it, no ordinance of princes abate its worth, nothing but his own recreancy and baseness. He who made the eye for light, made also the soul for truth; and the sight of the soul which fails not through age, is evidence that the perception shall hereafter grow clearer forever. Northampton, Mass. F. M. H. "Oho!" bawled out some six-and-thirty spouters- In streams from Carolina even to Japan; He ceased-the whale that spoke; and then the shark Or hide a fact that couldn't be denied ; Than the accommodation-whale, that carried Jonah; But not a toe fell to the ocean Nero, For the GREAT WESTERN didn't burst her boiler! THE STEAMER.* A FISH STORY. BY PARK BENJAMIN. What said the mighty monsters of the deep- THE GRAVE YARD. "There all are equal, side by side, Voices of the night, How peacefully they rest; the young, the old, The grave, and gay, here sleep alike in silence. Time, which destroys all things, has smoothed The roughness of their sepulchres. The first flowers of spring "What said they!" Faith! they couldn't speak for wonder, Shed their fragrance; the songs of sweet birds resound But held a silent meeting, like the quakers; And some concluded that it must be thunder That turned the waves from tumblers into shakers. The biggest spouters were dumb-foundered quite, Through the groves in notes of sweetest harmony. Upon the lifeless clod which once was called a man. * Written after the first arrival at New-York of "The The strong arm, and shut the active senses Great Western." Into deep forgetfulness. Mark how silent is he Who once the homage of his fellows claimed. His noble deeds, his riches, and his charity; but how little The dull ear drinks not in the melody of sweetest music; And "dust to dust" concludes his noblest song; he had seen Here also rests the child of poverty. No more Near him, the new made grave, of those dwelling-places, scattered throughout the world, and known as "the houses appointed for all the living." My evening meditations may be of less value to you than the space they will occupy in your Messenger; and if they are, you can take the liberty of a friend, without offence, and quietly change their resting-place, by mingling them with the dust and ashes, of which all of us, and all around us, the living soul alone excepted, must soon become a part. Your's truly, Washington, Dec. 19, 1841. E. B. TO BE BORN, TO BE MARRIED, AND TO DIE! Thus briefly we write the history of all mankind, from the moment they make their entrance upon the stage of life, to the moment that they make their exit from it, and to be launched forth upon a new and untried being. The majority die in infancy. They spring forth like the buds of the promised flowers in summer, as fair as they are pure, and as lovely in the eyes of a fond parent as they are innocent in the presence of all mankind. The rose is not sweeter, nor the lily purer, than this bright cherub, when just ushered into the world. Behold the newborn infant! A child is born: but yesterday all was doubt, fear and alarm; and to-day, in that quick transition from fear to hope, all is joy and gladness. As the blossom of the fruit tree, so beautiful to the eye and so full of promise, unfolds itself, so this flower of the fruit of the tree of life is opening its petals, with the promise, not of a transitory existence, but of a blessed immortality, before it. It breathes the breath of life; the scales fall from its little eyes, and gradually, as soon as its weak power of vision can bear the light of heaven, its eyes are opened to all the world around it. The power of limb and muscle is already felt; and ere the gift of sight is fairly felt and known, you behold the power of speech developed. And then, yes then, when the heart beats high with hope; when the past and present are forgotten in the future; and events for the time to come, have been parcelled out like playthings for each sucCONGRESSIONAL BURYING-GROUND. childhood to youth, Death steps in, uncalled for; uncessive year, from infancy to childhood, and from And turning, sought for rest, in realms of endless bliss. MEDITATIONS AMONG THE TOMBS. To T. W. WHITE, ESQ. CYRIL. wished for; as dreadful to look upon as it is painEditor of the Southern Literary Messenger. ful to feel, in the hours of approaching dissolution. DEAR SIR,-For the want of something better Its message is, " Death;" and its journey "to the to do, and in that frame of mind which grows weary grave." The spirit of infancy and purity has alwith the monotony of the events of every-day life, ready winged its way to the God who gave it, and I sat out, an hour or two since, to make a visit to the tabernacle of flesh, which held the hallowed the principal Burying-Ground of Washington City. treasure, lies low beneath the clods of the valley. Returning to my domicil, I find myself alone, mu- There is a consolation for those who are left, it is sing while the fire burns, and so far lost in the re- true; but the heart which clung to its offspring, as flection of what I have read and seen, the hour the ivy clings to the oak, will not be consoled. gone by, that I have thought you and your readers, The good angel whispers,-" OF SUCH is the Kingperhaps, might be interested, as I have been, in a DOM OF HEAVEN;" but to look on vacancy, where a brief remembrance and record of some of the dead moment before, we looked on life, and that life a whose remains lie entombed in one of the myriad part of ourselves, "bone of our bone and flesh of VOL. VIII-11 were all laid here, and buried in all the pomp and circumstance due to the elevated positions to which they had been raised by patriotism, learning and distinguished public service. What was, has been written by a grateful country, or a devoted friend, upon the cenotaph or tombstone, our flesh," is a picture so dark, and so interwo- age, rich and poor, the exalted in life and the humven with our affections; and so human too, that we bled in life, all laid down together, and upon that see, soaring aloft and around and at all points, only common ground, which levels all distinctions.that Destroying Angel, who, if he has not robbed The dust of generations past, lies mingled with us of all we loved, is nevertheless hovering over the man who but yesterday "shuffled off his us, and, like the relentless grave itself, crying mortal coil," and put on immortality. Presidents, “Give,” “ Give," " GIVE," for all that remains be- Vice-Presidents, Senators, Legislators and Judges hind. And yet, with such a translation of the spirit of man from its temporary abiding place on earth, to its immortal home in the skies, what a death would that be, even of infant innocence, to a doting parent, if there were no hope, no heaven,— no "bourne from whence the travellers return.' And what is infancy, but a leaf in the chapter of which tells you that here were, or here are, the human existence? Helplessness and dependence remains of one who passed from the council chamgive place to strength and vigor. The body ber or the battle-field, or from a green old age, to his grows--the mind expands--and, alas, that it should grave. The inscriptions we read, and the rebe so, the unalloyed innocence of an infant mind,-membrances we have, are all that is told and known powerless it is true to do wrong,-is changed of those who are gone. The good men do live into "a heart deceitful above all things, and des- after them,-and that divine principle of man-perperately wicked." We grow in years to the sta-haps the only divinity within him-teaches him, ture of perfect manhood. The image of the while he drops the tear of gratitude over the grave Godhead is stamped upon us, and within that of the sage and the hero, how to appreciate what frame of his, is placed every constituent element is really good and great in each and all of the hu which makes man, next to the Deity, the master man family. In an humbler sphere, that other mind of creation. Behold that herculean form,- grave, simple and unadorned, but beside those of erect, perfect, gigantic, as it is. In itself, the rank and fortune, is visited and remembered by mere flesh and blood and bones of his being,-private friends, who can often much better estiis written legibly to all, that "we are fearfully and mate the value of private worth, than a country wonderfully made." But look within this trunk, can, the blessings of public virtue. All here have which, like the tree, holds but the branches of life, their common level; as all hereafter, of equal merit, and you see there the true man. Those eyes are will have their common elevation. Imagination but windows of the soul, and the ears which hear can trace both, from the bosom of their mother only drink in that feast of reason which builds up earth, to Abraham's bosom, in the world of spirits. his monument of immortality. The organ of that But the body rests where it is; and what a picvoice, which in some men is as the music of the ture it is for the imagination of man to work upon. celestial choir, is but a part of the machinery of Who will answer for it, the question put for all to the power of speech,-and so of every sense answer, in reference to the greatest General at arms we have and use. And yet all these organs, of the world ever saw. "Why," it is asked, and oddly mind and body, sense and flesh, all that we have we may think, " may not imagination trace the noand are, perish, wither, and pass away forever. ble dust of Alexander, till it find it stopping a bungThat monument of mind, reared by the Almighty, hole? As thus-Alexander died, Alexander was and by the skill and time and labor of man, "so buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is noble in reason, so infinite in faculty, in action like an angel, and in apprehension like a god," has changed its estate on earth, and passed from a frail tenement of clay to a world of spirits. The nice machinery of being, which made man to the eyes of man, "in form and moving so express and admirable, the beauty of the world and the paragon of animals," has crumbled into the dust of its mother earth, the grave his body, and the world unknown, his spirit, holds. The epitaph upon every man's tombstone is-Birth, Life, Death! We breathe and live, speak and see, hear and feel; and then we die. Well may it be said "to what base uses we may return." earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?" And so of all the Alexanders, from Cyrus to Napoleon. "Imperious Cæsar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away; O, that the earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!” Such are the uses to which we come at last. The machinery which kept soul and body together in such nice harmony, has stopped. Its revolutions have been checked,-it may be, by that Providence which watches all our movements, and notes even the falling of the sparrow to the ground; or it may I looked upon the graves around me, as I left be, that those tender and delicate cords of life have them just now, and what a spectacle did they been cut asunder, by disease and crime. The folly present! Rank, and perhaps dishonor, youth and of man has been a greater suicide than man's mis |