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TIME.

BY THOMAS C. HARTSHORN.

TIME, though our friend, is often deemed a foe,
Against him many strive with idle zeal :
The lover and the sluggard think him slow,
And wish a rapid motion to his wheel:
While debtors, who have notes or drafts to pay,
Would gladly have him linger on his way.

The gay coquette, regardless how he flies,
Enjoys her conquests while her charms avail,

Nor knows the truth that Flattery denies,

Until her mirror tells the serious tale;

Then borrows she each artificial aid
To hide the ravages that Time hath made.

In vain she strives! proud monuments decay;

Shall frailer beauty such a wreck outlive? Alas! it is the creature of a day,

And passes with the cloud that shines at eve, When the bright sun in setting throws a fringe Of rays on it-an evanescent tinge!

Nor this alone; the fairest works of art

May fall unwept, but Genius weeps to see The gentlest lines that ever touched the heart, Fade like the colors on old tapestry.

Hath he not plundered Chaucer of his bays,
By making obsolete his finest lays?

And Shakspeare too, whom Nature took to nurse
Amid her mountain scenery, wild, sublime,
(Why did she not exempt him from the curse?)
Hath felt the woeful ravages of Time

So much, that some think all his commentators,
Compared to Time, are harmless depredators.

The words in which they breathed their glowing souls,
When the fine frenzy kindled up their ken,
Obscure in meaning, like the leafy scrolls
Which zephyr wafted from the Sybil's den,
Have lost the bold conceptions they conveyed,
And given critics quite a musty trade.

Even they who led the van, and kindled war

Along the breathing lines of clashing spears, Have missed the fame which they contended for, Obscured and buried in the lapse of years; Mentioned perhaps in some black-letter book Covered with cobwebs in its dusty nook.

Behold what mighty changes Time can make.
The fields that madmen fattened with their gore,
Are green and peaceful as a summer lake,

The victors and the vanquished known no more, Save when the sturdy ploughman, with his share, Turns up their bones and wonders whose they were.

He who hath read the records of the past,

Perchance may recollect the cause, the date, Wherefore and when the trumpet blew the blast Which called these mortal remnants to their fate:

And while his soul is tuned to melancholy
He drops a tear, and sighs for human folly.

O what a tale could Time to us reveal

Of by-gone ages, when the world was new!
Thou hoary sire! thine oracles unseal!
Display thy past experience to our view!
For thou hast seen proud empires rise and fall
Before the deluge overwhelmed them all.

Thy visionary form before me now
Appears as Neptune from the main arose,
The mists of ages hang upon thy brow,

Spectres of ruined things thy train compose,
The verdure shrinks and withers at thy tread
And crowds of mortals number with the dead!

Speak while I sit submissive to thy will,
Historic truth devoid of fabrication :

I wait, with eager mind and ready quill,
To give symbolic form to thy narration.

Infuse my ink with all thy gathered store,
And thus from darkness light shall spring once more.

Tell us the story of those eastern nations

To whom the arts and sciences were known,

Ere Philip's son commenced his operations,

Or his precursor, Cyrus, was o'erthrown;
Fable sits brooding over them, and mystery
Involves the scanty records of their history.

Who reared the mounds upon Ohio's shore
That mock research and triumph over thee!
The savage, skilled in legendary lore,
Hath no tradition from his ancestry.
Oblivion glooms upon the buried brave
Like Desolation, on a Druid's grave.

It is imagined by the antiquaries

That, ere Columbus found this hemisphere,
(Thou hast reduced them to these strange vagaries)
A nobler race of men existed here.

Pray, did this race, from earthly refuge driven,
Pass with the mammoth to the Indian's heaven?

When brilliant schemes the youthful fancy drew,
Did after years fulfil each fond desire?
Or did they, like the Hebrew leader, view

Afar the consummation, and expire

Before they reached it? Such the fate of all
Who grovel now on this terrestrial ball!

Deceitful Time! when grief and pain annoy
The mind and body, slow is thy career :
But when excited by some transient joy,
Rapid thy passage through the rolling year!

Our fears, our hopes, thou bearest on thy wing,
Age's ripe autumn, and young boyhood's spring.

Even while I gaze, thou fadest from my view
As some loose cloud fantastically dight,
Which, at the evening's close, dissolves in dew,
And leaves no vestige in the starry height.
Farewell! grim phantom of an idle hour,
Which Endor's art may not to me restore!

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

BY THE REV. DR. CHANNING.

POETRY seems to us the divinest of all arts ; for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment, which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty, and thrilling than ordinary and real life affords. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man's immortality; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, pos