THOU ART, O GOD.

Thou art, O God, the life and light
Of all this wondrous world we see;
Its glow by day, its smile by night

Are but reflections caught from thee.
Where'er we turn thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are thine.

When Day, with farewell beam, delays Among the opening clouds of Even, And we can almost think we gaze

Through golden vistas into heavenThose hues that make the sun's decline So soft, so radiant, Lord, are thine.

When Night, with wings of starry gloom,

O'ershadows all the earth and skies,

Like some dark, beauteous bird, whose plume
Is sparkling with unnumbered eyes-
That sacred gloom, those fires divine,
So grand, so countless, Lord, are thine.

When youthful Spring around us breathes,
Thy Spirit warms her fragrant sigh;
And every flower the Summer wreathes
Is born beneath that kindling eye.
Where'er we turn thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are thine.

THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER.

"Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions

Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred

No rose-bud is nigh,

To reflect back her blushes
Or give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem;

Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.

Thus kindly I scatter

Thy leaves o'er the bed

Where thy mates of the garden

Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow, When friendships decay,

And from Love's shining circle

The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,

Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?

THE MODERN PUFFING SYSTEM.
FROM AN EPISTLE TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.
Unlike those feeble gales of praise
Which critics blew in former days,
Our modern puffs are of a kind
That truly, really "raise the wind;"
And since they've fairly set in blowing,
We find them the best "trade-winds" going.
What steam is on the deep-and more-

Is the vast power of Puff on shore,
Which jumps to glory's future tenses
Before the present even commences,
And makes "immortal" and "divine" of us
Before the world has read one line of us.
In old times, when the god of song
Drove his own two-horse team along,
Carrying inside a bard or two
Booked for posterity "all through,"
Their luggage a few close-packed rhymes
(Like yours, my friend, for after-times),
So slow the pull to Fame's abode
That folks oft slumbered on the road;
And Homer's self sometimes, they say,
Took to his nightcap on the way.

But now how different is the story
With our new galloping sons of glory,
Who, scorning all such slack and slow time,
Dash to posterity in no time!

Raise but one general blast of puff
To start your author-that's enough!

In vain the critics set to watch him
Try at the starting-post to catch him:
He's off-the puffers carry it hollow-
The critics, if they please, may follow;
Ere they've laid down their first positions,
He's fairly blown through six editions!
In vain doth Edinburgh dispense
Her blue-and-yellow pestilence
(That plague so awful in my time
To young and touchy sons of rhyme);
The Quarterly, at three months' date,

To catch the Unread One comes too late;

And nonsense, littered in a hurry,
Becomes "immortal," spite of Murray.

Allston (1779-1843) was born in Charleston, S. C., was educated at a private school in Newport, R. I., and graduated at Harvard in 1800. His first wife was a sister of Channing. In 1830 he was married to a sister of the poet Dana, and resided in Cambridgeport, Mass., the rest of his life. While in Europe he formed the intimate friendship of Coleridge. Studying art in London and Rome, he attained to the highest eminence as a painter. He published "The Sylph of the Seasons, and other Poems," also " Monaldi," a prose romance. Honored and beloved, he passed a blameless and noble life.

SONNET ON COLERIDGE.

And thou art goue, most loved, most honored friend!
No, nevermore thy gentle voice shall blend
With air of earth its pure ideal tones,
Binding in one, as with harmonious zones,
The heart and intellect. And I no more
Shall with thee gaze on that unfathomed deep,
The Human Soul; as when, pushed off the shore,
Thy mystic bark would through the darkness sweep,

AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.

All hail! thou noble land,

Our fathers' native soil!
Oh, stretch thy mighty hand,

Gigantic grown by toil,

O'er the vast Atlantic waves to our shore;
For thou, with magic might,
Canst reach to where the light
Of Phoebus travels bright
The world o'er.

The Genius of our clime,

From his pine-embattled steep, Shall hail the great sublime;

While the Tritons of the deep

With their conchs the kindred league shall proclaim. Then let the world combine

O'er the main our naval line,

Like the Milky Way, shall shine
Bright in fame!

Though ages long have passed

Since our fathers left their home, Their pilot in the blast

O'er untravelled seas to roam,

Yet lives the blood of England in our veins!
And shall we not proclaim
That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame
By its chains?

While the language, free and bold,
Which the bard of Avon sang,

In which our Milton told

How the vault of heaven rang

When Satan, blasted, fell with his host;
While this, with reverence meet,

Ten thousand echoes greet,
From rock to rock repeat
Round our coast;

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!"

Clement C. Moore.

AMERICAN.

The son of a bishop, Moore (1779-1863) was a native of the city of New York, and a graduate of Columbia College in 1798. He published a volume of poems, dedicated to his children, in 1844. "I have composed them all," he writes, "as carefully and correctly as I could." Of these productions one at least, founded on an old Dutch tradition, seems to have in it the elements of vitality. Moore bore the title of LL.D.

A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced through their
heads;

And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by

name:

Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleighful of toys, and St. Nicholas too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

351

As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes, how they twinkled! his dimples, how
merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the
snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook, when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump-a right jolly old elf-
And I laughed, when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to the team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
'Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

66

Caleb C. Colton.

Colton (1779-1832) was, like Churchill, one of the mauvais sujets of literature and the Church. A native of England, he was educated at Cambridge, took orders, and became vicar of Kew and Petersham. Gambling, extravagance, and eccentric habits forced him to leave England, and he resided some time in the United States and in Paris. At one period in France he was so successful as a gambler that he realized £25,000. He was the author of "Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words" (1820)-an excellent collection of apothegms and moral reflections, which had a great sale. He corresponded for the London Morning Chronicle under the once famed signature of O. P. Q. Notwithstanding his dissolute life, he was the earnest advocate of virtue. He committed suicide at Fontainebleau-it was said, to escape the pain of a surgical operation from which no danger could be apprehended. In his "Lacon" we find these words: "The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss,