SONNET-MUTATION.

THEY talk of short-lived pleasure-be it so—
Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.

The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again

The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain,

Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease :
Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase

Are fruits of innocence and blessedness:

Thus joy, o'erborne and bound, doth still release

His young limbs from the chains that round him press. Weep not that the world changes--did it keep

A stable changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

THE sad and solemn night

Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;

All through her silent watches, gliding slow,

Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they :
Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.

Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,

Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

237

And eve, that round the earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;

There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun-
The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud-
And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,

Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,

Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,
Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER.

WILD was the day; the wintry sea

Moaned sadly on New-England's strand,

When first, the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.

They little thought how pure a light,

With years, should gather round that day; How love should keep their memories bright, How wide a realm their sons should sway.

Green are their bays; but greener still

Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, And regions, now untrod, shall thrill

With reverence, when their names are breathed.

Till where the sun, with softer fires,
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep,

The children of the pilgrim sires

This hallowed day like us shall keep.

ODE

FOR AN AGRICULTURAL CELEBRATION.

FAR back in the ages,

The plough with wreaths was crowned;
The hands of kings and sages

Entwined the chaplet round;
Till men of spoil disdained the toil

By which the world was nourished,
And dews of blood enriched the soil
Where green their laurels flourished:
-Now the world her fault repairs
The guilt that stains her story;
And weeps her crimes amid the cares
That formed her earliest glory.

The proud throne shall crumble,
The diadem shall wane,

The tribes of earth shall humble

The pride of those who reign;
And War shall lay his pomp away;-
The fame that heroes cherish,
The glory earned in deadly fray,

Shall fade, decay, and perish.