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Ah me! the laurelled wreath that Murder | Her musing mood shall every pang appease, And charm-when pleasures lose the power to please!

rears,

Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow's tears, Seems not so foul, so tainted, and so dread, As waves the night-shade round the sceptic head.

What is the bigot's torch, the tyrant's chain? I smile on death, if heavenward Hope remain!

But, if the warring winds of Nature's strife
Be all the faithless charter of my life,
If Chance awaked, inexorable power,
This frail and feverish being of an hour;
Doomed, o'er the world's precarious scene
to sweep,

Swift as the tempest travels on the deep,
To know Delight but by her parting smile,
And toil, and wish, and weep, a little while;
Then melt, ye elements, that formed in vain
This troubled pulse, and visionary brain!
Fade, ye wild flowers, memorials of my doom,
And sink, ye stars, that light me to the tomb!
Truth, ever lovely-since the world began,
The foe of tyrants, and the friend of man,
How can thy words from balmy slumber

start

Reposing Virtue, pillowed on the heart!
Yet, if thy voice the note of thunder rolled,
And that were true which Nature never
told,

Let Wisdom smile not on her conquered field;
No rapture dawns, no treasure is revealed!
Oh! let her read, nor loudly, nor elate,
The doom that bars us from a better fate;
But, sad as angels for the good man's sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in!
And well may Doubt, the mother of
Dismay,

Pause at her martyr's tomb, and read the lay.
Down by the wilds of yon deserted vale,
It darkly hints a melancholy tale!
There, as the homeless madman sits alone,
In hollow winds he hears a spirit moan!
And there, they say, a wizard-orgie crowds,
When the Moon lights her watch-tower in
the clouds.

Poor lost Alonzo! Fate's neglected child! Mild be the doom of Heaven-as thou wert mild!

For oh! thy heart in holy mould was cast, And all thy deeds were blameless, but the last.

Poor lost Alonzo! still I seem to hear The clod that struck thy hollow-sounding bier!

When Friendship paid, in speechless sorrow drowned,

Thy midnight rites, but not on hallowed ground?

Cease, every joy, to glimmer on my mind, But leave-oh! leave the light of HOPE behind!

What though my winged hours of bliss have been,

Like angel-visits, few and far between,

Yes! let each rapture, dear to Nature, flee; Close not the light of Fortune's stormy sea— Mirth, music, friendship, Love's propitious smile,

Chase every care, and charm a little while,
Ecstatic throbs the fluttering heart employ,
And all her strings are harmonized to joy !—
But why so short is Love's delighted hour?
Why fades the dew on Beauty's sweetest
flower?

Why can no hymned charm of music heal
The sleepless woes impassioned spirits feel?
Can Fancy's fairy-hand no veil create,
To hide the sad realities of fate?-

No! not the quaint remark, the sapient

rule,

Nor all the pride of Wisdom's wordy school,
Have power to soothe, unaided and alone,
The heart that vibrates to a feeling tone.
When stepdame Nature every bliss recalls,
Fleet as the meteor o'er the desert falls;
When, 'reft of all, yon widowed sire appears
A lonely hermit in the vale of years;
Say,can the world one joyous thought bestow
To Friendship, weeping at the couch of Woe!
No! but a brighter soothes the last adieu,-
Souls of impassion'd mould,she speaks to you!
Weep not, she says, at Nature's transient
pain,

Congenial spirits part to meet again!

What plaintive sobs thy filial spirit drew, What sorrow choked thy long and last adieu! Daughter of Conrad! when he heard his knell, And bade his country, and his child farewell! Doomed the long isles of Sydney-cove to see, The martyr of his crimes, but true to thee? Thrice the sad father tore thee from his heart,

And thrice returned to bless thee, and to part;

Thrice from his trembling lips he murmured low

The plaint that owned unutterable woe; Till Faith, prevailing o'er his sullen doom, As bursts the morn on night's unfathomed gloom,

Lured his dim eye to deathless hopes sublime, Beyond the realms of Nature and of Time! "And weep not thus," he cried, “young El

lenore, My bosom bleeds, but soon shall bleed no more!

Short shall this half-extinguished spirit burn, And soon these limbs to kindred dust return! But not, my child, with life's precarious fire, The immortal ties of nature shall expire; These shall resist the triumph of decay, When time is o'er, and worlds have passed away!

Cold in the dust this perished heart may lie, But that which warmed it once shall never die! That spark unburied in its mortal frame, With living light, eternal, and the same,

Shall beam on Joy's interminable years, Unveiled by darkness—unassuaged by tears. "Yet, on the barren shore and stormy deep, One tedious watch is Conrad doomed to weep; But when I gain the home without a friend, And press the uneasy couch where none attend,

This last embrace, still cherished in my heart, Shall calm the struggling spirit ere it part! Thy darling form shall seem to hover nigh, And hush the groan of life's last agony! "Farewell! when strangers lift thy father's bier,

And place my nameless stone without a tear; When each returning pledge hath told my child

That Conrad's tomb is on the desert piled;
And when the dream of troubled fancy sees
Its lonely rank grass waving in the breeze;
Who then wil soothe thy grief, when mine
is o'er?
Who will protect thee, helpless Ellenore?
Shall secret scenes thy filial sorrows hide,
Scorned by the world, to factious guilt
allied?

Ah! no; methinks the generous and the good
Will woo thee from the shades of solitude!
O'er friendless grief compassion shall awake,
And smile on innocence, for Mercy's sake!”
Inspiring thought of rapture yet to be,
The tears of love were hopeless, but for thee!
If in that frame no deathless spirit dwell,
If that faint murmur be the last farewell,
If Fate unite the faithful but to part,
Why is their memory sacred to the heart?
Why does the brother of my childhood seem
Restored a while in every pleasing dream?
Why do I joy the lonely spot to view,
By artless friendship blessed when life was
new?

Eternal HOPE! when yonder spheres sublime Pealed their first notes to sound the march of Time,

Thy joyous youth began—but not to fade.— When all the sister-planets have decayed; When rapt in fire the realms of ether glow, And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below;

Thou, undismayed, shalt o'er the ruins smile, And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile!

GERTRUDE OF WYOMING.

Most of the popular histories of England, as well as of the American war, give an authentic account of the desolation of Wyoming, in Pennsylvania, which took place in 1778, by an incursion of the Indians. The Scenery and Incidents of the following Poem are connected with that

In

Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies, The happy shepherd-swains had nought to do But feed their flocks on green declivities, Or skim perchance thy lake with light canoe, From morn till evening's sweeter pastime grew,

With timbrel, when beneath the forests brown,

And

aye

event. The testimonies of historians and travellers concur in describing the infant colony as one of the happiest spots of human existence, for the hospitable and innocent manners of the inhabitants, the beauty of the country, and the Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew; luxuriant fertility of the soil and climate. an evil hour, the junction of European with Inthose sunny mountains half-way dian arms converted this terrestrial paradise down into a frightful waste. Mr. ISAAC WELD informs Would echo flagelet from some romantic us, that the ruins of many of the villages, perforated with balls, and bearing marks of conflagration, were still preserved by the recent inhabitants, when he travelled through America in 1796.

PARTI.

ON Susquehana's side, fair Wyoming!
Although the wild-flower on thy ruined wall
And roofless homes a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall;
Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all
That see the Atlantic wave their morn re-

store.

Sweet land! may I thy lost delights recall, And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore, Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania's shore!

town.

Then, where of Indian hills the daylight
takes
His leave, how might you the flamingo see
Disporting like a meteor on the lakes,
And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:
And every sound of life was full of glee,
From merry mock-bird's song, or hum of

men;

While hearkening, fearing nought their revelry,

The wild deer arched his neck from glades, and then, ⚫ Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again.

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Can I forget thee, favourite child of yore?
Or thought I, in thy father's house, when
thou

Wert lightest hearted on his festive floor,
And first of all his hospitable door

Then down again it rained an ember-shower,
And louder lamentations heard we rise:
As when the evil Manitou that dries
Th' Ohio woods consumes them in his ire, To meet and kiss me at my journey's end?
But where was I when Waldegrave was no
more?

In vain the desolated panther flies,
And howls, amidst his wilderness of fire:
Alas! too late we reached and smote those
Hurons dire!

But as the fox beneath the nobler hound,
So died their warriors by our battle-brand;
And from the tree we, with her child, un-
bound

And thou didst pale thy gentle head extend, In woes, that even the tribe of desarts was thy friend!

He said—and strained unto his heart the boy : Far differently, the mute Oneyda took His calumet of peace, and cup of joy; A lonely mother of the christian land: As monumental bronze unchanged his look: Her lord the captain of the British band-A soul that pity touched, but never shook; Amidst the slaughter of his soldiers lay. Trained, from his tree-rocked cradle to his Scarce knew the widow our delivering hand; Upon her child?shefsobbed, and swooned

bier,

The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook Impassive-fearing but the shame of fearOr shrieked unto the God to whom the A stoic of the woods -a man without a

away,

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