WINTER AND SPRING. Winter is gone, and May, Queen of the Year, must in a few days resign her Crown of Flowers:-the following poems are not, therefore, as seasonable as we might have made them; but as none will require poetry either to be written or published according to the Calendar, we have no doubt they will still prove acceptable to our readers. The ode of Earl Conrad is taken from a note, by the translator, to Sismondi's "Historical view of the Literature of the South of Europe;" and was long since intended to usher in, instead of bidding adieu to "merry, merry May;" but was forgotten. It was written several centuries ago. Dawns sometimes lovely on a night of storm On the charm'd eye with sudden beauty bursts O'er the still boughs! how pure! how heav'nly white! And as the sun, with horizontal beam, And furtive glance, peeps passionately through See, from each silver'd leaf and drooping bough Where marble trees from alabaster grow, For the dead year how sweet a resting place! Winter, thou art a faithful moralist, "The following song of Earl Conrad of Kirchberg, is translated very closely, and in the same measure as the original: May, sweet May, again is come: O'er the laughing hedgerow's side "Up, then, children, we will go We the bursting flowers will see; Courtly dames our pleasures share, Never saw I May so fair; Therefore, dancing will we go: Youths rejoice, the flowrets blow; Sing ye join the chorus gay! Hail this merry, merry May ! "Our manly youths,-where are they now? Now, thou pale and wounded lover! "Oh, if to my love restored, For her spotless self alone, THE BOOK OF NATURE. "There are two books from which I collect my divinity-besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature: That universal and public manuscript that lies expanded unto the eyes of all. . . . . Possibly, even the Heathens knew better how to join and read these mys tical letters, than many Christians, who cast a more care. less eyen on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of nature."-Religio-Medici, (Sir Thomas Browne.) The manuscript of Nature's Book Is open spread to every eye, But few into the leaves will look That round them lie: In characters both quaint and old, TO THE TURTLE-DOVE. Loving, kissing, cooing, Thou art lovely, lovely! Undulating, swelling Float thy cooings, telling Thou thy pinions lending, Her lot is lonely! one by one have parted The silvery links that wove Life's chain of yore: She is a mourner-widow'd--broken-hearted-Her vanish'd hopes time never can restore. The bread of bitterness she oft hath broken-And with it mingled Marah's cup of wo; Her isolated heart hath long since spoken Its farewell to the world of pride and show. Her pilgrim feet are weary--yet she cometh Up to this place, this holiest place of prayer-Poor, care-worn child of clay! 'tis here she summeth Her all of happiness :--and pausing there She stilleth each human throbbing ere she enters Those gracious doors which guard her hallow'd home ;- There with a child-like faith her hope she centres, Therefore with lowliest reverence doth she come. Meekly she enters, and as meekly kneeling Up to the shrine with sacred symbols spread; His love hath roll'd the gathering mists away, And through the steadfast eye of Faith she's gifted To see the dawning of a clearer day. Only the Hope that looketh up to Heaven Her own she calleth, yet 'tis a hope divineA joy "not of this world" to her is given, And she goes forth patient to bide her time! STANZAS. My days and hours of childhood, oh! how often I recall you, say, I ne'er spend time in business, as I used to spend in play. My fleeting moments pass'd so sweet, when life was in its spring, When all my feelings yet were fresh, and hope was on the wing; When with the sun I rose each morn, and with him went to rest; I slept upon my childhood's bed, he slumbered in the west. I used to wander through the fields, with dog, or gun, or book, And when the walk or hunt was o'er, to bathe me in the brook; My days then passed so happily, they never seem'd too long, And when the welcome evening came, I cheer'd me with a song. I used to love the solitude, of wood, or hill, or plain, It hurt my childish vanity because I was not sought, I used to lay me in the shade, beneath a holly tree, These were the joys of childhood, with its pastimes and | More graceful than the bounding fawn that sprang to her its haunts, caress. But now succeed the toil of life, its business and its And oh, with more than Angel's power, a mortal heart to wants; Its pleasures and its prospects here, held out to court or To soothe, to rouse, to frighten us-Love, Glory, and the J. bless! A MORN IN PARADISE. As the learned have not yet come to a decision respecting the location of the Garden of Eden, the writer of the following verses has availed herself of the "Poet's License," and supposed it in a valley. The mist of ages vanished-and lo, serene and bright, SLEEP. With curtains drawn, with bright glare dimmed, by hand as soft and fair As the white cloud that floats along and woos the passing air, A form, as bright and glowing as the sun's last lingering ray, MORN walked the hills of Eden, but she came not there Sank, sun-like, though at noon, to sleep the dreary hours Gently upon my bosom white, the very way I chose, rose !" But most the gentle warblers from out each downy nest, tide, It floated o'er the fragrant dale, or up the mountain's side. But soon, more fair than Morning that charmed the eastern skies, More loving than the tender Night, with its soft and starry eyes, could it be ! "Too true, too true, oh! fatal nap-Not to lie gracefully !" EFFIE Charleston, S. C. THE FORTUNES CF ESTHER, THE JEWESS. CHAPTER I. mouth was pressed upon the pale and rigid lips of her lifeless parent. Amidst agonizing sobs, her tiny voice broke forth in plaintive appeals to the tender love and affection of that fond and pious mother, who had so often pressed her to her bosom, but whose ear was now closed to all the sounds of earth. "Mother, dear mother, look up-look kindly on thy Esther: O do not close your eyes so fast," and her little fingers essayed to press back the lids now compressed in death. Speak, dear mother, one kind word, thy little Esther calls thee. She is dead and will not hear me," she ex 66 The gray twilight of early dawn had thrown a pale, broad streak upon the eastern horizon-the harbinger of approaching day—and faintly marked the dusky outlines of the lofty and stupendous hanging gardens of Babylon, that reared their broad terraces above the out-spread city, like a mighty promontory over a sleeping ocean. Hard claimed, clasping her little hands with passionate by this astonishing and beautiful display of human grief, and pressing her face to her mother's bosom. art, there stood a splendid and stately mansion,- These simple and touching outpourings of infant the abode of wealth and luxury. In that palace sorrow, powerfully affected the subdued and godly of earthly greatness, was heard the sound of many spirit of her gray-headed relative. Strengthened instruments pouring forth, all night, soft and vo- and confirmed by a pious resignation to the will of luptuous music to a riotous crowd of mirthful rev- that God, whose righteous wisdom plans and exeellers. The feast was sumptuous and set off by cutes only what is good, he had curbed his own all the glitter and magnificence of Eastern splen- tumultuous yearnings for a loved and honored memdor. The bound of the gay dance was heard in ber of his house and tribe; but the wailings of those halls, and the shouts of frantic mirth broke that helpless innocent, crushed down by sorrow, upon the still ear of night. It was the clamorous distended his heart to bursting, and the big tears festival of licentious passions, luxuriating in un-of tender sympathy overflowed his cheeks. It bridied license. In the wild delirium of sensual was a thrilling and an awful sight to look upon excess, the past and the future were equally for- that man, so calmly and so sternly armed against gotten; nor did a thought upon the destitute and suf- rebellious nature, thus subdued by earthly passion. fering crowds in that immense city intrude amidst He raised the meek and unresisting child in his the wasteful abundance that cloyed upon the over-arms, and with tender affection thrusting away the feasted appetite. Near this palace of feasting clustering curls from her beautiful forehead, kissed her again and again. She yet wept, and her little bosom was convulsed with quick and deep drawn sobs; yet her grief was passive and her spirit as gentle as a lamb's. ants. and mirth, and almost flanking it, stood a wretched little hovel, so small and so miserable in its exterior as to strike the fancy with a perfect display of the extremes in contrast. Within this covert of humble poverty there was silence--deep, solemn, and mel "Esther, child of bereavement and of early ancholy silence, save when broken by the low, sorrows," he kindly whispered, "remember the plaintive moans of a sobbing child, or the deep words of thy pious mother. She taught thee that groans of a gray-headed man, its only living ten- to murmur at the decrees of thy God, was to rebel The ill according sounds of mirth, too, against his government. He blessed thee with the from that house of feasting, would at intervals nurture and instructions of a tender mother, and burst within these narrow walls of mourning. He has taken her away. His righteous will has Upon a hard and narrow couch lay the wasted and not revealed to us the causes of his action; but meagre corpse of a female shrouded in the hum- we know that all He does is good and just; thereble habiliments of poverty--that last covering of fore, believe He saw it best to take thy mother the mortal body, the appalling dress of the char- from all of us. His strong arm can raise thee up nel house. How calm! how quiet in that sleep! many joys and comforts, and surely-He will bless Despised and neglected child of indigence, thy all that love and obey him. The cheering rays of toiling and drooping spirit is now at rest--thy trou- His countenance were cast upon the path of thy bles are over and thy tears have ceased to flow, pious mother throughout life. How peaceful, how though others weep for thee. Thy God has ended happy she lived, in the full consciousness of his thy weary pilgrimage, and spread over thee the man- approbation? With horror would she have shrunk tle of His peace. Now freed from the trammels of from the exchange of her life of humble poverty, dust and the bondage of man, thou mayest wander for the throne of Xerxes himself, with all his by the stream and roam over the hills of Pales- greatness, surrounded as it is with darkness and tine--the land of thy fathers and the home of thy apostacy from God. Though firm in her reliance dreams. At the head of the couch and bending on His merciful providence, one anxious fear, inover the silent corpse of her mother, sat a little separable from a mother's love, preyed upon her girl, about six years old. Her small slender arms troubled spirit--the fear that thou shouldst want were twined about her neck and her beautiful an earthly friend when death should take her from VOL. XIII-44 |