And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned,
And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,
Where autumn, like a faint old man, sits down
By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves. The purple finch,
That on wild-cherry and red-cedar feeds,
A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud
From cottage roofs the warbling bluebird sings,
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.

O, what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves,
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go

To his long resting-place without a tear.

TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING.1

The pages of thy book I read,
And, as I closed each one,
My heart responding, ever said,
"Servant of God! well done!"

Well done! Thy words are great and bold,
At times they seem to me,

Like Luther's in the days of old,

Half-battles for the free.

Go on, until this land revokes

The old and chartered Lie,

The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes
Insult humanity.

I

This poem was written at sea, in the latter part of October, 1842. had not then heard of Dr. Channing's death. Since that event, the poem addressed to him is no longer appropriate. I have decided, however, to let it remain as it was written, a feeble testimony of my admiration for a great and good man.

A voice is ever at thy side
Speaking in tones of might,
Like the prophetic voice that cried
To John in Patmos, "Write!"

Write! and tell out this bloody tale!
Record this dire eclipse,

This Day of Wrath, this Endless Wail,
This dread Apocalypse!

THE WARNING.

Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore

The lion in his path-when, poor and blind, He saw the blessed light of heaven no more, Shorn of his noble strength, and forced to grind In prison, and at last led forth to be

A pander to Philistine revelry

Upon the pillars of the temple laid

His desperate hands, and in its overthrow
Destroyed himself, and with him those who made
A cruel mockery of his sightless woe;
The poor blind slave, the scoff and jest of all,
Expired, and thousands perished in the fall!

There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,

Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel, Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand, And shake the pillars of this commonweal,

Till the vast temple of our liberties

A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.

EXCELSIOR.

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung

The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light

Of household fires gleam warm and bright;

Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!

"Try not the pass!" the old man said;
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead;
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

"O, stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!"

This was the peasant's last good-night;
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There, in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!

SPRING.

In all climates Spring is beautiful. The birds begin to sing; they utter a few rapturous notes, and then wait for an answer in the silent woods. Those green-coated musicians, the frogs, make holiday in the neighboring marshes. They, too, belong to the orchestra of Nature; whose vast theatre is again opened, though the doors have been so long bolted with icicles, and the scenery hung with snow and frost like cobwebs.

This is the prelude which announces the opening of the

scene. Already the grass shoots forth. The waters leap with thrilling pulse through the veins of the earth; the sap through the veins of the plants and trees; and the blood through the veins of man. What a thrill of delight in Spring-time! What a joy in being and moving! Men are at work in gardens; and in the air there is an odor of the fresh earth. The leafbuds begin to swell and blush. The white blossoms of the cherry hang upon the boughs like snow-flakes; and ere long our next-door neighbors will be completely hidden from us by the dense green foliage. The May-flowers open their soft blue eyes. Children are let loose in the fields and gardens. They hold buttercups under each other's chins, to see if they love butter. And the little girls adorn themselves with chains and curls of dandelions; pull out the yellow leaves, to see if the schoolboy loves them, and blow the down from the leafless stalk, to find out if their mothers want them at home.

And at night so cloudless and so still! Not a voice of living thing-not a whisper of leaf or waving bough-not a breath of wind-not a sound upon the earth nor in. the air! And overhead bends the blue sky, dewy and soft, and radiant with innumerable stars, like the inverted bell of some blue flower, sprinkled with golden dust, and breathing fragrance. Or if the heavens are overcast, it is no wild storm of wind and rain; but clouds that melt and fall in showers. One does not wish to sleep; but lies awake to hear the pleasant sound of the dropping rain.

GEORGE B. CHEEVER.

GEORGE BARRELL CHEEVER was born at Hallowell, Maine, on the 17th of April, 1807, graduated at Bowdoin College in 1825, and studied theology at Andover, Massachusetts. He was licensed to preach in 1830, and in 1832 was ordained as pastor of the Howard Street Church, Salem, Massachusetts. He commenced his ministry with an uncompromising spirit against everything that hindered the spread of the Gospel of Christ, of the object of which "Gospel" he seemed to have a clear understanding. Such a spirit would not long need a subject against which to direct its energies. Accordingly, when the tempe

rance reformation began, he was found the foremost and the boldest in the van of those who enlisted in this great moral warfare. In February, 1835, appeared in the "Salem Landmark" a piece entitled "Inquire at Amos Giles' Distillery,” that quite electrified that quiet community; for, under the guise of "a dream," it depicted, in the most appalling colors, the hateful, soul-destroying business of distilling and vending intoxicating drinks. Every one immediately or remotely engaged in it meditated revenge against the author, and a prosecution was instituted against him for libel, alleging that, under the name of "Deacon Giles," the writer really meant a certain “deacon" long and notoriously engaged in distilling, and who was also “a treasurer to a Bible Society, and had a little counting-room in one corner of the distillery where he sold Bibles." Mr. Cheever pleaded his own cause, and in his defence thus remarked upon the

NATURE OF A DISTILLER'S BUSINESS.

Could the amount of misery, in time and eternity, which any one distillery in Salem has occasioned, be portrayed before your honor, I should feel no solicitude for the result. Let the mothers who have been broken-hearted, the wives that have been made widows, the children that have been made fatherless, the parents borne down with a bereavement worse than death, in the vices of their children, be arrayed in your presence; let the families reduced to penury, disgraced with crime, and consumed with anguish, that the owners of one distillery might accumulate their wealth, be gathered before you. Let the prosecutor in this suit go to the graveyards, and summon their shrouded tenants; let him summon before you the ghosts of those whose bodies have been laid in the grave from that one distillery; let him call up, if he could, the souls that have been shut out from heaven and prepared for hell, through the instrumentality of the liquor manufactured there; and let him ask what is their verdict.-Need I suppose the judgment? Surely it would be said: Let the defendant be shielded. Even if he has overstepped the limits of exact prudence, in his efforts to portray the evils of intemperance; in the name of mercy, let the great object of the effort shield him, and let the law be turned against that dreadful business whose nature he has aimed to delineate."

To the lasting disgrace of that judiciary, the defendant was con