In the tall rocks Echo deplores thy silence,
And sports not with thy strain : at thy departure
The trees all shed their fruits, the flowers all withered,'
The milk no longer streamed from the mild ewe,
The honey from the hive : in the waxed cell
It darkly perished. Who would gather sweets
In that black hour when thy rare sweetness fled ?

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses !
Never beside the murmuring ocean-beach
Did dolphins grieve so loudly; never yet
So loudly did the plaintive nightingale
Mouru on the cliffs ; never in such deep sorrow
Screamed the shrill swallows on the desert mountains.
Not thus for sad ALCYONE called Ceyx:
Not the swift ciris on the gleaming billows,
Nor that strange bird which flies round Memnon's tomb,
With dirges for Aurora's warrior son,
In fragrant valleys of the golden morn,
Ever sent up such piercing sounds of wo,
As when they mourned for Bion's early death.
Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses !
The nightingales and swallows which he charmed,
And taught to speak, sat gathered on the boughs,
Lamenting with each other : sorrowing birds
Of meaner tribes replied: nor ye forget,
In saddening tones, O doves! to mourn his fall.
Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses !
Who now will draw glad sounds from thy mute pipe,
Thou thrice deplored? Who now will touch the reeds
That whisper still of thy sweet lips and breath,
And still give out faint murmurs of thy lay?
We yield that pipe to Pan, though Pan, perchance,
Will fear to press thy syrinx with his mouth,
Lest he be judged to strive in vain with thee.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses !
Lorn Galatea weeps thy music hushed;
She that once came, entranced by those wild numbers,
And sat beside thee on the wave-worn shore:
Thou wast no piping Cyclops: him in haste
Fair Galatea fled, but smiled on thee,
Rising in beauty from the foaming deep;
And now, forgetful of her ocean-caves,
She sits in tears upon the lonely sands,
Or tends the flock which droops since thou art gone.
Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses !
Shepherd! the Muses' gifts all fled with thee.
With thee the joys and hopes of youth departed,
And sorrowing Cupids weep around thy tomb.
Venus loves thee far more than that warm kiss
With which she kissed ADONIS as he died.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses !
Most musical of streams! this second pain,
This pain renewed, O Meles! must be thine.
Thy glorious Homer perished long ago,
THAT SWEET MOUTH OF CALLIOPE; that son

Whom thou didst seek with floods that wailed aloud,
With grief for whom thou filledst all the sea.
They bid thee now bewail another child,
They see thee wasted with a new regret.
Both were most dear to fountains: that did quaff
The pure deep wave of sacred Hippocrené;
This dipped his cup in sparkling Arethusa ;
That sang of HELEN TYNDAREUS' fair daughter,
Of MENELAUS ATREUS' valiant heir,
And that great chief whom seaborn Tuetis bore:
This sang not wars and woes, but told of Pan,
And joined smooth reeds, and milked his gentle flock;
He tended herds, and sang the cares of herdsmen.
He taught Love's wiles, and cherished Love's quick fire
Deep in his heart, and pleased Love's matchless quoen.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses !
Thee, Bion! all the noble cities mourn.
Ascra laments thee more than her own HESIOD:
Bæotia's woods long not for Pindar so.
Not thus the pleasant Lesbos wailed ALCÆUS,
Nor Teos thus her lost ANACREON wept:
Paros in thee forgets ArchiLOCHUS,
And Mitylené still desires thy song
Above her Sappho's. Every shepherd poet,
Whose mouth the Muses fill with lofty strains,
Thinks with wet eyes of thee thus early gone.
Thee, stricken in thy prime, SICELIDES,
The light of Samos, weeps: thee Lycidas,
Whose laugh and jest made glad the bold Cydonians,
Recalls with tears: thee, where swift Hales roams,
By sacred Triopé, PHILETAS mourns:
Thee, by the sea-girt towers of Syracuse,
THEOCRITUS deplores. I too for thee
Wake the loud dirges of Ausonia's sorrow;
I, not a stranger to Bucolic song ;
I, who received from thee that Doric verse,
Which thou didst teach, (a rich inheritance ;)

whom thou honoredst above other men, Leaving to them thy gold, to me thy lore.

多

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses !
Alas! alas! the mallows, in the garden,
The low green parsley and the fresh crisp anise.
The frailest herbs, that wither, live again,
And spring with joy to greet a coming year;
But we, the great, the valiant, and the wise,
Once dead, sleep, senseless in the dark cold earth,
A long, long dreary sleep, that brings no waking:
Thou too shalt slumber, voiceless in the dust;
And yet the Nymphs forbid not the dull frog
To croak for ever in one hoarse harsh strain,
At war alike with silence and with song.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
Did poison kill thee, Bion? did fell poison
Touch thy bland lips, nor lose its deadly force ?
Who so depraved could mix that draught for thee?
Could hear thee speak, and then could see thee drink?
Who thus defied the magic of thy words ?

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses !
JUSTICE FINDS ALL. Bon ed down in sore distress,
I grieve for thy sad fate; but could I go,
As ORPHEUS went, to deep dark Tartarus,
As great Alcides, as Ulysses went,
I too would enter Pluto's dread domain,
To learn if there thou singest aught for Pluto,
And hear thy lay. Do thou to PROSERPINE
Repeat some old Sicilian pastoral ;
Remind her of her own Sicilian birth,
And how she gambolled, warbling Doric odes,
In flowery vales of Etna. She will greet
The welcome music of thy Doric strain,
Nor leave thy tuneful labors unrepaid;
And as she once gave hack Eurydice,
Moved by the strings which weeping ORPHEUB swept,
She will relent, and send thee too, O BION!
Back to thy mountains. But, had I the power
To wake the speaking reeds, I fain would sing
In Pluto's halls, to bid thee live once more.

Rambledom : in Four Chapters.

WITH SCENES, INCIDENTS AND RECOLLECTIONS BY THE WAY.

Twenty years almost away from the place of my nativity; away, without intermediate visit, from the fields, woods and waters, which, haunting my memory intensely now, wear that freshness and glory which the eye, the heart

, and the aspirations of childhood accord to nature; a freshness and glory which have no counterpart in the nature that surrounds the world-accustomed man, and which forever flow up in the pathway of retrospect, as the most beautiful memories of life. Ah! twenty years ago the earth was to me a paradise, the universe a palace of enchantment, whose star-fretted sky never wearied me with its glories, and whose brightness came glowing to my vision, a perpetual wonder and delight! Then I sat upon the slate-rock and coined moneys richer than the gold of Ind; I lifted my young soul on the wing of fancy, holding commerce with fabled lands, where the sun sets not; and I drew from thence argosies freighted with unreckonable fortune and careering ever to my harbors in the face of winds, and tempests, and shoals. Then I walked in the meadows, with the grass waving musically around me, and the daisies, and clover, and butter-cups smiled on me as they were brothers, twin with my innocency, my wonder, and my joy. Then, if I cast line in the brook, the smallest fish had infinite weight and significance, and wading in the shining waters I plucked the lilies with a vastness of delight,

men,

Then my outward world was bounded by the eye; the horizon held it like a hoop; and therein the sum of beauty and gladness was made perfect.

Oh! precious and blessed time of childhood! Oh! excellent and hallowed spot, one calls his « nativity!' Barren to manhood in all but recollections, it was light, music and glory to the child. Never can the conscious soul otherwise behold it. Lands and seas, and time and change may intervene, but the birth-place, the home of childhood, shall never wane in the heaven of the heart. It is so to me; so to all

Neither expatriation nor voluntary exile can dim it, nor make it less beautiful than it was. It is defended in the heart by impressions that mock the thickness of dungeon walls; that flit in upon the hardest soul of crime, like angels that would redeem even depravity itself.

It is not strange then that I should wish to look again upon a spot so dear; a spot divided from my vision by twenty years of absence ; years big with adventures which have brought the earth's surface, save this one spot, to a level and common in all that can interest or charm. Well, to enjoy that look I must away to the heart of Vermont; to valleys where the Green Mountains cast their shadows on the brightest of rivers, and wave their green crests amid the clouds. The Isaac Newton bore me up the Hudson. A splendid steamer, an enchanted palace, the Alhambra of the fairest stream on this round earth. I speak with due deference to the glory of the Clyde, the Rhine, the Arno, the Danube, and even the mighty Amazon. Yes, the Hudson is unsurpassable as a river, and the Isaac Newton worthy to share honor with the illustrious name it bears. What to this was Cleopatra's galley, bearing the drunken Anthony? What the Bu. centaur of the haughtiest Doge ? Only so much molasses gingerbread compared with the daintiest cake at a monarch's wedding-feast. It was a voyage by night; the earth lay wrapped in shadow; the dark waters drank the images of stars and clouds, and over all, the heavens opened their glowing eyes, deep, piercing, and constant as eternity. Morning found me gazing on the gables and roofs of Albany, albeit as solemn-looking as the faces of Dutch burgomasters by Rembrandt, and as substantial too. Bagyage unshipped, and ten minutes transplanted me by rail to Troy. And what a charming breakfast, (burying the memory of a ghostly supper,) I ate at COLEMAN's! Troy is the nearest approach to an exhalation of any city I know. It has sprung up, not grown. Its life is huge and impetuous, but unnatural, and its decay will come while its manhood should be in prime. Forced existence is not healthy, and I saw it in Troy from her position and her ambition. She can never compete with Albany, because nature, stronger than all art and device, is against her. Albany is destined to a long and growing life ; Troy carries her ashes and urn (no allusion to her trade in stones) already in her bosom, ready for the burial to which she is early destined.

But the iron-horse champs his bit, and through his vapory nostrils the fire-sparkles speak his impatience of delay. We are off

, and on the road to the Champlain. The earth whirls and spins like a top;

32

VOL. XXXIV.

the hills and valleys dance polkas, and the villages, to the music of our steeds' clattering hoofs, reel and jig like drunken witches at a midsummer night dance. What glorious pictures are passed without being seen! What battle-fields, and corn-fields, and jumping off places' for true lovers, which I might, travelling behind a less frisky beast, jot down! Old Saratoga, the battle-ground, Bemis' Heights, Fort Edward and Fort Ann; all, all are lost in this mad rush over a path of iron, on which solitude, romance, nature, and common sense almost are sacrificed to Crockett's motto.

Ah! this path, trodden by its iron steeds never-tiring, yet tender on the bit as sucking colts, is the wonder, the revolutionizer of our times ! It opens a way through the mountains, spans the valleys, leaps the rivers, and rushing on toward the world's end, batters down feudal castles, oppressions, castes, ignorances and frauds, which otherwise might gall the back of tyranny.saddled, and king, lord, and priestbestridden humanity, since Adam, like an ass as he was, made league with the devil and took to dysentery diet for ages to come. Yes ! steamboats were grand, and all honor to Fitch and Fulton, and to the man who, in anticipation of such things, caused himself to be buried on a steep slope of Lake Champlain shore, that he might ghostlily look out and see them when they came; but the rail-road is a grander thing. Over the Pontine marshes, thundering around the Vatican; across Saharian deserts; through Hartz forests; past Lapland cabins and Camanche wigwams; rousing the Hottentot and Patagonian from a bestial lethargy, the iron path, and iron steed, flaming of nostril and furious in speed, shall break the monotony of past eternity ; its darkness and ugliness, and scatter a new life and light to the uttermost bounds of the earth. Who will say that oceans may not be tunnelled to give the iron fire-horse freer vent, that with loosened rein he may snort and plunge from hemisphere to hemisphere like lightning, or like thought. It were easier in our time, than for Nubians to build the first pyramids, or the flatterer artist-genius to hew Athos into a statue. It is already talked of as a small bore to tunnel the Alps; the oceans will be a worthier task. And these heaven-fed wires, posted along these iron paths; these electric drawbacks upon flying crime, are the fit reins to guide the fire-steed, whose pawing will beat down Russian boundaries and despotisms, though Hungary lie defeated, betrayed and bloody in the dust, and Kossuth wanders a stricken prophet and hero, whose name can never die, hunted like a wild beast among the nations. Out of the way, 'Turk and bird'snest-eating celestial! Clear the track, for the engine is coming that will tumble down your pagodas, and send your harems harum-scarum to some locker, deeper down than Davy Jones'! And fly, you tyrants, assassins, and thieves ; you haters of light, law and liberty, for the telegraph is at your heels, goaded by the press, which will flay you on the block of justice and truth.

We are at Whitehall, ready for the Champlain boat. But I must turn back ten miles, to Fort Ann, for one moment.

Here were spent ten years of my life, and that is no mean space of time to turn one's nose up at. At Fort Ann the muse first cracked its little shell in me,