Lute of the summer-clouds! whilst thou art singing Would freely join thee in the distance dim; With heart upon my lip, bright minstrel of the sky! And yet, sweet bird, bright thoughts to me are given, As many as the clustering leaves of June; And my young heart is like a harp of Heaven, Forever strung unto some pleasant tune; And my soul burns with wild, poetic fire, Though simple are my strains, and simpler still my lyre. And now, farewell! the wild winds of the mountain And the blue streams alone my strains have heard; And it is well-for, from my heart's deep fountain They flow, uncultured as thy own, sweet birdFor my free thoughts have ever spurned control, Since this heart held a wish, and this frail form a soul ! BE PATIENT. Be patient, Oh, be patient! put your ear against the earth; Listen there how noiselessly the germ o' the seed has birth; How noiselessly and gently it upheaves its little way, Till it parts the scarcely broken ground, and the blade stands up in the day! Be patient, Oh, be patient! the germs of mighty thought Must have their silent undergrowth, must underground be wrought; But as sure as ever there's a Power that makes the grass appear, Our land shall be green with LIBERTY, the bladetime shall be here. Be patient, Oh, be patient! go and watch the wheatears grow! So imperceptibly, that ye can mark nor change, nor throe; Day after day-day after day, till the ear is fully grown; And then, again, day after day, till the ripened field is brown. Be patient, Oh, be patient! though yet our hopes are green, The harvest-fields of Freedom shall be crowned with the sunny sheen: Be ripening! be ripening! mature your silent way, Till the whole broad land is tongued with fire, on Freedom's harvest day! THE WIFE. FROM THE GERMAN OF STOLBERG. Happy he to whom kind heaven, Rich in grace, a wife hath given, Virtuous, wise, and formed for love, Gentle, guileless as a dove. Let him thank his God for this With such friend to soothe and cheer. She, like moonlight, mild and fair, When his boiling heart heaves high, Then her gentle step is near; As when evening dew comes down Some have sought their bliss in gold! Heaven sends man the faithful wife; MOTHER. BY PHAZMA." Of all the words in language there's no other It is the first name that we learn to love- Mother! It back to childhood brings the man, And forth to womanhood it leads the maiden. Mother!-'Tis with the name of all things be gan 'That are with love and sympathy full laden. O! tis the fairest thing in nature's plan, That all life's cares may not affection smother, While lives within the yearning heart of man Melting remembrance of a gentle Mother! THE GOBLET OF LIFE. BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. Filled is Life's goblet to the brim; With solemn voice and slow. This goblet, wrought with curious art, Are running all to waste; With fennel is it wreathed and crowned, Above the lowly plants it towers, Lost vision to restore. It gave new strength and fearless mood; New light and strength they give. The prayer of Ajax was for light; Patient, though sorely tried! I pledge you in this cup of grief Were floats the fennel's bitter leaf! The Battle of our Life is brief, The alarm-the struggle-the reliefThen sleep we side by side. THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT. BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. Loud he sang the psalm of David! In that hour, when night is calmest, POEMS BY HANNAH F. GOULD. THE WINTER KING. O! what will become of thee, poor little bird? They'll soon scatter snow-flakes all over thy back! I'm pecking the gum from the old peach tree, But what makes thee seem so unconscious of care? Because the same hand is a shelter for me, But man feels a burden of want and of grief, A very small portion sufficient will be, If sweetened with gratitude!-Pee, dee, dee.' I thank thee, bright monitor! what thou hast taught Whereon thou art fleeting so merrily now! And though there's a vesture well-fitted and warm, Protecting the rest of thy delicate form, What then wilt thou do with thy little bare feet To save them from pain 'mid the frost and the sleet? I can draw them right up in my feathers you see! To warm them, and fly away!-Pee, dee, dee.' THE RISING EAGLE. My bird, the struggle's over! Thy wings, at length unfurled, Will bear thee, noble rover, Through yon blue airy world. Thy fearless breast has shaken Earth's dust and dew away; Thine eye its aim has takenIts mark the orb of day. Up, up, the faster leaving Thy rocky rest below, A fresher strength receiving, The lighter shalt thou go. The clouds that hang before thee Thou soon shalt over-sweep, Where all is brightness o'er thee, To swim the upper deep. Through seas of ether sailing, Thou lofty, valiant one! The breath of morn inhaling, Thy course is to the sun. The strife was all in lifting Thy breast from carth at first, The poising, and the shifting To balance, was the worst. And so with us; 'tis spreading Our pinions for the skies, That keeps us low and dreading The first attempt to rise. "T is rousing up and getting Our balance, that we shun; With thousand ties besetting, We shrink from breaking one. But when we've fairly started, And as our bosoms kindle With pure and holy love, How all below will dwindle, And all grow bright above! The world that we are leaving Looks little in our sight, While, clouds and shadows cleaving, We seek the Source of Light. Rise! timid soul, and casting Aside thy doubt and fear, Mount up where all is lasting; For all is dying here! Then, as an eagle training Her tender young to fly, The hand, that's all sustaining, Will lift thee to the sky. While higher, higher soaring, Thou'lt feel thy cares are drowned Where heaven's bright sun is pouring A flood of glory round. WORSHIP BY THE ROSE TREE. Author of Beauty, Spirit of Power, Thou, who didst will that the Rose should be, Here is the place, and this is the hour To feel thy presence, and bow to thee! Bright is the world with the sun's first rays; Clear is the dew on the soft, green sod; The Rose Tree blooms, while the birds sing praise, And earth gives glory to nature's God. Under this beautiful work of thine, The flowery boughs that are bending o'er I kneel, and its Maker and mine adore. Traced is thy name in delicate lines On flower and leaf, as they dress the stem. Thy care is seen, and thy wisdom shines In even the thorn that is guarding them. Now, while the Rose that has burst her cup Opens her heart, and freely throws To me her odors, I offer up Thanks to the Being, who made the Rose! VOICES OF THE TRUE HEARTED. No. 8. HEROISM. BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON. -as In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a noble behavior were as easily marked in the society of their age, as color is in our American population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valerio enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, This is a gentleman, and proffers civilities without end; but all the rest are slag and refuse. In harmony with this delight in personal advantages, there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character and dialogue,in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double Marriage, wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial, and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the slightest additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among many texts, take the following. The Roman Martius has conquered Athens,—all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of Athens, and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter inflames Martius, and he seeks to save her husband; but Sophocles will not ask his life, although assured that a word will save him, and the execution of both proceeds. Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell, Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well; An old, stale, weary work, and to commence Of gods and goodness. Thou, thyself, must part But with my back toward thee; 'tis the last duty Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth : Dor. O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, novel, or oration, that our press vents in the last few years, which goes to the same tune. We have a great many flutes and flageolets, but not often the sound of any fife. Yet, Wordsworth's Laodamia, and the ode of " Dion," and some sonnets, have a certain noble music; and Scott will sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale, given by Balfour of Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his natural taste for what is manly and daring in character, has suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his biographical and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns has given us a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies, there is an account of the battle of Lutzen, which deserves to be read. And Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies of individual valor with admiration, all the more evident on the part of the narrator, that he seems to think that his place in Christian Oxford requires of him some proper protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Val. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminondas, the Scipio of life thus ? Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent To them I ever loved best? Now, I'll kneel, old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. or divines. It is the avowal of the unschooled man, A wild courage, a stoicism not of the schools, but, that he finds a quality in him that is negligent of of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that book its immense fame. expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and that he knows that his will is higher and more excellent than all actual and all possible Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual's character. Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper path, than any one else. Therefore, just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after some little time be past: then, they see it to be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol. We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than books of political science, or of private econo-antagonists. my. Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front. The violations of the laws of nature by our predecessors and our contemporaries, are punished in us also. The disease and deformity around us, certify the infraction of natural, intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed such compound misery. A lock-jaw, that bends a man's head back to his heels, hydrophobia, that makes him bark at his wife and babes, insanity, that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily, almost no man exists, who has not in his own person, become to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation. Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth | and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, selfcollected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his behaviour. Towards all this external evil, the man within the breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with the infinite army of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul, we give the name of Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms, and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just. It is generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common life. That false prudence which dotes on health and wealth, is the foil, the butt and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What shall it say, then, to the sugarplums, and cats'-cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and custard, which rack the wit of all human society. What joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! There seems to be no interval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not master of the world, then is it its dupe. Yet the little man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or a trifle, made happy with a little gossip, or a little There is somewhat not philoso-praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh phical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in at such earnest nonsense. Indeed, these humble it it seems not to know that other souls are of one considerations make me out of love with greatness. texture with it; it hath pride; it is the extreme of What a disgrace is it to me to take note how many individual nature. Nevertheless, we must profound pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these and ly revere it. There is somewhat in great actions, those that were the peach-colored ones, or to hear which does not allow us to go behind them. Hero- the inventory of thy shirts, as one for superfluity ism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always and one other for use." right, and, although a different breeding, different religion, and greater intellectual activity, would have modified, or even reversed the particular action, yet for the hero, that thing he does, is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider the inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, reckon narrowly the loss of time and the unusual display: the soul of a better quality thrusts back the unseasonable economy into the |