WOMAN'S DESTINY. "I am a woman: - tell me not of fame! she whose smile And in his sickness sorrow - with an aid It has a wasted bloom, a burning heart; And so have I; and both must droop and die! too soon my heart, Watch-like, had pointed to a later hour Than time had reach'd; and as my years pass'd on, Shadows and floating visions grew to thoughts, And thoughts found words, the passionate words of song, And all to me was poetry. SONG. FAREWELL! - we shall not meet again I must my beating heart restrain- Oh! those are tears of bitterness, Farewell! we have not often met,- e may not meet again; But on my heart the seal is set Love never sets in vain! Fruitless as constancy may be, No chance, no change, may turn from thee But whose first love-vow breathed farewell. MONT BLANC. "Heaven knows our travellers have sufficiently alloyed the beautiful, and profaned the sublime, by associating these with themselves, the common-place, and the ridiculous; but out upon them, thus to tread on the gray hair of centuries, on the untrodden snows of Mont Blanc." THOU monarch of the open air, For morning's earliest of light, The vapor from the marsh, the smoke From crowded cities sent, Are purified before they reach Thy loftier element. Thy hues are not of earth, but heaven ; Only the sunset rose Hath leave to fling a crimson dye Upon thy stainless snows. Now out on those adventurers Its sully on thy brow, The glory of thy forehead made A shrine to those below: Men gazed upon thee as a star, And turned to earth again, With dreams like thine own floating clouds. The vague but not the vain. No feelings are less vain than those It catches loftier impulses ; But now, where may we seek a place For any spirit's dream; Our steps have been o'er every soil, Our sails o'er every stream. Those isles, the beautiful Azores, We looked for their perpetual spring · Bright El Dorado, land of gold, We have so sought for thee, There's not a spot in all the globe How pleasant were the wild beliefs, Alas! to our posterity Will no such tales be told. We know too much, scroll after scroll Weighs down our weary shelves; Our only point of ignorance Is centered in ourselves. Alas! for thy past mystery, Nurse of the tempest, hadst thou none Mont Blanc thou wert dethron'd. PORTRAIT PAINTING. Divinest art, the stars above Were fated on thy birth to shine; THE Softness of Ionian night Enough to guide a lover's way; A music meet for such an hour: That, and the tones the gentle wind Won from the leaf, as from a lute In natural melody combined, Now that all ruder sound was mute; And odors floated on the air, As many a nymph had just unbound The wreath that braided her dark hair, And flung the fragrant tresses round. Pillow'd on violet leaves, which prest Fill'd the sweet chamber with their sighs, Lull'd by the lyre's low notes to rest, A Grecian youth in slumber lies ; And at his side a maiden stands, The dark hair braided on her brow, The lute within her slender hands, But hush'd is all its music now; She would not wake him from his dreams, Although she has so much to say, |