The silent, soft, and humble heart, In the Violet's hidden sweetness breathes; A twine of Evergreen fondly wreathes. The Cypress, that daily shades the grave, Speaks in thy blue leaves, Forget-me-Not. And tell the wish of thy heart in flowers. Here is the commencement of his fine poem, The Coral Grove: Deep in the wave is a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and the gold-fish rove; Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, But in bright and changeful beauty shine The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow; For the winds and waves are absent there, The sea-flag streams through the silent water, To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter. MRS. SIGOURNEY'S productions, mostly didactic, have long enjoyed a deserved popularity. Her lines, To an early Blue-Bird, form a pleasing picture : Clouds are sweeping o'er the sky, Doth he shiver at the cold? Hath he not a nose of blue? Tell me, birdling, tell me true. There are some beautiful and pathetic lines by PIERPONT, entitled Passing Away, commencing: Was it the chime of a tiny bell, That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell That he winds on the beach so mellow and clear, And he his notes, as silvery quite, While the boatman listens and ships his oar, To catch the music that comes from the shore ?— Are set to words: as they float, they say, His lines on the loss of his Child are full of natural pathos : I cannot make him dead! His fair, sunshiny head Yet, when my eyes grow dim with tears, I turn to him, I walk my parlour floor, and, through the open door, I'm stepping toward the hall to give the boy a call; And then bethink me that he is not there! I cannot make him dead! When passing by the bed, My spirit and my eye seek him inquiringly, Before the thought comes that he is not there! DRAKE has enriched American literature by a remarkable poem, The Culprit Fay; which discovers exquisite fancy and rare poetic beauty. The scene is laid in the Highlands of the Hudson, and the subject is a fairy story, decked with all the dainty accessories of Fairyland and forest scenery. The origin of the poem is traced to a conversation with Cooper, the novelist, and Halleck, the poet, who, speaking of the Scottish streams and their romantic associations, insisted that our own rivers were unsusceptible of the like poetic uses. Drake thought otherwise, and, to make his position good, produced, in three days after, this exquisite fairy tale. The opening passage of the poem is a description of moonlight on the Highlands of the Hudson : 'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night- But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, A river of light on the welkin blue. The moon looks down on old Crónest, She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge gray form to throw The stars are on the moving stream, In an eel-like, spiral line below; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, Here we have introduced to us the Fairy culprit:— He cast a saddened look around, But he felt new joy his bosom swell, |