GALLAGHER'S fine poem on the Miami Woods contains this glowing picture of Indian Summer. This poet of the West seems to have caught inspiration from the bold, primeval aspects of Nature:

What a change hath passed upon the face
Of Nature, where the waving forest spreads,
Once robed in deepest green! All through the night
The subtle frost hath plied its mystic art;

And in the day, the golden sun hath wrought

True wonders; and the winds of morn and even

Have touched with magic breath the changing leaves.
And now, as wanders the dilating eye

Across the varied landscape, circling far,

What gorgeousness, what blazonry, what pomp

Of colors, bursts upon the ravished sight!
Here, where the maple rears its yellow crest,
A golden glory; yonder, where the oak
Stands monarch of the forest, and the ash
Is girt with flame-like parasite, and broad
The dogwood spreads beneath, a rolling flood
Of deepest crimson; and afar, where looms
The gnarlèd gum, a cloud of bloodiest red!

The two following extracts are from the same source:

When last the maple-bud was swelling,
When last the crocus bloomed below,
Thy heart to mine its love was telling,
Thy soul with mine kept ebb and flow :
Again the maple-bud is swelling—
Again the crocus blooms below-

In heaven thy heart its love is telling,

But still our hearts keep ebb and flow.

1

When last the April bloom was flinging
Sweet odours on the air of Spring,
In forest-aisles thy voice was ringing,

Where thou didst with the red-bird sing;
Again the April bloom is flinging

Sweet odours on the air of Spring,-
But now in heaven thy voice is ringing,
Where thou dost with the angels sing.

Broad plains-blue waters-hills and valleys,
That ring with anthems of the free!
Brown-pillared groves, and green-arched alleys,
That Freedom's holiest temples be!
These forest-aisles are full of story:
Here many a one of old renown
First sought the meteor-light of glory,

And mid its transient flash-went down.

Historic names forever greet us,

Where'er our wandering way we thread;
Familiar forms and faces meet us,

As, living, walk with us the dead.

Man's fame, so often evanescent,

Links here with thoughts and things that last;

And all the bright and teeming Present

Thrills with the great and glorious Past !

*

PERKINS, another of the woodland minstrels of the West, thus gilds his verse with sunshine :

Oh! merry, merry be the day, and bright the star of even,—
For 'tis our duty to be gay, and tread in holy joy our way;

Grief never came from heaven, my love, it never came from heaven.

Then let us not, though woes betide, complain of fortune's spite,

As rock-encircled trees combine, and nearer grow and closer

twine,

So let our hearts unite, my love, so let our hearts unite.

And though the circle here be small of heartily approved ones, There is a home beyond the skies, where vice shall sink and

virtue rise,

Till all become the loved ones, love, till all become the loved ones.

Then let your eye be laughing still, and cloudless be your brow; For in that better world above, O! many myriads shall we love, As one another now, my love, as one another now.

BYRON, notwithstanding all his errors of creed and conduct, seems to have been possessed of fine sensibilities, as the following incident will prove :-On a certain occasion, when in London, he was solicited to subscribe for a volume of poems, by a young lady of good education, whose connections were impoverished by reverses. He listened to her sad story, and, while conversing with her, wrote something on a piece of paper; he then, handing it to her, said, "This is my subscription, and I heartily wish you success." On reaching the street, she found it to be a check for fifty pounds. That Byron was endowed with brilliant powers, none will deny; but all do not as readily admit that those gifts were sadly perverted. It is not true, as his false morality teaches, that great crimes imply great qualities, and that virtue is a slavery: it is in the converse of the proposition that truth rests. No wonder that Byron should have recorded, in this sad refrain, his own bitter experience :—

"My days are in the yellow leaf;

The fruits and flowers of love are gone,-
The worm, the canker, and the grief,

Are mine alone."

What a magnificent picture does he give us in these descriptive lines, one of the finest passages in all poetry :

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control

Stops with the shore ;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths,―thy fields

Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction, thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering, in thy playful spray,
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.

The armaments which thunder-strike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts :—not so thou,

Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow—
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving ;-boundless, endless, and sublime