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Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts,
I day by day frequent'ed silent groves
And solitary walks. One morning early

This accident encountered me: I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention
That art and nature ever were at strife in.

2. A sound of music touched mine ears, or rather, Indeed, entranced my soul: as I stole nearer, Invited by the melody, I saw

ΕΙ

This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute,
With strains of strange variety and harmony,
Proclaiming, as it seemed, so bold a challenge
To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds,
That, as they flocked about him, all stood silent,
Wondering at what they heard. I wondered too.

3. A nightingale,

Nature's best-skilled musician, undertakes
The challenge; and for every several strain

The well-shaped youth could touch, she sang him down
He could not run divisions with more art
Upon his quaking instrument than she,

The nightingale, did with her various notes
Reply to.

4. Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird,

Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study

Had busied many hours to perfect practice.

To end the controversy,

in a rapture

Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,

So many voluntaries, and so quick,

That there was curiosity in cunning,

Concord in discord, lines of differing method

Meeting in one full centre of delight.

5. The bird (ordained to be

Music's true martyr) strove to imitate

These several sounds; which, when her warbling throat

Failed in, for grief down dropt she on his lūte,

And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness

To see the conqueror138 upon her hearse

To weep a funeral elegy of tears.

6 He looked upon the trophies of his art,

Then sighed, then wiped his eyes; then sighed and cried,

"Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge

This cruelty upon the author of it.

Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,

Shall never more betray a harmless peace

To an untimely end:

and in that sorrow

As he was dashing it against a tree,

I suddenly stept in.

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WE wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south,
The touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth;
For the yearly evan'gel thou bearest from God, -
Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod!
Up our long river valley for days have not ceased
The wail and the shriek of the bitter north-east,
Raw and chill as if winnowed through ices and snow,
All the way from the land of the wild Esquimaux.
O, soul of the spring-time, its balm and its breath!
O, light of its darkness, and life of its death!
Why wait we thy coming? why linger so long
The warmth of thy breathing, the voice of thy song?
Renew the great miracle! let us behold

The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled
And Nature, like Lazarus, rise as of old!

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Hark, that sweet carol! With delight
We leave the stifling room;
The little blue-bird meets our sight,
Spring, glorious Spring, has come !
The south-wind's balm is in the air,
The melting snow-wreaths everywhere
Are leaping off in showers;

And Nature, in her brightening looks,
Tells that her flowers, and leaves, and brooke
And birds, will soon be ours.

3 THE DELIGHTS OF SPRING.

Mary Howitt.

The Spring, she is a blessed thing,
She is the mother of the flowers;

She is the mate of birds and bees,

The partner of their revelries,

Our star of hope through wintry hours,

The little brooks run on in light,

As if they had a chase of mirth;

FORD

The skies are blue, the air is balm;
Our very hearts have caught the charm
That sheds a beauty o'er the earth.

4. THE FIRST WARM DAY OF SPRING. Horace Smith.

The perfume and the bloom that shall decorate the flower
Are quickening in the gloom of their subterranean bower;
And the juices meant to feed trees, vegetables, fruits,
Unerringly proceed to their preäppointed roots.

How awful is the thought of the wonders under ground,
Of the mystic changes wrought in the silent, dark profound!
How each thing upward tends, by necessity decreed,
And a world's support depends on the shooting of a seed!
The Summer's in her ark, and this sunny-pinioned day
Is commissioned to remark whether Winter holds his sway;
Go back, thou dove of peace, with the myrtle on thy wing,
Say that floods and tempests cease, and the world is ripe for Spring

5. A WELCOME TO SPRING.-Wm. G. Simms.

O! thou bright and beautiful day,
First bright day of the virgin Spring,
Bringing the slumbering life into play,
Giving the leaping bird his wing!
I feel thy promise in all my veins,

They bound with a feeling long suppressed,
And, like a captive who breaks his chains,
Leap the glad hopes in my heaving breast.
There are life and joy in thy coming, Spring,
Thou hast no tidings of gloom and death,
But buds thou shakest from every wing,

And sweets thou breathest with every breath.

6. THE BIRDS OF SPRING.

Sing on by fane and forest old, by tombs and cottage eaves,
And tell the waste of coming flowers, the wood of coming leaves,
Sing the same song that o'er the birth of earliest blossoms rang,
And caught its music from the hymn the stars of morning sang!
It hailed the radiant path of Spring by stream and valley fair,
And o'er the earth's green hill-tops when no step but hers was there
And, like the laurel's gift of green, the violet's depth of blue,
It has survived a thousand thrones, and yet the song is new.

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What is this mighty breath, ye sages, say,
That, in a powerful language, felt, not heard.

Thomson.

Instructs the fowls of heaven; and through their breast

These arts of love diffuses? What, but God?
Inspiring God! who, boundless spirit all
And unremitting energy, pervades,
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.
He ceaseless works alone; and yet alone
Seems not to work; with such perfection framed
Is this complex stupendous scheme of things.
But, though concealed, to every purer eye
The informing Author in his works appears.
Chief, lovely Spring, in thee, and thy soft scenes,
The smiling God is seen; while water, earth,
And air, attest his bounty; which exalts
The brute creation to this finer thought,
And annual melts their undesigning hearts
Profusely thus in tenderness and joy.

CXLII. THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

1. TRAITS OF CHARACTER. - Flint.

AN Indian seldom jests. He usually speaks low, and under his breath. Loquacity is with him an indication of being a trifling character, and of deeds inversely less as his words are more The young men, and even the boys, have a sullen, moody, and unjoyous countenance; and seem to have little of that elastic gayety with which the benevolence of Providence has endowed the first days of the existence of most other beings. In this general remark, we ought not, perhaps, to include the squaw, who shows some analogy of feeling to the white female.

The males evidently have not the quick sensibilities, the acute perceptions, of most other races. They do not easily sympathize with what is enjoyment or suffering about them. Nothing but an overwhelming excitement can arouse them. They seem callous to all the passions, but rage. Every one has remarked how little surprise they express for whatever is new, strange, or striking. True, it is partially their pride that induces them to affect this indifference, for, that it is affected, we have had numberless opportunities to discover. It is, with them, not only pride, but calculation, to hold in seeming contempt things which they are aware they cannot obtain and possess. But they seem to be born with an instinctive determination to be independent, if possible, of nature and society, and to concentrate within themselves an existence, which, at any moment, they seem willing to lay down.

Their impassible fortitude and endurance of suffering, their contempt of pain and death, invest their character with a kind of

moral grandeur. Some part of this may be the result of their training, discipline, and exercise of self-control; but it is to be doubted whether some part be not the result of a more than ordinary degree of physical insensibility. It has been said, but with how much truth we do not pretend to say, that, in undergoing amputation, and other surgical operations, their nerves do not shrink, or show the same tendency to spasms, with those of the whites. When the savage - to explain his insensibility to cold-called upon the white man to recollect how little his own face was affected by it, in consequence of its constant exposure, the savage added, " My body is all face."

Surely it is preposterous to admire, as some pretend to do, the savage character in the abstract. Let us make every effort to convey pity, mercy, and immortal hopes, to their rugged bosoms. Pastorals that sing savage independence and generosity, and gratitude and happiness in the green woods, may be Arcadian enough to those who never saw savages in their wigwams, or never felt the apprehension of their nocturnal and hostile yell, from the depth of the forest around their dwelling. But let us not undervalue the comfort and security of municipal and social life; nor the sensibilities, charities, and endearments, of a civilized home. Let our great effort be to tame and domesticate the Indians. Their happiness, steeled against feeling, at war with nature, the elements, and one another, can have no existence, except in the visionary dreamings of those who have never contemplated their actual condition.

It is curious to remark, however, that, different as are their religions, their discipline, and their standards of opinion, in most respects, from ours, in the main they have much the same notion of a great, respectable, and good man, that we have. If we mark the universal passion for military display among our ow race, and observe what place is assigned by common feeling, as well as history, to military prowess, we shall hardly consider it a striking difference from our nature, that bravery, and contempt of death, and reckless daring, command the first place in their hom age. But, apart from these views, the same traits of characte. that entitle a man to the appellation of virtuous and good, and that insure respect among us, have much the same bearing upon the estimation of the Indians. In conversing with them, we are struck with surprise, to observe how widely and deeply the obligations of truth, constancy, honor, generosity, and forbearance, are felt and understood among them.

As regards their vanity, we have not often had the fortune to contemplate a young squaw at her toilet; but, from the studied arrangement of her calico jacket, from the glaring circles of ver

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