excellencies of Clovernook,' the characters being drawn with wonderful fidelity and force.

Since the issue of her last volume of poems, Miss Cary has given many fugitive pieces of great beauty to various periodicals.

LIGHT AND LOVE.

Light waits for us in heaven. Inspiring thought!
That, when the darkness all is overpast,
The beauty which the Lamb of God has bought
Shall flow about our savéd souls at last,

And wrap them from all night-time and all woe:—
The Spirit and the Word assure us so.

Love lives for us in heaven.

Oh, not so sweet

Is the May dew which mountain-flowers enclose,
Nor golden raining of the winnow'd wheat,

Nor blushing out of the brown earth, of rose,
Or whitest lily, as, beyond time's wars,

The silvery rising of these two twin-stars.

HARVEST-TIME.

God's blessing on the reapers! all day long
A quiet sense of peace my spirit fills,
As whistled fragments of untutor'd song

Blend with the rush of sickles on the hills:
And the blue wild-flowers and green brier-leaves
Are brightly tangled with the yellow sheaves.
Where straight and even the new furrows lie,
The cornstalks in their rising beauty stand;
Heaven's loving smile upon man's industry

Makes beautiful with plenty the wide land.
The barns, press'd out with the sweet hay, I see,
And feel how more than good God is to me!

In the cool thicket the red-robin sings,

And merrily before the mower's scythe

Chirps the green grasshopper, while slowly swings,
In the scarce-swaying air, the willow lithe;
And clouds sail softly through the upper calms,
White as the fleeces of the unshorn lambs.

Outstretch'd beneath the venerable trees,

Conning his long, hard task, the schoolboy lies,
And, like a fickle wooer, the light breeze

Kisses his brow; then, scarcely sighing, flies;

"We do not hesitate to predict for these sketches a wide popularity. They bear the true stamp of genius,-simple, natural, truthful,—and evince a keen sense of the humor and pathos, of the comedy and tragedy, of life in the country."J. G. WHITTIER.

And all about him pinks and lilies stand,
Painting with beauty the wide pasture-land.

Oh, there are moments when we half forget
The rough, harsh grating of the file of Time;
And I believe that angels come down yet

And walk with us, as in the Eden clime;
Binding the heart away from woe and strife,
With leaves of healing from the Tree of Life.
And they are most unworthy who behold
The bountiful provisions of God's care,
When reapers sing among the harvest-gold,
And the mown meadow scents the quiet air,
And yet who never say, with all their heart,
How good, my Father, oh, how good thou art !

THE BROKEN HOUSEHOLD.

Vainly, vainly memory seeks,

Round our father's knee,
Laughing eyes and rosy cheeks
Where they used to be:
Of the circle once so wide
Three are wanderers, three have died.

Golden-hair'd and dewy-eyed,
Prattling all the day,
Was the baby first that died:

Oh! 'twas hard to lay
Dimpled hand and cheek of snow
In the grave so dark and low!

Smiling back on all who smiled,

Ne'er by sorrow thrall'd,
Half a woman, half a child,

Was the next one call'd:
Then a grave more deep and wide
Made they by the baby's side.

When or where the other died
Only heaven can tell;
Treading manhood's path of pride
Was he when he fell;
Haply thistles, blue and red,
Bloom about his lonely bed.

I am for the living three

Only left to pray;

Two are on the stormy sea;—

Farther still than they

Wanders one, his young heart dim,—
Oftenest, most, I pray for him.

Whatsoe'er they do or dare,
Wheresoe'er they roam,
Have them, Father, in thy care,
Guide them safely home,-
Home, O Father, in the sky,
Where none wander and none die.

WHAT IS LIFE?

Oh, what is life! at best a narrow bound,
Where each that lives some baffled hope survives,-
A search for something, never to be found,
Records the history of the greatest lives.

There is a haven for each weary bark,

A port where they who rest are free from sin;
But we, like children trembling in the dark,
Drive on and on, afraid to enter in.

PHOEBE CARY.

PHOEBE CARY was born in Hamilton County, Ohio, in the year 1825. In 1854, she published a volume of her collected writings, entitled Poems and Parodies.' Her fortunes have been linked with her sister's, and both now reside in the city of New York, enriching, from time to time, the columns of various periodicals with their poetical effusions.

THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN.

Oh, beautiful as morning in those hours
When, as her pathway lies along the hills,
Her golden fingers wake the dewy flowers,
And softly touch the waters of the rills,
Was she who walk'd more faintly day by day
Till silently she perish'd by the way.

It was not hers to know that perfect heaven
Of passionate love return'd by love as deep;
Not hers to sing the cradle-song at even,

Watching the beauty of her babe asleep;
"Mother and brethren,"-these she had not known,
Save such as do the Father's will alone.

Yet found she something still for which to live,—
Hearths desolate, where angel-like she came,

I do not like "parodies," especially if written on any thing serious and beautiful. They may be good as parodies, as a merchant of worthless moral character is "good" commercially if he can pay his notes,-but they are often the mark of a frivolous mind, and leave behind associations of which one would be glad to divest themselves. But one of them, by that singular law of association,-contrast,-reminds me of the following exquisite gem by

JAMES ALDRICH.

Mr. Aldrich, (1810-1856,) who lived and died in New York, was much beloved for his social qualities and admired for his talents and culture. Though engaged in mercantile pursuits, he was a warm lover and friend of polite letters and the fine arts, and was for a season an associate with Park Benjamin in the conduct of a literary journal. He wrote several graceful, touching, and finished poems, of which the following, at least, deserves perpetual remembrance:—

A DEATH-BED.

Her suffering ended with the day;

Yet lived she at its close,

And breathed the long, long night away

In statue-like repose.

But when the sun, in all his state,

Illumed the eastern skies,

She pass'd through Glory's morning-gate,
And walk'd in Paradise!

And "little ones" to whom her hand could give
A cup of water in her Master's name;
And breaking hearts to bind away from death,
With the soft hand of pitying love and faith.
She never won the voice of popular praise;

But, counting earthly triumph as but dross,
Seeking to keep her Saviour's perfect ways,

Bearing in the still path his blessed cross,
She made her life, while with us here she trod,
A consecration to the will of God!

And she hath lived and labor'd not in vain:
Through the deep prison-cells her accents thrill,
And the sad slave leans idly on his chain,

And hears the music of her singing still;
While little children, with their innocent praise,
Keep freshly in men's hearts her Christian ways.
And what a beautiful lesson she made known,—
The whiteness of her soul sin could not dim;
Ready to lay down on God's altar-stone

The dearest treasure of her life for him.
Her flame of sacrifice never, never waned,
How could she live and die so self-sustain'd?

For friends supported not her parting soul,

And whisper'd words of comfort, kind and sweet,
When treading onward to that final goal,

Where the still bridegroom waited for her feet;
Alone she walk'd, yet with a fearless tread,
Down to Death's chamber, and his bridal bed!

AMELIA B. WELBY, 1821-1852.

TO AMELIA WELBY.

Darling of all hearts that listen

To your warble wild and true!
As a lovely star doth glisten

In the far West,-so do you!
Are you sure you are a mortal?
Or a Peri in disguise,
Watching till the heavenly portal
Lets you into Paradise?
Whiling all the weary hours

With the songs you used to sing
In those bright aerial bowers

Where the rainbow dips its wing?

Peri! no!-all woman-feeling
Pleads in that impassion'd lay;
Yet 'tis woman proudly stealing
Some fond angel's harp away;
Mingling, with divine emotion
Holy as a seraph's thought,
Human love and warm devotion,
Into rarest pathos wrought.

Sweep again the silver chords!

Pour the soul of music there!
Write, for your heart's tune, the words,-
All our hearts will play the air!
FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD.

THIS sweet poetess, whose maiden name was Coppuck, was born in the small town of St. Michael's, Maryland, in 1821. At the age of fourteen, her father removed to Lexington, and afterwards to Louisville, Kentucky, where, in 1838, she was married to Mr. George B. Welby, a merchant of that city. She died in 1852.

Mrs. Welby early wrote for the "Louisville Journal," under the signature of "Amelia;" and in 1844, a collection of her poems was published, in a small volume, at Boston. In 1850, a beautiful edition was published by Appleton & Co., entitled Poems, by Amelia; a New and Enlarged Edition; illustrated with Original Designs by Weir.1

THE RAINBOW.

I sometimes have thoughts, in my loneliest hours,
That lie on my heart like the dew on the flowers,
Of a ramble I took one bright afternoon

When my heart was as light as a blossom in June;
The green earth was moist with the late-fallen showers,
The breeze flutter'd down and blew open the flowers,
While a single white cloud, to its haven of rest,
On the white wing of Peace, floated off in the west.
As I threw back my tresses to catch the cool breeze,
That scatter'd the rain-drops and dimpled the seas,
Far up the blue sky a fair rainbow unroll'd
Its soft-tinted pinions of purple and gold.
'Twas born in a moment, yet, quick as its birth,
It had stretch'd to the uttermost ends of the earth,
And, fair as an angel, it floated as free,

With a wing on the earth and a wing on the sea.

How calm was the ocean! how gentle its swell!
Like a woman's soft bosom it rose and it fell;
While its light sparkling waves, stealing laughingly o'er,
When they saw the fair rainbow, knelt down on the shore.
No sweet hymn ascended, no murmur of prayer,
Yet I felt that the spirit of worship was there,
And bent my young head, in devotion and love,
'Neath the form of the angel that floated above.
How wide was the sweep of its beautiful wings!
How boundless its circle, how radiant its rings!
If I look'd on the sky, 'twas suspended in air;
If I look'd on the ocean, the rainbow was there;
Thus forming a girdle, as brilliant and whole
As the thoughts of the rainbow that circled my soul.
Like the wing of the Deity, calmly unfurl'd,
It bent from the cloud and encircled the world.
There are moments, I think, when the spirit receives
Whole volumes of thought on its unwritten leaves,
When the folds of the heart in a moment unclose,
Like the innermost leaves from the heart of a rose.
And thus, when the rainbow had pass'd from the sky,
The thoughts it awoke were too deep to pass by;

1 "Mrs. Welby has nearly all the imagination of Maria del Occidente, (Maria Brooks,) with a more refined taste; and nearly all the passion of Mrs. Norton, with a nicer ear and (what is surprising) equal art. Very few American poets are at all comparable with her in the true poetic qualities. As for our poetesses, (an absurd but necessary word,) few of thein approach her."-EDGAR A. POE.