THE WANDERER.

THE sun was set, and that dim twilight hour,
Which shrouds in gloom whate'er it looks upon,
Was o'er the world: stern desolation lay

In her own ruins; every mark was gone,
Save one tall, beetling monumental stone.

Amid a sandy waste it reared its head,

All scathed and blackened by the lightning shock,

That many a scar and many a seam had made,

E'en to its base; and there with thundering stroke, Erie's wild waves in ceaseless clamor broke.

And on its rifted top the wanderer stood, (ƒ)
And bared his head beneath the cold night air,

And wistfully he gazed upon the flood:

It were a boon to him, (so thought he there,) Beneath that tide to rest from every care.

And might it be, and not his own rash hand

Have done the deed, (for yet he dared not brave,

All reckless as he was, the high command,

Do thyself no harm,) adown the wave

And in the tall lake-grass that night had been his grave.

Oh! you may tell of that philosophy,

Which steels the heart 'gainst every bitter wo: 'Tis not in nature, and it cannot be ;

You cannot rend young hearts, and not a throe Of agony tell how they feel the blow.

He was a lone and solitary one,

With none to love, and pity he disdained: His hopes were wrecked, and all his joys were gone; But his dark eye blanched not; his pride remained: And if he deeply felt, to none had he complained.

Of all that knew him few but judged him wrong:
He was of silent and unsocial mood:

Unloving and unloved he passed along :

His chosen path with steadfast aim he trod,

Nor asked nor wished applause, save only of his God.

Oh! how preposterous 'tis for man to claim

In his own strength to chain the human soul!

Go, first, and learn the elements to tame,

Ere you would exercise your vain control

O'er that which pants and strive for an immortal goal.

Yet oft a young and generous heart has been

By cruel keepers trampled on and torn;

And all the worst and wildest passions in

The human breast have roused themselves in scorn, That else had dormant slept, or never had been born.

Take heed ye guardians of the youthful mind, That facile grows beneath your kindly care: 'Tis of elastic mould, and, if confined

With too much stress 'shoots madly from its sphere,' Unswayed by love, and unrestrained by fear,

Oh! tis a fearful blasting sight to see

The soul in ruins, withered, rived, and wrung, And doomed to spend its immortality

Darkling and hopeless, where despair has flung Her curtains o'er the loves to which it fondly clung.

So thought the wanderer: so, perhaps, he felt:
(But this is unrevealed :) now had he come
To the far woods, and there in silence knelt

On the sharp flint-stone in the rayless gloom,
And fervently he prayed to find an early tomb.

Weep not for him: he asks no sympathy
From human hearts and eyes; aloof, alone,
On his own spirit let him rest, and be

By all his kind forgotten and unknown,
And wild winds mingle with his dying groan.

And in the desert let him lie and sleep,

In that sweet rest exhausted nature gave:
Oh! make his clay-cold mansion dark and deep,
While the tall trees their sombre foliage wave,
And drop it blighted on the wanderer's grave.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith.

THE AMARANTH.

Thou art not of earth, thou beautiful thing,
With thy changeless form and hue-
For thou in thy heart hast ever borne

A drop of that living dew

That nourished thee, when earth was young, And the music of Eden around thee rung.

Thou art not of earth: no change is thine-
No touch of death or decay;
And the airs that fanned thee in Paradise,
Seem over thy leaves to play;

And they whisper still of fadeless bowers,
Where never shall wither the blooming flowers.

Thou art not of earth: thou changest not
When the wintry blast is nigh,
Though thy scatter'd leaves are wildly toss'd
On the wind as it rushes by;

For even then, in that hour of dread,

Not a hue of beauty hath left the dead.

I deem that Eve, when in terror forced

From her Eden home to part,

Must have sadly look'd on those fadeless bowers, And clasped thee to her heart

And thou in thy exile still dost tell

Of a changeless home where the good shall dwell.