GRENVILLE MELLEN.

THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA.

ITALIA'S vales and fountains,
Though beautiful ye be,
I love my soaring mountains
And forests more than ye;
And though a dreamy greatness rise

From out your cloudy years,
Like hills on distant stormy skies,

Seem dim through Nature's tears,
Still, tell me not of years of old,
Of ancient heart and clime;
Ours is the land and age of gold,
And ours the hallow'd time!

The jewell'd crown and sceptre
Of Greece have pass'd away;
And none, of all who wept her,
Could bid her splendor stay.

The world has shaken with the tread
Of iron-sandall'd crime-
And, lo! o'ershadowing all the dead,
The conqueror stalks sublime!
Then ask I not for crown and plume
To nod above my land;

The victor's footsteps point to doom,
Graves open round his hand!

Rome! with thy pillar'd palaces,

And sculptured heroes all,

Snatch'd, in their warm, triumphal days,
To Art's high festival;

Rome! with thy giant sons of power,
Whose pathway was on thrones,
Who built their kingdoms of an hour

On yet unburied bones,

I would not have my land like thee,

So lofty yet so cold!

Be hers a lowlier majesty,
In yet a nobler mould.

Thy marbles - works of wonder!

In thy victorious days, Whose lips did seem to sunder

Before the astonish'd gaze;

When statute glared on statute there,

The living on the dead,

And men as silent pilgrims were

Before some sainted head!

O, not for faultless marbles yet

Would I the light forego

That beams when other lights have set, And Art herself lies low.

O, ours a holier hope shall be
Than consecrated bust,
Some loftier mean of memory

To snatch us from the dust.

Then let them bind with bloomless flowers

The busts and urns of old, –

A fairer heritage be ours,

A sacrifice less cold!

Give honor to the great and good,
And wreathe the living brow,
Kindling with Virtue's mantling blood,
And pay the tribute now!

So, when the good and great go down,
Their statues shall arise,

To crowd those temples of our own,
Our fadeless memories!

And when the sculptured marble falls,

And Art goes in to die,

Our forms shall live in holier halls,

The Pantheon of the sky!

THE BUGLE.

O! WILD, enchanting horn!

Whose music up the deep and dewy air Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there, Till a new melody is born

-

Wake, wake again, the night

Is bending from her throne of beauty down, With still stars burning on her azure crown, Intense and eloquently bright.

Night, at its pulseless noon!

When the far voice of waters mourns in song, And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long Barks at the melancholy moon.

Hark! how it sweeps away, (i)

Soaring and dying on the silent sky,
As if some sprite of sound went wandering by,
With lone holloo and roundelay!

Swell, swell in glory out!

Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart, And my stirr'd spirit hears thee with a start As boyhood's old remember'd shout.

heard that peal,

From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements, Or from the guarded field and warrior tents, Like some near breath around you steal?

Or have ye in the roar

Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise,
Shriller than eagle's clamor, to the skies,
Where wings and tempests never war?

No music that of air or earth is born,

Can match the mighty music of that horn,

On midnight's fathomless profound!