And the head that wears a crown What are honors, what are riches, What the spangled robes of grandeur, What is beauty but the image Trust in Heaven's smile-trust in God! Prelude to Mount Auburn. LINES, SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE BY WASHINGTON ALLSTON. The tender Twilight with a crimson cheek To slumber by the darken'd woods-the herds Have left their pastures, where the sward grows green And lofty by the river's sedgy brink, And slow are winding home. Hark, from afar Their tinkling bells sound through the dusky glade Like winter shadows o'er the peaceful mind, Of peace in some green paradise like this. The brazen trumpet and the loud war-drum Ne'er startled these green woods :-the raging sword Of War's rude pomp:-the humble dweller here To slay his fellow with unholy hand; The maddening voice of battle, the wild groan, NATHANIEL P. WILLIS. NATHANIEL P. WILLIS was born in Portland, Maine, January 20, 1807.' After being fitted for college at Phillips Academy, Andover, he entered Yale, at sixteen years of age, and soon distinguished himself as a poet of true genius by writing a series of pieces on Scriptural subjects which have not been surpassed, if equalled, by anything he has subsequently written, and which gave him at once a wide-spread and enviable reputation. On leaving college, in 1827, he was engaged by Mr. Goodrich (“Peter Parley”) to edit the "Legendary” and “The Token." In 1828, he established the "American Monthly Magazine,” which he conducted two years and a half, when it was merged in the "New York Mirror," and Mr. Willis went to Europe, and travelled through Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Turkey, and England, in which latter country he married. The letters he wrote while abroad were first published in the "New York Mirror," under the title of "Pencillings by the Way." In 1835, he published "Inklings of Adventure," a series of tales which appeared originally in a London magazine. In 1837, he returned home, and retired to a beautiful place on the Susquehanna, near Owego, New York, which he named Glenmary in com His father was Nathaniel Willis, who, a few years after the birth of Nathaniel, removed to Boston, and projected and edited the "Boston Recorder," one of the first weekly religious journals published in this country. 66 pliment to his wife. In 1839, he became one of the editors of the Corsair," a literary gazette in New York city, and towards the close of that year again went to London, where he published “Loiterings of Travels," and two tragedies, entitled "Two Ways of Dying for a Husband." In 1840 appeared an illustrated edition of his poems, and "Letters from under a Bridge." In 1843, in conjunction with Mr. George P. Morris, he revived the "New York Mirror;" but withdrew from it upon the death of his wife in 1844, and again visited England. On his return home the next year, he issued a complete edition of his works, in an imperial octavo of eight hundred pages. In October, 1846, he married a daughter of the Hon. Mr. Grinnell, and is now settled at his country home Idlewild, and is associated with Mr. Morris as editor of the "Home Journal," a weekly literary paper, which is always enriched, more or less, with pieces from his pen, and which is hailed by thousands every week as the purest and richest of fireside companions. However full of beauty, and wit, of rich paintings of natural scenery, and delicate and humorous touches of the various phases of social life, Mr. Willis's prose writings are, it is by his poetry, and especially by his sacred poetry, that he will be most known and prized by posterity. There is a tenderness, a pathos, and a richness of description in it which give him a rank among the first of American poets.' 'No man has appeared in our literature, endowed with a greater variety of fine qualities. He possesses an understanding quick, acute, distinguishing even in excess; enriched by culture, and liberalized and illuminated by much observation. He commands all the resources of passion; at the same time that he is master of the effects of manner. The suggestions of an animated sense are harmonized by feeling, and are adorned by a finished wit. His taste is nice, but it is not narrow or bigoted, and his sympathies with his reader are intimate and true. His works exhibit a profusion of pointed and just comment on society and life; they sparkle with delicate and easy humor; they display a prodigality of fancy, and are fragrant with all the floral charm of sentiment. He possesses surprising saliency of mind, which in his hasty effusions often fatigues, but in his matured compositions is controlled to the just repose of art. But distinct from each of these, and sovereign over them all, is the vivifying and directing energy of a fine poetical talent-that prophetic faculty in man whose effects are as vast as its processes are mysterious; whose action is a moral enchantment that all feel, but none can fathom. This influence it is which, entering into and impregnating all his other faculties, gives force to some, elevation to others, and grace and interest to them all.-Literary Criticisms, by Horace Binney Wallace. Read a good review of Willis's writings-prose and poetry-in the "North American Review," xliii. 384, in which he is ably defended from the attack in the 54th volume of the "London Quarterly." This paper was written by Lockhart, who, in condemning Willis for his personalities in his "Pencillings by the Way," forgot that he himself was far more offensively open to the same charge in his "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk," in which he makes very free with the society at Edinburgh. HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. The morning broke. Light stole upon the clouds All things are dark to sorrow; and the light To see a mirth in anything it loves. She stood at Abraham's tent. Her lips were press'd The spirit there, and his young heart was swelling Why bends the patriarch as he cometh now His lip is quivering, and his wonted step That binds him to a woman's delicate love- He gave to her the water and the bread, Should Hagar weep? May slighted woman turn, But oh! estrange her once-it boots not how- A change has come upon your tenderness- Her pride o'ermastereth not. She went her way with a strong step and slowHer press'd lip arch'd, and her clear eye undimm'd, As if it were a diamond, and her form Borne proudly up, as if her heart breathed through. The morning pass'd, and Asia's sun rode up Hung down his head, and open'd his parch'd lips Of the thick pines-and tried to comfort him; But he was sore athirst, and his blue eyes Were dim and bloodshot, and he could not know She sat a little longer, and he grew Ghastly and faint, as if he would have died. |