XVII.

And now, when skies are clear and toils are done, (And may that ancient custom long abide,)

With joyous hearts, united all as one,

In ready sleigh, the youth and maidens glide.
They seek the plains; they climb the hillock's side;
Well pleased, they praise the splendors of the night,
The stars, that give the galaxy its pride,

The overhanging cliffs in robes of white,

The chaste, unclouded moon, that sheds o'er all her light.

XVIII.

The cracking thong, the tramp, the bells' rude chime,
The owl have frightened from his leafless bower,
Where hooting oft at midnight's "witching time,"
His song
has added terror to that hour.

They pass the forests wide, that proudly tower;
The wild deer lifts his arching head to hear,
High on his cliffs. Dreading the hunter's power,
The hare starts suddenly away with fear,

Then crouching to the ground, erects his sentinel ear.

IX.

Far other was the night, whose whirlwinds loud Tossed through the troubled air the restless snow; Darkly on high went forth the angry cloud, And breaking forests uttered sounds of woe. Remote, alone, with footsteps faint and slow, That night a HUNTER did his way pursue. Cold o'er his track, the stormy tempests blow; No cot was near, his strength that might renew; His hands to ice congealed; his cheeks to marble grew.

XX.

Sad victim of the storm and weary way,
He bowed his head, like one that soon shall die,
For life was breaking from its house of clay,
And light was stealing from his glassy eye.
And yet he had a home, a wife, and nigh
His cheerful hearth, were lovely children twain.
No more their heads shall on his bosom lie,
No more he'll press their ruddy lips again,
Cold is the HUNTER's breast upon the distant plain.

XXI.

But whither bends the muse her wayward flight,
Indulging thus in solemn minstrelsy?

'Tis true, when winter spreads o'er earth its blight,
And rends its bloom and fruit from field and tree,
That songs of joy may uncongenial be;
Such as would suit, when birds are on the wing,
And leaf and flower are shining laughingly.

And yet, though sad, she will not cease to sing,
But ever, full of life, her various tribute bring.

XXII.

Then rouse the fire; the moon is watching yet;
And chanticleer his midnight cry delays.

Though others, pleased with modern things, forget,
Old Tims, at least, shall tell of other days.

'T is pleasant, seated round the evening blaze, In Fancy's eye, the wonders to review

Of chieftains of the lost, the native race.

And memory yet her efforts shall renew,

And Passaconaway* sketch with tints and honors due. * See the note, which belongs here, on the next page.

XXIII.

Son of the forest! Child of deathless fame!
If wond'rous deeds a deathless name can win;
Who bore aloft, where'er in wrath he came,
The club, that oft had made the battle thin,
And fearless raised the war-cry's dreadful din.
Around his painted neck terrific hung,

With dangling claws, a huge and shaggy skin ;
The curious fish-bones o'er his bosom swung,
And oft the Sachem danced, and oft the Sachem sung.

XXIV.

Strange man! A tenant of the dusky wood,
The cave, the mountain, and the tangled glen,
He roused the hissing serpent, and pursued
The angry bear, and slew him in his den.
O'er craggy cliffs, the dread of other men,
The eagle's solitary home he sought,

And sternly tamed his mighty wing, and then

O'ertook the tall gray moose, as quick as thought, And then the mountain cat he chased, and chasing caught.

* This is the name of a distinguished Indian Sachem, residing at the place known by the Indian name of Penacook, whose dominions, chiefly upon the banks of the Merrimack and Piscatawa rivers, were very extensive. "He excelled the other Sachems," says Belknap, in his history of New Hampshire, Vol.1, chap. 5, "in sagacity, duplicity, and moderation; but his principle qualification was his skill in some of the secret operations of nature, which gave him the reputation of a sorcerer, and extended his fame and influence among all the neighboring tribes. They believed that it was in his power to make water burn, and trees dance, and to metamorphose himself into a flame; that in winter he could raise a green leaf from the ashes of a dry one, and a living serpent from the skin of one that was dead."

XXV.

And often o'er 'Seogee's* thick-ribbed ice,

With fiercely howling wolves, trained three and three,
High seated on a sledge, made in a trice;
Of bones and skins and fitly shapen tree,
He "rode sublime," and sung right jollily.
And once upon a car of living fire,

The dreadful Indian shook with fear to see
The King of Penacook, his chief, his sire,

Borne flaming up towards heaven, than any mountain

higher.

XXVI.

Thus ever hath the muse a mingled note, Such as all places and all times will suit. In summer's winds her numbers gently float, Breathed soft as sound of sighing lover's lute, All gentleness, with stormy passions mute. But when strong winter comes with maddening strife, Aroused, she lays aside her shepherd's flute, And takes the shrilling trump, the martial fife, And sounds the stormy notes of wild, mysterious life.

XXVII.

Those youthful days are gone! And with them fled
The scenes, the sports, that soothed my simple heart;
Yet still those scenes their genial ray shall shed,
To charm the careless hour, to soothe the smart
Of disappointment's sting and sorrow's dart.

Oft will I muse, and shed the willing tear,

O'er the loved plains, whence fortune bade me part,
Recall the happy faces once so dear,

Recall the WINTER EVE, and all its social cheer.

*The Lake Winnipisseogee in New Hampshire.

American Cottage Life.

(IV.) THE COTTage revisited.

[It is well known, that every year a large number of persons, especially from the agricultural class, leave the Northern States of the Republic, for the purpose of making a settlement in the new and more fertile lands of the West. They seldom, however, lose that strong attachment, which they had previously cherished, for the place of their nativity. It is the object of the following Poem, to describe the feelings of one of this class of persons at his return, after many years, to his father's house.]

I.

WHEN one returneth from a distant land,
Where he hath been in pilgrimage afar,

And seeks once more with wandering foot to stand
Beneath the brightness of his country's star,
It is with beating heart and joyful eyes,
He views the long remembered scenes again,
The mountains far, ascending to the skies,
The verdant hills more near, the flowering plain,

The willow shaded stream, the fields of golden grain.