And the head that wears a crown
'Neath the meanest lance goes down.
Walk, then, on life's pathway, mortal
With a pure and steadfast heart;
So that through death's frowning portal,
Peacefully thou may'st depart!

What are honors, what are riches,
What the haughty trump of fame?
Dazzling meteors, vain delusions,
Echoes of an empty name.

What the spangled robes of grandeur,
Jewelled sceptre, gilded crown,
What the plaudits won by genius,
What the poet's wide renown?
What but vain and idle breath,
Frosted by the chills of death!

What is beauty but the image
Of the gay cloud in the stream,
Fading from its crystal mirror
With the evanescent beam?
What is pleasure but the phantom
Luring o'er the marshy waste?
The false mirage of the desert,

Fleeting with deceitful haste.

Trust not life above Life's sod;

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
Leans on the breast of Eve. The wayward Wind
Hath folded her fleet pinions, and gone down

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
And forest-openings, with a pleasant sound;
While answering Echo, from the distant hill,
Sends back the music of the herdsman's horn.
How tenderly the trembling light yet plays
O'er the far-waving foliage! Day's last blush
Still lingers on the billowy waste of leaves,
With a strange beauty-like the yellow flush
That haunts the ocean, when the day goes by.
Methinks, whene'er earth's wearying troubles pass

Like winter shadows o'er the peaceful mind,
"Twere sweet to turn from life, and pass abroad,
With solemn footsteps, into Nature's vast
And happy palaces, and lead a life

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
Hath never gather'd its red harvest here!
The peaceful summer-day hath never closed
Around this quiet spot, and caught the gleam

Of War's rude pomp:-the humble dweller here
Hath never left his sickle in the field,

To slay his fellow with unholy hand;

The maddening voice of battle, the wild groan,
The thrilling murmuring of the dying man,
And the shrill shriek of mortal agony,
Have never broke its Sabbath-solitude.

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.

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
With a strange beauty. Earth received again
Its garment of a thousand dyes; and leaves,
And delicate blossoms, and the painted flowers,
And everything that bendeth to the dew,
And stirreth with the daylight, lifted up
Its beauty to the breath of that sweet morn.

All things are dark to sorrow; and the light
And loveliness, and fragrant air were sad
To the dejected Hagar. The moist earth
Was pouring odors from its spicy pores,
And the young birds were singing as if life
Were a new thing to them; but oh! it came
Upon her heart like discord, and she felt
How cruelly it tries a broken heart

To see a mirth in anything it loves.

She stood at Abraham's tent. Her lips were press'd
Till the blood started; and the wandering veins
Of her transparent forehead were swell'd out,
As if her pride would burst them. Her dark eye
Was clear and tearless, and the light of heaven,
Which made its language legible, shot back
From her long lashes, as it had been flame.
Her noble boy stood by her, with his hand
Clasp'd in her own, and his round, delicate feet,
Scarce train'd to balance on the tented floor,
Sandall'd for journeying. He had look'd up
Into his mother's face until he caught

The spirit there, and his young heart was swelling
Beneath his dimpled bosom, and his form
Straighten'd up proudly in his tiny wrath,
As if his light proportions would have swell'd,
Had they but match'd his spirit, to the man.

Why bends the patriarch as he cometh now
Upon his staff so wearily? His beard
Is low upon his breast, and his high brow,
So written with the converse of his God,
Beareth the swollen vein of agony.
His lip is quivering, and his wonted step
Of vigor is not there; and, though the morn
Is passing fair and beautiful, he breathes
Its freshness as it were a pestilence.
Oh! man may bear with suffering: his heart
Is a strong thing, and godlike, in the grasp
Of pain that wrings mortality; but tear
One chord affection clings to-part one tie

That binds him to a woman's delicate love-
And his great spirit yieldeth like a reed.

He gave to her the water and the bread,
But spoke no word, and trusted not himself
To look upon her face, but laid his hand
In silent blessing on the fair-hair'd boy,
And left her to her lot of loneliness.

Should Hagar weep? May slighted woman turn,
And, as a vine the oak hath shaken off,
Bend lightly to her leaning trust again?
O no! by all her loveliness-by all
That makes life poetry and beauty, no!
Make her a slave; steal from her rosy cheek
By needless jealousies; let the last star
Leave her a watcher by your couch of pain;
Wrong her by petulance, suspicion, all
That makes her cup a bitterness-yet give
One evidence of love, and earth has not
An emblem of devotedness like hers.

But oh estrange her once-it boots not how—
By wrong or silence-anything that tells

A change has come upon your tenderness-
And there is not a feeling out of heaven

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.
Her child kept on in silence, though she press'd
His hand till it was pain'd; for he had caught,
As I have said, her spirit, and the seed
Of a stern nation had been breathed upon.

The morning pass'd, and Asia's sun rode up
In the clear heaven, and every beam was heat.
The cattle of the hills were in the shade,
And the bright plumage of the Orient lay
On beating bosoms in her spicy trees.
It was an hour of rest! but Hagar found
No shelter in the wilderness, and on
She kept her weary way, until the boy

Hung down his head, and open'd his parch'd lips
For water; but she could not give it him.
She laid him down beneath the sultry sky-
For it was better than the close, hot breath

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
Why God denied him water in the wild.

She sat a little longer, and he grew

Ghastly and faint, as if he would have died.