AGRICULTURE AND COMMERCE.
mutual supports and dependencies, by which the activity, the improvement and the pleasure of the inhabitants of every part of the world are secured and promoted. Above all, forget not, that you are instruments in the hands of Providence, by which he diffuses his blessings, and promotes his grand purposes in the cultivation, the civilization, and thus the moral and religious advancement, of this wide creation. God grant, that you may never feel the remorse of having deliberately contributed to the introduction of a new vice into the community, or to the corruption of an old or established principle; of having aided the tyranny of a worthless fashion, or assisted the gradual encroachments of selfishness, vanity, pomp, and slavish imitation, on the freedom and dignity of social life!
TRIBUTE TO MY NATIVE STREAM.
[Born at Concord, 1788. Died at Marseilles, France, January 2, 1830.]
HAIL! hail again my native stream,
Scene of my boyhood's earliest dream!
With solitary step once more
I tread thy wild and silvan shore,
And pause at every turn and gaze
Upon thy dark meandering maze.
What though obscure thy woody source,
What though unsung thy humble course,
What if no lofty classic name
Give to thy peaceful waters fame;
Still can thy rural haunts impart
A solace to this saddened heart.
Since last with thee I parted, Time
Has borne me on through many a clime,
Far from my native roof that stood
Secluded by thy murmuring flood;
And I in distant lands have roamed,
Where rolled new streams, new oceans foamed.
Along the Shannon, Doon, and Tay,
I've sauntered many a happy day,
And sought beside the Cam and Thames,
Memorials of immortal names;
Or mingled in the polished train
Of fashion, on the banks of Seine.
And I have seen the azure Rhone
Rush headlong from his Alpine throne;
Green Mincius and the silver Po
Through vine-clad vales meandering flow;
Sweet Arno wreath'd in summer flowers,
Linger amidst Etrurian bowers;
And the swoln Tiber's yellow tide
Roll to the sea in sullen pride.
In climes beneath the burning zone,
Mid tangled forests, deep and lone,
Where fervid skies forever glow,
And the soft trade-winds whispering blow.
TRIBUTE TO MY NATIVE STREAM.
My roving footsteps too have press'd
The loveliest island of the West.
There Yumuri winds deep and calm,
Through groves of citron and of palm;
And on the sluggish wave of Juan,*
My little boat hath borne me on,
Or up Canimar's silent floods,
Strown with the blossoms of its woods.t
Yet not the less, my native stream,
Art thou to me a grateful theme,
Than when in heedless boyhood's prime
I wove for thee the rustic rhyme,
Ere other realms, beyond the sea,
Had spread their fairest charms for me.
E'en now, alone I sit me down
Amidst thy woods, with autumn brown,
And on the rustling leaves recline,
Beneath a copse of whispering pine,
To watch thy amber current run,
Bright with November's parting sun.
Around, with eager eye I trace
The charms of each remembered place;
Some fountain gushing from the bank,
At which, in youth, I knelt and drank;
Yon oak its hoary arms that rears,
Scene of my sports in boyish years.
Farewell! farewell! though I no more
May ramble on thy rural shore,
Still shall thy quiet wave glide on
When he who watched its flow is gone,
And his sole epitaph shall be
Inscribed upon some aged tree.
*This word is pronounced in Spanish as if written Whon.
†The author in rowing up the river Canimar, near Matanzas, in January, 1828, found its current covered with the blossoms of forest trees growing upon its banks.
BY WILLIAM B. O. PEABODY.
UPON the far-off mountain's brow
The angry storm has ceased to beat,
And broken clouds are gathering now,
In lowly reverence round his feet.
I saw their dark and crowded banks
On his firm head in wrath descending,
But there once more redeemed he stands,
And heaven's clear arch is o'er him bending.
I've seen him when the rising sun
Shone like a watch-fire on the height,
I've seen him when the day was done,
Bathed in the evening's crimson light;
I've seen him in the midnight hour,
When all around were calmly sleeping,
Like some lone sentry in his tower,
His patient watch in silence keeping.
And there, as ever, steep and clear,
That pyramid of Nature springs!
He owns no rival turret near,
No sovereign, but the King of kings.
While many a nation hath passed by,
And many an age, unknown in story,
His walls and battlements on high
He rears, in melancholy glory.
And let a world of human pride,
With all its grandeur, melt away,
And spread around his rocky side
The broken fragments of decay.
Serene his hoary head will tower,
Untroubled by one thought of sorrow;
He numbers not the weary hour,
He welcomes not nor fears to-morrow.
Farewell! I go my distant way;
Perhaps not far in future years,
The eyes that glow with smiles to-day,
May gaze upon thee, dim with tears.
Then let me learn from thee to rise,
All time and chance and change defying;
Still pointing upward to the skies,
And on the inward strength relying.
If life before my weary eye
Grows fearful as the angry sea, Thy memory shall suppress the sigh For that which never more can be. Inspiring all within the heart
With firm resolve and strong endeavor, To act a brave and faithful part,
Till life's short warfare ends for ever.
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