With a few big drops, that are soon repress'd, The spirit may burn with a brighter power; And when her sun is low declining, In a deep and long imprinted kiss! Where the glassy vapor cheats his eyes, NIGHT. Am I not all alone?-The world is still Am I not all alone?-A spirit speaks From the abyss of night, "Not all alone,- LOVE OF STUDY.' And wherefore does the student trim his lamp, In deep and voiceless thought, the blooming hours He has his pleasures,-he has his reward: That snatches us a while from earth, and lifts With eye upturn'd, watching the many stars, That beckon in the future, nearer draw, And ask fruition,-oh, there is a pure, A hallow'd feeling in these midnight dreams! They have the light of heaven around them, breathe The odor of its sanctity, and are Those moments taken from the sands of life, Where guilt makes no intrusion, but they bloom And there is pleasure in the utterance Of pleasant images in pleasant words, "There are many youths, and some men, who most earnestly devote themselves to solitary studies, from the mere love of the pursuit. I have here attempted to give some of the causes of a devotion which appears so unaccountable to the stirring world." Melting like melody into the ear, EXTRACT FROM PROMETHEUS. Our thoughts are boundless, though our frames are frail, The spirit has its energies untamed By all its fatal wanderings; time may heal Bore him with steeds of fire triumphant to the sky. We are as barks afloat upon the sea, Helmless and oarless, when the light has fled And, kindling in the blaze around him shed, Nor, like a senseless brute, its unknown journey take. How awful is that hour, when conscience stings And, screaming like a vulture in his ears, His swart eye flashes with intensest flame, And like the torture's rack the wrestling of his frame. MARIA BROOKS, 1795-1845. MARIA GOWEN (known by the name of " Maria del Occidente," given to her by the poet Southey) was descended from a Welsh family, and born in Medford in 1795. She early displayed uncommon powers of mind, which were judiciously cultivated and directed by an intelligent and educated father. She was married very early in life to Mr. John Brooks, a merchant-tailor of Boston, who, a few years after their marriage, lost the greater part of his property, when Mrs. Brooks resorted to poetry for her amusement and consolation. In 1820, she gave to the public a small volume, entitled Judith, Esther, and other Poems, by a Lover of the Fine Arts. It contained much that was beautiful, and gave promise of far higher excellence. In 1823, Mr. Brooks died, and she went to reside with a paternal uncle in Cuba, where, in 1824, she completed her first canto of Zophiel, or The Bride of Seven, which she had planned and nearly written before leaving Boston. It was published in Boston in 1825: other cantos were written from time to time, and the sixth was published in 1829. Mrs. Brooks's uncle having died, leaving her an ample income, she returned soon after to the United States, and in 1831 visited England, where she was cordially welcomed by the poet Southey, who pronounced her "the most impassioned and most imaginative of all poetesses." When she left England, she intrusted to his care her completed work, which he carried through the press, in London, in 1833. After returning home, she had printed, for private circulation, Idomen, or the Vale of the Yumuri, being simply her own history, under a different name. In 1843, she sailed for Matanzas, in Cuba, where she died on the 11th of November, 1845. Zophiel, or The Bride of Seven, Mrs. Brooks's chief poem, is a beautiful tale of an exiled Jewish maiden in Media, and is evidently suggested by the Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha. Sara, the heroine in Tobit, is married to seven husbands successively, who all die on entering the bridal chamber, being killed by Asmodeus, the evil spirit. At last Tobias, the son of Tobit, being instructed by the angel Raphael how to overcome the evil spirit, marries Sara, and drives off Asmodeus by means of "a smoke" made of "the liver and heart of a fish." In Mrs. Brooks's poem, The Bride of Seven, Zophiel is Asmodeus, and Egla is Sara, a maiden of exquisite beauty, grace, and tenderness; but though the poem shows much artistic skill and has many passages of great beauty and power, it is deficient in simplicity and true human feeling, and receives rather the homage of the intellect than of the heart. Hence, while it commands the warm approbation of the few, it will never please or interest the many. Some of Mrs. Brooks's minor poems, however, have all the finish of Zophiel, and at the same time interest our feelings. MORNING. How beauteous art thou, O thou morning sun!- The infant strains his little arms to catch The rays that glance about his silken hair; And Luxury hangs her amber lamps, to match Thy face, when turn'd away from bower and palace fair. But comes to pay new homage to thy charms. And finds in thee, like love, a theme forever new. Thy dark-eyed daughters come in beauty forth, In thy near realms; and, like their snow-wreaths fair, The bright-hair'd youths and maidens of the north Smile in thy colors when thou art not there. 'Tis there thou bidst a deeper ardor glow, And higher, purer reveries completest; As drops that farthest form the ocean flow, Refining all the way, form springs the sweetest. Haply, sometimes, spent with the sleepless night, Some wretch, impassion'd, from sweet morning's breath Turns his hot brow, and sickens at thy light; But Nature, ever kind, soon heals or gives him death. CONFIDING LOVE. What bliss for her who lives her little day, To every blast she bends in beauty meek: Let the storm beat-his arms her shelter kind- |