Was there ever more tender tribute paid to a mother's memory, than throbs throughout this? The questioning exists only in form; this we realize, as we read each soulful line. In the poet's remembrance the mother lives on, as much a cheering personal presence as in the days gone by; and the poet feels that when life's waiting is over, together they will enter upon immortality. Thank God that some mothers live thus, although their places here with us be vacant!

The poem has been so widely published with full recognition of authorship that, although often appearing as a waif, we need hardly say it was written by James G. Clark. Mr. Clark was born on the 28th of June, 1830, in the little village of Constantia, N. Y., close by the border of Oneida Lake. His parents were excellent Christian people, well-known and much respected in the community. His father, Sereno Clark, was quite prominent in Oswego county politics, being Supervisor of his town for ten or twelve years, Justice of the Peace full twenty years, and member of the Constitutional Convention in 1846. His mother was a very fine singer, and possessed of a highly poetic organization, and from her he inherited those gifts that have made him so popular as a balladist and poet. We believe both parents have

been dead several years.

In childhood Mr. Clark displayed great taste for music, as also a strong liking for dreamful idleness. Before he could talk he sang tunes correctly; and much

more.

of his time, in summer, he spent in lonely loitering about the borders of Oneida Lake, dreaming the days away. His educational opportunities were fair, nothing Largely self-taught, in music as in general knowledge, he owes much to a rare quickness of perception allied to unusual powers of memory, and to a ready comprehension of the salient features of things. He has been all his life a student, though not many years a student of the schools. He has studied humanity and nature, with a largeness of heart and a sympathy of soul to understand both.

Mr. Clark first drew public attention to himself, not as a poet, but as a concert singer. Or rather, while he began by being both poet and singer-for from the outset he sang his own songs-people thought of him first as singer instead of poet. He drifted into the concert field by force of natural tendencies, with no thought that he might make concertizing a permanent business. First he traveled with a troupe of his own, made up from neighboring counties; then he associated himself with Ossian E. Dodge-famous as a public performer twenty years ago-acting for a time in the capacity of musical composer, and afterwards as musical director, of the troupe known as "Ossian's Bards." We have said that at first the people thought of him rather as the singer than the poet, and yet it was during this portion of his life that he wrote and set to music several of his best known and most admired poems-poems which have

done ballad duty every since, and which, it is safe to say, have been more popular among the cultured and intelligent than any similar productions from any other American writer. "The Rover's Grave;" "The Old Mountain Tree; "The Rock of Liberty;" "Meet Me by the Running Brook;" "The Mountains of Life," and "The Beautiful Hills," carried his name everywhere.

"The Mountains of Life" has been very widely copied and several times plagiarized.

THE MOUNTAINS OF LIFE.

There's a land far away 'mid the stars we are told,
Where they know not the sorrows of time,

Where the pure waters wander through valleys of gold,
And life is a treasure sublime;

'T.s the land of our God, 't is the home of the soul,

Where ages of splendor eternally roll

Where the way-weary traveler reaches his goal,
On the evergreen Mountains of Life.

Our gaze cannot soar to that beautiful land,

But our visions have told of its bliss,

An our souls by the gales from its garden are fanned,
When we faint in the desert of this;

And we sometimes have longed for its holy repose,
When our spirits were torn with temptations and woes,
And we've drank from the tide of the river that flows
From the evergreen Mountains of Life.

O, the stars never tread the blue heavens at night
But we think where the ransomed have trod-
And the day never smiles from his palace of light
But we feel the bright smile of our God;

We are traveling homeward, through changes and gloom,
To a kingdom where pleasures unceasingly bloom,
"And our guide is the glory that shines through the tomb,"
From the evergreen Mountains of Life.

Finer than this, in the estimation of many, and differing from it sufficiently to be included here, although nearly akin in spirit, is the following:

THE BEAUTIFUL HILLS.

Oh! the Beautiful Hills where the blest have trod
Since the years when the earth was new;
Where our fathers gaze from the field of God,
On the vale we are traveling through.

We have seen those hills in their brightness rise,
When the world was black below,

And we've felt the thrill of immortal eyes,
In the night of our darkest woe.

Then sing for the Beautiful Hills,

That rise from the evergreen shore;

Oh! sing for the Beautiful Hills,

Where the weary shall toil no more.

The cities of yore that were reared in crime,
And renowned by the praise of seers,
Went down in the tramp of old King Time,
To sleep with his gray-haired years.
But the Beautiful Hills rise bright and strong
Through the smoke of old Time's red wars,
As on that day when the first deep song

Rose up from the morning stars.

Then sing for the Beautiful Hills, etc.

We dream of rest on the Beautiful Hills,
Where the traveler shall thirst no more;
And we hear the hum of a thousand rills

That wander the green glens o'er.
We can feel the souls of the martyred men

Who have braved a cold world's frown;
We can bear the burdens which they did then,
Nor shrink from their thorny crown.

Then sing for the Beautiful Hills, etc.
Our arms are weak, yet we would not fling
To our feet this load of ours.

The winds of spring to the valleys sing,
And the turf replies with flowers;
And thus we learn on our wintry way,
How a mightier arm controls,

That the breath of God on our lives will play
Till our bodies bloom to souls.

Then sing for the Beautiful Hills,

That rise from the evergreen shore;

Oh! sing for the Beautiful Hills,

Where the weary shall toil no more.

Another, not less known, and always liked, as well for the uncommon beauty of the poem as for the sweetness of the melody to which it was wedded, we give entire :

MARION MOORE.

Gone, art thou, Marion, Marion Moore,

Gone, like the bird in the autumn that singeth;

Gone, like the flower by the way-side that springeth,
Gone like the leaf of the ivy that clingeth

Round the lone rock on a storm-beaten shore.