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Graham's Magazine, Vol XXXIII, No. 6, December 1848
LINES
TO A SKETCH OF J. BAYARD TAYLOR, IN HIS ALPINE COSTUME
BY GEO. W. DEWEY
[SEE ENGRAVING.]The inspiration of thy smile,Thou minstrel of the wayside song,Yet lingers on thy face the whileI see thee climb the Alps along;As if thy harp's unwearied laySustained thee on thy rugged way.There dwells within thy poet-eyesThe spirit of the ancient bards —A soul in which no shadow lies —A glance forever heavenwards;As though the thoughts thy dreams unfurledHung, star-like, o'er a watching world.Methinks the bard who saw at night,Amid the glacier's snow and ice,A youth ascend the spectral height,Unfurling there "the strange device,"Did, with a prophet's pen, foreshowThy form upon those mounts of snow.And when the mists have valeward rolled,Below thy pathway, hard and long,Stern Death shall find thee, pale and cold,Upon the highest peak of Song —Still grasping, with a frozen hand,The banner of that Alpine Land!GAUTAMA'S SONG OF REST
BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR
[The Hindoo philosopher Gautama, now worshiped under the name of Buddha, lived in the fifth century before Christ. He taught the unity of God and Nature, or rather, that the physical and spiritual worlds are merely different conditions of an eternal Being. In the spiritual state, this Being exists in perfect and blissful rest, whose emanations and over-flowings enter the visible world, first in the lowest forms of nature, but rising through gradual and progressive changes till they reach man, who returns after death to the original rest and beatitude.]
How long, oh! all-pervading Soul of Earth,Ere Thy last toils on this worn being close,And trembling with its sudden glory-birth,Its wings are folded in the lost repose?Thy doom, resistless, on its travel liesThrough weary wastes of labor and of pain,Where the soul falters, as its ParadiseIn far-off mirage fades and flies again.From that pure realm of silence and of joy,The quickening glories of Thy slumber shine,Kindling to birth the lifeless world's alloy,Till its dead bosom bears a seed divine.Through meaner forms the spirit slowly rose,Which now to meet its near elysium burns;Through toilsome ages, circling towards repose,The sphere of Being on its axle turns!Filled with the conscious essence that shall grow,Through many-changed existence, up to Man,The sighing airs of scented Ceylon blow,And desert whirlwinds whelm the caravan.On the blue bosom of th' eternal deepIt moves forever in the heaving tide;And, throned on giant Himalaya's steep,It hurls the crashing avalanche down his side!The wing of fire strives upward to the air,Bursting in thunder rock-bound hills apart,And the deep globe itself complains to bearThe earthquake beatings of its mighty heart!Even when the waves are wearied out with toil,And in their caverns swoon the winds away,A thousand germs break through the yielding soil,And bees and blossoms charm the drowsy day.In stillest calms, when Nature's self doth seemSick for the far-off rest, the work goes onIn deep old forests, like a silent dream,And sparry caves, that never knew the dawn.From step to step, through long and weary time,The struggling atoms rise in Nature's plan,Till dust instinctive reaches mind sublime —Till lowliest being finds its bloom in Man!Here, on the borders of that Realm of Peace,The gathered burdens of existence rest,And like a sea whose surges never cease,Heaves with its care the weary human breast.Oh! bright effulgence of th' Eternal Power,Break the worn band, and wide thy portals roll!With silent glory flood the solemn hourWhen star-eyed slumber welcomes back the soul!Then shall the spirit sink in rapture down,Like some rich blossom drunk with noontide's beam,Or the wild bliss of music, sent to crownThe wakening moment of a midnight dream.Through all the luminous seas of ether there,Stirs not a trembling wave, to break the rest;But fragrance, and the silent sense of prayer,Charm the eternal slumber of the Blest!MY FATHER'S GRAVE
BY S. D. ANDERSON
It is a sweet and shady spotBeneath the aged trees,Where perfumed wild flowers lowly bendUnto the passing breeze;And joyous song-birds warble thereRich music to the sunny air,And many a golden-tinted beamFails on the spot like childhood's dream.The moss-clad church is standing there,The stream goes laughing by,Sending its gurgling music outAlong a summer sky;The rose has found a dwelling hereBeside the coffin and the bier;And here the lily rears its head,Within this Eden of the dead.The sunlight glances on the sceneWith many a sombre hue,Caught from the cypress near the stream,Or from the funeral yew;And, spirit-like, above each stoneIs heard the night-wind's whispered tone,As if the spirit lingered there,Enchanted with a scene so fair.The wild bee revels 'mid the flowersThat climb the ruined wall,And, gently drooping, shroud the tombWith Nature's fairest pall;And dirge-like sings the trickling rill,At evening's hour when all is still;Whilst echo answers back againIn mimic notes the plaintive strain.But moonlight gilds the scene anew,Now all is hushed and calm;The very winds seem sunk to rest,O'erladen with their balm;The stars, pale watchers of the night,Look brightly out on such a sight;Whilst from the hill the bird's low wailIs wafted on the evening gale.Be mine the lot, when life's dull dayHas drawn unto a close,And dreams of Love, and hopes of Fame,Have sunk to calm repose,By all forgot, to rest my headUnmarked beside the silent dead;Hushed by the murmurs of the waveThat moans around my Father's Grave.VOICES FROM THE SPIRIT LAND
WORDS BY JOHN S. ADAMS
COMPOSED AND ARRANGED FOR THE PIANO FORTE
BY VALENTINE DISTER
Presented by George Willig, No. 171 Chestnut Street. – Copyright Secured according to Law
GEMS FROM LATE READINGS
BY THE AUTHOR OF KATE WALSINGHAM
Oh, there is many a spot in this every-day world of ours as bright and beautiful as those of which we dream, or go miles away to visit and admire; but we must seek for them in the right spirit, ere the dimness will pass away from eyes blinded by the love of foreign novelties. Our own land, ay, even our own city – the crowded mart of commerce, and the vast haunt of poverty and crime, is rich in many a quiet nook, which, although it might arrest the attention if depicted on the gemmed page of the picturesque annual by some summer tourist, it is considered plebeian to notice as we pass them in our daily walks.
We have sat beneath the vines and blue skies of Italy, and heard from her moonlight balconies such strains as made us hold our breath to listen that we might not lose a note ere the perfumed breeze bore it lingeringly away: and in after years, in those English balconies we have described, wept, beneath the same moon, tears that had more of joy than grief in them, at some rude and simple strain which, sung by loved lips, made the charm of our careless and happy childhood. We have stood awe-stricken before the walls of the Colosseum, at Rome, and dreamt of it for evermore! But we have likewise paused opposite the Colosseum in the Regent's Park, investing it in the dim twilight with a thousand beauties that made it an object of interest. We can well remember lingering in the neighborhood, before the mimic church, or convent, as we had been taught to call it, of St. Catharine, with the moonshine gleaming through its arches, and the flickering lights appearing here and there in the diamond-paned windows, watching eagerly for the appearance of those white-robed nuns with which our childish fancy had peopled that quiet place – wondering that they never came. And amid all the architectural glory of foreign churches and cathedrals, since visited, have failed again to realize that simple love of, and faith in the beautiful, which then invested every scene with its peculiar charm. Where the mind makes its own picturesque, it never yet failed to find materials, and is often gifted with a strange power to charm others into seeing with its own loving eyes! So the poet immortalizes the humble home of his boyhood, and in after years men make pilgrimages to the time-worn stile, the
Rustic bridge – the willow tree;Bathing its tresses in the quiet brook;which his genius has redeemed from obscurity, and rendered hallowed spots for evermore.
BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURYOh! tell me not of lofty fate,Of glory's deathless name;The bosom love leaves desolateHas naught to do with fame.Vainly philosophy would soar —Love's height it may not reach;The heart soon learns a sweeter loreThan ever sage could teach.The cup may bear a poisoned draught,The altar may be cold,But yet the chalice will be quaffed —The shrine sought as of old.Man's sterner nature turns awayTo seek ambition's goal;Wealth's glittering gifts, and pleasure's ray,May charm his weary soul; —But woman knows one only dream —That broken – all is o'er;For on life's dark and sluggish streamHope's sunbeam rests no more.BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTONHow strange it is to those who are in some sense new to the world, to see the way in which time plasters over wounds which we should have imagined that nothing could have healed: wounds which we should have expected to see bleed afresh at the sight of the inflictor, as it was said of old that those of the murdered did at the approach of the murderer. Sometimes we almost feel as if nothing was real in that singular existence called the world. Like the performers, who laugh and talk behind the scenes after the close of some dreadful tragedy; we see around us men who have ruined the fortunes and destroyed the happiness of others, women who have betrayed and been betrayed, whose existence has been perhaps devoted to misery and to infamy by the first step they have taken in the path of guilt, and whose hearts, if they did not break grew hard; we see the victims and the destroyers, those who have loved and those who have hated, those who have injured and those who have been injured, mix together in the common thoroughfares of life, meet even in social intimacy, with offered hands and ready smiles; not because "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy;" not because "To those who forgive, shall much be forgiven;" but because what is genuine and true, what is deep and what is strong, takes no root in that worn-out soil on which we tread, thrives not in that withering air which we breathe in that fictitious region which we live in, and which we so emphatically and so presumptuously call the world.
BY MRS. LUELLA J. CASECHARITYSpeak kindly, oh! speak soothingly,To him whose hopes are crossed,Whose blessed trust in human love,Was early, sadly lost;For wearily – how wearily!Drags life, if love depart;Oh! let the balm of gentle wordsFall on the smitten heart.Go gladly, with true sympathy,Where want's pale victims pine,And bid life's sweetest smiles againAlong their pathway shine.Oh, heavily doth povertyMan's nobler instincts bind;Yet sever not that chain, to castA sadder on the mind.BY G. P. R. JAMESHe was a fool, and not a philosopher, who said that uncertainty was the just condition of man's mind. In trust, in confidence, in firm conviction, and in faith, is only to be found repose and peace. Assurance is what man's heart and understanding both require, and the very fact of the mind not being capable of obtaining certainty upon many points, is a proof of weakness, not of strength.
EDITOR'S TABLE
The Close of the Year. – The year is closing on us – and the change suggests reflections, which, if rather melancholy, may nevertheless be profitable. We acknowledge that the divisions of time are rather arbitrary – and therefore may vary, as they do vary, in different parts of the world. But whenever we arrive at one of these important epochs, whatever that may be, and wherever it constitutes a point in the popular calendar, we have passed one period of our life, and have so much the less to spend.
If we feel the rapidity of time's march in our ordinary festivity, and regret the approaching dissolution of the pleasant assembly, by how much the more do we feel if we pause to think that we are approaching the time when all our associations in life must cease, and we be remembered – not known – and that remembrance day by day growing less and less distinct, as new objects occupy the public eye, or new associations are taken up by those we leave. Nor would we "jump the life to come," by neglecting to make our approximation to that an occasion for such a solicitude as would lead to a preparation.
But we would not have all those reflections gloomy. We would not cloud the close of the year, nor the evening of life with moroseness, as if all were vanity that we had enjoyed, and all were vexation of spirit that was left. Such a use of the season would be a poor return for all the good things which Providence has wrought in our behalf. We know at this season of the year that the mountain summits are covered with snow, and in some places the drooping sides are whitened with the treasures of the clouds, but even these things, chilling as they may appear, are good in their season, and the beauteous covering of the hill-tops may glisten with the reflected rays of the sun, and seem to enjoy the visiter that has descended upon them. All the trees that yield their leaves to the season have for weeks been bare, ready to receive the weight of snow which might fall upon them, and teaching man that preparation is necessary to meet the evils of life and sustain its burthens. Here and there a few evergreens retain their foliage, and appear doubly beautiful amid the waste that is around them.
But it is not alone for their beauty that these objects are worthy of consideration – they teach also. They are full of instruction. Every leaf that glistens with winter's frost, or is crushed dry and rustling beneath our feet, has its lesson – it is well that all do not retain their position – they would be less monitory, less worthy our thought. Nature, in her use of foliage, acts upon the plan which the sybil of old adopted – she writes her lessons upon the leaves – and yet so arranges the truths they should convey, that they become more and more apparent, more and more valuable, as the hand of destructive time diminishes their number.
Elsewhere we have given reflections upon those events by which kingdoms and empires have been shaken in the year now coming to a close. Let us come nearer the heart, and speak of some of those changes by which human affections and individual attachments have been disturbed. Not, however, to quote the instance exactly – that would be to drag up into life the hidden sorrow, and expose to observation the grief which is sanctified for the recesses of the heart, whither in moments of leisure the wounded retire and sit and brood in profitable reflection over the affliction which Providence has allowed. We dare not drag up to day and its exposure each grief that lies buried deep in the grave of the mourner's heart. How truly beautiful, however, is the reflection that the stone of the sepulchre may be rolled away, and that in appropriate seasons the afflicted one makes a retreat from the business and the pleasures of life, and "goeth unto the grave to weep there." Sanctified – as beautiful – be the sorrow that hath not its exponent in the public assembly, that hath no signal by which its existence is to be denoted – no condition of countenance by which its extent is to be measured. Perhaps the sufferer had not yet obtained permission to call the object hers – and thus is deprived of the privilege of admitted mourning – how deep is that grief – it has known only the hope of life which takes with it all of the sunlight that makes the rainbow; without one drop of the storm from which that bow is reflected. Perhaps the young WIFE sits solitary in the chamber which affection has blessed, and pines amid the thousand emblems of the taste or customs of the dead – perhaps her grief is her inspiration, and she gives to story or to song the promptings of her sorrow, which the world supposes is the gift of joyous inspiration.
Perhaps the mother is pausing in the midst of renewed anguish for the departure of her gifted, her only child, and sits enumerating all his perfections, the greatest of which, and that which sanctified all other virtues, and hid the very shadowings of error, was his deep, constant love for her. Oh, how the maternal heart, smitten by the heaviest of griefs, bathes itself in the fountain of filial love; and when, at last, the over-wrought frame yields to the undermining sorrow, the mourner comforts herself with the reflection of the afflicted monarch of Israel, "I shall go unto him, he shall not come again unto me." These reflections, with all of blighted hopes which parent, lover, friend and patriot have indulged, the falling leaves of autumn suggest; but the evergreen tells us of the survival of affections, of friends, of beauty, and, perhaps, of attainments, and teaches us that while we bend, and may bend in bitter anguish – anguish long indulged beneath the rod of affliction – it is good for us also to kiss the rod – for it has the power of budding anew in the hand of Him who wields it; and the same might which made it the instrument of His afflictive dealings can make it also the means of after joy and peace.
Perhaps, upon the leaves that we examine, the sybil, with rearward glance, has recorded some event for joyous reflection. Have we not been made participants of high gratifications – domestic, social, public associations of instructive and pleasant operation? Have not new affections warmed the heart, or old ones sent out new tendrils to cling with a stronger hold upon us? Perhaps we have had the acquisition of wealth without the augmentation of desires, so that we can make ourselves happy by judicious distribution. Perhaps, above all, and over all, we are better, by the passage of the year, better by newly acquired, and especially newly exercised virtues – virtues that bless others, and, through them, bless ourselves. If so, surely we have grounds for pleasant reflections on the close of the year, and may hope that we have not lived in vain.
The virtues of the human heart are like the water-springs of the earth, their worth is measured by what overflows; nay, as an accumulation even of the purest water must become stagnant, profitless and offensive without an outlet, so what we call the virtues of man become useless and even injurious, unless they extend to others, by overflowing the fountain breast. Virtue is communicable; and those who associate with the good, find an influx of affection and piety, as the woman of faith was cured by touching the hems of the garment, that covered the source and example of all health and goodness. If we have sought to acquire good for ourselves, and to do good to others during the present year, reflections upon its approaching close need not be painful; it should be to us a source of high gratification, that, enjoying as we have enjoyed, and mourning as we have mourned, we are nearer the union of the good who have gone before us, and further from the ills that follow upon our footsteps; and as we close our year, or close our life, may we throw back from joyous, grateful hearts, a smile of virtuous pleasure, which shall enrich the stern clouds that have passed us with the bow of promise of pleasures that are to come. C.
Graham's Magazine for 1849. – The new volume of Graham's Magazine, to be commenced with the January number, will, beyond all doubt, be the most elegant volume that has ever been issued of this most popular of all the American monthlies. The ample experience and liberal expenditure of money by the publishers, the ability of its host of contributors, the editorial tact which will be brought into service, and the genius and skill of the artists engaged to embellish it, must more than sustain the high position it has heretofore held in public estimation. The magazine literature of this country is destined to a warmer appreciation in the public regard, as it becomes purged from the sickly sentimentality which degrades public taste, and when the first minds in the nation are found devoting solid thought to adorn and elevate it. A few years since, the highest aim of contemporary competition seemed to be to fill a given number of pages with the silly effusions of a class of writers whose feeble powers and false taste were gradually undermining public regard, and bringing this branch of national literature into contempt and disgrace, but the higher aims of the publishers of the now leading periodicals, evinced in the engagement of the brightest intellect of the country, have raised American periodicals to a scale second to none in the world.
Blackwood and Frazer, in England, and The Knickerbocker and "Graham's Magazine," in America, now stand side by side, and by paying liberally for talent, command the very highest. It may be doubted, however, whether in this country the force of periodical writing has not been in some degree impaired, by a diversion of the public eye and taste in the smaller class of magazines with feeble aims, to engravings and pictures, many of which are but the refuse of the English Annuals, and the efforts of second rate artists in this country; and also how far those magazines which are marked by ability, and which, as magazines of Art as well as of Literature, embracing in their object and scope, the improvement of a very laudable branch of art – that of engraving – as well as the adornment of the work, should be drawn aside into a competition in the number of their engravings, instead of the worth which should mark each one of them. It appears to us that this degrading of magazines into picture-books for children, by impoverishing the literary department to swell the number of wretched engravings in a department of art, so called, must impair the value and shorten the existence of any periodical thus conducted.
For ourselves, we have marked out a course in regard to the mere illustrations of this periodical, from which we shall not be diverted. We shall continue to furnish to our readers the most finished and elegant specimens of the American engraver's skill, keeping at the same time in view the value aside from the mere ornament of the engraving, thus catching the public desire in the portrait of a person who may have some claim upon posterity, even though the face may not be the most beautiful; and in sketches of such scenes as deserve to live in the pages of this magazine, either from their own great beauty, from their grandeur, or from association which gives them value to the American eye and mind.
The Female Poets of America. – Messrs. Lindsay & Blakiston have presented to the public a delightful volume prepared by Caroline May. It embraces biographical sketches, and extracts from the productions of many of our own native female writers, and serves to render us familiar with those whose sweet strains have often charmed our hearts. The style of execution of the volume in question, corresponds with the excellent character of its contents, and the authoress, publishers and printers have executed their respective parts with great skill and effect.
Burns, as a Poet and as a Man. – The admirers of the gifted Scottish bard, will find an interesting and well executed review of his character as a Poet and a Man, in a volume, prepared by S. Tyler, Esq., of the Maryland bar, and just issued by Baker and Schriver, of New York. We are indebted for a copy to Messrs. Lindsay & Blakiston, of this city, who are ever skillful in catering for the intellectual taste of their literary friends.
