The Portland Sketch Book. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">       To daylight's latest, lingering glow—

       When slope, and rock, and wood around,

       In all their dreamy, hushed repose,

       Are glassed adown the bright profound—

       And passing fair is evening's close!

       When from the bright, cerulean dome,

       The sea-fowl, that have all the day

       Wheeled o'er the far, lone billows' spray,

       Come thronging to their eyries home;

       When over rock and wave, remote,

       From yon dim fort, the bugle's note

       Along the listening air doth creep,

       Seeming to steal down from the sky,

       Or with out-bursting, martial sweep

       Rings through the forests, clanging high,

       While echo waked bears on the strain,

       Till faint, beyond the trackless main,

       In realms of space it seems to die.

       But lovelier still is night's calm noon!

       When like a sea-nymph's fairy bark,

       The mirrored crescent of the moon

       Swings on the waters weltering dark;

       And in her solitary beam,

       Upon each bald, storm-beaten height,

       The quartz and mica wildly gleam,

       Spangling the rocks with magic light;

       And when a silvery minstrelsy

       Is swelling o'er the dim-lit sea,

       As of some wandering fairy throng,

       Passing on viewless wing along,

       Tuning their spirit-lyres to song;

       And when the night's soft breeze comes out,

       And for a moment breathes about,

       Shaking a burst of fresh perfume

       From every honied bell and bloom,

       Startling the tall pine from its rest,

       And sleeping wood-bird in her nest,

       Or kissing the bright water's breast;

       Then stealing off into the shade,

       As if it were a thing afraid!

      The Indian prized this beauteous spot

       Of old; beneath the embowering shade

       He reared his rude and simple cot;

       And round these wild shores where they played

       In youth, still—pilgrims from the bourn

       Of far Penobscot's sinuous stream,

       Aged and bowed, and weary worn—

       Lingering they love to stray, and dream

       O'er the proud hopes possessed of yore,

       When forest, isle and mainland shore,

       For many a league, owned but their sway;

       When, on the labyrinthine bay,

       Now checkered o'er with many a sail,

       Alone his lightsome birch canoe

       Fast, by the bright, green islets flew,

       Nor bark spread canvas to the gale.

      Matchless retreat! mayst aye remain

       As wild, as natural and free

       As now thou art; nor hope of gain,

       Nor enterprize a motive be

       To lay thy hoary forests low;

       Gold ne'er can make thy beauties glow,

       Nor enterprize restore thy pride,

       When once the monarchs round thy tide,

       Have felt the exterminating blow.

OUR OWN COUNTRY.

       Table of Contents

By James Brooks.

       Table of Contents

      What nation presents such a spectacle as ours, of a confederated government, so complicated, so full of checks and balances, over such a vast extent of territory, with so many varied interests, and yet moving so harmoniously! I go within the walls of the capitol at Washington, and there, under the star-spangled banners that wave amid its domes, I find the representatives of three territories, and of twenty-four nations, nations in many senses they may be called, that have within them all the germ and sinew to raise a greater people than many of the proud principalities of Europe, all speaking one language—all acting with one heart, and all burning with the same enthusiasm—the love and glory of our common country,—even if parties do exist, and bitter domestic quarrels now and then arise. I take my map, and I mark from whence they come. What a breadth of latitude, and of longitude, too,—in the fairest portion of North-America! What a variety of climate,—and then what a variety of production! What a stretch of sea-coast, on two oceans—with harbors enough for all the commerce of the world! What an immense national domain, surveyed, and unsurveyed, of extinguished, and unextinguished Indian titles within the States and Territories, and without, estimated, in the aggregate, to be 1,090,871,753 acres, and to be worth the immense sum of $1,363,589,69,—750,000,000 acres of which are without the bounds of the States and the territories, and are yet to make new States and to be admitted into the Union! Our annual revenue, now, from the sales, is over three millions of dollars. Our national debt, too, is already more than extinguished,—and yet within fifty-eight years, starting with a population of about three millions, we have fought the War of Independence, again not ingloriously struggled with the greatest naval power in the world, fresh with laurels won on sea and land,—and now we have a population of over thirteen millions of souls. One cannot feel the grandeur of our Republic, unless he surveys it in detail. For example, a Senator in Congress, from Louisiana, has just arrived in Washington. Twenty days of his journey he passed in a steam-boat on inland waters,—moving not so rapidly, perhaps, as other steam-boats sometimes move, in deeper waters,—but constantly moving, at a quick pace too, day and night. I never shall forget the rapture of a traveller, who left the green parks of New Orleans early in March,—that land of the orange and the olive, СКАЧАТЬ