C.

1 Mrs. Hemans.

2 The Natural Bridge.

3 Harper's Ferry.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

DEATH AMONG THE TREES.

Death walketh in the forest. The tall Pines
Do woo the lightning-flash,—and thro' their veins
The fire-cup darting, leaves their blacken'd trunks
A tablet, where Ambition's sons may read
Their destiny. The Oak that centuries spar'd,
Grows grey at last, and like some time-scath'd man
Stretching out palsied arms, doth feebly cope
With the destroyer, while its gnarled roots
Betray their trust. The towering Elm turns pale,
And faintly strews the sere and yellow leaf,
While from its dead arms falls the wedded vine.
The Sycamore uplifts a beacon-brow,
Denuded of its honors,—while the blast
That sways the wither'd Willow, rudely asks
For its lost grace, and for its tissued leaf
Of silvery hue.
I knew that blight might check
The sapling, ere kind nature's hand could weave
Its first spring-coronal, and that the worm
Coiling itself amid our garden-plants
Did make their unborn buds its sepulchre.
And well I knew, how wild and wrecking winds
May take the forest-monarchs by the crown,
And lay them with the lowliest vassal-herb;
And that the axe, with its sharp ministry,
Might in one hour, such revolution work,
That all earth's boasted power could never hope
To reinstate. And I had seen the flame
Go crackling up, amid yon verdant boughs,
And with a tyrant's insolence dissolve
Their interlacing,—and I felt that man
For sordid gain, would make the forest's pomp
Its heaven-rear'd arch, and living tracery
A funeral pyre. But yet I did not deem
That pale disease amid those shades would steal
As to a sickly maiden's cheek, and waste
The plenitude of those majestic ranks,
Which in their peerage and nobility,
Unrivall'd and unchronicled, had reign'd.
And then I said, if in this world of knells,
And open graves, there lingereth one, whose dream
Is of aught permanent below the skies,
Even let him come, and muse among the trees,
For they shall be his teachers,—they shall bow
To their meek lessons his forgetful ear,
And by the whispering of their faded leaves,
Soften to his sad heart, the thought of death.

L. H. S.

Hartford, Con. Sept. 10, 1834.