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claration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment-Independ ence now! and independence FOREVER!

THANATOPSIS.—Bryant.

To him who, in the love of nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
· A various language; for his gayer hours,
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile,
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his dark musings, with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.

2.

When thoughts—

Of the last bitter hour, come like a blight

Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;
Go forth into the open sky, and list

To nature's teaching, while, from all around
Comes a still voice-

3.

"Yet a few days, and thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more,

In all his course; nor yet, in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go,
To mix forever with the elements,

To be a brother-to th' insensible rock,

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon.

4.

The oak

Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold,
Yet not, to thy eternal resting place,

Shalt thou retire alone-nor could'st thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All--in one-mighty sepulchre.

5.

The hills,

Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers, that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages.

6.

All that tread

The globe are but a handfull, to the tribes

That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings.
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods,
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save its own dashings-yet the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first

The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep: the dead reign there alone.

7.

So shalt thou rest; and what, if thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone; the solemn brood of care
Plod on; and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their enjoyments, and shall come,
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,

The youth, in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
The bowed with age, the infant, in the smiles
And beauty of its innocent age, cut off,-
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side,
By those who, in their turn, shall follow them.

8.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves

To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his lungeon, but unstained and othed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA.-Heber.

'Mid the light spray, their snorting camels stood,
Nor bath'd a fetlock, in the nauseous flood:
He comes-their leader comes! the man of God,
O'er the wide waters, lifts his mighty rod,
And onward treads. The circling waves retreat
In hoarse, deep murmurs, from his holy feet;
And the chas'd surges, inly roaring, show
The hard, wet sand, and coral hills below.

2.

With limbs that falter, and with hearts that swell,
Down, down they pass-a steep, and slippery dell;
Around them rise, in pristine chaos hurl'd,

The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world;
And flowers, that blush beneath the ocean green,
And caves, the sea-calves' low-roof'd haunts, are seen
Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread;
The beetling waters-storm above their head;
While far behind, retires the sinking day,
And fades on Edom's hills, its latest ray.

3.

Yet not from Israel-fled the friendly light,

Or dark to them, or cheerless came the night;
Still, in their van, along thar dreadful road,

Blaz'd broad and fierce, the brandish'd torch of God.

Its meteor glare-a tenfold lustre gave,
On the long mirror-of the rosy wave:
While its blest beams-a sunlike heat supply,
Warm every chcek, and dance in every eye.
To them alone-for Misraim's wizard train
Invoke, for light, their monster-gods in vain:
Clouds heap'd on clouds, their struggling sight confine,
And tenfold darkness broods above their line.

4.

Yet on they press, by reckless vengeance led,
And range, unconscious, through the ocean's bed,
Till midway now-that strange, and fiery form,
Show'd his dread visage, lightning through the storm;
With withering splendor, blasted all their might,
And brake their chariot-wheels, and marred their cour
sers' flight.

"Fly, Misraim, fly!" The ravenous floods they sen, And, fiercer than the floods, the Deity.

5.

"Fly, Misraim, fly!" From Edom's coral strand,
Again the prophet stretch'd his dreadful wand:
With one wild crash, the thundering waters sweep,
And all-is waves-a dark, and lonely deep:-
Yet, o'er these lonely waves, such murmurs past,
As mortal wailing swell'd the nightly blast:
And strange, and sad, the whispering breezes bore
The groans of Egypt-to Arabia's shore.

TALENTS.- Wirt.

Talents, whenever they have had a suitable theatre, have never failed to emerge from obscurity, and assume

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