Mary Gardiner Horsford

Through the half-curtained window stole An Autumn sunset's glow, As languid on my couch I lay

I knelt beside a little bed, The curtains drew away, And, 'mid the soft, white folds beheld,

I remember once, when a careless child, I played on the mossy lea; The stars looked forth in the shadowy west,

I looked upon the fair young flowers That in our gardens bloom, Gazed on their winning loveliness,

Blessings on thee, noble boy! With thy sunny eyes of blue, Speaking in their cloudless depths

Beside me, in the golden light That slants upon the floor, She twines the many-colored silks

Where the waters of the Mohawk Through a quiet valley glide, From the brown church to her dwelling

Leonardo da Vinci is said to have been four years employed upon the portrait of Mona Lisa, a fair Florentine, without being able to come up to the idea of her beauty. Artist! lay the brush aside; Twilight gathers chill and gray;

My native isle! my native isle! For ever round thy sunny steep The low waves curl, with sparkling foam,

The town of Pleurs, situated among the Alps and containing about two thousand five hundred inhabitants, was overwhelmed in 1618 by the falling of Mount Conto. The avalanche occurred in the night, and no trace of the village or any of its inhabitants could ever after be discovered. 'T was eve; and Mount Conto Reflected in night

As the bright flowers start from their wintry tomb, I've sprung from the depths of futurity's gloom; With the glory of Hope on my unshadowed brow,

'Neath their green and cool cathedrals, In the garden lilies bloom, Casting to the fresh Spring Zephyrs

An Incident Of The French Revolution And Reign Of Robespierre. Day dawned above a city's mart, Yet not 'mid peace and prayer:

Night bent o'er the mountains With aspect serene; The deep waters slept

The twilight o'er Italia's sky Had spread a shadowy veil, And one by one the solemn stars

With dirge-like music, low, Sounds forth again the solemn harp of Time; Mass for the buried hours, a funeral chime

The sunset on Judah's high places grew pale, And purple tints shadowed the gorge and the vale, While Venus in beauty, with dilating eye,

I heard the strokes of the midnight bell As they thrilled the quiet air, And saw the soft, white curtains wave

The ancient Highlanders believed the spirits of their departed friends continually present, and that their imagined appearances and voices communicated warnings of approaching death. Oh! set the bridal feast aside, And bear the harp away;

Diodorus has recorded an impressive Egyptian ceremonial, the judgment of the dead by the living. When the corpse, duly embalmed, had been placed by the margin of the Acherusian Lake, and before consigning it to the bark that was to bear it across the waters to its final resting-place, it was permitted to the appointed judges to hear all accusations against the past life of the deceased, and if proved, to deprive the corpse of the rites of sepulture. From this singular law not even kings were exempt. With sable plume and nodding crest, They bore him to his dreamless rest,

Travellers in Mexico have found the form of a serpent invariably pictured over the doorways of the Indian Temples, and on the interior walls, the impression of a red hand. The superstitions attached to the phenomena of the thunderstorm and Aurora Borealis, alluded to in the poem, are well authenticated. I saw him in vision,--the last of that race

The Indian name for the Falls of St. Anthony signifies "Laughing Water," and here tradition says that a young woman of the Dahcotah tribe, the father of her children having taken another wife, unmoored her canoe above the fall, and placing herself and children in it, sang her death-song as she went over the foaming declivity. The sun went down the west As a warrior to his grave,

"There dwelt a nun in Dryburgh bower Who ne'er beheld the day." Twilight o'er the East is stealing,

A void is in the sky! A light has ceased the seaman's path to cheer, A star has left its ruby throne on high,

A story is told in Spain, of a woman, who, by a sudden shock of domestic calamity, became insane, and ever after looked up incessantly to the sky. O'er her infant's couch of death, Bent a widowed mother low;

During the Revolutionary war, a young American lady was murdered, while dressed in her bridal robe, by a party of Indians, sent by her betrothed to conduct her to the village where he was encamped. After the deed was done, they carried her long hair to her lover, who, urged by a frantic despair, hurried to the spot to assure himself of the truth of the tale, and shortly after threw himself, in battle, on the swords of his countrymen. After this event, the Indians were never successful in their warfare, the spectre of their victim presenting itself continually between them and the enemy. The worn bird of Freedom had furled o'er our land The shattered wings, pierced by the despot's rude hand,

The historical incident related in this poem is recorded in Cheever's "JOURNAL OF THE PILGRIMS." 'T was early morn, the low night-wind Had fled the sun's fierce ray,

"He who would write heroic poems, must make his whole life a heroic poem."--MILTON. There came a voice from the realm of thought, And my spirit bowed to hear,--

There is an artless tradition among the Indians, related by Irving, of a warrior who saw the thunderbolt lying upon the ground, with a beautifully wrought moccasin on each side of it. Thinking he had found a prize, he put on the moccasins, but they bore him away to the land of spirits, whence he never returned. Loud pealed the thunder From arsenal high,

She dwelt within a convent wall Beside the "blue Moselle," And pure and simple was her life

Oh! call us not silent, The throng of the dead! Though in visible being

'T is said that each succeeding year Another circlet weaves Within each living, waving tree;