There's music in the forest leaves Has music in his song, and in The fluttering of his wing. 3. There's music in the dash of waves When the swift bark cleaves their foam; There's music heard upon her deck, The mariner's song of home. When moon and star beams smiling meet At midnight on the sea And there is music once a week In Scudder's balcony. 4. But the music of young thoughts too soon And from our morning dreams we wake And childhood's frolic hours are brief, Their memory comes to chill the heart, 5. To-day the forest leaves are green, And the maiden's laugh be chang'd ere long Come with the winter snows, and ask Where are the forest birds? The answer is a silent one, More eloquent than words. 6... The moonlight music of the waves When the living lightning mocks the wreck And the mariner's song of home has ceased, His corse is on the sea And music ceases when it rains In Scudder's balcony. POEMS, ORIGINAL AND TRANSLATED; BY RICHARD DABNEY. MR. DABNEY is the Author of a small volume of Poems, published at Philadelphia, in the year 1814, and which, he informs the reader in an Advertisement, was presented to the public at a former period, and under another form, in a remote part of the Union. This collection is, it is believed, but little known even in America, but the merit of some of the pieces will not allow the name of their Author to be omitted in a volume like the present. Amongst Mr. Dabney's original poems, the longest and most important consists of an attempt to embody a series of metaphysical ideas in verse. A task which it may be easily conceived, requires the highest powers to execute with success. Un der the title of "Illustrations of simple moral emotions," he has endeavoured to paint many of the most powerful features of human passion, and at the same time to trace in the associations of the mind, the principal sources of human feeling. It must be confessed that the idea is a little vague and unsatisfactory, and that the execution of it is not altogether such as to rescue the author from the imputation of a failure. There are, however, amongst the Illustrations, many passages which display much thought and feeling poetically expressed. A few of these portions are given in the following pages. Some of the lighter pieces at the conclusion of the volume have considerable merit, and the war-songs, which are curious as specimens of American feeling, will be found very bold and spirited. The insertion of these memorials of hostile feeling will, it is hoped, require no apology. It must be remembered that they were published during the period of the war, and an allowance must therefore be made for some exasperation of sentiment; indeed the English public, always so proudly and eminently national, will scarcely be inclined to quarrel with foreign patriotism, even though expressed in terms not the most courtly. Mr. Dabney's style partakes of all the characteristic faults of his countrymen's carelessness, roughness, and occasional want of good taste. LINES. 'Tis not enough that virtue sways Though words of Truth eternal say, O then, upon those future years, |