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There's music in the forest leaves
When summer winds are there,
And in the laugh of forest girls
That braid their sunny hair.
The first wild bird that drinks the dew,
From violets of the spring,

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
Is faint, and dies away,

And from our morning dreams we wake
To curse the coming day;

And childhood's frolic hours are brief,
And oft, in after years,

Their memory comes to chill the heart,
And dim the eye with tears.

5.

To-day the forest leaves are green,
They'll wither on the morrow,

And the maiden's laugh be chang'd ere long
To the widow's wail of sorrow.

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
In storms is heard no more,

When the living lightning mocks the wreck
At midnight on the shore;

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

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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
Our present hours and passing days;
"Tis not enough, our purpose be
From every base intention free;
All that polluted life's first source
Will float along its downward course,
And dark shall be each future year,
Unless the SPRING of life is clear.

Though words of Truth eternal say,
Repentance washes guilt away;
If former times display a stain,
The future shall the blot retain ;
The hue and colour of the past
Upon the coming hour is cast;
And dark shall be each future year,
Unless the SPRING of life be clear.

O then, upon those future years,
Bestow not agony and tears!

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