ever such a thing as a critic or a rule of criticism?)—but to show that there is poetry, pure poetry, scattered in solid golden ingots around us.

Where will one find a more nervous description of remorse for a dark and deadly crime, than in the following extract?A remorse struggling in a nature not wholly lost, making the man fly to the remotest wilderness to hide himself from man, and alas! if it might be, from God-torturing him with one horrible memory that will not away, and pointing to the future, and pronouncing the words of doom, forever, forever, till reason is shaken on her throne, and the outward man is wrecked like the spirit within: this is what is described; and the picture is drawn in sharp, clear lines, as if engraved in steel.

He was a man of hideous mein;
His eyes were deeply set,
And the demon-fires of guilty days
Were burning in them yet.

His beard was thick, and long, and black;
Apparently the growth

Of many a day of wretchedness,

And solitude, and sloth.

His hair was matted o'er his head,

In locks of black and gray;

His cheeks were thin; with his shaggy chin
His fingers were ever at play.

They were ever at play with his shaggy chin,
And the eyebrows, iron-gray,

That lowered above his flashing eyes,

Like a cloud o'er the brilliants that gem the skies
At the close of a sultry day.

Remorse had furrowed his ample brow

His cheeks were sallow and thin;

His limbs were shriveled-his body was lank-
He had reaped the wages of sin:

And though his eyes constantly glanced about,
As if looking or watching for something without,
His mind's eye glanced within!

And he drew in his breath, and shrank away
From the things that he saw there;
And the pallor of death o'erspread his face,
And the writhings of despair.

Wildly his eyes still glared about;

But the eye that glanced within,
Was the one which saw the images
That frightened this man of sin.
But the things he saw I may not tell—

For there's nothing so frightful, unseemly and fell,
As the shapes in a guilty bosom's hell.

He drew in his breath, and shrank away,

As far as he could get

For his eye had now caught the aged man's-
And he shrieked, "Not yet! Not yet!"

He drew in his breath, and shrank away-
And his cowardly limbs did quake;
For, half crazed, he thought that the Evil One
Had come to tell him his days were done;
And he felt that he could not make
His peace with his much offended God:
And, fearing the stroke of the righteous rod,
In agony of soul

He fell over-and on his musty leaves
Moaning he lay, and attempting to pray:
And then a look he stole

At the solemn old man, and again began
To beckon him away.

The holy man approached him then-
But as he drew more near

The guilty wretch shrieked wildly out,

And swooned away, with fear.

And the murdered one haunts him-she, whom he had loved and destroyed.

He smote his breast-and soon his eyes
Were fixed, as if in death;

But still his lips, though mute, moved on,
And still he drew his breath.

And with his coarse and grizzly beard
His fingers were at play,

And time-and-time he 'd mutter low,
"Away!-not yet!-away!"

But by degrees, "the priestlike father," who had wandered to those remote regions of the north west, to carry the gospel to their savage tribes, by his presence and his prayers, sooths and wins the demon of insanity out of his heart.

The hoary watcher bent him o'er
The guilty wretch's bed,

And wiped the dew from his clammy brow,
And lifted his frantic head;

And he pillowed it on his breast awhile,
Then words that soothed him said.

When the sinful one was calm again,
The good man knelt in prayer;

But the murderer's face soon turn'd from him-
Wild-haggard with despair;

For his thoughts were borne to the Heavens above,
And they found no haven there!

But as the fervent prayer went on,
That sad face brighter grew;

And it seem'd that within that man of sin

A change was working too:

That the dried-up fount of feeling,

Which in Passion's sun for years

Had been scorching, was suddenly made again
The source of relieving tears.

The words of the good man pierced his heart,
Whence a stream refreshing rush'd;

As the rod of the prophet smote the rock,
Till the gladdening waters gush'd.

He cast his tearful eyes above-
The star of Hope was there!

It shone upon his soul, and lit
That desert of Despair.

And then he thanked the man of God
Time after time, and bless'd,
And asked to join with him in prayer:
"Not now-thou needest rest;"
He said, and gave a draught prepared
To lull him to repose;

And the soothed sufferer's weary eyes
Grow heavy soon, and close.

This is not the part of the poem which would generally be regarded as the best. We do not quote it as such. We extract it as showing that the writer possesses, in a very great degree, that which is one of the very first qualifications of a poet-the power of vivid and complete conception, and the power of transmitting his conceptions to the minds of others through transparent words.

Here is a poem of a different character.

TO MY MOTHER.

Thy cheek-it is pale, my mother,
And the light of thine eye is dim-

And the gushings of gladness, that used to fill

Thy cup of joy to its brim,
Come, like the visits of angels,

So 'few, and far between,"

That I feel the reed is a feeble one
On which thou hence must lean.

"Tis a bitter thing, my mother,
To look on a parent's decay-
To behold the Spoiler's ravages,
As he tears life's bloom away:
'Tis bitter to look on the furrows

He ploughs in the god-like brow--
To weep, o'er the gems of intellect
That are rayless, and sheenless now.

But there is a thought, my mother,
That is balm to the stricken heart:
-Though the gift of life is a frail one,
And from it we soon must part,
There is a haven of gladness,

For the weary heart a home-
Where the light of joy is never dim,
And sorrows never come.

On that blissful home, my mother,
Thine eye is often bent,

Like a tiny child's on a wished-for thing—
So longing-so intent.

Oh, how pure in the eye of Heaven

Must the heart of the christian be

So entirely fixed on that home above,
From earthliness so free.

We hope we have extracted enough to direct our readers to the volume itself. We will, however, add one more piece from the same pen.

HAPPINESS-A PICTURE.

A green vale, and a humble cot

Embowered in vines and spreading trees;
Before the door a verdant plat,

And flowers whose perfume loads the breeze:

Upon the grass, those flowers among,
Glad as the winds that thither stray,
A group of children, fair and young,--
Their cheeks are flush'd with play!

Midway the two small rooms between,
(For only two hath cot like this,)
Spectator of the joyous scene,
And sharer of the heart-felt bliss,

A white-haired grandam;--on her knee
Her knitting lies neglected now;
She fairly strains her eyes to see,--
Her specs pushed to her brow!

A smile upon her withered cheeks,--
On each a glistening tear-drop lies;
Her lips apart--she thoughtless speaks,
And harder strains her filmy eyes.
An anguish'd cry!--she quickly sprung,—
The sufferer's head was on her breast:
A bee its tiny foot had stung,

On clover-blossom prest.

The following is by Judge Hall. Years have gone—alas! how rapidly we count the mile-stones on life's journey—since without knowing anything of the author, we read it on the shore of the Atlantic. We remember as if it were but yesterday, the impression that this poetry of the heart, so tenderly beautiful, made on us then; nor does it seem less beautiful as we read it now. It expresses what many have felt; yet who has given the feeling a more truthful utterance, than the poet whose voice came from among the silent and solemn prairies of the Illinois?

WEDDED LOVE'S FIRST HOME.

'Twas far beyond yon mountains, dear, we plighted vows of love,
The ocean wave was at our feet, the autumn sky above,
The pebbly shore was covered o'er, with many a varied shell,
And on the billow's curling spray, the sunbeams glittering fell.
The storm has vexed that billow oft, and oft that sun has set,
But plighted love remains with us, in peace and lustre yet.

I wiled thee to a lonely haunt, that bashful love might speak,
Where none could hear what love revealed, or see the crimson cheek;
The shore was all deserted, and we wandered there alone,
And not a human step impressed the sand-beach but our own;
Thy footsteps all have vanished from the billow-beaten strand-
The vows we breathed remain with us-they were not traced in sand.

Far, far, we left the sea-girt shore, endeared by childhood's dream,
To seek the humble cot, that smiled by fair Ohio's stream;
In vain the mountain cliff opposed, the mountain torrent roared,
For love unfurled her silken wing, and o'er each barrier soared;
And many a wide domain we passed, and many an ample dome,
But none so blessed, so dear to us, as wedded love's first home.
Beyond those mountains now are all, that e'er we loved or knew,
The long remembered many, and the dearly cherished few;
The home of her we value, and the grave of him we mourn,
Are there; and there is all the past to which the heart can turn;—
But dearer scenes surround us here, and lovelier joys we trace,
For here is wedded love's first home,-its hallowed resting place.