Kitabı oku: «The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844», sayfa 12

 
Thrust him in his narrow bed,
Heap the cold earth on his head,
But be sure no tear ye shed—
            Not a tear for him!
 
 
Bitter toil was his from birth,
Dearly bought his homely mirth,
While his master was of earth—
            Now he’s of the sky.
 
 
Death knocked at his door at night,
With his crushing hand of might,
Woke him to that morning light
            Which can know no noon!
 
 
When that sacred morning beam
Wakes his spirit, life shall seem
But a dreary changeful dream—
            Soon o’er, and not too soon!
 
 
Patiently for few long years,
Struggling with earth’s giant fears,
With hands too busy to wipe tears,
            Met he life’s long shock.
 
 
Yet not all blank and desolate
Was this poor man’s earthly state;
Hope, toil, content, can soften fate,
            As the moss the rock.
 
 
O! lost Brother! still and cold,
Sunk like rain into the mould,
Silently, unseen, untold—
            Thou ’rt a God-sown seed!
 

It is a sad sight to look upon the corpse of a laborer, cut down in the midst of a toilsome life; his hard, knotty hands clasped upon the still breast, and the strong limbs laid in serene repose. And yet how happy the change! No longer does he ask leave to toil; no longer is he at war with poverty, for death has made it a drawn battle. He ‘rests from his labors’ where the rich and the poor meet together, and he hears no more the voice of the oppressor. ••• Perhaps our readers will have observed that the Sketches of East Florida are from no common pen. The description which has been given by the writer, of the delicious climate in that sunny region, may to many ‘Northeners’ seem exaggerated; but such is not the fact. A friend writing recently from St. Augustine, thus playfully alludes to the effect which the climate produces upon a New-Yorker: ‘If a business-man could be caught up from the whirl of Broadway, and dropped in a warm climate, say that of St. Augustine, and left under a fig-tree to his own reflections, his first thought doubtless would be for an omnibus ‘right up.’ ‘Rather queer!’ he would say; ‘a hot sun, sandy street, and not a carriage to be seen! There’s a man out in his slippers, and a woman with her head tied up in a handkerchief—may-be a night-cap; probably some old Dutch settlers that went to-sleep with Rip Van Winkle. Wild turkeys, as I live, all about the market!—and oh, Lord! there’s a little nigger with only a shirt on! Halloo there! you little nigger! tell me the way to the Broadway coaches! No coaches? no omnibii? Well, where’s your five-o’clock boats?—where’s your Harlaem rail-road? I want to go back to town!’ Such would probably be his first go-off; and the next impulse would be to run, shout, cry fire! or murder!—any thing to produce a sensation; but unless very soon about it, he would find himself yielding to some strange influence hitherto unfelt; and it would be amusing to notice how soon the fretting restless man of the forty-second latitude would be tamed down in the thirteenth to the equanimity of a child asleep. The climate enters within the man, and brings out one by one some hidden and better impulse, at the same time laying a gentle hand upon his rougher humors; so that when he would shout, he hums, and when he would laugh, he smiles only; and in undertaking to run, he is caught about the waist; and goes floating smoothly around in the ground-swell motion of the Spanish-dance.’ ••• We perceive that the Copy-right Question has been thus early brought before the National Legislature. From the present aspect of things we may indulge a well-grounded hope that authors who have worn themselves out in making other people happy, will not hereafter be left to perish amidst age and infirmity, unrelieved by the fruit of their labors. There is one argument exceedingly well illustrated in the recent address of the ‘Copy-right Club.’ In allusion to the floods of trash which have for months inundated the Atlantic cities and towns, the writer, addressing himself to American citizens, observes: ‘In all other circumstances and questions save that of a literature, you have taken the high ground of freedom and self-reliance. You have neither asked, nor loaned, nor besought, but with your own hands have framed, what the occasion required. Whatever stature you have grown to as a nation, it is due to that sole virtue; and by its exercise may you only hope to hold your place. In almost any other shape than that of silent books you would have spurned the foreign and held fast to the home-born; but stealing in quietly at every opening, making themselves the seemingly inoffensive and unobtrusive lodgers in every house, they have full possession of the country in all its parts; and another people may promise themselves in the next generation of Americans, (as the question now goes,) a restored dominion which their arms were not able to keep. The pamphlet will carry the day where the soldier fell back.’ ••• We derive the annexed stanzas through a Boston correspondent. He assures us that the work of art which they commemorate is most honorable to the genius of the sculptor, who has been winning laurels ever since his removal to the tasteful city:

LINES

WRITTEN ON COMPLETING A MARBLE BUST OF THE LATE WASHINGTON ALLSTON

BY M. A. BRACKETT

 
Upward unto the living light
    Intensely thou dost gaze,
As if thy very soul wouldst seek
    In that far distant maze
 
 
Communion with those heavenly forms
    That lifting to the sight
Their golden wings and snowy robes,
    Float on a sea of light.
 
 
Anon far, far away they glide,
    Shooting through realms of bliss,
Till from the spirit’s eye they fade
    In heaven’s own bright abyss.
 
 
Such are the visions thou dost wake,
    Such are the thoughts that rise
In him who ’neath thy upturned brow
    Beholds thy spirit-eyes.
 
 
There is no stain upon that brow;
    Pure as thy holy life
Serene and calm, thy heavenly face—
    Within, no wasting strife.
 
 
How strangely have the swift hours flown
    As o’er the shapeless pile
I poured the full strength of my soul,
    Lost to all else the while!
 
 
When fell the last faint stroke which told
    That thou and I must part,
That all of life that I could give
    Was thine, how throbbed my heart!
 
 
Yet to this form that I have reared
    Should aught of praise belong,
Not unto me the merit due,
    But Him who made me strong:
 
 
Who with his ever fostering care
    My wayward steps did guide,
Through paths of flowers, in beauty cloth’d,
    Along life’s sunny tide.
 
 
Semblance of him, the great, the good,
    Whose task on earth is done;
Of those that walked in beauty’s light
    Thou wert the chosen one!
 

We should like to see in some appropriate journal a sketch of the Progress of Mechanics in the United States. Without any question, the Americans are, in respect of that branch of science, behind no nation or people on earth. And yet no longer ago than 1791, a clock-maker from London, after public advertisement of his arrival from England for that purpose, visited our scattered cities and towns to repair clocks! ‘Yankee ingenuity’ was not then as now synonymous with the accomplishment of any thing that can either be fabricated or ‘fixed’. ••• We have no remembrance of the communication referred to in a note from a correspondent at Albany, in which we find the following sentences: ‘If received, I hope it was not amenable to the censure in a late number of the Knickerbocker, of certain correspondence, for having been written ‘too carefully.’ Now I do flatter myself upon so writing, that compositors can have no excuse for blunders, though I am well aware that to be esteemed a Genious, one’s chirography should very nearly approach unintelligibility. If this be true, the patience and good nature of an Editor must be severely tried; but I incline to the opinion that a man of Genious need not model after Byron’s facsimile,’ and so forth. Our correspondent does write a good hand; so good indeed, that we lament, as we gaze at it, that he does not know how to spell. A man may certainly be a ‘Genious’ without being able to write a clerkly hand; but a man who is not a ‘Genious,’ ought at least to be able to spell the word. As to writing ‘too carefully,’ our censor has mistaken the letter for the spirit of our remarks. ••• The lines ‘To my Mother’ are replete with the poetry of feeling. Their literary execution however is marred by deficiencies, which although slight, require amending. Our correspondent we are sure has the true poetical vein; and we shall not despair of hearing from her again. ••• A very ‘inquiring’ correspondent desires to know ‘whether there is any thing below a quartette, in music?—a pintette or a gillette?’ He is also anxious, he says, to ‘ascertain whether Puffer Hopkins is any relation to the pious poet who was in partnership in the psalm and hymn way with old Uncle Sternhold, a great many years ago.’ Moreover, he considers it ‘a little curious’ that a black hen should lay a white egg; and states that he ‘would give something handsome to be certain whether or no Nebuchadnezzar’s hands, when he was out on grass, grew six-penny or ten-penny nails!’ His remaining queries are profane; indeed, the last one goes somewhat too near the edge. ••• ‘Ever anxious to please,’ as the advertisements have it, we have placed the original department of the Knickerbocker in a larger type; and it seems to us that we may ask with some confidence whether our readers ever saw a Magazine in a neater garniture than ‘this same?’ Only have the consideration to reciprocate our endeavors to please you, good Public, and you ‘shall see what you shall see.’ There are certain delinquents upon our books, to whom we would venture to insinuate, in the most delicate manner conceivable, that ‘it is high time somebody had a sight of somebody’s money.’ ••• A new style of frames for drawings, engravings, paintings, looking-glasses, etc., has recently been brought to great perfection, and into very general favor, by Mr. Weiser, at No. 43 Centre-street, near Pearl. They are composed externally of glass-veneerings, beautifully painted and shaded, so as to resemble different-tinted woods, tortoise-shell, or indeed any other colors that may be desired. These are painted on the inner side of the glass, which is so firmly cemented to the wood-frames as to be little liable to injury from jarring or even falling. With a gilt beading, they have a very beautiful appearance, by reason of the admirable lustre of the glass, which gives to them a polish finer than that of the most susceptible woods. They are, in short, exceedingly handsome, easily kept clean, always new and fresh, and what is worthy of mention, much cheaper than wood or gilt.

⁂ Will our readers have the kindness to exhibit the Advertisement of our Twenty-third Volume to their friends? It will be found on the second and third pages of the cover of the present number; and they can testify to the accuracy of its unexaggerated statements. Many articles in prose and verse await examination or insertion, and a more particular reference hereafter. Notices are in type of new publications from the presses of Messrs. Burgess and Stringer, M. W. Dodd, J. Winchester, the Langley’s, D. Appleton and Company, M. H. Newman, Wiley and Putnam, and of the ‘Columbian Magazine,’ which we are reluctantly compelled to defer to our February issue.