The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844

There never existed one who more lived and moved, and had his spiritual being in the affections; a sensitive nature wooed into life by the kindness of the faintest breath, but killingly crushed by the footsteps of the thoughtless or the cruel. For such a one, life is well deserving of the epithet applied to it by the poet Virgil: dulcis vita, sweet life. It is not a vulgar sensuality, a Lethean torpor; the triumph of the grosser nature over the eternal principle within. It is already a separation of the carnal from the spiritual; a refinement of fierce passions; a present divorce from a close and clinging alliance; a foretaste of the waters of life; in short, the very essence and devotion of a pure religion. Would it seem strangely inconsistent that a being of so sweet a character as I shall describe him, my poor young friend declared, with a gush of the bitterest tears, that he could not go into the dark valley, for he loved life with an inconceivable, passionate love? His was the very agony and pathos of the dying Hoffman, when almost with his latest breath, he alluded to ‘the sweet habitude of being.’ But it was only, thanks be to God! a short defection, a momentary clouding of that bright faith which was destined soon to see beyond the vale. His tears ceased to flow, glistened a moment, and then passed away as if they had been wiped by some gentle hand.

He leaned upon a soft couch, so very pale and haggard that his hour seemed very near. Costly books strewed his table; pictures and many exquisite things were scattered about with lavish hand; for wealth administered to refined luxury, and affection crowned him with blessings which gold can never buy. A mother hid from him her bitter tears, and spoke the words of cheerfulness; sisters pressed around him with the poignant grief an only brother can inspire; a beautiful betrothed betokened to him in irrepressible tears her depth and purity of love. Letters came to him hurried on the wings of friendship, and impressed on all their seals with sentiments which awakened hope. Youth and beauty hovered around him with their unintermitted care, and Age sent up its fervent prayers to heaven. Oh! who but the ungrateful would not love a life so filled with blandishments and crowned with blessings? Who could see all these receding without a sigh, or feel the pressure of that kiss of love as pure as if it had its origin in Heaven? But with the finest organization of intellectual mind, he had been accustomed to look at all things in the light of poetry. For one so constituted the pleasures which are in store are as inexhaustible as the works or mercies of his God. Not an hour which did not present some new phase of undiscovered beauty. He revelled in the beams of the morning; the rising sun was never a common object, nor its grandeur ever lost upon a soul so conscious of the sublime. For all beauty in nature he found a correspondent passion in the soul; and intoxicated alike with the music of birds or the perfume of flowers, found no weariness in a life whose current was like the living spring, pure, perennial and delightful.

To be so susceptible of pleasure, I would be willing to encounter all the keenness of pangs suffered by such natures. For such, the rational delights of a year are crowded into a day, an hour; and the ignorant reader of their obituary sighs mournfully, computing their lives by a false reckoning. Yet after all, we have been disposed to regard the death of the young as something unnatural; the violent rending asunder of soul and body; the penalty enacted of a life artificial in its modes and repugnant to nature. As Cicero has beautifully expressed it, it is like the sudden quenching of a bright flame; but the death of the virtuous Old is as expected, as free from terror as the sunset; it is the coming of a gentle sleep after a long and weary day.

Travers was in the very gush and spring-tide of his youth; yet crowned as he was with blessings, and every attribute for their most perfect enjoyment, the true secret of his too fond desire to live, was that he loved:

                        ‘He loved but one,And that loved one, alas! could ne’er be his.’

In her the poetry of his life centred; and as a river is swollen by divers rills, and tributary streams, so all the thoughts and passions of his soul hurried with a pure and rapid tide to mingle and be lost in one. But illness, and the long looking at death, and above all, the Christian’s hope, enable us one by one to break off the dearest ties, and to renounce whatever we most love on earth. And so my young friend in good time emerged from the cloud which obscured his prospects, and saw clearly beyond the vale. It is not long since, being well assured that his fate was inevitable, he expressed a desire, which he carried into execution, to visit once more his well-loved haunts, and take a solemn farewell of them all. As one grasps the hand of a friend at parting, he looked his last at things which were inanimate. He rambled in the deep, dark groves whither he had so often gone in health, to enjoy their Gothic grandeur, to breathe the spirit of the religion they inspire, or to murmur in their deepest shades the accents of his pure and passionate love. He inscribed his name for the last time upon the smooth bark of a tree; then leaving them forever, as he emerged into the gay meadows, he turned to me with tears and said:

‘Ye woods, and wilds, whose melancholy gloomAccords with my soul’s sadness, and draws forthThe voice of sorrow from my bursting heart!’

He clambered the steep hill-side, and sinking exhausted beneath a smitten tree, enjoyed the picturesqueness of the scene; the meadows, the streams, the pasture-grounds, the dappled herds, the sereneness of the summer skies, cleft by the wing of the musical lark, in all their purity of blue. He sat beside the sea-shore, and watched the big billows breaking and bursting at his feet; and as he looked where the waters and the sky met together in the far horizon, he exclaimed, ‘Now indeed do I long to fly away!’ Then he returned to his pillow, never to go forth again. ‘I shall die,’ he said, ‘when the season is in its prime and glory; when the fields are green and the trees leafy; and the sunlight shall shimmer down through the branches where the birds sing over my grave.’ Then casting a look at his books, where they stood neatly arranged on the well-filled shelves, he lamented that he had not time to garner half the stores of a beautiful literature; to satisfy his perpetual thirst; to drink to the full at the ‘pure wells of English undefiled.’ There were the Greek poets, whom he would have more intimately cherished, (he had been lately absorbed in the sublimity of the ‘Prometheus Vinctus;’) there was the great master and anatomizer of the human heart, who knew how to detail the springs of action common to all ages, the paragon of that deep learning which is not derived from books, but gleaned by his genius from all nature with a rare intuition, and with an incomprehensible power of research. In him what mines of instruction, what sources of undiscovered delight, what philosophy yet to be grappled with, to be laid to the heart! Charles Lamb has with a quaint melancholy depicted the pain of parting from his books, and from the indefinable delights laid up in each dear folio. Yet after all, what is the literature of one age but the reproduction, the remoulding, the condensation of the literature of another; the loss and destruction of its waste ore, but the re-setting of its gems, and the renewed investiture of all its beauties. There is no glowing thought, no exquisite conception, no sublime and beautiful idea, which is not imperishable as the mind itself, and which shall not be carried on from age to age, or if destroyed or lost upon the written page, revived by some happy coincidence of intellectual being, and perpetuated and enjoyed, here or hereafter, wherever mind exists. A communion like this will be a communion of spirits. A finer organization, expanded faculties shall rapidly consume the past; but oh, the future! what glories are to be crowded into its immensity? How shall knowledge be commensurate with the stars, or wander over the universe? Now bring me the written Revelation, the written word. It clasps within its volume all excellencies, all sublimities of speech; secrets which could not be developed by reason, nor found in the arcana of human wisdom. Henceforth this shall be my only companion, and its promises shall light my passage over the grave.’

I marked the lustrous beaming of his eye, and from that time he looked at all things on the ‘bright side.’ His very love could think upon its object without a tear, and look forward to a pure and eternal re-union. At last the hour of dissolution came. I knew it by its unerring symptoms; yet still I listened to his passionate, poetic converse. It was for the last time; I was in the chamber of death. What observer can mistake it; the darkened windows, the stillness, the grouping, the subdued sobs, the awful watchfulness for the identical moment when a lovely and intellectual spirit breaks its bonds, as if the strained vision could detect the spiritual essence. What a heart-sickness comes over those who love! What a change in the appearance of all things! The very sun-light is disagreeable, the very skies a mockery; the very roses unlovely. We look out of the casement, and see the external face of nature still the same; how heartless, how destitute of sympathy, now appears the whole world without, with the home, that inner world! How can those birds sing so sweetly on the branches; how can the flowers bloom as brightly as ever; how can those children play so gleefully; how can yon group laugh with such unconcern! He is an only son. Though wan, and wasted in all his lineaments, his pure brow, his gentle expression, tell that he was worthy to be loved. Can no human power restore him to the arms of a fond mother? It is in vain! The spirit flutters upon his lips; it has departed. But it has left behind it a token; a clear, bright impress; a smile of undissembled love and purity; an expression beaming with the last unutterable peace; the graces which were so winning upon earth, but which shall attain their perfection in heaven.

FREEDOM’S BEACON

‘To-day, to-day it speaks to us! Its future auditories will be the generations of men, as they rise up before it and gather round it’

Webster.‘To-day it speaks to us!’    Of ‘the times that tried men’s souls,’When hostile ships rode where yon bay    Its deep blue waters rolls:When the war-cloud dark was lowering    Portentous o’er the land;When the vassal troops of Britain came    With bayonet, sword and brand.‘To-day it speaks to us!’    Of brave deeds nobly done,When patriot hearts beat high with hope,    Ere Freedom’s cause was won:Of the conflict fierce, where fell    New-England’s valiant men,Who waved their country’s banner high,    Though warm blood dyed it then!And will its voice be still    When the thousands of to-day,Who have come like pilgrim-worshippers,    From earth shall pass away?Oh no! ‘the potent orator’    To future times shall tellWhere Prescott, Brooks, and Putnam fought,    Where gallant Warren fell.’Twill speak of these, and others—    Of brave men, born and nurstIn stormy times, on Danger’s lap.    Who dared Oppression’s worst:Of Vernon’s chief, and he who came    Across the Atlantic flood,To offer to the patriot’s God    A sacrifice of blood.Long as the ‘Bay State’ cherishes    One thought of sainted sires,Long as the day-god greets her cliffs,    Or gilds her domes and spires;Long as her granite hills remain    Firm fixed, so long shall beYon Monument on Bunker’s height    A beacon for the free!

A WINTER TRIP TO TRENTON FALLS

IN THREE SCENES

SCENE FIRST

Morning; eight on the clock. Billing’s Hotel, Trenton. Outside, a clear bright sun glancing down through an atmosphere sparkling with frost, upon as fine a road for a sleigh-ride as ever tempted green-mountain boys and girls for a moonlight flit. Inside, a well-furnished breakfast-table, beef-steak, coffee, toast, etc., etc. On the one side of it your correspondent; serious, as if he considered breakfast a thing to be attended to. He is somewhat, as the lady on the other side of the table says, somewhat in the ‘sear leaf,’ by which name indeed she is pleased to call him; but there is enough of spring in her, to suffice for all deficiencies in him. Like the morning, she is a little icy, but sunshiny, sparkling, exhilarating, thoughtful, youthful—and decided. She takes no marked interest in the breakfast.

‘Sear leaf!’ Madam, say on.

‘I wish to go to the Falls.’

‘To what!’

‘To the Falls—to Trenton Falls.’

He drops his knife and fork. ‘Whew! what! in winter?—in the snow?—on the ice?’

‘Certainly; that is just the season.’

‘Crazy! You were there in the summer–’

‘I know it; every one goes there in summer. I must see them now. There’s no time like it; in their drapery of snow and ice; in the sternness and solitude, the wild grandeur of winter!’

‘How you run on! You’ll miss the cars at Utica.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You’ll be a day later in New-York.’

‘I don’t care. I must see them in their hoary head.’

‘You wish to see if they look as well in gray hairs as I do, perhaps.’

‘Yes.’

‘You really must go?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are a very imperious young lady; and allow me to say, that although some young gentlemen–’

Lady, interrupting him: ‘Shall I ring the bell?’ She rings it. Enter landlord. She orders the horse and cutter.

SCENE SECOND

Enter landlord: ‘All ready, Sir.’

‘Will you allow me to ask if your feet are warmly clad, Madam?’

‘I am ready for the ascent of Mont Blanc, or a ramble with a hunter upon the shore of Hudson’s Bay.’

‘Very well; now for the cutter.’

‘Landlord, just step round, if you please, and put that buffalo-robe a little more closely about the lady. Hold fast, hostler! That horse likes any thing better than standing still.’

‘Ay, ay, Sir.’

‘Now we are ready. Let go! Away we dash; ‘on for the Falls!’ Gently, my good horse, gently round this corner; now ‘go ahead!’ How do you like my steed, Madam?’

‘A rein-deer could not transact this little business better.’

‘Is not this a glorious morning?’

‘Vivifying to the utmost! How far we fail of becoming acquainted with the face of nature, when we only come to look upon it in summer! It is as if one should only look upon the human face in the hues of youth, and never upon the gray head; on the brow where high thoughts have left their impress; on the face which deeper and sterner knowledge, research, patience, have made eloquent, while stealing away the rose. As for me, though I am but a girl, I like to see sometimes an old man; one who in the trial-hour of life has kept his integrity; and when the snows of age fall on him, he gently bends beneath their weight, like those old cedars yonder by the way-side, beneath their weight of snow. Wherever the eye can pierce their white vesture, all is still deep spring-green beneath; unchanged at heart—strong and true. So I like to look on you, Sere Leaf.’

‘Thank you! You have a gift at compliments.’

‘Summer reminds one of feeling and Lalla Rookh; Winter; of intellect and Paradise Lost.’

‘How your voice rings in this clear air! Do you know what Dean Swift says a sleigh-ride is like? ‘Sitting in the draft of a door with your feet in a pail of cold water!’’

‘Abominable! libellous! Exhilaration and comfort are so blended in me that– But is not that the house?’

‘Ay; here we are! Smoke from the chimney; some one is there to welcome us, no doubt. Gently, my Bucephalus, through this gate! There comes the landlord. Treat my horse well, if you please; we are going to the Falls.’

SCENE THIRD

‘Madam, are you ready for the woods?’

‘Quite. How still the air is! Why don’t you thank me for insisting on coming? You have no gratitude. There’s not two inches of snow on the ground. It all seems piled upon these grand old trees. There! see that tuft of it falling and now spreading into a cloud of spangles in the sun-light which streams down by those old pines. Hark! the roar of waters! The sound seems to find new echoes in these snow-laden boughs, and lingers as if loth to depart.’

‘This way, Madam; the trees are bent too low over the path to allow a passage there. We are near the bank which overlooks the first fall. Take my arm; the brink may be icy. Lo! the abyss!’

‘Magnificent! What a rush of waters! How the swollen stream foams and rages!’

‘And see! the pathway under the shelving rock where we passed in summer is completely colonnaded by a row of tall ice pillars; gigantic, symmetrical—fluted, even. What Corinthian shaft ever equalled them! What capital ever rivalled the delicacy or grace of those ice-and-hemlock wreaths about their summits!’

‘And see those pines, rank above rank, higher and higher; stately and still and snow-robed like tall centinels! Perhaps, Sear Leaf, the Old Guard might have stood thus in the Russian snows over Napoleon, when he bivouacked on the hill-side, and sought rest while his spirit was as wildly tossed as the waters that dash beneath us.’

‘Yes, Lady; or it may be that these trees in their perpetual green, in their calmness and dignity, may be emblematic of the way in which the angels who watch on earth look down on man. Perfect rest on perfect unrest.’

‘Ah! you grow gloomy.’

‘Took I not my hue from you? On, then, for the higher fall!’

‘These trees seem to have increased in stature since the summer we were here. As we proceed, the snow lies thicker on them, and the branches seem closer locked; the roof overhead more complete. How still the woods are! Our very foot-fall is noiseless.’

Influenced by the scene, they pass on in silence along the path which leads round the foot of the cone-like hill toward the cottage by the higher Falls, whose deep roar now breaks upon the ear, and rolls through the motionless forest. Thus then the Lady to Sear Leaf:

‘Has God any other temple like this?’

‘Never a one, reared by any hand save His!’

‘What organ ever rolled so deep a bass through arches so grand! See how the sunlight glances amid the gnarled branches of the roof, and here and there falls through on the floor below; making those low icy forms look like the shrubs of the valley of diamonds in the eastern story. Just so it is that the light of truth struggles through entangled and dark mazes of human error, and here and there illuminate some humble mind with its pure ray; while others, tall and strong and haughty, like those old trees, are left darkened.’

‘You have a noble nature, and should be nobly mated. But here we are upon the brow of the hill which leads to the cottage. The snow is deeper here: gently, now; a slide down this bank might check even your enthusiasm. Take my arm; there—so; safe at the bottom! Let us go forward upon the platform of the cottage over the Falls. No bench? Well, sit upon my cloak.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘You must. There; be pleased to sit and rest. What a gorgeous display of frost-work and flashing light on fantastic forms of ice! How the spray rises and waves and changes its hues in the sun! And the trees, how delicately each sprig of the evergreens is covered with a dress so white and shining ‘as no fuller on earth could whiten them.’’

‘Even so, Sear Leaf; And I love to think that the same one who wove the glorious dress to which you refer, to gladden Peter, made this dazzling drapery, and gave us eyes to look upon it. It recalls to my mind the song of the Seraphim: ‘The whole earth is full of thy glory!’’

‘Did they not, Lady, sing of a moral glory?’

‘No; decidedly no. There was no moral glory in the earth when they sang that song. Even the chosen people of God are then and there denounced as having abandoned Him. No; it was the glory of the works of His hands, such as we look upon this day, which elicited their praise.’

‘I believe your exegesis is right. The scene is glorious. Summer in all her loveliness has no dress like this. She has no hues equal to the play of colors on these walls and columns of ice, extending far as the eye can reach down the ravine, and towering in more than colossal grandeur. The water is in treble volume, and force and voice; and as it rolls its white folds of spotless foam down the valley, it reminds one of the great white throne of the Revelations, and this wavy foam the folds of the robe that filled the temple.’

‘It is inexpressibly, oppressively beautiful, Sear Leaf!’

‘Speaking of Revelation, how accurate is the description in Manfred of this scene!’

‘Let me hear it:’

‘It is not noon; the sun-bow’s rays still archThe torrent with the many hues of heaven,And roll the sheeted silver’s waving columnO’er the crags headlong perpendicular,And fling its lines of foaming light alongAnd to and fro, like the pale courser’s tail,The giant steed to be bestrode by Death,As told in the apocalypse.’

‘Well, Madam, why are you silent? Shall we go?’

‘No. I could stay here till nightfall. I was thinking of the lines succeeding those you have repeated:

                    –‘No eyesBut mine now drink the sight of loveliness,’’

‘Am I nobody?’

‘We are alone here. How many of the light of heart, in youth and strength and beauty, climbed these rocks, shouted in these old woods, and gathered the summer flowers along these banks—and passed away! Where are they now! Some who wrote their names in the traveller’s book in this cottage, have them now written by others on their tombstone. One I knew well, who, full of health and beauty, passed up this wild ravine, who has faded like the flowers she culled, and is now in her father’s house, to pass in a few more days to heaven. And of all the rest, did we know their history, what a picture would it give of life!’

‘You are thoughtful for one so young.’

‘Are not twenty years enough to make one a moment thoughtful? Tell me now, thou of the gray head, of what art thou thinking?’

‘Of earth’s fairest scene, blent with her fairest daughter.’

‘Bravo! For what fair lady on your native mountains did you frame that compliment twenty years ago?’

‘Madam!’

‘Well?’

‘It is time to return.’

G. P. T.

THE RUINS OF BURNSIDE

Sadly, amid this once delightful plain,    Stern ruin broods o’er crumbling porch and wall,And shapeless stones, with moss o’ergrown, remain    To tell, Burnside, the story of thy fall:These ancient oaks, although decaying, green,Like weary watchers, guard the solemn scene.Where cowslip cup and daisy sweetly bloomed,    Hemlock and fern, in rank luxuriance spread;Where rose and lily once the air perfumed,    Wild dock and nettle sprout, no fragrance shed:And here no more the throstle’s mellow layAwakes with gladsome song the jocund day.O’er yon church wall the ivy creeps, as fain    To shield it from thy withering touch, Decay;No pastor ever more shall there explain    The sacred text, nor with his hearers, prayTo the Eternal Throne for grace divine;Nor sing His praise, nor taste the bread and wine.And here of yore the parish school-house stood,    Where flaxen-pated boys were taught to read;At merry noon, in wild unfettered mood,    They rushed with boisterous glee to stream or mead;The care-worn teacher homeward wends his way,And freer feels than his free boys at play.Yon roofless cot, which still the alders shade,    While all around is desolate and sere,Perchance the dwelling of some village maid,    Who fondly watched her aged parents here;And with her thrifty needle, or her wheel,Earned for the lowly three the scanty meal.Close by yon smithy stood the village inn,    Where farmers clinched each bargain o’er a glass;And oft, amid mirth’s unrestricted din,    Would Time with softer foot, and swifter pass.The husband here his noisy revel kept,While by her lonely hearth the good wife wept.At lazy twilight, ’neath yon ancient elm,    The village statesmen met in grave debate,And sagely told, if at their country’s helm,    How bravely they would steer the ship of stateFrom treacherous quicksands or from leeward shore,And all they said, betrayed their wondrous lore.I’ve seen the thoughtless rustic pass thee by;    In thee, perhaps, his ancestors were bred,And, at my question, point without a sigh,    Where calmly rest thy unremembered dead;I asked thy fate, and, as he answered, smiled,‘Thus looked these ruins since I was a child.’Methinks, Burnside, I see thee in thy prime,    When thou wert blessed with innocent content,Thy robust dwellers, prodigal of time,    Yet still with cheerful heart to labor went;Nor envied lordly pomp, with courtly train,    Of empty rank and fruitful acres vain.Methinks I see a summer evening pass,    When thou wert peopled, and in sinless gleeMethinks the lusty ploughman and his lass    Dance with unmeasured mirth, enraptured, free,While seated from the joyous throng apart,The blind musician labors at his art.Though fancy, wayward as the vagrant wind,    May picture scenes of unambitious taste,Yet vainly now, we look around to find    Thy early beauty mid this dreary waste;Unmourned, unmissed, thus in thy fallen state,Thou art an emblem of the common fate!Before the stern destroyer all shall bow,    And sweet Burnside, like thine, ’twill be my lotTo lie a ruin, tenantless and low,    By friends unmentioned, and by foes forgot:As earth’s uncounted millions I shall be—No mortal think, no record speak of me!Kenneth Rookwood.