SOME OF OUR EARLIER POETESSES.
It is among the dii minores that we discover a large proportion of our choicer verse. The glory of these lesser singers, when at their best, outshines all but the brightest effulgence of their superiors. Particularly in their scenic song do we repeatedly meet most glowing passages; and it may not be amiss to here renew our acquaintance with certain of them. The poetry of America does not suffer in the hands of such men as Gallagher on shore, and Sargent on the sea. For instance, the opening of "Miami Woods," by the former author:
"The Autumn time is with us! Its approach
Was heralded, not many days ago,
By hazy skies that veiled the brazen sun,
And sea-like murmurs from the rustling corn,
And low-voiced brooks that wandered drowsily
By purpling clusters of the juicy grape,
Swinging upon the vine. And now, 'tis here,
And what a change hath passed upon the face
Of Nature, where the waving forest spreads,
Then robed in deepest green! All through the night
The subtle frost hath plied its mystic art;
And in the day the golden sun hath wrought
True wonders; and the winds of morn and even
Have touched with magic breath the changing leaves.
And now, as wanders the dilating eye
Athwart the varied landscape, circling far,
What gorgeousness, what blazonry, what pomp
Of colors, burst upon the ravished sight!
Here, where the maple rears its yellow crest,
A golden glory; yonder, where the oak
Stands monarch of the forest, and the ash
Is girt with flame-like parasite, and broad
The dogwood spreads beneath, a rolling field
Of deepest crimson; and afar, where looms
The gnarled gum, a cloud of bloodiest red."
Again, from the "Falls of a Forest Stream," by another Western poet. Would that the mightier never wrote after a lesser fashion:
"O'er all there broods repose; the breeze
Lingers as it goes past;
The squirrel's foot sounds loud among
The leaves by Autumn cast;
And the lonely bird, whose glancing wing
Flits restlessly among
The boughs, stops doubtfully, and checks
The sudden burst of song.
"And silently, year after year
Is ushered in and goes,
And time, amid these quiet scenes,
No other measure knows
But the wakening and the sleep of birds.
The dawn and shut of day,
And the changes of the forest leaves,
From budding to decay.
"The wilderness is still; the long,
Long sleep of ages gone,
With its unmoving presence fills
These distant shades and lone;
And changing dynasties, and thrones
Cast down, send hither brief
And fainter echoes than the fall
Of Autumn's faded leaf."
Such poets are not rare among us; their song, though wafted to no great distance, come fresh and fragrant as the very forest. But we have promised ourselves to devote this pa per to the female poets. Maria Gowen, better known as Maria Brooks, and perhaps better still as Maria dell' Occidente, has been dead about thirty-five years. How many of the present generation are aware that this, their countrywoman, was pronounced by Southey to be "the most impassioned and imaginative of all poetesses." Mrs. Browning has since put England in a position to dispute the title with us; but the star of our own poetess is burning still. Beautiful throughout her being, in soul, mind, and body, gifted with those high and mysterious powers that so rarely take up their abode in the flesh, Maria Brooks must be remembered as one of the most wonderful of American women. A life of sorrow is too often the price of unusual endowments, and this suffering one paid it in full. At the age of fourteen, she was betrothed to a Boston merchant. We have not the space to give her after history. The reader may learn enough from these four stanzas, direct from her own heart:
"The bard has sung, God never formed a soul
Without its own peculiar mate, to meet
Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole
Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete.
"But thousand evil things there are that hate
To look on happiness; these hurt, impede.
And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate,
Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine, and pant, and bleed.
"And as the dove to far Palmyra flying,
From where her native founts of Antioch beam,
Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing,
Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream—
