PORTRAIT AND LANDSCAPE PAINTING

CONTRASTED.

BY HORACE SMITH, ESQ.

THE portrait painter, doomed to trace
Each tenth transmitter's foolish face,
And pore on human features,
Copies from symbols that express
Each foible, fault, and littleness
Of all his fellow creatures.

Ugly and base together rush,
To purchase from his venal brush
Its flattering expedients:

And seldom can the head or heart
Be elevated by an art

That deals in such ingredients.

But, Nature! he whose pencil loves
Thy plains and mountains, waves and groves,
With heavenly azure vaulted,
Looks on a face from passion free,
And feels himself by sympathy

Soothed, gratified, exalted.

With every change that hails his sight,

His inexhaustible delight

And reverence are greater;
For beauties of created things
Give to his spirit quicker wings
To soar to their Creator.

A A

CONSTANCY.

BY C. REDDING, ESQ.

I SAW her in her looks of light

And beauty's calmness, like the sky When the rich summer eve is bright, Glorious in its tranquillity.

She to a sylvan fountain came,
And leaned against a shivered tree,
Her pure cheek mantling into flame
As I approached her silently.

For neither spoke but with the eyes

Can tongue Love's language speak so well? Sweet looks and tale-betraying sighs Linked our young hearts in mystic spell.

Our spirits wedded from that hour,
Two sun-beams blended in one ray,
That none can see commingling pour
Their warm light on the brow of day.

She placed a token in my hand,

Το prove her vow she'd never break, That her free spirit she'd command,

Though fraud might blind or force might take.

And thus we parted! - Years swept on, Wide oceans rolled their waves between, In heart each loving each alone

Through every change of time and scene.

They led her forth in bride's array,
As marble saints, tearless and cold,
The victim of parental sway,

The sacrifice to power and gold.

Her heart they led not

-that was true,

She told them, to another's love, Fixed, till the source of being flew To spirit-isles of bliss above.

This bride of body without soul; Nor long the time that passed away, Ere she had quitted earth's controul.

And I returned from far employ,

And found how true her heart had been, Then sought her tomb-oh! tombs have joy For mourners over those within!

And there was graven on her urn
That token secret but to me;
While I, alas! did but return

To mourn o'er buried constancy!

MEMORY.

BY J. FAIRBAIRN, ESQ.

THE Muse in solitude was nurst,
In solitude her songs began;
From some lone burning bosom burst
The tide of song, that, as it ran
In glory o'er the golden sands

Of memory back to childhood's prime,
Revived the drooping shadowy bands
Of feelings, tender or sublime;
Thoughts, images, beloved or feared,

Tears, smiles, regrets — whate'er the wing
Of Time had scattered first, then seared,
Or left in darkness withering —
All were renewed in that blest hour
Of boundless passion, boundless power.

The Past

no more a dreary waste Which the sad spirit feared to roam Now charmed the wanderer from her haste To seek with hope a distant home.

She now beheld in Fancy's light,
Serene, eternal, ever new,

Bowers, skies, more beautiful and bright
Than her aspiring ardour drew,
In dreams, for coming years of bliss,
And all her own; - no mortal power,
Nor chance, nor change, can snatch from this
Clear mirror one enchanted flower:

No fears disturb, no sorrows wait
In this fair world redeemed from fate.

SONNET.

WITH marvellous natures we familiar grow
Up from our infancy; the sun at noon
Wakes not our wonder, nor the wan broad moon,
That piles the azure void with peaks of snow,
And pales the fiery stars. Like seraphs glow
Heaven's starry host — yet worships not the mind.
In silence and in darkness there is power;
A soul of beauty intense in leaf and flower;
And a mild spirit in the stirring wind:
But these unto our senses are grown old,
And have no mystery. Natures new and bold
Have on us come as light unto the blind :
Minds, godlike minds, we almost could adore-
Free, boundless, vast as seas that have no shore.
R. II.