SONG.* OH the lad from Tuckahoe. That all the truth may know. From the day that first I knew him, That my love shall still pursue him, He alighted at the door Where my aunt and I were spinning, My aunt her anger hiding, When he comes from Tuckahoe. This poem and all the subsequent ones (the Cricket ex cepted) have been copied from scraps of paper, since the death of Dr. Shaw. J. B. DE MATOS. SONNET III. NOW forty years have pass'd with flowing tide, Now frequent tremors lead the hand astray, For soon the fountain shall no stream supply, Hopes! fears! desires! and joys! perfidious crew! And idle love! I bid you all adieu! And fame, so long, so fondly sought-away! FROM GESSNER-1807. WHITHER fairest, hast thou stray'd? Tell me now what cooling air And with the glossy ringlets plays. Dost thou by the streamlet's side Gently stealing slumbers prove?— Flow thou stream with silent tide, Do not!-do not wake my love! Should she then in slumber deep But if present to her eyes Should my hated rival seem, Rise! with hoarser murmur rise! Rouse her from the guilty dream! FROM clime to clime a ranger- Yet oft when day is over, Some whispering spirit cries, How swift the hours have hasted, Before thy youth be wasted There that lost peace shall find thee, And there for thee is pleasure, THRO' the forest the sound of the axe has been heard, And the elms wave no more their high tops to the gale, The pines on the hill that so tow'ring appear'd, And the poplars are fallen, that shaded the vale. For the plough drives its course, and the harvest shall wave O'er each breeze-courted hill and each interval dell, Where once the fierce Mohawk and Seneca grave And the wily Oneida delighted to dwell. To the fields, where his fathers establish'd their home, To the woods, where the chase they were wont to For the steps of the white men have printed the ground, Yet the sigh to an exile that ever is due, Tho' breath'd by a stranger, shall follow him still;— |