Like maids in haste to be fair,
Lightly themselves adorn

With a scarf the Spring at the door
Has sportively flung before,

Or a stranded cloud of the morn!

Afar, through the mellow hazes
Where the dreams of June are stayed,
The hills, in their vanishing mazes,
Carry the flush, and fade!
Southward they fall, and reach
To the bay and the ocean beach,
Where the soft, half-Syrian air
Blows from the Chesapeake's
Inlets, coves, and creeks
On the fields of Delaware!
And the rosy lakes of flowers,
That here alone are ours,
Spread into seas that pour
Billow and spray of pink,
Even to the blue wave's brink,
All down the Eastern Shore!

*

*

*

Bayard Taylor.

T

TO DELAWARE.

HRICE welcome to thy sisters of the East, To the strong tillers of a rugged home, With spray-wet locks to Northern winds released, And hardy feet o'erswept by ocean's foam;

And to the young nymphs of the golden West,
Whose harvest mantles, fringed with prairie bloom,
Trail in the sunset, - O redeemed and blest,
To the warm welcome of thy sisters come!
Broad Pennsylvania down her sail-white bay
Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from her plains,
And the great lakes, where Echo, free alway,

Moaned never shoreward with the clank of chains,
Shall weave new sun-bows in their tossing spray,
And all their waves keep grateful holiday.
And, smiling on thee through her mountain rains,
Vermont shall bless thee; and the Granite peaks,
And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, shall wear
Their snow-crowns brighter in the cold keen air;
And Massachusetts, with her rugged cheeks
O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn to thee,
When, at thy bidding, the electric wire
Shall tremble northward with its words of fire;
Glory and praise to God! another State is free!

John Greenleaf Whittier.

MIDDLE STATES.

A

Alleghany Mountains, Pa.

CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES.

S looked the traveller for the world below,
The lively morning breeze began to blow,

The magic curtain rolled in mists away,
And a gay landscape laughed upon the day.
As light the fleeting vapors upward glide,
Like sheeted spectres on the mountain side,
New objects open to his wondering view
Of various form, and combinations new,
A rocky precipice, a waving wood,
Deep winding dell, and foaming mountain flood,
Each after each, with coy and sweet delay,
Broke on his sight, as at young dawn of day,
Bounded afar by peak aspiring bold,

Like giant capt with helm of burnished gold.

Now down the mountain's rugged western side,

Descending slow, our lowly travellers hied,

Deep in a narrow glen, within whose breast

The rolling fragments of the mountain rest;
Rocks tumbled on each other, by rude chance,
Crowned with gay fern, and mosses, met the glance,
Through which a brawling river braved its way,
Dashing among the rocks in foamy spray.
Here, mid the fragments of a broken world,
In wild and rough confusion idly hurled,
Where ne'er was heard the woodman's echoing stroke,
Rose a huge forest of gigantic oak;

With heads that towered half up the mountain's side,
And arms extending round them far and wide,
They looked coeval with old mother Earth,
And seemed to claim with her an equal birth.

The forest roared, the everlasting oak
In writhing agonies the storm bespoke,
The live leaves scattered wildly everywhere,
Whirled round in maddening circles in the air,
The stoutest limbs were scattered all around,
The stoutest trees a stouter master found,
Crackling and crashing, down they thundering go,
And seem to crush the shrinking rocks below :
Then the thick rain in gathering torrents poured,
Higher the river rose, and louder roared;
And on its dark, quick eddying surface bore
The gathered spoils of Earth along its shore ;
While trees, that not an hour before had stood
The lofty monarchs of the stately wood,
Now whirling round and round with furious force,
Dash 'gainst the rocks that break the torrent's force,
And shiver, like a reed by urchin broke