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HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT,

THE sad and solemn night

Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious hosts of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires :
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and round the heavens, and go.

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they:
Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set;
Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air
And eve, that round the earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;
There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun

The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud,

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,

Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,

Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,

Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good, That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

WHERE ARE THE FRIENDS OF MY YOUTH?
Long years had elapsed, since I gazed on the scene
Which my fancy had robed in its freshness of green,
The spot, when a schoolboy, all thoughtless, I strayed
By the bank of the stream, in the gloom of the shade.
I thought of the friends who had roamed with me there,
When the sky was so blue, and the flowers were so fair;
All scattered-all sundered, by mountain and wave,
And some in the cold, silent womb of the grave.
I thought of the river, all stirless, and bright
As the face of the sky in a mild summer night;
And I thought of the trees under which we had strayed,
Of the broad leafy boughs, with their coolness of shade;
And I hoped, though disfigured, some token to find,
Of the names, and the carvings, impressed on the rind.-
All cager I hastened the scene to behold,

Rendered sacred and dear, by the feelings of old;
And I deemed, that unaltered my eye should explore,
This refuge, this haunt, this Elysian of yore.
'Twas a dream.-Not a token, or a trace could I view,"
Of the names that I loved, of the scenes that I knew,
Like the shadow of night, at the dawning of day,
Like a tale that is told, they have vanished away.
And I thought the lone river that murmured along,
Was more dull in its music, more sad in its song,
Since the birds that had nested, and warbled above,
Had all fled from its bank, at the fall of the grove.
I paused-and the moral came bome to my heart:
Behold how of earth all the glories depart!
Our visions are baseless-our hope but a gleam-
Our staff but a reed, and our life but a dream.
Then oh! let us look, let our prospect allure
To scenes that can fade not, to realms that endure;
To glories, to blessings that triumph sublime,
O'er the blightings of change, and the ruins of time.

AN AUTUMNAL EVENING THOUGHT. Why sighs my pensive spirit, as alone

It marks, in lonely thought, the wind's wild sweep Through the leaf-shaken branches?-Music deep Of plaintive Autumn!-ah! its saddened tone Revives a silent echo: for, to me,

Those falling leaves-that mournful minstrelsy,

Thy voice. lone spirit of the autumn blast!

Tell of Time's changes,-life's oft varying hue;
Bend pensive thought on tracings of the past,
And o'er the future's wide and misty view.

Then anxious cares my drooping mind o'ercast,

Vain cares-best left where Faith's high trust is due; O may this earth-bound soul be there forgiven,

And place its strength anew, in ALL-SUSTAINING HEAVEN,