The mountain sentinel. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1844-1853, 1851-07-24

c 1 0 IC / P OETRY.
An African Legend.

&OAAo
A legend wild and strange,
OF q burning cline, where the sultry air
Is never known to change;
But oft think, in my mOurnful hours,
Of that legend sad and strange.
Twas of a traveller, young and bold,
In Afric's fatal land;
The lordly Niger had tempted him
To tread the glittering sand;
To leave the cot where his sisters dwelt,
a happy household band
But he grew lonely and sick at heart,
And pined to see again
His childhood's home, where the fragrant
flowers
Crept over the window-pane;
And longed for the welcome waiting him
Far over the tossing main.
He thought of one, with her earnest eyes,
In that far land away,
Whose sunny hair and radiant brow
He dreamed of night and day;
Till, starting he cried, in Afric's land
He would no longer stay.
But, alas! ere he could reach the shore,
Came tidings Ger the wave,
That she he loved with a love intense
Lay shrouded in the grave;
Then blanched the cheek of that trav'Ier bold,
And trembled then the brave!
But strange light shone in his deep dark eye;
He laughed in frantic glee;
u will CO. he said, 'and seek the lost
In desert wild and free;
l shall find her where the sand lies piled
In billows, ike the sea-"
Twas in vain they told him she had died
In his own sunny land;
That the willows waved above her grave,
By summer breezes famed;
And the earth was heaped upon her breast,
Instead of desert sand
1t was all in vain '.She is not dead"
Said he, with cheerful air;
Il hear her voice, which the scented winds
Have hasted here to bear;
Her silver tones from the desert waste
They bid me seek her there"
--o "NAN AOA III, tldI ueSOldte one,
To the desert bleak and vast,s
Where the snow white sand in columns high
Its glittering wreaths did cast;
But he needed not the eddying sand,
Nor yet the scOrching blast
But at last he weary grew, and faint.
And DINNER was his eye;
Till with parched lip and fevered brow.
He laid him down to die,
where the burning sand in many q wave
Went wildly surging by.
There came to him as he fainting lay,
white-plumed Message-bird;
And strangely like was the tune she sung
To one he oft had heard;
And her earnest eyes within his heart
thousand memories stirred.
lWas the eye' the voice of her, the lost,
That bird with plume of snow;
With dew from her wing she wet his lips,
And famed him soft and low,
I'LL the fever was quenched within his veins.
And cooled his brow's fierce glow.
Then he rose refreshed, and journeyed on;
But lowering round him there
was that wondrous bird, with radiant ewes.
And pinions brightly fair;
Ana she sung, in music sweet and wild.
Full many plaintive air.
Nhen the desert breath came thick and hot
She, futtering, waved her wing.
Ill., fresh from its folds of living light.
The soft, cool air would spring;
As the perfumed incense sweetly floats,
Which silver censers fling.
Ana when the angry simeon came,
All closely she would fold
Her piniOns pale round his trembling form.
Upon the dreary world,
And shelter him, till darkly bv
The mighty storm had rolled.
The legend tells that he wanders yet,
With strength that ne'er shall fail:
And travlers say they have sometimes seen
> That bird with snowy sail,
or heard the sound of her music sweet,
Borne on the desert gale.
SONNET.
Prove all things, hold fast to that which is good
will not wrap around me, for a robe. !
ms WOrn-out mantle, Custom. | Would he
That which my soul proclaims should be-free
To act upon conviction. / would probe
Ev'n to the very centre of its globe
The deepest depths of Thought, and seek for