The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-10-31

OF OctoDer IN the year OF our Lord 1874 and of the
Independence Of the United States the ninety
NINTH
U. S. GRANT.
HAMILTON FISH, Secretary of State
Recent Publications.
HAzEL-BLossoMs. By John Greenleaf Whittier.
Published by j. R. Osgood g. Co. For sale by Bal
ley & Noyes.
In presence of any work of Mr.. Whittier,
equally beloved and respected as a poet and
IS man-criticism becomes admiration;
and it only remains for the reviewer to ex-
press his enjoyment of the book as whole,
and indicate his appreciation of the choice
passages which have given him especial
pleasure. The poems contained in the pres
snt volume have been published at various
lines in the atlantic Monthly. We tran
scribe the beautiful verses which form the
prelude to these songs of the poets own au-
tumn, penetrated with the mellowed richness
of the Indian summer-a warmth made more
glowing for chilly days before it,; a summer
Of fruitage born of the earlier summers full
Tiled blossoming. its glory veiled, not hidden,
by the silver mist that the days fold about all
things, changing the familiar world into an
enchanted land.
The summer warmth has left the sky,
The summer songs have died away;
And withered, in the footpaths lie
The fallen leaves, but yesterday
With ruby and with topaz gay.
The grass is browning on the hills;
NO pale, belated flowers recall
The astral fringes of the rills,
And drearily the dead vines fall,
Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall.
Yet, through the gay and sombre wood,
Against the dusk OF fir and pine,
Last of their floral sisterhood,
The hazel's yellow blossoms shine,
The tawny gold OF Afric's mine!
Small beauty hath my unsung flower,
For spring to own or summer hail;
But, in the seasons saddest hour,
10 skies that weep and winds that wall
Its glad surprises never fail.
days grown cold! o life grown old!
No rose of June may bloom again.
But, like the hazel's twisted gold,
Through early frost and latter rain
Snail hints OF summertime remain.
And as within the hazeps bough
A gift of mystic virtue dwells
That points to golden ores below,
And in dry desert places tells
Where flow unseen the cool. sweet wells,
So, in the wise OWNERS hand
Be mine the hazels grateful part
To feel, beneath thirsty land,
The living waters thrill and start,
The beating Of the rivulet's heart!
Suffceth me the gift to light
With latest bloom the dark, cold days.
70 call some hidden spring to sight
That in those dry and dusty ways
Shall sing its pleasant song Of praise.
o Love! the hazel-wand may fail,
But thou canst lend the surer spell,
kepeats the Outline miracle,
And makes the desert-land well.
The tribute to the memory of Charles
Sumner has been copied by journals through
out the country; yet in reading it again, we
IRE more than ever impressed by its calm
strength; its loving appreciation of the rare
qualities that made the great statesman what
be was; its absence of all meaningless or ex-
aggerated eulogy where simple justice were
BEST praise. And who could more iitly build
This noble and enduring monument to Mr..
Sumner than one who, like him, has devoted
his powers to the cause of an oppressed race?
The one made the laws of the people, the
other its songs-and who shah say which
we're the more noble?
"The Prayer of Agassiz," "John Under
hill," and Conductor Bradley''-varying in
style and treatment, are alike fine and power
'ul, and evince the poets sympathy with all
hat is genuine and heroic in mankind,
whether the faith that walks hand in hand
With knowledge, the heroism that can accept
shame rather than unmerited honor, or the
supreme bravery that recognizes no limit set
% duty by death.
Not less worthy than these is the beautiful
memorial of a sanity woman-"The Friends
Burial" We all have known such dear
that in their quietness counted
themselves of little use, yet through force of
he sweet influence of their living have given
to other lives about them tender sense of
and strength, comforting re.
which no rough contact of the
world shall efface.
ga Sea Dream" is perfect in its delicacy of
outline, warmth of coloring, and harmoni.
ous contrasts. To give to each poem its due
praise would exceed the limits of our notice;
20 we will leave to the readers of the volume
arther discoveries of its beauties.
In the following note Mr.. Whittier intro
luces the poems of his sister:
As she was very distrustful of her own
powers, aud altogether without ambition for
literary distinction, she Stunned everything
like publicity, and found far greater happi-
ness in generous appreciation of the gifts of
her friends than in the cultivation of her
own. Yet it has always seemed to me that,
had her health, sense of duty and fitness,
and her extreme self-dist-ust permitted, she
might have taken a high place among lyrical
singers. These poems, with perhaps two or
three exceptions, afford but slight indications
Of the inward life of the writer, who had an
almost morbid dread of spiritual and intel
ectual egotism, or of her tenderness of SYM
pathy, chastened mirthfulness, and pleasant
play of thought and fancy, when her shy,
beautiful soul opened like a flower in the
warmth of social communion. In her lines
on DR.. Kane, her friends will see something
Of her fine Individuality rare mingling
Of delicacy and intensity of feeling which
made her dear to them. This little poem
reached Cuba while the great explorer lay on
his death bed, and we are told that he lis
tened with grateful tears while it was read to
him by his mother.
Her talent bears some family resemblance
to that of her brother, and her verses give
evidence of taste and delicacy of feeling.
'.Hazel Blossoms" is bound and printed in
d style of quiet elegance, with well-executed
ON REEF; A true story, from the French
off. E. Raynal New York I. Nelson and Sons.
For sale by Loring, Short and Harmon.
Wrecked on reef is the true narrative
Of one of those seasons of suffering and priva-
lion which occur so frequently to the seafarer
but of which we so seldom have full and de-
tailed account. 1t is written by one of the
party and is in interest fully
equal to the fictitious tales of Captains Marry
att or Reid. The narrative is the simple
history Of the daily life of five men who were
wrecked in the schooner Grafton, from Sgd
ney, upon the inhospitable coast of the Auck-
land Islands where they spent twenty months
entirely dependent upon their own resources
for necessaries of life, living mostly upon the