When Uri's beechen woods wave red With a leap, like Tell's proud leap From the flashing billow sprung* They shall wake beside their Forest-sea, When they link'd the hands that made us free, And be answered with a shout, When Winkelried, on Sempach's plain, And the crown'd casques,t o'erthrown, For the Kühreihen'st notes must never sound And the yellow harvests wave SWISS SONG, ON THL ANNIVERSARY OF AN ANCIENT BATTLE. [The Swiss, even to our days, have continued to celebrate the anniversaries of their ancient battles with much solemnity; assembling in the open air on the fields where their ancestors fought, to hear thankgivings offered up by the priests, and the names of all who shared in the glory of the day enumerated. They afterwards walk in procession to chapels, always erected in the vicinity of such scenes, where masses are sung for the souls of the departed.-See PLANTA'S History of the Helvetic Confederacy.] LOOK on the white Alps round! If yet they gird a land *The point of rock on which Tell leaped from the boat of Gessler s marked by a chapel, and called the Tellensprung. Crowned Helmets, as a distinction of rank, are mentioned in Simond's Switzerland. The Kühreihen, the celebrated Ranz des Vaches. Where Freedom's voice and step are found, The faithful band, our sires, who fell If yet, the wilds among, Our silent hearts may burn, When the deep mountain-horn hath rung, Look on the white alps round! Their caves prolong'd the trumpet's blast, They saw the princely crest, Praise to the mountain-born, They left the vineyard and the field, Look on the white Alps round! Our children's fearless feet may bound, Teach them in song to blesss the band Amidst whose mossy graves we stand! If, by the wood-fire's blaze, When winter stars gleam cold, Forget not then the shepherd race, Who made the hearth a holy place! Look on the white Alps round! Comes o'er them with a gladdening sound, For blood first bathed its flowery sod. THE MESSENGER BIRD. [Some of the native Brazilians pay great veneration to a certain bird that sings mournfully in the night-time. They say it is a messenger which their deceased friends and relations have sent, and that it brings them news from the other world.-See PICART's Ceremo nies and Religious Customs.] THOU art come from the spirits' land, thou bird! Through the dark pine grove fet thy voice be heard, We know that the bowers are green and fair In the light of that summer shore, And we know that the friends we have lost are there, And we know they have quenched their fever's thirst For there must the stream in its freshness burst And we know that they will not be lured to earth By the feast, or the dance, or the song of mirth, Though they sat with us by the night-fire's blaze, And heard the tales of our fathers' days, But tell us, thru bird of the solemn strain! Doth the warrior think of his brother there, And the chief, of those that were wont to share We call them far through the silent night, * An expedition was actually undertaken by Juan Ponce de Leon, In the 16th century, with a view of discovering a wonderful fountain, believed by the natives of Puerto Rico to spring in one of the Lucayo Isles, and to possess the virtue of restoring youth to all who bathed in its waters.-See ROBERTSON'S History of America. We know, thou bird! that their land is bright, THE STRANGER IN LOUISIANA. An early traveller mentions people on the banks of the Mississippi who burst into tears at the sight of a stranger. The reason of this is, that they fancy their deceased friends and relations to be only gone on a journey, and being in constant expectation of their re turn, look for them vainly amongst these foreign travellers.PICART'S Ceremonies and Religious Customs.] "J'ai passé-moi-même," says Chateaubriand in his Souvenirs d'Amerique," chez une peuplade Indienne qui se prenait à pleurer à la vue d'un voyageur, parce qu'il lui rappelait des amis partis pour la Contrée des Ames, et depuis long-teins en voyage."] WE saw thee, O stranger, and wept! We look'd for the youth of the sunny glance The path of his arrows a storm to flee! But there came a voice from a distant shore: He was call'd-he is found 'midst his tribe no more! * ANSWER TO THE MESSENGER BIRD. BY AN AMERICAN QUAKER LADY. YES, I came from the spirits' land, From the land that is bright and fair; To say, if a wish or a vain regret Could live in Elysian bowers, "Twould be for the friends they can ne'er forget, To whisper the dear deserted band, Who smiled on their tarriance here, That a faithful guard in the dreamless land, "Tis true, in the silert night you call, But the spirits of bliss are voiceless all- That their land is bright and they weep no more, But my plaintive strain should have told before, They bid me say that unfading flowers And a welcome true to their deathless bowers, He is not in his place when the night-fires burn, In the gloom of the shadowing cypress bough: We saw thee, O stranger, and wept! The winter is white on his lonely head, He hath none by his side when the wilds we track, We saw thee, O stranger, and wept! We look'd for the first-born, whose mother's cry And to watch for a step-but the step was thine! THE ISLE OF FOUNTS. AN INDIAN TRADITION. "The river St. Mary has its source from a vast lake or marsh, which lies between Flint and Oakmulge rivers, and occupies a space of near three hundred miles in circuit. This vast accumulation of waters, in the wet season, appears as a lake, and contains some large islands or knolls of rich high land; one of which the present generation of the Creek Indians represent to be a most blissful spot of earth: they say it is inhabited by a peculiar race of Indians, whose women are incomparably beautiful. They also tell you that this terrestial paradise has been seen by some of their enterprising hunters, when in pusuit of game; but that in their endeavors to approach it, they were involved in perpetual laby rinths, and, like enchanted land, still as they imagined they had just gained it, it seemed to fly before them, alternately appearing and disappearing. They resolved, at length, to leave the delusive |