THE ORDINAL.

ALAS for me if I forget The memory of that day

Which fills my waking thoughts, nor yet
E'en sleep can take away!

In dreams I still renew the rites

Whose strong but mystic chain
The pirit to its God unites,

And none can part again.
How oft he bishop's form I see,
And hear that thrilling tone
Demanding with authority

The heart for GoD alone; Again I kneel as then I knelt,

While he above me stands, And seem to feel, as then I felt, The pressure of his pands.

Again the priests in meet array.

As my weak spirit fails,
Beside me bend them down to pray
Before the chancel-rails;

As then, the sacramental host

Of God's elect are by,

When many a voice its utterance lost,
And tears dimm'd many an eye.

As then they on my vision rose,

The vaulted aisles I see,

And desk and cushion'd book repose

In solemn sanctity,

The mitre o'er the marble niche,

The broken crook and key,

That from a bishop's tomb shone rich
With polished tracery;

The hangings, the baptismal font,
All, all, save me unchanged,
The holy table, as was wont,

With decency arranged;
The linen cloth, the plate, the cup,
Beneath their covering shine,
Ere priestly hands are lifted up
To bless the bread and wine.

The solemn ceremonial past,

And I am set apart

To serve the LORD, from first to last,
With undivided heart;

And I have sworn, with pledges dire,

Which GoD and man have heard,
To speak the holy truth entire,
In action and in word.

O Thou, who in thy holy place

Hast set thine orders three,

Grant me, thy meanest servant, grace
To win a good degree;

That so, replenish'd from above,
And in my office tried,

Thou mayst be honoured, and in love
Thy church be edified!

CHRISTMAS EVE.

THE thickly-woven boughs they wreathe
Through every hallow'd fane

A soft, reviving odour breathe

Of summer's gentle reign;

And rich the ray of mild green light
Which, like an emerald's glow,
Comes struggling through the latticed height
Upon the crowds below.

O, let the streams of solemn thought
Which in those temples rise,

From deeper sources spring than aught
Dependent on the skies:

Then, though the summer's pride departs,
And winter's withering chill

Rests on the cheerless woods, our hearts
Shall be unchanging still.

THE DEATH OF STEPHEN.

WITH awful dread his murderers shook, As, radiant and serene,

The lustre of his dying look

Was like an angel's seen; Or Moses' face of paly light,

When down the mount he trod, All glowing from the glorious sight And presence of his GoD.

To us, with all his constanty,

Be his rapt vision given,

To look above by faith, and se

Revealments bright of heaven. And power to speak our triumphs out, As our last hour draws near, While neither clouds of fear nor Before our view appear.

dopt

THE CHRISTMAS OFFERING.

WE come not with a costly store,
O LORD, like them of old,
The masters of the starry lore,

From Ophir's shore of gold:
No weepings of the incense tree
Are with the gifts we bring,
No odorous myrrh of Araby

Blends with our offering.

But still our love would bring its best, A spirit keenly tried

By fierce affliction's fiery test,

And seven times purified:
The fragrant graces of the mind,
The virtues that delight

To give their perfume out, will find
Acceptance in thy sight.

MR. PALMER is descended from a Puritan ancestor who came to America in the next ship after the May Flower. His father was a youthful soldier in the Revolution, and one of the latest, if not the last, of the survivors of the Jersey prison ship. Having acquired a competency as the captain of a New York merchantman, he retired from the sea early in the present century, to Stockbridge, Berkshire county, Massachusetts, where he spent the remainder of his days, in that sunshine of love and respect which has gilded the declining years of so many men of our heroic age. There, on the twenty-second of February, 1805, our poet was born, and named in honour of the great orator whose claims to gratitude are recognised among us in a thousand living monuments which bear the name of WILLIAM PITT.

In his native county, Mr. PALMER has told me, the first and happiest half of his life was spent on the farm, in the desultory acquisition of such knowledge as could then be obtained from a New England common school, and a "college" with a single professor. The other half has been chiefly passed in New York, as a medical student, teacher, writer for the gazettes, and, for several years, clerk in a public office.

Mr. PALMER is a man of warm affections, who finds a heaven in a quiet home. He is a lover of nature, too, and like most inhabitants of the pent-up city, whose early days have been passed in the country, he delights in recollections of rural life. Some of his poems have much tenderness and delicacy, and they are generally very complete and polished.

LIGHT.

FROM the quicken'd womb of the primal gloom
The sun roll'd black and bare,

Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast,
Of the threads of my golden hair;
And when the broad tent of the firmament
Arose on its airy spars,

I pencill'd the hue of its matchless blue,
And spangled it round with stars.

I painted the flowers of the Eden bowers,
And their leaves of living green,

And mine were the dyes in the sinless eyes
Of Eden's virgin queen;

And when the fiend's art, on her trustful heart,
Had fasten'd its mortal spell,

In the silvery sphere of the first-born tear
To the trembling earth I fell.

When the waves that burst o'er a world accursed
Their work of wrath hath sped,

And the Ark's lone few, the tried and true,
Came forth among the dead;

With the wondrous gleams of my braided beams
I bade their terrors cease;

As I wrote on the roll of the storm's dark scroll
GoD's covenant of peace.

Like a pall at rest on a pulseless breast,
Night's funeral shadow slept,

Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains
Their lonely vigils kept;

When I flash'd on their sight the heralds bright Of heaven's redeeming plan,

'As they chanted the morn of a Saviour bornJoy, joy to the outcast man!

Equal favour I show to the lofty and low,
On the just and unjust I descend;
E'en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness
and tears,

Feel my smile the best smile of a friend: Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced, As the rose in the garden of kings;

As the chrysalis bier of the worm I appear,
And lo! the gay butterfly's wings!

The desolate Morn, like a mourner forlorn,
Conceals all the pride of her charms,
Till I bid the bright Hours chase the Night from
her bowers,

And lead the young Day to her arms;
And when the gay rover seeks Eve for his lover,
And sinks to her balmy repose,

I wrap their soft rest by the zephyr-fann'd west,
In curtains of amber and rose.

From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep,
I gaze with unslumbering eye,
When the cynosure star of the mariner

Is blotted from the sky;

And guided by me through the merciless sea,
Though sped by the hurricane's wings,
His compassless bark, lone, weltering, dark,
To the haven-home safely he brings.

I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers,
The birds in their chambers of green,
And mountain and plain glow with beauty again,
As they bask in my matinal sheen.
O, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth,
Though fitful and fleeting the while,
What glories must rest on the home of the bless'd,
Ever bright with the DEITY's smile!

LINES TO A CHRYSALIS.

MUSING long I asked me this,
Chrysalis,

Lying helpless in my path,
Obvious to mortal scath
From a careless passer by,
What thy life may signify?
Why, from hope and joy apart,
Thus thou art?

Nature surely did amiss,
Chrysalis,

When she lavish'd fins and wings
Nerved with nicest moving-springs,
On the mote and madripore,
Wherewithal to swim or soar;
And dispensed so niggardly
Unto thee.

E'en the very worm may kiss,
Chrysalis,

Roses on their topmost stems
Blazon'd with their dewy gems,
And may rock him to and fro
As the zephyrs softly blow;
Whilst thou lyest dark and cold
On the mould.

Quoth the Chrysalis, Sir Bard,
Not so hard

Is my rounded destiny
In the great Economy:
Nay, by humble reason view'd,
There is much for gratitude
In the shaping and upshot
Of my lot.

Though I seem of all things born
Most forlorn,

Most obtuse of soul and sense,
Next of kin to Impotence,
Nay, to Death himself; yet ne'er
Priest or prophet, sage or seer,
May sublimer wisdom teach

Than I preach.

From my pulpit of the sod,

Like a god,

I proclaim this wondrous truth, Farthest age is nearest youth, Nearest glory's natal porch, Where with pale, inverted torch, Death lights downward to the rest Of the blest.

Mark yon airy butterfly's

Rainbow-dyes! Yesterday that shape divine Was as darkly hearsed as mine; But to-morrow I shall be Free and beautiful as she, And sweep forth on wings of light, Like a sprite.

Soul of man in crypt of clay! Bide the day When thy latent wings shall be Plumed for immortality,

And with transport marvellous Cleave their dark sarcophagus, O'er Elysian fields to soar Evermore!

THE HOME VALENTINE.

STILL fond and true, though wedded long.
The bard, at eve retired,
Sat smiling o'er the annual song

His home's dear Muse inspired:
And as he traced her virtues now
With all love's vernal glow,

A gray hair from his bended brow,
Like faded leaf from autumn bough,
Fell to the page below.

He paused, and with a mournful mien
The sad memento raised,
And long upon its silvery sheen

In pensive silence gazed:
And if a sigh escaped him then,

It were not strange to say;
For fancy's favourites are but men;
And who e'er felt the stoic when
First conscious of decay?

Just then a soft cheek press'd his own
With beauty's fondest tear,

And sweet words breathed in sweeter tone
Thus murmur'd in his ear:

Ah, sigh not, love to mark the trace

Of time's unsparing wand!

It was not manhood's outward grace,
No charm of faultless form or face,
That won my heart and hand.

Lo! dearest, mid these matron locks,
Twin-fated with thine own,

A dawn of silvery lustre mocks

The midnight they have known:
But time to blighted cheek and tress
May all his snows impart;
Yet shalt thou feel in my caress
No chill of waning tenderness,
No winter of the heart!

Forgive me, dearest Beatrice!
The grateful bard replied,
As nearer and with tenderer kiss
He pressed her to his side:
Forgive the momentary tear

To manhood's faded prime;

I should have felt, hadst thou been near, Our hearts indeed have nought to fear From all the frosts of time!

THE author of "Greyslaer," "Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie," etc., is a brother of the Honourable OGDEN HOFFMAN, and a son of the late eminent lawyer of the same name.* He is the child of a second marriage. His maternal grandfather was JOHN FENNO, of Philadelphia, one of the ablest political writers of the old Federal party, during the administration of WASHINGΤΟΥ. The family, which is a numerous one in the state of New York, planted themselves, at an early day, in the valley of the Hudson, as appears from the Dutch records of PETER STUYVESANT'S storied reign.

Mr. HOFFMAN was born in New York, in the year 1806. He was sent to a Latin grammarschool in that city, when six years old, from which, at the age of nine, he was transferred to the Poughkeepsie academy, a seminary upon the Hudson, about eighty miles from New York, which at that time enjoyed great reputation. The harsh treatment he received here induced him to run away, and his father, finding that he had not improved under a course of severity, did not insist upon his return, but placed him under the care of an accomplished Scottish gentleman in one of the rural villages of New Jersey. During a visit home from this place, and when about twelve years of age, he met with an injury which involved the necessity of the immediate amputation of the right leg, above the knee. The painful circumstances are minutely detailed in the New York "Evening Post," of the twenty-fifth || of October, 1817, from which it appears, that while, with other lads, attempting the dangerous feat of leaping aboard a steamer as she passed a pier, under full way, he was caught between the vessel and the wharf. The steamer swept by, and left him clinging by his hands to the pier, crushed in a manner too frightful for description. This deprivation, instead of acting as a disqualification for the manly sports of youth, and thus turning the subject of it into a retired student, seems rather to have given young HOFFMAN an especial ambition to excel in swimming, riding, etc., to the still further neglect of perhaps more useful acquirements.

When fifteen years old, he entered Columbia College, and here, as at preparatory schools, was noted rather for success in gymnastic exercises

* Judge HOFFMAN was, in early life, one of the most distinguished advocates at the American bar. He won his first cause in New Jersey at the age of seventeen; the illness of counsel or the indulgence of the court giving him the opportunity to speak. At twenty-one he suc ceeded his father as representative, from New York, in the state legislature. At twenty-six he filled the office of attorney-general; and thenceforth the still youthful pleader was often the successful competitor of HAMILTON, BURR, PINKNEY, and other professional giants, for the highest honours of the legal forum.

than in those of a more intellectual character. His reputation, judging from his low position in his class, contrasted with the honours that were awarded him by the college-societies at their anniversary exhibitions, was greater with the students than with the faculty, though the honorary degree of Master of Arts, conferred upon him under peculiarly gratifying circumstances, after leaving the institution in his third or junior year, without having graduated, clearly implies that he was still a favourite with his alma mater.*

Immediately after leaving college-being then eighteen years old--he commenced the study of the law with the Honourable HARMANUS BLEECKER, of Albany, now Charge d'Affaires of the United States at the Hague. When twenty-one, he was admitted to the bar, and in the succeeding three years he practised in the courts of the city of New York. During this period he wrote anonymously for the New York American--having made his first essay as a writer for the gazettes while in Albany--and I believe finally became associated with Mr. CHARLES KING in the editorship of that paper. Certainly he gave up the legal profession, for the successful prosecution of which he appears to have been unfitted by his love of books, society, and the rod and gun. His feelings at this period are described in some rhymes, entitled "Forest Musings," from which the following stanzas are quoted, to show the fine relish for forest-life and scenery which has thrown a peculiar charm around every production from his pen :-

The hunt is up

The merry woodland shout,
That rung these echoing glades about
An hour agone,

Hath swept beyond the eastern hills,
Where, pale and lone,

The moon her mystic circle fills;

A while across the setting sun's broad disc
The dusky larch,

As if to pierce the blue o'erhanging arch, Lifts its tall obelisk.

And now from thicket dark,

Where, by the mist-wreathed river, The fire-fly's spark

Will fitful quiver,

And bubbles round the lily's cup
From lurking trout come coursing up,
The doe hath led her fawn to drink;
While, scared by step so near,
Uprising from the sedgy brink
The lonely bittern's cry will sink
Upon the startled ear.

And thus upon my dreaming youth,

When boyhood's gambols pleased no more,
And young Romance, in guise of Truth,
Usurp'd the heart all theirs before;

At the first semi-centennial anniversary of the incorporation of Columbia College, the honorary degree Master of Arts was conferred upon FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, and CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN.

Thus broke ambition's trumpet-note

On Visions wild,

Yet blithesome as this river

On which the smiling moon-beams float, That thus have there for ages smiled,

And will thus smile forever.

And now no more the fresh green-wood,
The forest's fretted aisles

And leafy domes above them bent,
And solitude

So eloquent!

Mocking the varied skill that's blent

In art's most gorgeous piles-

No more can soothe my soul to sleep
Than they can awe the sounds that sweep
To hunter's horn and merriment

Their verdant passes through,
When fresh the dun-deer leaves his scent
Upon the morning dew.

The game's afoot!-and let the chase
Lead on, whate'er my destiny-
Though fate her funeral drum may brace
Full soon for me!

And wave death's pageant o'er me-
Yet now the new and untried world
Like maiden banner first unfurl'd,

Is glancing bright before me!
The quarry soars! and mine is now the sky,
Where, "at what bird I please, my hawk shall fly!"
Yet something whispers through the wood
A voice like that perchance

Which taught the haunter of EGERIA'S grove
To tame the Roman's dominating mood

And lower, for awhile, his conquering lance
Before the images of Law and Love-
Some mystic voice that ever since hath dwelt
Along with Echo in her dim retreat,

A voice whose influence all, at times, have felt
By wood, or glen, or where on silver strand
The clasping waves of Ocean's belt

Do clashing meet

Around the land:

It whispers me that soon-too soon
The pulses which now beat so high
Impatient with the world to cope
Will, like the hues of autumn sky,
Be changed and fallen ere life's noon
Should tame its morning hope.
It tells me not of heart betray'd
Of health impair'd,

Of fruitless toil,

And ills alike by thousands shared, Of which each year some link is made To add to "mortal coil:"

And yet its strange prophetic tone

So faintly murmurs to my soul

The fate to be my own,

That all of these may be

Reserved for me

Ere manhood's early years can o'er me roll.

Yet why,

While Hope so jocund singeth

And with her plumes the gray-beard's arrow wingeth,

Should I

Think only of the barb it bringeth?

Though every dream deceive

That to my youth is dearest,

Until my heart they leave

Like forest leaf when searest

Yet still, mid forest leaves,

Where now

Its tissue thus my idle fancy weaves,

Still with heart new-blossoming

While leaves, and buds, and wild flowers spring,
At Nature's shrine I'll bow;

Nor seek in vain that truth in her
She keeps for her idolater.

66

Since that time Mr. HOFFMAN has devoted his attention almost constantly to literature. While ' connected with the American," he published a series of brilliant articles in that paper, under the signature of a star (*), which attracted much at tention. In 1833, for the benefit of his health, he left New York on a travelling tour for the far | west," and his letters, written during his absence, were also first published in that popular journal. They were afterward included in his Winter in the West," of which the first impression appeared in New York, in 1834, and the second, soon after, in London. This work has passed through many editions, and it will continue to be popular so long as graphic descriptions of scenery and character, | and richness and purity of style, are admired. His next work, entitled Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie," was first printed in 1837, and, like its predecessor, it contains many admirable pictures of scenery, inwoven with legends of the western country, and descriptive poetry. This was followed by a romance, entitled “Greyslaer," founded upon the famous criminal trial of BEATCHAMP, for the murder of Colonel SHARPE, the Solicitor-General of Kentucky,—the particulars of which, softened away in the novel, are minutely detailed in the appendix to his "Winter in the West." "Greyslaer" was a successful noveltwo editions having appeared in the author's native city, one in Philadelphia, and a fourth in London, in the same year. It placed him in the front rank of American novelists. He describes in it, with remarkable felicity, American forest-life, and savage warfare, and gives a truer idea of the border contests of the Revolution than any formal history of the period that has been published.

The Knickerbocker magazine was first issued under the editorial auspices of Mr. HOFFMAN, He subsequently became the proprietor of the American Monthly Magazine, (one of the ablest literary periodicals ever published in this country,) and during the long term of which he was the chief editor of this journal, he also, for one year, conducted the New York Mirror, for its proprietot, and wrote a series of zealous papers in favour of international copyright, for the New Yorker, the Corsair, and other journals.

Mr. HOFFMAN published in 1843 « The Vigil of Faith, a Legend of the Andirondack Mountains, and other Poems;" in 1844," Borrowed Notes for Home Circulation," (the title of which was suggested by an article on "The Poets and Poetry of America," in The Foreign Quarterly Review,") and near the close of 1845, through the house of Harper and Brothers, of New York, the most complete collection that has been printed of his poetical writings.

The poetry of Mr. HOFFMAN is graceful and fanciful. No American is comparable to him as a song-writer. Although some of his pieces are exquisitely finished, they have all evidently been thrown off without labour, in moments of feeling. A few of his pieces, in which he has copied the style of "the old and antique song," are equal to the richest melodies of the time of HERRICK and WALLER.