Already, while at Bowdoin, Hawthorne had begun to write verses, and perhaps to print some of them anonymously in the newspapers. From some forgotten poem of his on the sea, a single stanza has drifted down to us, like a bit of beach-wood, the relic of a bark too frail to last. It is this:-- "The ocean hath its silent caves, Deep, quiet, and alone; Though there be fury on the waves, Beneath them there is none." If one lets the lines ring in his ears a little, the true Hawthornesque murmur and half-mournful cadence become clear. I am told, by the way, that when the Atlantic cable was to be laid, some one quoted this to a near relative of the writer's, not remembering the name of the author, but thinking it conclusive proof that the ocean depths would receive the cable securely. Another piece is preserved complete, and much more nearly does the writer justice:-- "MOONLIGHT. "We are beneath the dark blue sky, And the moon is shining bright; O, what can lift the soul so high As the glow of a summer night; When all the gay are hushed to sleep And they that mourn forget to weep, Beneath that gentle light! "Is there no holier, happier land Among those distant spheres, Where we may meet that shadow band, The dead of other years? Where all the day the moonbeams rest, And where at length the souls are blest Of those who dwell in tears? "O, if the happy ever leave The bowers of bliss on high, To cheer the hearts of those that grieve, And wipe the tear-drop dry; It is when moonlight sheds its ray, More pure and beautiful than day, And earth is like the sky." At a time when the taste and manner of Pope in poetry still held such strong rule over readers as it did in the first quarter of the century, these simple stanzas would not have been unworthy of praise for a certain independence; but there is something besides in the refined touch and the plaintive undertone that belong to Hawthorne's individuality. This gentle and musical poem, it is curious to remember, was written at the very period when Longfellow was singing his first fresh carols, full of a vigorous pleasure in the beauty and inspiration of nature, with a rising and a dying fall for April and Autumn, and the Winter Woods. One can easily fancy that in these two lines from "Sunrise on the Hills":-- "Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke Through thick-leaved branches from the dingle broke," it was the fire of Hawthorne's fowling-piece in the woods that attracted the young poet, from his lookout above. But Longfellow had felt in the rhythm of these earliest poems the tide-flow of his future, and Hawthorne had as yet hardly found his appropriate element.