How sweet to stray along thy flowery shore, Where crystals sparkle in the sunny ray; While the red boatman plies his silvery oar To the wild measure of some rustic lay. As a specimen of the sometimes able and sometimes slovenly mode in which Mrs. Ware poetizes, take the following couplets as an example. In describing what scenes are beheld by “The Genius of Græcia,” she finely writes:— “Views the broad Stadium, where the Gymnic art Nerved the young arm and energized the heart.” A little further on, our ears are tortured with— “Where Scio’s isle blushes with Christian gore, And hostile fiends still yell around the shore.” Well nigh tired of animadversion, let us employ the remainder of this article with selections that will be read with satisfaction, and which may strike some sympathetic and responsive chords. We need not bestow any higher praise upon the following pieces, chosen with care, as by far the best in the volume, (though we will venture to assert that the author considers them the poorest,) than to remark that we consider them worthy of the space they occupy in this magazine. LOSS OF THE FIRST BORN. “A grief that passeth show.” I saw a pale young mother, bending o’er Her first born hope. Its soft blue eyes were closed— Not in the balmy dream of downy rest; In Death’s embrace the shrouded babe reposed, It slept the dreamless sleep that wakes no more! A low sigh struggled in her heaving breast, But yet she wept not—hers was the deep grief The heart in its dark desolation feels; Which breathes not in impassioned accents wild, But slowly the warm pulse of life congeals: A grief, which from the world seeks no relief— A mother’s sorrow o’er her first-born child! She gazed upon it with a steadfast eye, Which seemed to say—Oh! would I were with thee. As if her every earthly hope were fled With that departed cherub. Even he— Her young heart’s choice, who breathed a father’s sigh Of bitter anguish o’er the unconscious dead— Felt not, while weeping by its funeral bier, One pang so deep as hers, who shed _no tear_! THE HEBREW MOTHER. (A PAINTING.) Bright glowed the sun on Nile’s resplendent tide, Reflecting the rich landscape far and wide; The verdant hills, with lofty cedars crowned, Those heights sublime, where, in stern glory, frowned Egypt’s proud battlements, stretched forth on high, Like a dark cloud athwart the summer sky! But softer shadows claimed a birth-place there; The pensile willow, and the lotus fair, And flowers of richest bloom, their perfume gave, To wreathe the margin of the azure wave.