“Within a wood extending wide By Thames’s steeply winding side, There sat upon a fallen tree, Grown green through ages silently, An Indian girl. The gradual change Making all things most sweetly strange, Had come again. The autumn sun, Half up his morning journey, shone With conscious lustre, calm and still; By dell, and plain, and sloping hill Stood mute the faded trees, in grief, As various as their clouded leaf. With all the hues of sunset skies Were stamp’d the maple’s mourning dies; In meeker sorrow in the vale The gentle ash was drooping pale; Brown-seared the walnut raised its head, The oak displayed a lifeless red; And grouping bass and white-wood hoar Sadly their yellow honors bore; And silvered birch and poplar rose With foliage gray and weeping boughs; But elm and stubborn beech retained Some verdant lines, though crossed and stained, And by the river’s side were seen Hazel and willow palely green, While in the woods, by bank and stream And hollows shut from daylight gleam, Where tall trees wept their freshening dews, Each shrub preserved its summer hues. Nor this alone. From branch and trunk The withered wild-vines coldly shrunk, The woodland fruits hung ripe or dry, The leaf-strown brook flowed voiceless by; And all throughout, nor dim nor bright. There lived a rare and wondrous light Wherein the colored leaves around Fell noiselessly; nor any sound, Save chattering squirrels on the trees, Or dropping nuts, when stirred the breeze, Might there be heard; and, floating high, Were light clouds borne along the sky. And, scarcely seen, in heaven’s deep blue One solitary eagle flew.” From these passages the general character of the work may be inferred. It is too long: it would be unwise to extend a poem on any theme to nine cantos, of near fourteen thousand lines; and besides its diffuseness, in parts, it has other faults, to which we have already alluded. It is the first production, however, of an author just freed from the University; not yet, apparently, twenty-two years old; and, so regarded, the severest critic must deem it remarkably free from errors in design and execution.