The Tell-Tale Heart - The Pioneer, January 1843 — reading text

to this end we ask calism has only gone too far when it has hated the help of all who feel any sympathy in such +(IS Sey conservatism, and has despised all reverence an undertaking. We are too well aware of because conservatism is based upon it, forget- the thousand difficulties which lie in the way of ting that it is only so inasmuch as it is a need- such an attempt, and of the universal failure to ful part of nature. ‘To have claimed that make what is written come near the standard of reverence should not play at blind-man’s-buff what is thought and hoped, to think that we had been enough. shall not at first disappoint the expectations of In this country, where freedom of thought our friends. But we shall do our best, and does not’shiver at the cold shadow of Spielberg they must bear with us, knowing that what is (unless we name this prison of ‘* public opin- written from month to month, can hardly have NY yet ion ’’ so), there is no danger to be apprehended that care and study which is needful to the from an excess of it. It is only where there is highest excellence, and believing that no freedom, that anarchy is to be dreaded. “ We shall be willing, if not apt to learn; The mere sense of freedom is of too pure and Age and experience will adorn our mind holy a nature to consist with injustice and With larger knowledge: and, if we have done wrong. We would fain have our journal, in A wilful fault, think us not past all hope, some sort at least, a journal of progress,— For once.” one that shall keep pace with the spirit of the HUDSON RIVER. BY T. W. PARSONS. ° — Rivers that roll most musical in song, Are often lovely to the mind alone ; The wanderer muses, as he moves along Their barren banks, on glories not their own. When, to give substance to his boyish dreams, He flies abroad far countries to survey, Oft must he whisper, greeting foreign streams, ‘* Their names alone are beautiful, not they.’’ And oft, remembering rivulets more fair, Whose praise no poet yet has dared to sound, He marvels much that deserts dull and bare, Soaked by scant brooks, should be so wide renowned.  THE PIONEER. If chanee he mark the shrunken Danube pour A tide more meagre than his native Charles; Or views the Rhone when summer’s heat is o’er, Subdued and stagnant in the fen of Arles; Or when he sees the slimy Tiber fling _ His sullen tribute at the feet of Rome, Oft to his partial thought must memory bring More noble waves that sleep unhymned at home ; Then will he mourn that not in nature dwell _ The eharms which fired him in harmonious verse, For numbers veil mean objects with a spell Whose mist the reasoning senses must disperse. But bid him climb the Catskill to behold Thy flood, O Hudson! marching to the deep, And tell what strain of any bard of old Might paint thy grace and imitate thy sweep. In distant lands, ambitious walls and towers Declare what robbers once the realm possessed, But here heaven’s handiwork surpasses ours, le a it eet eee, aSk And man has hardly more than built his nest. L No storied castle overawes thy heights, Nor antique arches curb thy current’s play, Nor crumbling architrave the mind invites To dream of deities long passed away. No gothic buttress, nor decaying shaft Of marble yellowed by a thousand years, Rears a proud landmark to the cloudlike craft That grows in sight then melts and disappears. But cliffs, unaltered from their primal form Since the subsiding of the deluge, rise And lift their savins to the upper storm, To screen the skiff that underneath it plies. Farms, rich not more in harvests, than in men Of Saxon mould, and strong for every toil, Gem the green mead or scatter through the glen Beotian plenty in a Spartan soil. Then, where the reign of cultivation ends, Again the beauteous wildertess begins; From steep to steep one solemn wild extends, Till some new hamlet’s growth the boscage thins. And there deep groves forever have remained Touched by no axe — by no proud owner nursed : As now they bloom, they bloomed when Pharaoh reigned, Lineal descendants of creation’s first. Thou Scottish Tweed, whose course is holier now, Since thy last minstrel laid him down to die, Where through the casement of his chamber thou Didst mix thy moan with his departing sigh ; Sree HUDSON RIVER. A single one of Hudson’s lesser hills Might furnish forests for the whole of thine, Hide in thick shade all Humber’s feeding rills And blacken all the children of the Tyne. Whatever waters rush from Albion’s heart, To float the citadels that crowd her sea, In nothing save the meaner pomp of Art, Sublimer Hudson! can be named with thee. Could bloated Thames with all his riches buy : To deck the strand which London leads with gold, Sunshine so fresh — such purity of sky As bless thy sultry season and thy cold ? No deeds we know, are chronicled of thee | In sacred scrolls; no tales of doubtful claim Have hung a history on every tree, And given each rock its fable and a fame. But neither here hath any conqueror trod Nor grim invaders from barbarian climes ; No horrors feigned of giant or of god Pollute thy stillness with recorded crimes. Here never yet have happy fields laid waste, And butchered flocks and heaps of burning fruit, The co ruined — and the shrine defaced, Tracked the foul passage of the feudal brute. ** Alas, Antiquity! ’’ the stranger sighs— ‘* Scenes wanting thee soon pall upon the view ; The soul’s indifference dulls the sated eyes, Where all is fair indeed — but all is new.”’ False thought! is age to musty books confined? To Grecian fragments and Egyptian bones? Hath Time nv monuments to raise the mind, More than old fortresses and sculptured stones! Call not this new which is the only land That wears unchanged the same primeval face Which, when just budding from its Maker’s hand, Gladdened the first great grandsire of our race. Nor did Euphrates with an earlier birth Glide past green Eden towards the unknown south, Than Hudson flashed upon the infant earth, And kissed the ocean with its nameless mouth. Twin-born with Jordan, Ganges and the Nile! Thebes and the pyramids to thee are young; Oh! had thy fountain burst from Britain’s isle, Till now perchance it had not flowed unsung. a VOLTAIRE. HEeEavEN shield me from ambition such as his — To weigh a pun against Eternal bliss And séoff st God for an antithesis.  6 THE PIONEER. AARON BURR. BY JOHN NEAL. To speak of the Dead as they deserve, is to in the forum and at the fire-side ; whether he bring the whole world about your ears. It is appeared among them as‘a soldier, as a politi- the greatest of hardships— for neither the liv- cian, as a man of the world, or as a lawyer— ing nor the dead will bear the truth. Pigmies by turns the betrayer and the betrayed — and become giants, harnessed in ‘‘ golden panoply whether doubted or trusted, denounced or wor- complete,’’ and carrying spears like weaver’s shipped — now glorying in his own ruthless beams, in the exaggerating atmosphere of that treachery, and now standing at bay against the Other-World. Vices change to Virtues, and treachery of others — what has he left behind Folly to warm-hearted Weakness, under the him to tell that he ever lived? Nothing— ab- transforming power of the grave. The De- solutely nothing! A name like a shadow— parted, who were nobodies while they lived, vast, unwieldy and portentous — but after all, loom like ships at sea after death; until the a shadow, and nothing but a shadow ! great over-peopled Past is thronged with dwarf- With no monument, no record, no history! ed and stunted apparitions, toiling and stretch- leaving: neither brother nor sister, neither wife ing and crowding and jostling one another nor child! no drop of his blood running in the eS for a niche where they may rest themselves— veins of a single human creature, unless by mere standing room for a few days at most, stealth — what is there to make people remem- is all they ask—who, but for their biogra- ber him? Like the unhappy Lear, he lived to phers and their booksellers, and the hope they ‘* confess that he was old;”’ to acknowledge have to be remembered yet a little while after with a trembling voice and a quenched eye, death, or at least paid for their labor, would that “age was unnecessary ;” that he was “ four- have been forgotten forever before the turf had score and upwards, and mightily abused ;’’ and flowered once upon their graves. to look about him, as he drew near to the anti- To overpraise the dead is reckoned a virtue chamber of Death, for some one to take charge by men who always underrate the living. We of the kingly wreck, and ‘‘ vouchsafe him food flatter the dead that we may be flattered after and raiment.’’ And this was the end of Aaron death. We are lavish in this world, that we Burr! may reap a golden harvest in the next. ‘Truth He died in his eighty-first year. His whole is mighty, nevertheless; and there may be life was a drama —and though he was blasted found here and there one, a * faithful few ’’ at in the fourth act, as with fire from heaven, most, not unwilling to hear the truth even of