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It is among the dii minores that we discover a large proportion of our choicer verse. The glory of these lesser singers, when at their best, outshines all but the brightest effulgence of their superiors. Particularly in their scenic song do we repeatedly meet most glowing passages; and it may not be amiss to here renew our acquaintance with certain of them. The poetry of America does not suffer in the hands of such men as Gallagher on shore, and Sargent on the sea. For instance, the opening of "Miami Woods," by the former author:

Again, from the "Falls of a Forest Stream," by another Western poet. Would that the mightier never wrote after a lesser fashion:

Such poets are not rare among us; their song, though wafted to no great distance, come fresh and fragrant as the very forest. But we have promised ourselves to devote this pa per to the female poets. Maria Gowen, better known as Maria Brooks, and perhaps better still as Maria dell' Occidente, has been dead about thirty-five years. How many of the present generation are aware that this, their countrywoman, was pronounced by Southey to be "the most impassioned and imaginative of all poetesses." Mrs. Browning has since put England in a position to dispute the title with us; but the star of our own poetess is burning still. Beautiful throughout her being, in soul, mind, and body, gifted with those high and mysterious powers that so rarely take up their abode in the flesh, Maria Brooks must be remembered as one of the most wonderful of American women. A life of sorrow is too often the price of unusual endowments, and this suffering one paid it in full. At the age of fourteen, she was betrothed to a Boston merchant. We have not the space to give her after history. The reader may learn enough from these four stanzas, direct from her own heart:

"The bard has sung, God never formed a soul

Without its own peculiar mate, to meet

Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole

Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete.

"But thousand evil things there are that hate

To look on happiness; these hurt, impede.

And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate,

Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine, and pant, and bleed.

"And as the dove to far Palmyra flying,

From where her native founts of Antioch beam,

Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing,

Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream—