Where branches close unite
Even in winter's leafless time,
The skeletons of summer's prime.

That flash'd the traveller's flame
On tree and precipice,
And show'd a fair unearthly frame
In robes of glittering ice,
With head against a trunk inclined,
Like a dream-spirit of the mind.

'Twas that love-wander'd maid, death-pale,
Her very heart's blood froze,
Love's Niobe, in her own vale,
Now reckless of all woes--
Love's victim fair, and true, find meet,
As she of the famed Paraclete.

The mountains round shall tell
Her tale to travellers long.
The little vale of Saco swell
The western poet's song,
And "Nancy's Hill" in loftier rhymes
Be sung through unborn realms and times.

_New Monthly Magazine_.

[7] A few miles below the Notch of the White Mountains in the
Valley of Saco, is a little rise of land called "Nancy's Hill."
It was formerly thickly covered with trees, a cluster of which