The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851

When the celebrated Buffon had completed the ornithological portion of his great work on natural history, he announced with unhesitating assurance that he had "finished the history of the birds of the world." Twenty centuries had served for the discovery of only eight hundred species, but this number seemed immense, and the short-sighted naturalist declared that the list would admit of "no material augmentation" which embraced hardly a sixteenth of those now known to exist. To this astonishing advance of the science of ornithology, no one has contributed more than Audubon, by his magnificent painting and fascinating history.

Mr. Audubon left unpublished a voluminous autobiography, which we hope will be published with as little delay as possible.

Original Poetry

OLD AGE

By Alfred B. Street

All day the chill bleak wind had shrieked and wailed
Through leafless forests, and o'er meadows sear;
Through the fierce sky great sable clouds had sailed;
Outlines were hard—all nature's looks were drear.
Gone, Indian Summer's bland, delicious haze,
Thickening soft nights and filming mellow days.
Then rose gray clouds; thin fluttered first the snow,
Then like loose shaken fleeces, then in dense streams
That muffled gradually all below
In pearly smoothness. Then outburst the gleams
At sunset; nature shone in flashing white,
And the last rays tinged all with rosy light.
So Life's bland Autumn o'er, may old age come
In muffling peace, and death display hope's radiant bloom.

THE CASTLE IN THE AIR.[12 - This poem, in an unfinished form, was published some months ago in Sartain's Magazine. It has since been re-written for the International, and is now much more than before deserving of the applause with which it was received.]

By R. H. Stoddard

I

We have two lives about us,
Within us, and without us;
Two worlds in which we dwell,
Alternate Heaven and Hell:
Without, the sombre Real,
Within our heart of hearts, the beautiful Ideal!
I stand between the thresholds of the two,
Fettered and bound with many a heavy chain;
I strive to rend their links, but all in vain;
The False is strong, and holds me from the True.
Only in dreams my spirit wanders o'er
The starry portal of the world of bliss,
And lives the life which Fate denies in this,
Which may have once been mind, but will be, nevermore.

II

My Castle stands alone,
Away from Earth and Time,
In some diviner clime,
In Fancy's tropic zone,
Beneath its summer skies,
Where all the live-long year the summer never dies!
A stately marble pile whose pillars rise,
From sculptured bases, fluted to the dome,
With wreathéd friezes crowned, all carven nice
With pendant leaves, like ragged rims of foam;
A thousand windows front the rising sun,
Deep-set between the columns, many paned,
Tri-arched, emblazoned, gorgeously stained,
Crimson and purple, green and blue, and dun,
And all their wedded colors fall below,
Like rainbows shattered on a field of snow;
A bordering gallery runs along the roof,
Topt by a cupola, whose glittering spire
Pierces the brooding clouds, a glowing woof,
With golden spindles wove in Morning's loom of fire!

III

What fine and rare domains
Untold for leagues around;
Green parks, and meads, and plains,
And bosky woods profound,—
A realm of leafiness, and sweet enchanted ground!
Before the palace lies a shaven lawn,
Sloping and shining in the dews of dawn,
With turfy terraces, and garden bowers,
Where rows of slender urns are full of flowers;
Broad oaks o'erarch the winding avenues,
Edged round with evergreens of fadeless bloom,
And pour a thousand intermingling hues,
A many tinted flood of golden gloom;
Far-seen through twinkling leaves,
The fountains gush aloft like silver sheaves,
Drooping with shining ears, and crests of spray,
And foamy tassels blowing every way,
Shaking in marble basins white and cold,
A bright and drainless shower of beaded grain,
Which winnows off, in sun-illumined rain
The dusty chaff, a cloud of misty gold;
Around their volumes, down the plashy tide,
The swans are sailing mixed in lilies white,
Like virgin queens in soft disdain and pride,
Sweeping amid their maids with trains of light;
A little herd of deer with startled looks,
In shady parks where all the year they browse,
Head-down are drinking at the lucid brooks,