Daily National Intelligencer

The anonymous letter which conveyed to us the subjoined lines, was post-marked Charleston, S. C. and, judging from appearances, is from the pen of a Lady. To compose a Poem in blank verse is a bold undertaking. It must be admitted, though the versification of this extract be not entirely harmonious, its conceptions are poetical as well as lofty, and its expression unusually vigorous.

TO THE EDITORS.
Gentlemen: Be pleased, when you have a vacant column, to give insertion to the ensuing lines; they are extracted from a Poem in manuscript, the first part of which is ready for the press, and will be published in the course of the present summer. It is entitled "Onea," and is founded on an Indian tradition, related in the travels of the elder Bartram. The author is led by the subject to the delineation of many objects peculiar to the Western Hemisphere, and among these, gives the following

DESCRIPTION OF THE GULF STREAM.
While fearlessly, in light canoe, the Lakes
They* trac'd, those northern, that with sea-like waves
Wash many a realm and wolfish forest through:
Their course pursu'd, upon the liquid paths
Of rivers, or the borders of the deep
Skim'd dexterous, its grim recesses never
With feeble prows dar'd they explore: or them
In vain the north-devolving current roll'd.
Of its blue Gulf, that wondrous shoreless stream,
Which, not as those of earth from hill or vale
Deriv'd, its course, where others end, begins:
Its purple fountain in th' abyss concealing,
Unfolds its mighty length, from sultry seas,
Smote by the tropic beam, to boreal climes,
Where fades the day, where icy mountains reel,
Their battlements, in thunder meeting round
The gallant ship, whose wings seem pal'd by fear.
Closing, a sudden prison, barr'd by death.
Enormous flood! huge rival of the deep!
That, as the vast sea-serpent overgrown,
Surpasses all that steamy marsh or fen
Ere nourish'd yet, so far the streams of earth
Outmeasures, whether Amazon's we name
Far-wand'ring Ob, or yet thy live-long tide,
Giant Missouri! When by hurricanes
And lightnings waken'd, thy emboldened waves
Toss navies to the clouds; in calms still grand,
Companion of the ocean, from the first
Of time the sharer of his awful couch;
In liquid limits bound, impassable,
As if by tree-grown banks and rocks confin'd.
The kraken, and the mann'd sea-dragon fierce
And whale, amid thy grass-invested vales
And restless hills, repose their unknown strength,
Or in thy depths sublime, their dwelling find
Ere Christian sail thy hoary solitudes
Invaded, lonelier than Columbia's world
Sequester'd, ages from man's knowledge hid,
Thy course by the All-seeing eye alone
Of Heaven was survey'd, yet first disclos'd,
A sea prolong'd, strange to the mariner,
Ere rose the Western Continent to light.

*The Indians.

The longest river in Asia.
† The Gulf, it is well-known, is covered by a peculiar weed, which occasioned the Spanish geographers to call it the "Grassy Sea."