Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake, In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen. The maize leaf and the maple bough but take,

From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green. The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away.

The mountain wind! most spiritual thing of all
The wide earth knows; when, in the sultry time,
He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall,

He seems the breath of a celestial clime!
As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow
Health and refreshment on the world below.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

49

*

TH

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

HE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown
and sere.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy

day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,

And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;

But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty

stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague

on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade,

and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days

will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees

are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late

he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream nc

more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side ;
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the
leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

A

OCTOBER.

Y, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath,
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,

And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay

In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.

In such a bright, late quiet, would that I

Might wear out life like thee, mid bowers and brooks,

And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,

And music of kind voices ever nigh;

And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,

Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

THE GLADNESS OF NATURE.

51

Is

THE GLADNESS OF NATURE.

this a time to be cloudy and sad,

When our mother Nature laughs around;

When even the deep blue heavens look glad,

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, And the gossip of swallows through all the sky; The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den,

And the wilding bee hums merrily by.

The clouds are at play in the azure space,

And their shadows at play on the bright green vale, And here they stretch to the frolic chase,

And there they roll on the easy gale.

There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,
There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree,
There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,
And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles;
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.

A

MIDSUMMER.

POWER is on the earth and in the air, From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid, And shelters him, in nooks of deepest shade, From the hot steam and from the fiery glare. Look forth upon the earth-her thousand plants Are smitten; even the dark sun-loving maize Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze; The herd beside the shaded fountain pants;