THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.

Heap'd 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 sunflower 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 no 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.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

WINTER STARLIGHT.

THE air is keen, the sky is clear,

The winds have gone in whispers down; And gleaming in the atmosphere,

A jewel, lies the lighted town,

The winter's mantle stretches white

Upon the roofs and streets below;
All hushed the noises of the night,
Against the bosom of the snow.

The moon from her blue dwelling-place
Smiles over all, so pale, so fair,
It seems the Earth's wan, winter face
Reflected in a mirror there.

Far off the lonely trees uplift

Their naked branches, like the spars

Of some deserted ship adrift
Under a canopy of stars.

It is the darkened world that rides
The sea of space, forever drawn
By secret winds and mighty tides

Unto the harbor of the Dawn.

FRANK D. Sherman.

IN SOLITUDE.

SOMETIMES at lonely dead of night
Weird sounds assail the ear,

And in our hearts is cold affright
To think a ghost is near,

Why should we feel swift through us thrill

A sense of awe and dread?

It is the living works us ill,

And not the peaceful dead!

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

A SHADOW BOAT.

UNDER my keel another boat

Sails as I sail, floats as I float;
Silent and dim and mystic still,

It steals through that weird nether-world,
Mocking my power, though at my will
The foam before its prow is curled,
Or calm it lies, with canvas furled.

Vainly I peer, and fain would see

What phantom in that boat may be ;

Yet half I dread, lest I with ruth

Some ghost of my dead past divine,

Some gracious shape of my lost youth,

Whose deathless eyes once fixed on mine

Would draw me downward through the brine !

ARLO BATES.

THANATOPSIS.

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth, under the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around-
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,—
Comes a still voice-Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix forever with the elements,

To be a brother to the insensible rock,

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain