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; The moon from her blue dwelling-place Far off the lonely trees uplift Their naked branches, like the spars Of some deserted ship adrift It is the darkened world that rides Unto the harbor of the Dawn. FRANK D. Sherman. IN SOLITUDE. SOMETIMES at lonely dead of night And in our hearts is cold affright 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; It steals through that weird nether-world, 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 Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, To Nature's teachings, while from all around- Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain |