And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon o'er thy shelter'd nest.

Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallow'd up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

THE CLOSE OF AUTUMN.
Tuan

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 hollews of the grove the wither'd 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 sprung 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 windflower and the violet, they perish'd long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died, amid the summer's 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,

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

And we wept that one so lovely should have a lot 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.

THE sad and solemn night

Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious hosts of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires:
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,

Her constellations come, and round the heavens, and go.

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they :
Through the blue fields afar,,

Unseen they follow in his flaming way:
Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.
Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,
And eve, that round the earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;
There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun-
The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud-

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wreck'd mariner, his compass lost,
Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,

Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,
Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,
Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray
The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

AUTUMN WOODS.

ERE, in the northern gale,

The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on.

The mountains that infold

In their wide sweep, the color'd landscape round,
Seem groups of giant kings in purple and gold,
That guard the enchanted ground.

I roam the woods that crown

The upland, where the mingled splendors glow,
Where the gay company of trees look down
On the green fields below.

My steps are not alone

In these bright walks; the sweet southwest at play, Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves, are strown Along the winding way.

And far in heaven, the while,

The sun, that sends that gale to wander here,
Pours out on the fair earth his quiet smile,-
The sweetest of the year.

Where now the solemn shade,

Verdure and gloom where many branches meet;
So grateful, when the noon of summer made
The valleys sick with heat?

Let in through all the trees

Come the strange rays; the forest depths are bright;
Their sunny-colour'd foliage, in the breeze,
Twinkles, like beams of light.

The rivulet, late unseen,

Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run,
Shines with the image of its golden screen,
And glimmerings of the sun.

But 'neath yon crimson tree,
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,

Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,
Her blush of maiden shame.

Oh, Autumn! why so soon
Depart the hues that make thy forests glad;
Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon,
And leave thee wild and sad!

Ah, 't were a lot too blest

For ever in thy colour'd shades to stray
Amidst the kisses of the soft southwest
To rove and dream for aye;

And leave the vain low strife,

That makes men mad-the tug for wealth and power, The passions and the cares that wither life,

And waste its little hour.

I KNOW where the timid fawn abides
In the depths of the shaded dell,

Where the leaves are broad, and the thicket hides,
With its many stems and its tangled sides,
From the eye of the hunter well.

I know where the young May violet grows,
In its lone and lowly nook,

On the mossy bank, where the larch tree throws
Its broad dark boughs, in solemn repose,
Far over the silent brook.

And that timid fawn starts not with fear
When I steal to her secret bower,
And that young May violet to me is dear,
And I visit the silent streamlet near,
To look on the lovely flower.

Thus Maquon sings as he lightly walks
To the hunting ground on the hills;
"T is a song of his maid of the woods and rocks,
With her bright black eyes and long black locks,
And voice like the music of rills.

He goes to the chase-but evil eyes
Are at watch in the thicker shades;
For she was lovely that smiled on his sighs,
And he bore, from a hundred lovers, his prize,
The flower of the forest maids.

The boughs in the morning wind are stirr'd,
And the woods their song renew,
With the early carol of many a bird,
And the quicken'd tune of the streamlet heard
Where the hazles trickle with dew.

And Maquon has promis'd his dark-hair'd maid,
Ere eve shall redden the sky,

A good red deer from the forest shade,

That bounds with the herd through grove and glade, At her cabin door shall lie.

The hollow woods, in the setting sun,
Ring shrill with the fire-bird's lay;
And Maquon's sylvan labours are done,
And his shafts are spent, but the spoil they won
He bears on his homeward way.

He stops near his bower-his eye perceives
Strange traces along the ground-
At once, to the earth his burden he heaves,
He breaks through the veil of boughs and leaves,
And gains its door with a bound.

But the vines are torn on its walls that leant,
And all from the young shrubs there

By struggling hands have the leaves been rent,
And there hangs, on the sassafras broken and bent,
One tress of the well known hair.

But where is she who at this calm hour,
Ever watch'd his coming to see,

She is not at the door, nor yet in the bower,
He calls-but he only hears on the flower
The hum of the laden bee.

It is not a time for idle grief,

Nor a time for tears to flow;

The horror that freezes his limbs is brief-
He grasps his war axe and bow, and a sheaf
Of darts made sharp for the foe.

And he looks for the print of the ruffian's feet,
Where he bore the maiden away;
And he darts on the fatal path more fleet
Than the blast that hurries the vapour and sleet
O'er the wild November day.

"T was early summer when Maquon's bride Was stolen away from his door;