THANATOPSIS To Nature's teachings, while from all around Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, 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 Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish - the vales 15 That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes So live, that when thy summons comes to join THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS 17 Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch William Cullen Bryant. 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. 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 sister hood? 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 perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the goldenrod, 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: A HEALTH 19 Yet not unmeet was it that one like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. William Cullen Bryant. A HEALTH I FILL this cup to one made up A woman, of her gentle sex Her every tone is music's own, The coinage of her heart are they, Affections are as thoughts to her, |