MY TRIUMPH

The autumn time has come;
On woods that dream of bloom,
And over purpling vines,

The low sun fainter shines.

The aster-flower is failing,
The hazel's gold is paling;
Yet overhead more near
The eternal stars appear!

And present gratitude
Insures the future's good,
And for the things I see
I trust the things to be;

That in the paths untrod,
And the long days of God,
My feet shall still be led,
My heart be comforted.

O living friends that love me!
O dear ones gone above me!
Careless of other fame,

I leave to you my name.

Hide it from idle praises,

Save it from evil phrases:

Why, when dear lips that spake it Are dumb, should strangers wake it?

Let the thick curtain fall;

I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.

Not by the page word-painted
Let life be banned or sainted :
Deeper than written scroll
The colors of the soul.

Sweeter than any sung

My songs that found no tongue; Nobler than any fact

My wish that failed of act.

Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong,-
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.

What matter, I or they?
Mine or another's day,
So the right word be said.
And life the sweeter made?

Hail to the coming singers!
Hail to the brave light-bringers!
Forward I reach and share
All that they sing and dare.

The airs of heaven blow o'er me;

A glory shines before me

Of what mankind shall be,

Pure, generous, brave, and free.

A dream of man and woman
Diviner but still human,

Solving the riddle old,

Shaping the Age of Gold!

The love of God and neighbor;

An equal-handed labor;
The richer life, where beauty
Walks hand in hand with duty.

Ring, bells in unreared steeples,
The joy of unborn peoples!
Sound, trumpets far off blown,
Your triumph is my own!

Parcel and part of all,
I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be,
And share the victory.

I feel the earth move sunward,
I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving.

MY PLAYMATE

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.

For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home,

And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine:
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father's kine?

She left us in the bloom of May:

The constant years told o'er

Their seasons with as sweet May morns, But she came back no more.

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years;

Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring
And reap the autumn ears.

She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.

There haply with her jewelled hands
She smooths her silken gown,—
No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.

The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
The brown nuts on the hill,

And still the May-day flowers make sweet
The woods of Follymill.

The lilies blossom in the pond,

The bird builds in the tree,
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
The slow song of the sea.

What cares she that the orioles build

For other eyes than ours,

That other hands with nuts are filled,
And other laps with flowers?

O playmate in the golden time!
Our mossy seat is green,
Its fringing violets blossom yet,
The old trees o'er it lean.

The winds so sweet with birch and fern

A sweeter memory blow;

And there in spring the veeries sing

The song of long ago.

And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea,
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!

SNOW-BOUND

A WINTER IDYL

"As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common VVood fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of VVood doth the same."— COR. AGRIPPA, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v.

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow; and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm."

EMERSON, The Snow-Storm