TO A WATERFOWL

Whither, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-
The desert and illimitable air

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

5 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 DEATH OF THE FLOWERS

10 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;

15 They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

20

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 25 flowers

Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of

ours.