INDIAN SUMMER.

| So shall the truant bluebirds backward fly,

And all loved things that vanish or that die WHEN leaves grow sear all things take sombrehue : Return to us in some sweet By-and-By ! The wild winds waltz no inore the woodside

ANONYMOUS. through, And all the faded grass is wet with dew. A gauzy nebula films the pensive sky,

NO! The golden bee supinely buzzes by,

No sun — no moon ! In silent flocks the bluebirds southward fly.

No morn — no noon —

com | No dawn — no dust — no proper time of day The forests' cheeks are crimsoned o'er with shame, No

No sky- no earthly view The cynic frost enlaces every lane,

No distance looking blue The ground with scarlet blushes is aflame !

No road — no street — no “t'other side the The one we love grows lustrous-eyed and sad,

way" — With sympathy too thoughtful to be glad,

No end to any Row -While all the colors round are running mad.

No indications where the Crescents go

No top to any steeple The sunbeams kiss askant the sombre hill, No recognitions of familiar people The naked woodbine climbs the window-sill,

No courtesies for showing 'em The breaths that noon exhales are faint and chill.

No knowing 'em !

No travelling at all — no locomotion, The ripened nuts drop downward day by day, No inkling of the way - no notion -. Sounding the hollow tocsin of decay,

“No go" — by land or ocean And bandit squirrels smuggle them away.

No mail - no postVague sighs and scents pervade the atmosphere,

No news from any foreign coast

" No park -- no ring - no afternoon gentility Sounds of invisible stirrings hum the ear, The morning's lash reveals a frozen tear.

No company --no nobility

. No warmth. no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, The hermit mountains gird themselves with mail, No comfortable feel in any member Mocking the threshers with an echo flail, No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, The while the afternoons grow crisp and pale. I No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,

November!

THOMAS HOOD
Inconstant Summer to the tropics flees,
And, as her rose-sails catch the amorous breeze,
Lo! bare, brown Autumn trembles to her knees !

WINTER SONG.
The stealthy nights encroach upon the days,
The earth with sudden whiteness is ablaze,

SUMMER joys are o'er ;
And all her paths are lost in crystal maze!

Flowerets bloom no more,

Wintry winds are sweeping; Tread lightly where the dainty violets blew,

Through the snow-drifts peeping, Where the spring winds their soft eyes open flew ;

Cheerful evergreen Safely they sleep the churlish winter through.

Rarely now is seen. Though all life's portals are indiced with woe,

Now no plumed throng And frozen pearls are all the world can show,

Charms the wood with song ; Feel ! Nature's breath is warm beneath the snow.

Ice-bound trees are glittering;

Merry snow-birds, twittering, Look up ! dear mourners! Still the blue expanse,

Fondly strive to cheer Serenely tender, bends to catch thy glance,

Scenes so cold and drear. Within thy tears sibyllic sunbeams dance !

Winter, still I see With blooms full-sapped again will smile the land.

Many charms in thee, The fall is but the folding of His hand,

Love thy chilly greeting, Anon with fuller glories to expand.

Snow-storms fiercely beating, The dumb heart hid beneath the pulseless tree

And the dear delights

Of the long, long nights. Will throb again ; and then the torpid bee

LUDWIG HÖLTY (German). Translation of Upon the ear will drone his drowsy glee.

CHARLES T. BROOKS.

WINTER.

| Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call

The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing, FROM "THE WINTER MORNING WALK."

And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood, "T is morning ; and the sun, with ruddy orb Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge. Ascending, fires the horizon ; while the clouds, | The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves That crowd away before the driving wind, To seize the fair occasion. Well they eye More ardent as the disk emerges more,

The scattered grain, and thievishly resolved Resemble most some city in a blaze,

To escape the impending famine, often scared Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray As oft return, a pert voracious kind. Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,

Clean riddance quickly made, one only care And, tingeing all with his own rosy hue, Remains to each, the search of sunny nook, From every herb and every spiry blade

Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field. To sad necessity, the cock foregoes Mine, spindling into longitude immense, His wonted strut, and, wading at their head In spite of gravity, and sage remark

With well-considered steps, seems to resent That I myself am but a fleeting shade,

His altered gait and stateliness retrenched. Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance How find the myriads, that in summer cheer I view the muscular proportioned limb

The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs, Transformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pair, Due sustenance, or where subsist they now? As they designed to mock me, at my side Earth yields them naught; the imprisoned worm Take step for step; and, as I near approach

is safe The cottage, walk along the plastered wall, Beneath the frozen clod ; all seeds of herbs Preposterous sight! the legs without the man. Lie covered close ; and berry-bearing thorns, The verdure of the plain lies buried deep

That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose), Beneath the dazzling deluge ; and the bents, Afford the smaller minstrels no supply. And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest, The long protracted rigor of the year Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine

Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad,

holes , And, fledged with icy feathers, nod superb. Ten thousand seek an unmolested end, The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence As instinct prompts; self-buried ere they die. Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep

WILLIAM COWPER. In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait Their wonted fodder ; not, like hungering man,

WINTER WALK AT NOON. Fretful if unsupplied ; but silent, meek, And, patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. | The night was winter in his roughest mood, He from the stack carves out the accustomed load, The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon Deep plunging, and again deep plunging oft, Upon the southern side of the slant hills, His broad keen knife into the solid mass : | And where the woods fence off the northern blast, Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands, | The season smiles, resigning all its rage, With such undeviating and even force

And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue He severs it away: no needless care

Without a cloud, and white without a speck Lest storms should overset the leaning pile The dazzling splendor of the scene below. Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.

Again the harinony comes o'er the vale ; Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned And through the trees I view the embattled tower, The cheerful haunts of men, to wield the axe | Whence all the music. I again perceive And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, The soothing influence of the wafted strains, From morn to eve his solitary task.

And settle in soft musings as I tread Shaggy and lean and shrewd with pointed ears, The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, Whose outspread branches overarch the glade. His dog attends him. Close behind his heel Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow The redbreast warbles still, but is content With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; With slender notes, and more than half supThen shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy. pressed :

Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale, From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam From many a twig the pendent drops of ice, Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side, That tinkle in the withered leaves below.

To-who;

.

SHAKESPEARE

Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,

WHEN ICICLES HANG BY THE WALL. Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the

FROM "Love's LABOR'S LOST." heart May give a useful lesson to the head,

WHEN icicles hang by the wall, And Learning wiser grow without his books.

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, WILLIAM COWPER. And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,
WINTER SCENES.

To-whit, to-who, a merry note,
THE keener tempests rise : and fuming dun
From all the livid east, or piercing north,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
Thick clouds ascend ; in whose capacious womb

When all aloud the wind doth blow, A vapory deluge lies, to snow congealed.

And coughing drowns the parson's saw, Heavy they roll their fleecy world along ;

And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And the sky saddens with the gathered storip.
Through the hushed air the whitening shower

And Marian's nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, descends At first thin wavering ; till at last the flakes

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who;
Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day

To-whit, to-who, a merry note,
With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white.

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 'T is brightness all ; save where the new snow

melts Along the mazy current. Low the woods Bow their hoar head ; and, ere the languid sun

THE SNOW-STORM. Faint from the west emits his evening ray, Earth's universal face, deep hid and chill, ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky, Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide Arrives the snow; and, driving o'er the fields, The works of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet The winnosting store, and claim the little boon Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates Which Providence assigns them. One alone,

sit
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods, Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves Come see the north-wind's masonry.
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man Out of an unseen quarry, evermore
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Against the window beats ; then, brisk, alights Curves his white bastions with projected roof
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the Round every windward stake or tree or door ;

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work Eyes all the smiling family askance,

So fanciful, so savage ; naught cares he
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is : For number or proportion. Mockingly,
Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn ;
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset Mangre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs, | A tapering turret overtops the work.
And more unpitying man, the garden seeks, | And when his hours are numbered, and the world
C'rged on by fearless Want. The bleating kind Is all his own, retiring as he were not,
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
earth,

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
With looks of dumb despair ; then, sad dispersed, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow. The frolic architecture of the snow.
JAMES THOMSON. .

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

floor,

THE SNOW-SHOWER.

But the hurrying host that flew between

The cloud and the water no more is seen; STAND here by my side and turn, I pray,

Flake after flake On the lake below thy gentle eyes ;

At rest in the dark and silent lake. The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray,

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
And dark and silent the water lies;
And out of that frozen mist the snow
In wavering flakes begins to flow;

SNOW. - A WINTER SKETCH.
Flake after flake
They sink in the dark and silent lake.

The blessed morn has come again ;
See how in a living swarm they come

The early gray

Taps at the slumberer's window-pane, From the chambers beyond that misty veil ;

And seems to say, Some hover awhile in air, and some

Break, break froin the enchantér's chain, Rush prone from the sky like summer hail.

Away, away!
All, dropping swiftly or settling slow,
Meet, and are still in the depths below;

'T is winter, yet there is no sound
Flake after flake

Along the air Dissolved in the dark and silent lake.

Of winds along their battle-ground; Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud,

But gently there Come floating downward in airy play,

The snow is falling, -- all around Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd

How fair, how fair !

RALPH HOYT. That whiten by night the Milky Way ; There broader and burlier masses fall ; The sullen water buries them all, Flake after flake, —

SNOW-FLAKES. All drowned in the dark and silent lake.

Out of the bosom of the Air, And some, as on tender wings they glide

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Are joined in their fall, and, side by side,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Come clinging along their unsteady way;

Silent and soft and slow
As friend with friend, or husband with wife,

Descends the snow.
Makes hand in hand the passage of life ;
Each mated Aake

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake.

Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste

In the white countenance confession, Stream down the snows, till the air is white,

The troubled sky reveals As, myriads by myriads madly chased,

The grief it feels. They fling themselves from their shadowy height.

This is the poem of the air, The fair, frail creatures of middle sky,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded; · What speed they make, with their grave so nigh ; This is the secret of despair, Flake after flake,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded, To lie in the dark and silent lake!

Now whispered and revealed I see in thy gentle eyes a tear ;

To wood and field.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. They turn to me in sorrowful thought; Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear,

Who were for a time, and now are not ;
Like these fair children of cloud and frost,

A SNOW-STORM.
That glisten a moment and then are lost, -
Flake after flake, -

SCENE IN A VERMONT WINTER
All lost in the dark and silent lake.
Yet look again, for the clouds divide ;

'T is a fearful night in the winter time,
A gleam of blue on the water lies ;

As cold as it ever can be ; And far away, on the mountain-side,

The roar of the blast is heard like the chime A sunbeam falls from the opening skies.

Of the waves on an angry sea.

1.

IV.

II.

III

The moon is full ; but her silver light
The storm dashes out with its wings to-night; He has given the last faint jerk of the rein,
And over the sky from south to north

To rouse up his dying steed;
Not a star is seen, as the wind comes forth And the poor dog howls to the blast in vain
In the strength of a mighty glee.

For help in his master's need.
For a while he strives with a wistful cry

To catch a glance from his drowsy eye,
All day had the snow come down, - all day And wags his tail if the rude winds flap
As it never came down before ;

The skirt of the buffalo over his lap,
And over the hills, at sunset, lay

And whines when he takes no heed.
Some two or three feet, or more ;
The fence was lost, and the wall of stone;

v.
The windows blocked and the well-curbs gone ; The wind goes down and the storm is o'er, -
The haystack had grown to a mountain lift, I T is the hour of midnight, past;
And the wood-pile looked like a monster drift,

The old trees writhe and bend no more As it lay by the farmer's door.

In the whirl of the rushing blast.

The silent moon with her peaceful light The night sets in on a world of snow,

Looks down on the hills with snow all white, While the air grows sharp and chill,

And the giant shadow of Camel's Hump, And the warning roar of a fearful blow

The blasted pine and the ghostly stump, Is heard on the distant hill;

Afar on the plain are cast. And the norther, see ! on the mountain peak

But cold and dead by the hidden log In his breath how the old trees writhe and shriek !

Are they who came from the town, He shouts on the plain, ho-ho! ho-ho !

The man in his sleigh, and his faithful dog, He drives from his nostrils the blinding snow,

And his beautiful Morgan brown, And growls with a savage will.

In the wide snow-desert, far and grand, | With his cap on his head and the reins in his

hand, Such a night as this to be found abroad,

The dog with his nose on his master's feet, In the drifts and the freezing air,

And the mare half seen through the crusted sleet, Sits a shivering dog, in the field, by the road,

1 Where she lay when she floundered down. With the snow in his shaggy hair.

CHARLES GAMAGE EASTMAN. He shuts his eyes to the wind and growls ; He lifts his head, and moans and howls; Then crouching low, from the cutting sleet, His nose is pressed on his quivering feet, - O WINTER, WILT THOU NEVER GOI Pray, what does the dog do there?

O WINTER ! wilt thou never, never go?

O summer! but I weary for thy coming, A farmer came from the village plain,

Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow, But he lost the travelled way;

And frugal bees, laboriously humming. And for hours he trod with might and main

Now the east-wind diseases the infirm, A path for his horse and sleigh ;

And must crouch in corners from rough weather; But colder still the cold winds blew,

Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm, And deeper still the deep drifts grew,

When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together, And his mare, a beautiful Morgan brown,

And the large sun dips red behind the hills. At last in her struggles floundered down,

I, from my window, can behold this pleasure ; Where a log in a hollow lay.

And the eternal moon what time she fills

Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure, In vain, with a neigh and a frenzied snort,

With queenly motions of a bridal mood, She plunged in the drifting snow,

Through the white spaces of infinitude. While her master urged, till his breath grew short,

DAVID GRAY With a word and a gentle blow ; But the snow was deep, and the tugs were tight; His hands were numb and had lost their might;

FROM “HYMN ON THE SEASONS.” So he wallowed back to his half-filled sleigh, And strove to shelter himself till day,

THESE, as they change, Almighty Father, these With his coat and the buffalo.

| Are but the varied God. The rolling year