FEUILLES D'AUTOMNE

Silence and chill; the beeches stand aflare
"Twixt pallid elm and pine no years despoil.
The golden bracken rusts, and sere and bare
The chilling brambles coil.

Upon the burnished footing of a glade,
Thin as a smoke a phantom shape arose,
Who peered and muttered as a man dismayed
"Where are my foes?"

Another flickered by his side, who said,
"Brother, be comforted, thy foes are gone,
Sailed from us long ago and left their dead.
For I was one.

"Our ways are done, our battles at an end,

Conquest nor overthrows, delights nor grieves, Let us lie down again as friend with friend Under the leaves."

I heard no more. The branches dripped, the sun
Sank without flames and closed an autumn day.
While through the mist the dead leaves one by one
Flutter into decay.

Lucy Lyttelton.

A BEECH-WOOD IN OCTOBER

Beneath the ancient beeches, cloth of gold

For Autumn's regal passing has been laid.
Gold sunbeams pierce the thinning golden shade,
Where wider glimpses of blue sky unfold.

No bird sings here; and never light wind blows
To stir the leafy curtains, golden brown,
But still the ripened leaves drift slowly down,
And still the carpet softer, thicker grows.

Among the beeches Autumn does not die
In crimson passion or in scarlet pain;
Here only peace and golden silence reign,
June dreams forgotten-winter fears put by.

So would I die, O beeches! When at last
My days are numbered like your ripened leaves,
I would not be as one who idly grieves,
And mourns the glories of the summer past.

In peace and golden silence I would lie,
Still gazing upward through the thinning gold,
Until the last leaf fell, and there-behold!
Beyond the lifeless boughs, God's open sky!

Marian Warner Wildman.

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 colored landscape round,
Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold,
That guard the enchanted ground.

I roam the woods that crown

The uplands, 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 colored 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! 'twere a lot too blest

Forever in thy colored shades to stray;
Amid the kisses of the soft southwest
To roam 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.

William Cullen Bryant.

FADING AUTUMN

Th' autumnal glories all have passed away;
The forest-leaves no more in hectic red
Give glowing tokens of their brief decay,

But scattered lie, or rustle at the tread,

Like whispered warnings from the mouldering dead; The naked trees stretch out their arms all day,

And each bald hill-top lifts its reverend head As if for some new covering to pray.

Come, Winter, then, and spread thy robe of white Above the desolation of this scene;

And when the sun with gems shall make it bright, Or, when its snowy folds by midnight's queen

Are silvered o'er with a serener light,

We'll cease to sigh for summer's living green.

Mrs. E. C. Kinney.

THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE

A Woodman whose rough heart was out of tune (I think such hearts yet never came to good) Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;-
And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose

Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,

The singing of that happy nightingale

In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness

Of the circumfluous waters, every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretcht in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave,

Which is its cradle-ever from below
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow

Of one serene and unapproachèd star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,

Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish!-And every form
That worshipt in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm

Girt as with an interminable zone,

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion

Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.

And so this man returned with axe and saw
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by nature's gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Checkering the sunlight of the blue serene

With jagged leaves,-and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep-or weeping oft
Fast showers of aerial water drops