Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,

Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness;—
Around the cradles of the birds aloft

They spread themselves into the loveliness

Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers

Hang like moist clouds :-or, where high branches kiss,

Make a green space among the silent bowers,
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,

Surrounded by the columns and the towers

All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion-and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,

Odors and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has past
To such brief unison as on the brain

One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.

The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.

Percy Byssche Shelley.

DIRGE IN WOODS

A wind sways the pines,
And below

Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that glow

On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.

The pine-tree drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead

Rushes life in a race,

As the clouds the clouds chase;

And we go,

And we drop like the fruits of the tree,

The wood is bare: a river-mist is steeping

The trees that winter's chill of life bereaves: Only their stiffened boughs break silence, weeping Over their fallen leaves;

That lie upon the dank earth brown and rotten,
Miry and matted in the soaking wet:
Forgotten with the spring, that is forgotten
By them that can forget.

Yet it was here we walked when ferns were springing,
And through the mossy bank shot bud and blade:-
Here found in summer, when the birds were singing,
A green and pleasant shade.

"Twas here we loved in sunnier days and greener;
And now, in this disconsolate decay,

I come to see her where I most have seen her,
And touch the happier day.

For on this path, at every turn and corner,
The fancy of her figure on me falls:
Yet walks she with the slow step of a mourner,
Nor hears my voice that calls.

So through my heart there winds a track of feeling,
A path of memory, that is all her own:
Whereto her phantom beauty ever stealing
Haunts the sad spot alone.

About her steps the trunks are bare, the branches
Drip heavy tears upon her downcast head;
And bleed from unseen wounds that no sun stanches,
For the year's sun is dead.

The dead leaves wrap the fruits that summer planted:
And birds that love the South have taken wing.
The Wanderer, loitering o'er the scene enchanted,
Weeps, and despairs of spring.

THE LAST LEAF

I saw him once before,

As he passed by the door,

And again

The pavement stones resound,

As he totters o'er the ground

With his cane.

Robert Bridges.

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,

Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

BURNT LANDS

On other fields and other scenes the morn

Laughs from her blue, but not such scenes are these,
Where comes no cheer of Summer leaves and bees,
And no shade mitigates the day's white scorn.
These serious acres vast no groves adorn;

But giant trunks, bleak shapes that once were trees,
Tower naked, unassuaged of rain or breeze,

Their stern gray isolation grimly borne.

The months roll over them, and mark no change;

But when spring stirs, or autumn stills, the year,

Perchance some phantom leafage rustles faint

Throught their parched dreams,—some old-time notes ring

strange,

When in his slender treble, far and clear,

Reiterates the rain-bird his complaint.

Charles G. D. Roberts.

LEAVES

When God the leaves of summer made

He left their surface dull

And non-reflecting, that their shade
Our wearied eyes may lull.

The oak, the elm, the beech, the ash,
Have not a leaf that gleams,
They can not catch and onward flash
The sun's most searching beams.