Ye have beheld where they
With wicker arks did come,
To kiss and bear away

The richer cowslips home;

You've heard them sweetly sing, And seen them in a round; Each virgin, like the Spring, With honeysuckles crowned. But now we see none here Whose silvery feet did tread, And with dishevelled hair Adorned this smoother mead.

Like unthrifts, having spent

Your stock, and needy grown, You're left here to lament

Your poor estates alone.

ROBERT HERRICK.

The Husbandman.

EARTH, of man the bounteous mother, Feeds him still with corn and wine; He who best would aid a brother,

Shares with him these gifts divine.

Many a power within her bosom,

Noiseless, hidden, works beneath; Hence are seed, and leaf, and blossom,

Golden ear and clustered wreath.

These to swell with strength and beauty

Is the royal task of man;
Man's a king; his throne is duty,

Since his work on earth began.
Bud and harvest, bloom and vintage-
These, like man, are fruits of earth;
Stamped in clay, a heavenly mintage,
All from dust receive their birth.
Barn and mill, and wine-vat's treasures,
Earthly goods for earthly lives —
These are Nature's ancient pleasures;
These her child from her derives.

What the dream, but vain rebelling,
If from earth we sought to flee?
"Tis our stored and ample dwelling;
"Tis from it the skies we see.

Wind and frost, and hour and season,
Land and water, sun and shade-
Work with these, as bids thy reason,
For they work thy toil to aid.

Sow thy seed, and reap in gladness!
Man himself is all a seed;
Hope and hardship, joy and sadness—
Slow the plant to ripeness lead.

JOHN STERLING.

To the Fringed Gentian.
THOU blossom, bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night;

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.
Thou waitest late, and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged Year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

A Still Day in Autumn.

I LOVE to wander through the woodlands hoary,
In the soft gloom of an autumnal day,
When Summer gathers up her robes of glory,
And, like a dream of beauty, glides away.

How, through each loved, familiar path she lingers,
Serenely smiling through the golden mist,
Tinting the wild grape with her dewy fingers,
Till the cool emerald turns to amethyst;

Kindling the faint stars of the hazel, shining

To light the gloom of Autumn's mouldering halls ; With hoary plumes the clematis entwining,

Where, o'er the rock, her withered garland falls.

Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning
Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled,
Till the slant sunbeams, through their fringesraining,
Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.

The moist winds breathe of crispèd leaves and flowers,

In the damp hollows of the woodland sown,
Mingling the freshness of autumnal showers
With spicy airs from cedarn alleys blown.

Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow,
Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground,
With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow,
The gentian nods, in dreamy slumbers bound.

Upon those soft, fringed lids the bee sits brooding,
Like a fond lover loath to say farewell;

Or, with shut wings, through silken folds intruding, Creeps near her heart his drowsy tale to tell.

The little birds upon the hill-side lonely

Flit noiselessly along from spray to spray, Silent as a sweet, wandering thought, that only Shows its bright wings and softly glides away. The scentless flowers, in the warm sunlight dreaming, Forget to breathe their fulness of delight; And through the tranced woods soft airs are streaming,

Still as the dew-fall of the Summer night.

So, in my heart, a sweet, unwonted feeling
Stirs, like the wind in Ocean's hollow shell,
Through all its secret chambers sadly stealing,
Yet finds no words its mystic charm to tell.

SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.

What joy in dreamy ease to lie

Amid a field new shorn,
And see all round on sunlit slopes

The piled-up stacks of corn:
And send the fancy wandering o'er
All pleasant harvest-fields of yore!

I feel the day- I see the field,
The quivering of the leaves,
And good old Jacob and his house
Binding the yellow sheaves;
And at this very hour I seem
To be with Joseph in his dream.
I see the fields of Bethlehem,
And reapers many a one,
Bending unto their sickles' stroke;
And Boaz looking on;
And Ruth, the Moabite so fair,
Among the gleaners stooping there.

Again I see a little child,

His mother's sole delight,-
God's living gift of love unto

The kind good Shunamite ;
To mortal pangs I see him yield,
And the lad bear him from the field.

The sun-bathed quiet of the hills,
The fields of Galilee,
That eighteen hundred years ago
Were full of corn, I see;
And the dear Saviour takes His way
'Mid ripe ears on the Sabbath day.

Oh, golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem!
The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves,
To me are like a dream.
The sunshine and the very air
Seem of old time, and take me there.
MARY HOWITT.

Cornfields.

WHEN on the breath of autumn breeze
From pastures dry and brown,
Goes floating like an idle thought

The fair white thistle-down,
Oh then what joy to walk at will
Upon the golden harvest hill!

Autumn Flowers.

THOSE few pale Autumn flowers,

How beautiful they are! Than all that went before, Than all the Summer store,

How lovelier far!

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