JOHN JAMES PIATT.

[Author of two volumes of poems, published in 1872-Western Windows &c., and Landmarks &c. Our extracts are all taken from the former of these two volumes, which shows the writer to more advantage than the latter].

THE MOWER IN OHIO.
JUNE 1864.

THE bees in the clover are making honey, and I am making my hay:

The air is fresh, I seem to draw a young man's breath

to-day.

The bees and I are alone in the grass: the air is so very still

I hear the dam, so loud, that shines beyond the sullen mill. Yes, the air is so still that I hear almost the sounds I cannot hear

That, when no other sound is plain, ring in my empty ear: The chime of striking scythes, the fall of the heavy swathes they sweep

They ring about me, resting, when I waver half asleep. So still I am not sure if a cloud, low down, unseen there be,

Or if something brings a rumour home of the cannon so far from me :

Far away in Virginia, where Joseph and Grant, I know, Will tell them what I meant when first I had my mow

ers go!

Joseph he is my eldest one, the only boy of my three Whose shadow can darken my door again, and lighten my heart for me.

Joseph he is my eldest-how his scythe was striking ahead!

William was better at shorter heats, but Jo in the long

run led.

William he was my youngest; John, between them, I somehow see,

When my eyes are shut, with a little board at his head in Tennessee.

But William came home one morning early, from Gettysburg, last July

(The mowing was over already, although the only mower was I):

William, my captain, came home for good to his mother; and I'll be bound

We were proud and cried to see the flag that wrapped his coffin around;

For a company from the town came up ten miles with music and gun :

It seemed his country claimed him then-as well as his mother-her son.

But Joseph is yonder with Grant to-day, a thousand miles or near;

And only the bees are abroad at work with me in the clover here.

Was it a murmur of thunder I heard that hummed again in the air?

Yet, may-be, the cannon are sounding now their "Onward to Richmond" there.

But under the beech by the orchard, at noon, I sat an hour, it would seem

It may be I slept a minute, too, or wavered into a dream.

For I saw my boys, across the field, by the flashes as

they went,

Tramping a steady tramp as of old with the strength in their arms unspent ;

Tramping a steady tramp, they moved like soldiers that

march to the beat

Of music that seems, a part of themselves, to rise and fall with their feet.

Tramping a steady tramp, they came with flashes of silver that shone,

Every step, from their scythes that rang as if they needed the stone

(The field is wide and heavy with grass)—and, coming toward me they beamed

With a shine of light in their faces at once, and—surely I must have dreamed!

For I sat alone in the clover-field, the bees were working ahead.

There were three in my vision-remember, old man : and what if Joseph were dead!

But I hope that he and Grant (the flag above them both, to boot)

Will go into Richmond together, no matter which is ahead or afoot!

Meantime alone at the mowing here- an old man somewhat grey

I must stay at home as long as I can, making myself the hay.

And so another round-the quail in the orchard whistles blithe

But first I'll drink at the spring below, and whet again my scythe.

FIRES IN ILLINOIS.

How bright this weird autumnal eve—
While the wild twilight clings around,
Clothing the grasses everywhere,
With scarce a dream of sound!

The high horizon's northern line,
With many a silent-leaping spire,
Seems a dark shore-a sea of flame-
Quick, crawling waves of fire!

I stand in dusky solitude,

October breathing low and chill, And watch the far-off blaze that leaps At the wind's wayward will.

These boundless fields, behold, once more, Sea-like in vanished summers stir;

From vanished autumns comes the FireA lone, bright harvester !

I see wide terror lit before

Wild steeds, fierce herds of bison here, And, blown before the flying flame,

The flying-footed deer!

Long trains (with shaken bells, that moved
Along red twilights sinking slow)
Whose wheels grew weary on their way,
Far westward, long ago;

Lone waggons bivouacked in the blaze
That long ago streamed wildly past;

Faces from that bright solitude

In the hot gleam aghast!

A glare of faces like a dream,

No history after or before,

Inside the horizon with the flames,

The flames-nobody more!

That vision vanishes in me,

Sudden and swift and fierce and bright; Another gentler vision fills

The solitude, to-night:

The horizon lightens everywhere,"

The sunshine rocks on windy maize ;
Hark, everywhere are busy men,
And children at their plays!

Far church-spires twinkle at the sun,
From villages of quiet born,
And, far and near, and everywhere,
Homes stand amid the corn.

No longer driven by wind, the Fire
Makes all the vast horizon glow,
But, numberless as the stars above,
The windows shine below!

LAND IN CLOUD.

ABOVE the sunken sun the clouds are fired
With a dark splendour: the enchanted hour
Works momentary miracles in the sky.
Weird shadows take from fancy what they lack
For semblance; and I see a boundless plain,
A mist of sun and sheaves in boundless air,
Gigantic shapes of reapers moving slow
In some new harvest. So I can but dream
Of my great Land, that takes its morning star
Out of the dusky evening of the East,
My Land, that lifted into vision gleams
Misty and vast, a boundless plain afar
(Like yonder fading fantasy of cloud)
With shadowy reapers moving, vague and slow,
In some wide harvest of the days to be—
A mist of sun and sheaves in boundless air!