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Against the sunset lie the darkening hills, | And up the listening hills the echoes float Faint and more faint and sweetly multiplied.

Mushroomed with tents, the sudden

growth of war;

The frosty autumn air, that blights and chills,

Yet brings its own full recompense therefor;

Rich colors light the leafy solitudes,

And far and near the gazer's eyes behold The oak's deep scarlet, warming all the woods,

And spendthrift maples scattering their gold.

The pale beech shivers with prophetic

woe,

The towering chestnut ranks stand blanched and thinned, Yet still the fearless sumach dares the foe, And waves its bloody guidons in the wind.

Where mellow haze the hill's sharp outline dims,

Bare elms, like sentinels, watch silently, The delicate tracery of their slender limbs Pencilled in purple on the saffron sky.

Content and quietude and plenty seem Blessing the place, and sanctifying all; And hark! how pleasantly a hidden stream Sweetens the silence with its silver fall!

The failing grasshopper chirps faint and shrill,

The cricket calls, in massy covert hid, Cheery and loud, as stoutly answering still

The soft persistence of the katydid.

With dead moths tangled in its blighted bloom,

The golden-rod swings lonesome on its throne, Forgot of bees; and in the thicket's gloom, The last belated peewee cries alone.

The hum of voices, and the careless laugh

Of cheerful talkers, fall upon the ear; The flag flaps listlessly adown its staff; And still the katydid pipes loud and

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Peace reigns; not now a soft-eyed nymph that sleeps

Unvexed by dreams of strife or conqueror,

But Power, that, open-eyed and watchful, keeps

Unwearied vigil on the brink of war.

Night falls; in silence sleep the patriot bands;

And the still figure of the sentry stands The tireless cricket yet repeats its tune, In black relief against the low full

moon.

EDNA DEAN PROCTOR.

[U. s. A.]

HEROES.

THE winds that once the Argo bore

Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines, And her hull is the drift of the deep seafloor,

Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines. You may seek her crew on every isle

Fair in the foam of Egean seas, But, out of their rest, no charm can wile Jason and Orpheus and Hercules.

And Priam's wail is heard no more

By windy Ilion's sea-built walls; Nor great Achilles, stained with gore, Shouts, "O ye Gods! 't is Hector falls!"

On Ida's mount is the shining snow,

But Jove has gone from its brow away, And red on the plain the poppies grow Where the Greek and the Trojan fought that day.

Mother Earth! Are the Heroes dead? Do they thrill the soul of the years no

more?

Are the gleaming snows and the poppies

red

All that is left of the brave of yore? Are there none to fight as Theseus fought

Far in the young world's misty dawn? Or to teach as gray-haired Nestor taught? Mother Earth! Afe the Heroes gone?

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And the sunshine still is golden, But it falls on a silvered head.

NORA PERRY.

And the girlhood dreams, once vanished,
Come back in her winter-time,
Till her feeble pulses tremble

With the thrill of spring-time's prime.

And looking forth from the window,

She thinks how the trees have grown Since, clad in her bridal whiteness,

She crossed the old door-stone.

Though dimmed her eyes' bright azure,
And dimmed her hair's young gold,
The love in her girlhood plighted
Has never grown dim or old.

They sat in peace in the sunshine
Till the day was almost done,
And then, at its close, an angel
Stole over the threshold stone.

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THE LATE SPRING.

291

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So sweet, so sweet the roses in their blowing,

So sweet the daffodils, so fair to see; So blithe and gay the humming-bird agoing

From flower to flower, a hunting with

the bee.

So sweet, so sweet the calling of the thrushes,

The calling, cooing, wooing, every

where;

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Plover or blackbird never heeding me;

AFTER THE BALL.

THEY sat and combed their beautiful hair, Their long, bright tresses, one by one, As they laughed and talked in the chamber there,

After the revel was done.

Idly they talked of waltz and quadrille, Idly they laughed, like other girls, Who over the fire, when all is still, Comb out their braids and curls.

Robe of satin and Brussels lace,
Knots of flowers and ribbons, too,
Scattered about in every place,
For the revel is through.

And Maud and Madge in robes of white,
The prettiest nightgowns under the sun,
Stockingless, slipperless, sit in the night,
For the revel is done,

Sit and comb their beautiful hair, Those wonderful waves of brown and gold,

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So loud the mill-stream too kept fretting, Till the fire is out in the chamber there,

falling,

O'er bar and bank, in brawling, boisterous glee.

So loud, so loud; yet blackbird, thrush, nor plover,

Nor noisy mill-stream, in its fret and fall,

Could drown the voice, the low voice of my lover,

My lover calling through the thrushes' call.

"Come down, come down!" he called, and straight the thrushes

From mate to mate sang all at once, "Come down!"

And while the water laughed through reeds and rushes,

The blackbird chirped, the plover piped, "Come down!"

Then down and off, and through the fields of clover,

I followed, followed, at my lover's call; Listening no more to blackbird, thrush, or plover,

The water's laugh, the mill-stream's fret and fall.

And the little bare feet are cold.

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