TAND here by my side and turn, I pray,

STAN

On the lake below thy gentle eyes;
The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray,
And dark and silent the water lies;
And out of that frozen mist the snow
In wavering flakes begins to flow;
Flake after flake
They sink in the dark and silent lake.

See how in a living swarm they come
From the chambers beyond that misty veil;
Some hover awhile in air, and some

Rush prone from the sky like summer hail.
All, dropping swiftly or settling slow,
Meet, and are still in the depths below;
Flake after flake

Dissolved in the dark and silent lake.

Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud,
Come floating downward in airy play,
Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd

That whiten by night the Milky Way; There broader and burlier masses fall; The sullen water buries them all,

Flake after flake,All drowned in the dark and silent lake.

And some, as on tender wings they glide
From their chilly birth cloud, dim and gray,
Are joined in their fall and, side by side,

Come clinging along their unsteady way; As friend with friend, or husband with wife, Makes hand in hand the passage of life; Each mated flake

Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake.

Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste
Stream down the snows, till the air is white,

As, myriads by myraids madly chased,

They fling themselves from their shadowy height. The fair, frail creatures of middle sky,

What speed they make, with their grave so nigh:

Flake after flake

To lie in the dark and silent lake!

I see in thy gentle eyes a tear;

They turn to me in sorrowful thought; Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear, Who were for a time, and now are not; Like these fair children of cloud and frost, That glisten a moment and then are lost,— Flake after flake,

All lost in the dark and silent lake
Yet look again, for the clouds divide;
A gleam of blue on the water lies;
And far away, on the mountain-side,

A sunbeam falls from the opening skies. But the hurrying host that flew between The cloud and the water no more is seen; Flake after flake

At rest in the dark and silent lake.

-William Cullen Bryant.

A

NNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow; and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit,
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north-wind's masonry!
Out of an unseen quarry, evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake or tree or door;

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage; naught cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Mauger the farmer s'ghs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

'HE moon is up, and yet it is not night:

THE

Sunset divides the sky with her; a sea
Of glory streams along the Alpine height
Of blue Friuli's mountains; heaven is free
From clouds, but of all colors seems to be
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,
Where the day joins the past eternity;
While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest
Floats through the azure air, an island of the blest.

A single star is at her side, and reigns
With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains
Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhotian hill,
As day and night contending were until

Nature reclaimed her order: gently flows
The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instill
The odorous purple of a new-born rose,

Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within its glows,

Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar,
Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,
From the rich sunset to the rising star,
Their magical variety diffuse:

And now they change; a paler shadow strews
Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new color as it gasps away,

The last still loveliest, till 'tis gone-and all is gray.

Within the Fairy's fane.

Yet not the golden islands

Gleaming in yon flood of light,

Nor the feathery curtains

Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch,
Nor the burnished ocean's waves

Paving that gorgeous dome,

So fair so wonderful a sight

As Mab's ethereal palace could afford.
Yet likest evening's vault, that fairy Hall!
Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread
Its floors of flashing light,
Its vast and azure dome,
Its fertile golden islands
Floating on a silver sea;

Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted
Through clouds of circumambient darkness,
And pearly battlements around

Looked o'er the immense of heaven.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley.

That heavenliest hour of heaven is worthiest thee!

Sweet hour of twilight! in the solitude
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er
To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood,

Evergreen forest; which Boccaccio's lore
And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!
The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,

Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, And vesper bells that rose the boughs along; The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,

His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng
Which learned from this example not to fly
From a true lover,-shadowed my mind's eye.

O Hesperus! thou bringest all good things,-
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlabored steer;

'HE day is done, and the darkness

THE

Falls from the wing of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist; And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, That my soul cannot resist;

A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day:
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty though s suggest

Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice;

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

—H. W. Longfellow.

The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal,
Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend.
Who with the weight of years would wish to bend,
When Youth itself survives young Love and joy?
Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend,
Death hath but little left him to destroy!

Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?

Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side, To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere, The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride, And flies unconscious o'er each backward year. None are so desolate but something dear, Dearer than self, possesses or possessed A thought, and claims the homage of a tear; A flashing pang! of which the weary breast Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean,This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold [unrolled. Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores

But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen With none who bless us, none whom we can bless, Minions of splendor shrinking from distress! None that, with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less Of all that flattered, followed, sought, and sued; This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

-Lord Byron.

OW beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh

zephyrstbreathe in evening's ear

Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,

Robed in a garment of untrodden snow,
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend;
So stainless that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castle steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the timeworn tower
So idly that rapt fancy deemeth it

A metaphor of peace-all form a scene
Where musing solitude might love to lift