POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME.

A DREAM OF HOME.

SUNSET! A hush is on the air,

Their gray old heads the mountains bare,
As if the winds were saying prayer.

The woodland, with its broad green wing,
Shuts close the insect whispering,

And lo! the sea gets up to sing.

The day's last splendor fades and dies,
And shadows one by one arise,
To light the candles of the skies.

O wild flowers, wet with tearful dew,
O woods, with starlight shining through,
My heart is back to-night with you!

I know each beech and maple tree,
Each climbing brier and shrub I see,-
Like friends they stand to welcome me.

Musing I go along the streams,
Sweetly believing in my dreams;
For fancy like a prophet seems.

Footsteps beside me tread the sod
As in the twilights gone they trod ;
And I unlearn my doubts, thank God!

Unlearn my doubts, forget my fears,
And that bad carelessness that sears
And makes me older than my years.

I hear a dear, familiar tone,
A loving hand is in my own,
And earth seems made for me alone.

If I my fortunes could have planned, I would not have let go that hand; But they must fall who learn to stand.

And how to blend life's varied hues,
What ill to find, what good to lose,
My Father knoweth best to choose.

EVENING PASTIMES.

SITTING by my fire alone, When the winds are rough and cold, And I feel myself grow old

Thinking of the summers flown.

I have many a harmless art
To beguile the tedious time:
Sometimes reading some old rhyme
I already know by heart;

FADED LEAVES.

Sometimes singing over words Which in youth's dear day gone by Sounded sweet, so sweet that I Had no praises for the birds.

Then, from off its secret shelf I from dust and moth remove The old garment of my love,

In the which I wrap myself.

And a little while am vain ; But its rose hue will not bear The sad light of faded hair; So I fold it up again,

More in patience than regret:
Not a leaf the forest through
But is sung and whispered to:
I shall wear that garment yet.

FADED LEAVES.

THE hills are bright with maples yet;
But down the level land

The beech leaves rustle in the wind
As dry and brown as sand.

The clouds in bars of rusty red
Along the hill-tops glow,

And in the still, sharp air, the frost
Is like a dream of snow.

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The berries of the brier-rose
Have lost their rounded pride:
The bitter-sweet chrysanthemums
Are drooping heavy-eyed.

The cricket grows more friendly now,
The dormouse sly and wise,
Hiding away in the disgrace
Of nature, from men's eyes.

The pigeons in black wavering lines Are swinging toward the sun; And all the wide and withered fields Proclaim the summer done.

His store of nuts and acorns now
The squirrel hastes to gain,
And sets his house in order for
The winter's dreary reign.

'Tis time to light the evening fire, To read good books, to sing

The low and lovely songs that breathe Of the eternal Spring.

THE LIGHT OF DAYS GONE BY.

SOME Comfort when all else is night, About his fortune plays,

Who sets his dark to-days in the light Of the sunnier yesterdays.

THE LIGHT OF DAYS GONE BY

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In memory of joy that's been

Something of joy is, still;

Where no dew is, we may dabble in
A dream of the dew at will.

All with the dusty city's throng
Walled round, I mused to-day
Of flowery sheets lying white along
The pleasant grass of the way.

Under the hedge by the brawling brook
I heard the woodpecker's tap,

And the drunken trills of the blackbirds shook
The sassafras leaves in my lap.

I thought of the rainy morning air
Dropping down through the pine,
Of furrows fresh from the shining share,
And smelling sweeter than wine.

Of the soft, thick moss, and how it grew
With silver beads impearled,

In the well that we used to think ran through
To the other side of the world.

I thought of the old barn set about
With its stacks of sweet, dry hay;
Of the swallows flying in and out

Through the gables, steep and gray;

Thought of the golden hum of the bees,

Of the cocks with their heads so high, Making it morn in the tops of the trees Before it was morn in the sky.