130

THE INDIAN SERENADE.

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy

form from off my door!"

Quoth the raven,

66

Nevermore."

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my cham

ber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming;

And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws the shadow on the floor;

And my

soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor,

I ARISE from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

Has led me who knows how?

To thy chamber-window, Sweet!

ANGEL OF THE RAIN.

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The wandering airs, they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
The champak odors fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,

It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,

O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas !
My heart beats loud and fast:
O, press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last!

ANGEL OF THE RAIN.

HARRIET MCEWEN KIMBALL.

AWAKE thy cloud-harp, angel of the rain!
Sweep thy dark fingers o'er the waiting strings;
And pour thy melodies in silvery showers
In the great heart of earth!

I love thy notes when in the hush of night
They fall with tranquil gladness on the roof,
Liquid and faint as laughter heard in dreams.

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WORLDLY TREASURES.

I love thy music when, with wildest power,
Thy unseen fingers smite the answering chords,
And torrents of bewildering fantasies
Deluge the mighty hills and lovely vales.

I love thy notes when thou dost improvise Melodious strains to charm the royal Day' Whose "sunbeam fingers," at its closing, fling A rainbow wreath athwart the dripping strings.

WORLDLY TREASURES.

BAILEY.

I'LL Woo thee, world, again,

And revel in thy loveliness and love.
I have a heart with room for every joy;
And since we must part sometime, while I may
I'll quaff the nectar in thy flowers, and press
The richest clusters of thy luscious fruit
Into the cup of my desires. I know
My years are numbered not in units yet.
But I cannot live unless I love and am loved,
Unless I have the young and beautiful

Bound up like pictures in my book of life.

It is the intensest vanity alone

Which makes us bear with life. Some seem to live
Whose hearts are like those unenlightened stars
Of the first darkness, lifeless, timeless, useless,
With nothing but a cold night air about them;

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

Not suns, not planets; darkness organized;
Orbs of a desert darkness; with no soul
To light its watch-fires in the wilderness,
And civilize the solitude one moment.
There are such seemingly; but how or why
They live, I know not. This to me is life;
That if life be a burden, I will join

To make it but the burden of a song;

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I hate the world's coarse thought. And this is life;
To watch young beauty's bud-like feelings burst
And load the soul with love; as that pale flower,
Which opes at eve, spreads sudden on the dark
Its yellow bloom, and sinks the air down with its sweets.
Let heaven take all that's good, hell all that's foul;
Leave us the lovely, and we will ask no more.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS

BRYANT.

THE melancholy days are come,

the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

134 THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers

Are lying in their lowly beds with the fair and good of ours.

The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain

Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the wild rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;

But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the

wood,

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls

the plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home,

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,