Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/532

516 If but a leaf, all gay

With autumn's gorgeous coloring, doth fall,

Along its fluttering way

A shrill alarum wakes a sharp dismay,

And, answering to the call,

The insect chorus swells and dies away,

With a fine, piping noise,

As if some younger singing mote cried out;

As do mischievous boys,

Startling their playmates with a pained voice,

Or sudden, thrilling shout,

Followed by laughter, full of little joys.

Perchance a lurking breeze

Springs, just awakened, to its wayward play,

Tossing the sober trees

Into a thousand graceful vagaries;

And snatching at the gay

Banners of autumn, strews them where it please.

The sunset colors glow

A second time in flame from out the wood,

As bright and warm as though

The vanished clouds had fallen and lodged below

Among the tree-tops, hued

With all the colors of heaven's signal bow.

The fitful breezes die

Into a gentle whisper, and then sleep;

And sweetly, mournfully,

Starting to sight in the transparent sky—

Lone in the "upper deep,"

Sad Hesper pours its beams upon the eye,

And for one little hour

Holds audience with the lesser lights of heaven;

Then, to its Western bower

Descends in sudden darkness, as the flower

That at the fall of even

Shuts its bright eye, and yields to sorrow's power.

Soon, with a dusky face,

Pensive and proud as some East-Indian queen,

And with a solemn grace,

The moon ascends, and takes her royal place

In the fair evening scene,

And Night sits crowned in Beauty's sweet embrace.

My soul, filled to the brim,

And half intoxicate with loveliness,

Sighs out its happy hymn;

And in the overflow my eyes grow dim

With a still happiness;

Till, voiceless with the rapture of my dream,

I yield my spirit up unto the bliss

Of perfect peace, sad by its sweet excess.

A LITTLE BIRD THAT EVERY ONE KNOWS.

is a bird, with a wond'rous song,

A little bird that every one knows

(Though it sings for the most part under the rose),

That is petted and pampered wherever it goes,

And nourished in bosoms gentle and strong.

This petted bird has a crooked beak,

And eyes like live coals set in its head,

And a gray breast, dappled with glowing red—

Dabbled, not dappled, it should be said—

From a fancy it has of which I may speak.

This eccentricity that I name

Is, that whatever the bird would sing,

It dips its black head under its wing,

And moistens its beak in—darling thing!—

A human heart that is broken with shame.