he southward
Adown the steps of the year.

The grass is ripe in the meadow,
And the mowers swing in rhyme;
The grain so green on the hillside
Is in its golden prime.

No more the breath of the clover
Is borne on every breeze,
No more the eye of the daisy
Is bright on meadow leas.

The bobolink and the swallow
Have left for other clime--
They mind the sun when he beckons
And go with summer's prime.

Buttercups that shone in the meadow
Like rifts of golden snow,
They, too, have melted and vanished
Beneath the summer's glow.

Still at evenfall in the upland
The vesper sparrow sings,
And the brooklet in the pasture
Still waves its glassy rings.

And the lake of fog to the southward
With surges white as snow--
Still at morn away in the distance
I see it ebb and flow.

But a change has come over nature,
The youth of the year has gone;
A grace from the wood has departed,
And a freshness from the dawn.

Another poem, "Loss and Gain," was printed in the New York "Independent"
about the same time.

LOSS AND GAIN

The ship that drops behind the rim
Of sea and sky, so pale and dim,
Still sails the seas
With favored breeze,
Where other waves chant ocean's hymn.

The wave that left this shore so wide,
And led away the ebbing tide,
Is with its host
On fairer coast,
Bedecked and plumed in all its pride.

The grub I found encased in clay
When next I came had slipped away
On golden wing,
With birds that sing,
To mount and soar in sunny day.

No thought or hope can e'er be lost--
The spring will come in spite of frost.
Go crop the branch
Of maple stanch,
The root will gain what you exhaust.

The man is formed as ground he tills--
Decay and death lie 'neath his sills.
The storm that beats,
And solar heats,
Have helped to form whereon he builds.

Successive crops that lived and grew,
And drank the air, the light, the dew,
And then deceased,
His soil increased
In strength, and depth, and richness, too.

From slow decay the ages grow,
From blood and crime the centuries blow,
What disappears
Beneath the years,
Will mount again as g