of storms
The dim day of her life went down.
While still beneath the golden hours,
That like a roof the woods o'erspread,
Among the few and faded flowers,
Musing this idle rhyme I tread.

Above yon reach of level mist
Bright shines the cross-crowned spire afar,
As in the sky's clear amethyst
The splendor of some steadfast star.
And still beneath its steady light
The waves of time heave to and fro,
From night to day, from day to night,
As the dim seasons come and go.

Some eager for ambition's strife,
Some to love's banquet hurrying on,
Like pilgrims on the hills of life
We cross each other, and are gone.
But though our lives are little drops,
Welled from the infinite fount above,
Our deaths are but the mystic stops
In the great melody of love.

III.

Burying the basement of the skies
October's mists hang dull and red,
And with each wild gust's fall and rise,
The yellow leaves are round me spread.
'Tis the third autumn, ay, so long,
Since memory 'neath this very bough,
Thrilled my sad lyre strings into song--
What shall unlock their music now?

Then sang I of a sweet hope changed,
Of pale hands beckoning, glad health fled,
Of hearts grown careless or estranged,
Of friends, or living, lost, or dead.
O living lost, forever lost,
Your light still lingers, faint and far,
As if an awful shadow crossed
The bright disk of the morning star.

Blow, autumn, in thy wildest wrath,
Down from the northern woodlands, blow!
Drift the last wild-flowers from my path--
What care I for the summer now?
Yet shrink I, trembling and afraid,
From searching glances inward thrown;
What deep foundation have I laid,
For any joyance, not my own?

While with my poor, unskilful hands,
Half hopeful, half in vague alarm,
Building up walls of shining sands
That fell and faded with the storm,
E'en now my bosom shakes with fear,
Like the last leaflets of this bough,
For through the silence I can hear,
"Unprofitable servant, thou!"

Yet have there been, there are to-day
In spite of health, or hope's decline,
Fountains of beauty sealed away
From every mortal eye but mine.
Even dreams have filled my soul with light,
and