at lately sprang 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 brier-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,
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878]

GOD'S CREATURES

ONCE ON A TIME

Once on a time I used to dream
Strange spirits moved about my way,
And I might catch a vagrant gleam,
A glint of pixy or of fay;
Their lives were mingled with my own,
So far they roamed, so near they drew;
And when I from a child had grown,
I woke--and found my dream was true.

For one is clad in coat of fur,
And one is decked with feathers gay;
Another, wiser, will prefer
A sober suit of Quaker gray:
This one's your servant from his birth,
And that a Princess you must please,
And this one loves to wake your mirth,
And that one likes to share your ease.

O gracious creatures, tiny souls!
You seem so near, so far away,
Yet while the cloudland round us rolls,
We love you better every day.

Margaret Benson [18--

TO A MOUSE
On Turning Up Her Nest With The Plow, November, 1785

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,
O, what a pani