THE CLOSING SCENE.

THE CLOSING SCENE.

WITHIN this sober realm of leafless trees,

The russet year inhaled the dreamy air,
Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease,
When all the fields are lying brown and bare.

The gray barns, looking from their hazy hills
O'er the dim waters widening in the vales,
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills,
On the dull thunder of alternate flails.

All sights were mellowed, and all sounds subdued,
The hills seemed farther, and the streams sang low;
As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed

His winter log with many a muffled blow.

Th' embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold,
Their banners bright with every martial hue,
Now stood, like some sad beaten host of old,
Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue.

On slumb'rous wings the vulture held his flight;
The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint;

And like a star slow drowning in the light,

The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint.

The sentinel cock upon the hill-side crew;

Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before

Silent till some replying wanderer blew

His alien horn, and then was heard no more.

Where erst the jay within the elm's tall crest
Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young;
And where the oriole hung her swaying nest
By every light wind like a censer swung;

Where sang the noisy masons of the eves,
The busy swallows circling ever near,
Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes,

An early harvest and a plenteous year;

Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast
Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn,
To warn the reapers of the rosy east,

All now was songless, empty, and forlorn.

Alone, from out the stubble piped the quail,

And croaked the crow through all the dreary gloom; Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale,

Made echo to the distant cottage loom.

There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;

The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night;

The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers,

Sailed slowly by-passed noiseless out of sight.

Amid all this-in this most cheerless air,

And where the woodbine shed upon the porch Its crimson leaves, as if the year stood there, Firing the floor with his inverted torch

Amid all this, the centre of the scene,

The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread Plied her swift wheel, and with her joyless mien Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread.

THE CLOSING SCENE.

She had known sorrow.

He had walked with her,

Oft supped, and broke the bitter ashen crust, And in the dead leaves still she heard the stir Of his black mantle trailing in the dust.

While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom,
Her country summoned, and she gave her all,
And twice War bowed to her his sable plume;
Re-gave the swords to rust upon her wall.

Re-gave the swords-but not the hand that drew,
And struck for Liberty the dying blow;
Nor him, who to his sire and country true
Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe.

Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on,
Like the low murmurs of a hive at noon;

Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone
Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune.

At last the thread was snapped, her head was bowed: Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene; And loving neighbours smoothed her careful shroud, While Death and Winter closed the autumn scene.

BAYARD TAYLOR.

KILIMANDJARO.

HAIL to thee, monarch of African mountains,
Remote, inaccessible, silent, and lone-

Who, from the heart of the tropical fervours,

Liftest to heaven thine alien snows,

Feeding for ever the fountains that make thee
Father of Nile and Creator of Egypt!

The years of the world are engraved on thy forehead;
Time's morning blushed red on thy first-fallen snows;
Yet lost in the wilderness, nameless, unnoted,

Of man unbeholden, thou wert not till now.
Knowledge alone is the being of Nature,
Giving a soul to her manifold features,
Lighting through paths of the primitive darkness
The footsteps of Truth and the vision of Song.
Knowledge has born thee anew to Creation,
And long-baffled Time at thy baptism rejoices.
Take, then, a name, and be filled with existence,
Yea, be exultant in sovereign glory,
While from the hand of the wandering poet
Drops the first garland of song at thy feet.

Floating alone, on the flood of thy making,
Through Africa's mystery, silence, and fire,
Lo! in my palm, like the Eastern enchanter,
I dip from the waters a magical mirror,
And thou art revealed to my purified vision.

KILIMANDJARO.

I see thee, supreme in the midst of thy co-mates,
Standing alone 'twixt the Earth and the Heavens,
Heir of the Sunset and Herald of Morn.

Zone above zone, to thy shoulders of granite,
The climates of Earth are displayed, as an index,
Giving the scope of the Book of Creation.
There, in the gorges that widen, descending
From cloud and from cold into summer eternal,
Gather the threads of the ice-gendered fountains—
Gather to riotous torrents of crystal,

And, giving each shelvy recess where they dally
The blooms of the North and its evergreen turfage,
Leap to the land of the lion and lotus!
There, in the wondering air of the Tropics
Shivers the Aspen, still dreaming of cold:

There stretches the Oak, from the loftiest ledges,
His arms to the far-away lands of his brothers,
And the Pine-tree looks down on his rival, the Palm.

Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance,

Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air,

Thy battlements hang o'er the slopes and the forests, Seats of the Gods in the limitless ether,

Looming sublimely aloft and afar.

Above them, like folds of imperial ermine,

Sparkle the snow-fields that furrow thy forehead—
Desolate realms, inaccessible, silent,

Chasms and caverns where Day is a stranger,
Garners where storeth his treasures the Thunder,
The Lightning his falchion, his arrows the Hail!

Sovereign Mountain, thy brothers give welcome:
They, the baptized and the crowned of ages,
Watch-towers of Continents, altars of Earth,
Welcome thee now to their mighty assembly.
Mont Blanc, in the roar of his mad avalanches,
Hails thy accession; superb Orizaba,