Now fails the song, and down the lonely ways The last low echoes die upon the breeze. I lay my lyre upon the moveless knees Of her who by the hollow roadway stays, In anguish waiting for her children slain That shall not come again With springtime, leading the new lambs to graze. They come no more; but while o’er hill and plain The twilight darkens, and the evening rose Aloft on Ætna glows, Silent she sits amid the sodden leas, With eyes that level on the ocean haze Their unobserving stare, as seaward gaze The eyes of stolid caryatides. _Scribner’s_ _Louis V. Ledoux_ NOVEMBER Hark you such sound as quivers? Kings will hear, As kings have heard, and tremble on their thrones; The old will feel the weight of mossy stones; The young alone will laugh and scoff at fear. It is the tread of armies marching near, From scarlet lands to lands forever pale; It is a bugle dying down the gale; It is the sudden gushing of a tear. And it is hands that grope at ghostly doors; And romp of spirit children on the pave; It is the tender sighing of the brave Who fell, ah! long ago, in futile wars; It is such sound as death; and, after all, ’Tis but the forest letting dead leaves fall. _The Bellman_ _Mahlon Leonard Fisher_ SALUTATION Did you choose the journey, friend? No, nor I; But to make it cheerfully, Let us try. When the day is dark, I pray, Sing a song to cheer the way, For tomorrow we will be One day nearer to the sea. Did you choose the journey, friend? No, nor I; But we know the end will come By and by. All today we bear the load Up the weary winding road, But tomorrow we may be At the Inn in company. _The Independent_ _Ruth Sterry_ HERE LIES PIERROT The moon’s ashine; by many a lane Walk wistful lovers to and fro; It must be like old days again; How they do love! _Here lies Pierrot._ She loved me once, did Columbine. It sets my dusty heart aglow Merely to lie and dream how fine Her semblance was,--_Here lies Pierrot!_ Her perfumed presence, silks and lace, Did madden men and wrought them woe; For me alone her witching grace. Where is she now? _Here lies Pierrot._ We two walked once beneath the moon-- Yellow it hung, and large and low-- And listened to the tender tune Of nightingales,--_Here lies Pierrot!_ Our foolish vows of passion shook The very stars, they trembled so. How it comes back, her soft, shy look, Now I am dead! _Here lies Pierrot!_ These other men and maids, who stroll Through moonlit poplar trees arow, Does each play the enchanted rôle We phantoms played? _Here lies Pierrot!_ O joy, that I remember yet Sweet follies of the long ago! Dear heaven, I would not quite forget! The moon’s ashine; _Here lies Pierrot!_ _Scribner’s_ _Richard Burton_ LIST OF “DISTINCTIVE POEMS,” THEIR AUTHORS, AND THE MAGAZINES IN WHICH THEY APPEARED _Century_--