Slowly and silently, falling, Dreamily floating by, Down on mosaic mosses Their purple vestures lie. Move they in stately sorrow, Out from their palace-home, Where they reveled, alike in star-light And when the day had come? Sink they, in sad bereavement, Along Despair’s dim shore, Because to their sheltering shadow, The young birds come no more? The sunshine and the starshine, Will seek their summer homes Full oft, in pleasant weather, And find them in their tombs. The little birds will seek their Well-remembered shadow, And build their nests above them, In the meshes of the meadow. Like travelers benighted, Where heaping snow-drifts lie, They’ll wither all the winter Beneath the open sky. Like fated generations They vanish, in a light That flings a treacherous beauty Above its deadly blight. Like altars, strangely lighted, That burn in human souls, They shed their sparkling showers Before the blackening scrolls. As roses we have tended, Though fainting in the noon, Still kept a pleasant fragrance Until the eves of June. Our forest, from the summer, Is fading in the frost, And the glories of his dying Are more than she could boast. Here in their mottled shadows, With bended heart and knees, Sweet thought comes to my spirit From out the aged trees. It seems, when flesh is failing, And Life folds up her wing, That soonest, in these crimson tents, We’d hear the angels sing! And many a bright and tangled thread, Here Fancy ever weaves, And Faith lifts up her trustful eyes Above the falling leaves; She knows that, to her native hills No blight can ever come, That trees, with leaves of healing, rise Forever round her home! * * * * * THE EMIGRANT CHILD. Small, yellow leaves, from locust boughs, Sprinkle the deep green grass, Where drowsy herds, on a zigzag path, To bubbling streamlets pass. The earliest lamps of fire-flies Grow dim with the rose of June, Now droning pipes, of the insect tribe, Practice an autumn tune. The clover-blooms, ’mid scented grass, Await the dews of night, The western pane, through clustering vines, Shines in the evening light. Yet why so light the hurrying tread Across yon entrance hall? And why no more on the garden walk, Do children’s shadows fall? The little stranger’s fevered lips, Like sound of struggling rills, Murmur of far, familiar things, Among his native hills. His words go out on evening airs, Where glancing leaves are still, And sadly tones of a foreign land In the pleasant homestead thrill: