"They have vanished!--one, the last, is just burying himself in the bushes of the bank--there! he has disappeared in the shadows of the trees! You have got your friend and we are all safe!" [1] Otsego Lake. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. TO A WATERFOWL. Whither, 'midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side? There is a power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-- The desert and illimitable air-- Lone wandering but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon, that toil shall end; Soon, shalt thou find a summer home and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend Soon o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. The melancholy days are come, The saddest of the year, Of wailing winds and naked woods, And meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, The autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, And to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, And from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow Through all the gloomy day. Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, That 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.