Now along the solemn heights Fade the Autumn’s altar-lights; Down the great earth’s glimmering chancel Glide the days and nights. Little kindred of the grass, Like a shadow on a glass Falls the dark and falls the stillness; We must rise and pass. We must rise and follow, wending Where the nights and days have ending,— Pass in order pale and slow, Unto sleep extending. Little brothers of the clod, Soul of fire and seed of sod, We must fare into the silence At the knees of God. Little comrades of the sky, Wing to wing we wander by, Going, going, going, going, Softly as a sigh. And to make the season-cycle complete, and also to show the delicacy of imagination with which Mr. Roberts invests every changing aspect of his well-loved outer world, here are two stanzas on “The Frosted Pane”: One night came Winter noiselessly, and leaned Against my window-pane. In the deep stillness of his heart convened The ghosts of all his slain. Leaves, and ephemera, and stars of earth, And fugitives of grass,— White spirits loosed from bonds of mortal birth, He drew them on the glass. Fancies as exquisite as this bespeak the true poet. “The Trout Brook” and “The Solitary Woodsman” are other inspirations as individual. Mr. Roberts’ fifth volume, _New York Nocturnes_, as its name implies, was a decided departure from his former work, showing his versatility, but what is more to the purpose, his recognition of the dramatic element, the human, vital poetry in the babel of the streets. One could wish that the _Nocturnes_ penetrated more profoundly into the varied phases of life in the great seething city, that, in short, they sounded other deeps than those of love; but Mr. Roberts has succeeded in conveying that sense of isolation in a throng, that heavy loneliness and reaction, throwing one back upon his own spiritual personality, which belongs to the bewildering city night, and from which the finer companionships of love arise as a refuge and need. The _Nocturnes_ have the city’s over-soul incarnate in them; for in the last analysis, the commerce, the art, the ambition, the strife, the defeat, that one may term the city’s life, are but as hands and feet to minister to the spirit of love. The first of the _Nocturnes_ suggests this: I walk the city square with thee, The night is loud; the pavements roar. Their eddying mirth and misery Encircle thee and me. The street is full of lights and cries: The crowd but brings thee close to me, I only hear thy low replies; I only see thine eyes.