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growth of war;

The frosty autumn air, that blights and chills,

Yet brings its own full recompense therefor;

Rich colors light the leafy solitudes,

And far and near the gazer's eyes behold The oak's deep scarlet, warming all the woods,

And spendthrift maples scattering their gold.

The pale beech shivers with prophetic

woe,

The towering chestnut ranks stand blanched and thinned,

Yet still the fearless sumach dares the foe, And waves its bloody guidons in the wind.

Where mellow haze the hill's sharp outline dims,

Bare elms, like sentinels, watch silently, The delicate tracery of their slender limbs Pencilled in purple on the saffron sky.

Content and quietude and plenty seem Blessing the place, and sanctifying all; And hark! how pleasantly a hidden stream Sweetens the silence with its silver fall!

The failing grasshopper chirps faint and shrill,

The cricket calls, in massy covert hid, Cheery and loud, as stoutly answering still

The soft persistence of the katydid.

With dead moths tangled in its blighted bloom,

The golden-rod swings lonesome on its throne,

Forgot of bees; and in the thicket's gloom,

The last belated peewee cries alone.

The hum of voices, and the careless laugh Of cheerful talkers, fall upon the ear; The flag flaps listlessly adown its staff; And still the katydid pipes loud and

near.

And now from far the bugle's mellow throat

Pours out, in rippling flow, its silver

tide;

Peace reigns; not now a soft-eyed nymph that sleeps

Unvexed by dreams of strife or conqueror,

But Power, that, open-eyed and watchful, keeps

Unwearied vigil on the brink of war.

Night falls; in silence sleep the patriot bands;

The tireless cricket yet repeats its tune, And the still figure of the sentry stands In black relief against the low full

moon.

EDNA DEAN PROCTOR.

[U. S. A.]

OUR HEROES.

THE winds that once the Argo bore
Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines,
And her hull is the drift of the deep sea
floor,

Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines.
You may seek her crew in every isle,
Fair in the foam of Egean seas,
But out of their sleep no charm can wile
Jason and Orpheus and Hercules.

And Priam's voice is heard no more
By windy Ilium's sea-built walls;
From the washing wave and the lonely
shore

No wail goes up as Hector falls.
On Ida's mount is the shining snow,
But Jove has gone from its brow away,
And red on the plain the poppies grow
Where Greek and Trojan fought that day.

Mother Earth! Are thy heroes dead? Do they thrill the soul of the years no more?

Are the gleaming snows and the poppies

red

All that is left of the brave of yore?
Are there none to fight as Theseus fought,
Far in the young world's misty dawn?
Or teach as the gray-haired Nestor taught,
Mother Earth! Are thy heroes gone?

Gone?-in a nobler form they rise; Dead?- we may clasp their hands in ours, And catch the light of their glorious eyes, And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers.

Wherever a noble deed is done,

There are the souls of our heroes stirred;
Wherever a field for truth is won,
There are our heroes' voices heard.

Their armor rings on a fairer field
Than Greek or Trojan ever trod,

Leave him to God's watching eye,

Trust him to the hand that made him.
Mortal love weeps idly by:
God alone has power to aid him.
Lay him low, lay him low,

In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he cannot know:
Lay him low!

wield,

And the sunshine still is golden,
But it falls on a silvered head.

And the girlhood dreams, once vanished,
Come back in her winter-time,
Till her feeble pulses tremble

With the thrill of spring-time's prime.

And looking forth from the window,

She thinks how the trees have grown Since, clad in her bridal whiteness,

She crossed the old door-stone.

Though dimmed her eyes' bright azure,
And dimmed her hair's young gold,
The love in her girlhood plighted
Has never grown dim or old.

They sat in peace in the sunshine
Till the day was almost done,
And then, at its close, an angel
Stole over the threshold stone.