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Mushroomed with tents, the sudden

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

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.]

HEROES.

THE winds that once the Argo bore

Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines, And her hull is the drift of the deep seafloor,

Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines. You may seek her crew on every isle

Fair in the foam of Egean seas, But, out of their rest, no charm can wile Jason and Orpheus and Hercules.

And Priam's wail is heard no more

By windy Ilion's sea-built walls; Nor great Achilles, stained with gore, Shouts, "O ye Gods! 'tis 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 the Greek and the Trojan

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!

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

[U. s. A.]

THE HOUSE IN THE MEADOW.

It stands in a sunny meadow,

The house so mossy and brown, With its cumbrous old stone chimneys, And the gray roof sloping down.

The trees fold their green arms round it,
The trees a century old;

And the winds go chanting through them,

And the sunbeams drop their gold.

The cowslips spring in the marshes,
The roses bloom on the hill,
And beside the brook in the pasture

The herds go feeding at will.

Within, in the wide old kitchen,
The old folks sit in the sun,
That creeps through the sheltering wood.
bine,

Till the day is almost done.

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.

He folded their hands together,

He touched their eyelids with balm, And their last breath floated outward, Like the close of a solemn psalm!

Like a bridal pair they traversed
The unseen, mystical road
That leads to the Beautiful City,

Whose builder and maker is God.

Perhaps in that miracle country

They will give her lost youth back, And the flowers of the vanished springtime

Will bloom in the spirit's track.

One draught from the living waters Shall call back his manhood's prime; And eternal years shall measure

The love that outlasted time.

But the shapes that they left behind them, The wrinkles and silver hair,

Made holy to us by the kisses

The angel had printed there,

We will hide away 'neath the willows, When the day is low in the west, Where the sunbeams cannot find them, Nor the winds disturb their rest.

And we'll suffer no telltale tombstone,
With its age and date, to rise
O'er the two who are old no longer,

In the Father's house in the skies.

calling,

Plover or blackbird never heeding me;"

falling,

O'er bar and bank, in brawling, boisterous glee.

So loud, so loud; yet blackbird, thrush, nor plover,

Nor noisy mill-stream, in its fret and

fall,

Could drown the voice, the low voice of my lover,

My lover calling through the thrushes'

call.

"Come down, come down!" he called, and straight the thrushes

From mate to mate sang all at once, "Come down!"

And while the water laughed through reeds and rushes,

The blackbird chirped, the plover piped, "Come down!"

Then down and off, and through the fields of clover,

I followed, followed, at my lover's call; Listening no more to blackbird, thrush, or plover,

The water's laugh, the mill-stream's fret and fall.

And the little bare feet are cold.

Then out of the gathering winter chill,

All out of the bitter St. Agnes weather, While the fire is out and the house is still, Maud and Madge together,

Maud and Madge in robes of white,

The prettiest nightgowns under thesun, Curtained away from the chilly night, After the revel is done,

Float along in a splendid dream,

To a golden gittern's tinkling tune, While a thousand lustres shimmering

stream

In a palace's grand saloon.

Flashing of jewels and flutter of laces,

Tropical odors sweeter than musk, Men and women with beautiful faces,

And eyes of tropical dusk,

And one face shining out like a star,

One face haunting the dreams of each, And one voice, sweeter than others are, Breaking into silvery speech,

Telling, through lips of bearded bloom, An old, old story over again,