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She only came when on the cliffs

The evening moonlight lay,

And no man knew the secret haunts
In which she walked by day.

White were her feet, her forehead showed

A spot of silvery white,

That seemed to glimmer like a star
In autumn's hazy night.

And here, when sang the whippoorwill,
She cropped the sprouting leaves,
And here her rustling steps were heard
On still October eves.

But when the broad midsummer moon
Rose o'er that grassy lawn,

Beside the silver-footed deer

There grazed a spotted fawn.

The cottage dame forbade her son
To aim the rifle here;

"It were a sin," she said, "to harm
Or fright that friendly deer.

"This spot has been my pleasant home Ten peaceful years and more;

86

And ever when the moonlight shines,
She feeds before our door.

"The red men say that here she walked A thousand moons ago;

They never raise the war-whoop here,
And never twang the bow.

"I love to watch her as she feeds,
And think that all is well,

While such a gentle creature haunts
The place in which we dwell.”

The youth obeyed, and sought for game
In forests far away,

Where deep in silence and in moss,
The ancient woodland lay.

But once, in autumn's golden time,

He ranged the wild in vain,

Nor roused the pheasant nor the deer,
And wandered home again.

The crescent mocn and crimson eve
Shone with a mingling light;
The deer upon the grassy mead,
Was feeding full in sight.

He raised the rifle to his eye,
And from the cliffs around
A sudden echo, shrill and sharp,
Gave back its deadly sound.

Away into the neighboring wood
The startled creature flew,
And crimson drops at morning lay
Amid the glimmering dew.

Next evening shone the waxing moon
As sweetly as before;

The deer upon the grassy mead
Was seen again no more.

But ere that crescent moon was old,
By night the red men came,
And burnt the cottage to the ground,

And slew the youth and dame.

Now woods have overgrown the mead,
And hid the cliffs from sight;

There shrieks the hovering hawk at noon,
And prowls the fox at night.

In 1860, Bryant delivered a Fulogy on The Life, Character, and Genius of Washington Irving, which, together with previous addresses on Thomas Cole, the artist, and Cooper, the novelist, affords a specimen of our poet's power as a pure, truthful, and accurate prose-writer.

A new volume of poems, called Thirty Poems, was issued in 1864. The most striking of these are those wherein the

author describes Nature, and the human feelings it would seem to typify. As a specimen, we quote

THE SONG OF THE SOWER.

THE maples redden in the sun;

In autumn gold the beeches stand;
Rest, faithful plough, thy work is done
Upon the teeming land.

Bordered with trees whose gay leaves fly
On every breath that sweeps the sky,
The fresh dark acres furrowed lie,

And ask the sower's hand.

Loose the tired steer and let him go
To pasture where the gentians blow,
And we, who till the grateful ground,
Fling we the golden shower around.

Fling wide the generous grain; we fling
O'er the dark mould the green of spring.
For thick the emerald blades shall grow,
When first the March winds melt the snow,
And to the sleeping flowers, below,

The early bluebirds sing.

Fling wide the grain; we give the fields
The ears that nod in summer's gale,
The shining stems that summer gilds,
The harvest that o'erflows the vale,
And swells, an amber sea, between
The full-leaved woods, its shores of green.
Hark! from the murmuring clods I hear
Glad voices of the coming year;

The song of him who binds the grain,
The shout of those that load the wain,
And from the distant grange there comes
The clatter of the thresher's flail,
And steadily the millstone hums
Down in the willowy vale.

Fling wide the golden shower; we trust
The strength of armies to the dust,
This peaceful lea may haply yield
Its harvest for the tented field.

Ha! feel ye not your fingers thrill,

As o'er them, in the yellow grains, Glide the warm drops of blood that fill, For mortal strife, the warrior's veins; Such as, on Solferino's day,

Slaked the brown sand and flowed away;-
Flowed till the herds, on Mincio's brink,
Snuffed the red stream and feared to drink;-
Blood that in deeper pools shall lie,

On the sad earth, as time grows gray,
When men by deadlier arts shall die,
And deeper darkness blot the sky
Above the thundering fray;

And realms, that hear the battle cry,
Shall sicken with dismay;

And chieftains to the war shall lead
Whole nations, with the tempest's speed,
To perish in a day;—

Till man, by love and mercy taught,
Shall rue the wreck his fury wrought,
And lay the sword away.

Oh strew with pausing, shuddering hand,
The seed upon the helpless land,

As if, at every step, ye cast

The pelting hail and riving blast.

Nay, strew, with free and joyous sweep,
The seed upon the expecting soil;
For hence the plenteous year shall heap
The garners of the men who toil.

Strew the bright seed for those who tear
The matted sward with spade and share,
And those whose sounding axes gleam
Beside the lonely forest stream,

Till its broad banks lie bare;

And him who breaks the quarry-ledge,

With hammer blows, plied quick and strong, And him, who, with the steady sledge, Smites the shrill anvil all day long. sprinkle the furrow's even trace

For those whose toiling hands uprear

The roof-trees of our swarming race,

By grove and plain, by stream and mere: Who forth, from crowded city, lead

The lengthening street, and overlay Green orchard plot and grassy mead

With pavement of the murmuring way. Cast, with full hands, the harvest cast, For the brave men that climb the mast, When to the billow and the blast

It swings and stoops, with fearful strain, And bind the fluttering mainsail fast, Till the tossed bark shall sit, again, Safe as a seabird in the main.

Fling wide the grain for those who throw
The clanking shuttle to and fro,

In the long row of humming rooms,
And into ponderous masses wind
The web that, from a thousand looms,
Comes forth to clothe mankind.
Strew, with free sweep, the grain for them,
By whom the busy thread,
Along the garments' even hem
And winding seam, is led;

A pallid sisterhood, that keep
The lonely lamp alight,

In strife with weariness and sleep,

Beyond the middle night.

Large part be theirs in what the year
Shall ripen for the reaper here.

Still, strew, with joyous hand, the wheat
On the soft mould beneath our feet,
For even now I seem

To hear a sound that lightly rings
From murmuring harp and viol's strings,
As in a summer dream.

The welcome of the wedding-guest,

The bridegroom's look of bashful pride, The faint smile of the pallid bride, And bridemaid's blush at matron's jest,

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