She only came when on the cliffs The evening moonlight lay, And no man knew the secret haunts White were her feet, her forehead showed A spot of silvery white, That seemed to glimmer like a star And here, when sang the whippoorwill, But when the broad midsummer moon Beside the silver-footed deer There grazed a spotted fawn. The cottage dame forbade her son "It were a sin," she said, "to harm "This spot has been my pleasant home Ten peaceful years and more; 86 And ever when the moonlight shines, "The red men say that here she walked A thousand moons ago; They never raise the war-whoop here, "I love to watch her as she feeds, While such a gentle creature haunts The youth obeyed, and sought for game Where deep in silence and in moss, But once, in autumn's golden time, He ranged the wild in vain, Nor roused the pheasant nor the deer, The crescent mocn and crimson eve He raised the rifle to his eye, Away into the neighboring wood Next evening shone the waxing moon The deer upon the grassy mead But ere that crescent moon was old, And slew the youth and dame. Now woods have overgrown the mead, There shrieks the hovering hawk at noon, 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; Bordered with trees whose gay leaves fly And ask the sower's hand. Loose the tired steer and let him go Fling wide the generous grain; we fling The early bluebirds sing. Fling wide the grain; we give the fields The song of him who binds the grain, Fling wide the golden shower; we trust 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;- On the sad earth, as time grows gray, And realms, that hear the battle cry, And chieftains to the war shall lead Till man, by love and mercy taught, Oh strew with pausing, shuddering hand, As if, at every step, ye cast The pelting hail and riving blast. Nay, strew, with free and joyous sweep, Strew the bright seed for those who tear 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 In the long row of humming rooms, A pallid sisterhood, that keep In strife with weariness and sleep, Beyond the middle night. Large part be theirs in what the year Still, strew, with joyous hand, the wheat To hear a sound that lightly rings 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, |