And the giddy stars (so legends tell) Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above,

In her highest noon,

The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red leven
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven)

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings,—
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty— Where Love's a grown-up God—

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest:

Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit: Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,

With the fervor of thy lute:

Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely-flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.

5. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), the patriarch of American poetry, was born in Massachusetts but, like Irving and Cooper, belongs to New York. He is our first great poet and is often called the American Wordsworth. He was a child prodigy, but in his case the child prodigy became the great literary artist and producer. At the age of seventeen he wrote Thanatopsis, a poem giving his ideas of death; at the age of seventy-three he began the translation of Homer into blank verse. "For faithfulness and majesty," says Professor Newcomer, "his translation ranks among the best that have been made."

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the

jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! They all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers

Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of

ours.

The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain

Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer

glow;

But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance

late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream

no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side. In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of

ours,

So gentle and so beautiful should perish with the flowers.

TO A WATERFOWL

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side?

There is a power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, The desert and illimitable air

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

THE HURRICANE

Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane!

And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales, Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails; Silent, and slow, and terribly strong,

The mighty shadow is borne along,
Like the dark eternity to come;

While the world below, dismayed and dumb,
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.

They darken fast-and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray—
A glare that is neither night nor day,

A beam that touches, with hues of death,
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
To its covert glides the silent bird,

While the hurricane's distant voice is heard,
Uplifted among the mountains round,

And the forests hear and answer the sound.
He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail !—

How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale;
How his huge and writhing arms are bent,
To clasp the zone of the firmament,

And fold, at length, in their dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain the visible space.
Darker still darker! the whirlwinds bear
The dust of the plains to the middle air:
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart,