stanzas; yet not more, certainly, than in this first verse of

An Impromptu:

The stars are in the ebon sky,

Burning, gold, alone;

The wind roars over the rolling earth,

Like water over a stone.

Take, now, this admirable picture of A Summer Storm:

Last night a storm fell on the world
From heights of drouth and heat,
The surly clouds for weeks were furled,
The air could only sway and beat.

The beetles clattered at the blind,
The hawks fell twanging from the sky,
The west unrolled a feathery wind,
And the night fell sullenly.

The storm leaped roaring from its lair,
Like the shadow of doom,

The poignard lightning searched the air,
The thunder ripped the shattered gloom,

The rain came down with a roar like fire,
Full-voiced and clamorous and deep,
The weary world had its heart's desire,
And fell asleep.

You shall go far before you find a stronger or juster piece of description than this. The most exquisite touch, perhaps, is the "feathery wind" from the west; but how fine is the "poignard lightning"! how palpably true the rain coming down "with a roar like fire"! Compare with this superb spectacular effect the silvery tenderness of the picture in the following stanzas from a poem entitled In May:

The apple orchards, banked with bloom,
Are drenched and dripping with the wet,
And on the breeze their deep perfume
Grows and fades by and lingers yet.

In some green covert far remote
The oven-bird is never still,
And, golden-throat to golden-throat,
The orioles warble on the hill.

Now over all the gem-like woods
The delicate mist is blown again,
And after dripping interludes

Lets down the lulling silver rain.

Mr. Scott is particularly happy in the phrases suggested to him by the song of birds. Note the ingenious suspension in the cadence of the last two lines of the following stanzas from a poem not otherwise remarkable-a song

made for my Dear One When we are far apart;

That she may have wherever she goes

A song of mine in her heart.

A song that will bid her remember

The north nights cool and still,
With the thrushes fluting deep, deep,
Deep on the pine-wood hill.

This is a musical inspiration of rare and haunting charm. There is scarcely a poem of Mr. Scott's from which one could not cull some memorable descriptive passage. By way of exemplifying once for all the originality and power of his nature-painting, I shall place in juxtaposition a midsummer and a late autumn picture, which seem to me almost equally masterly:

A NIGHT IN JUNE.

The world is heated seven times,
The sky is close above the lawn,
An oven when the coals are drawn.

There is no stir of air at all,

Only at times an inward breeze
Turns back a pale leaf in the trees.

Here the syringa's rich perfume
Covers the tulip's red retreat,

A burning pool of scent and heat.

The pallid lightning wavers dim

Between the trees, then deep and dense
The darkness settles more intense.

A hawk lies panting in the grass,

Or plunges upward through the air,
The lightning shows him whirling there.

A bird calls madly from the eaves,
Then stops, the silence all at once
Disturbed, falls dead again and stuns.

A redder lightning flits about,

But in the north a storm is rolled That splits the gloom with vivid gold;

Dead silence, then a little sound,

The distance chokes the thunder down, It shudders faintly in the town.

A fountain plashing in the dark

Keeps up a mimic dropping strain;

Ah! God, if it were really rain!

A SONG.

'Tis autumn and down in the fields
The buckwheat is browning still:
Gather yourself in your cloak,
The winter is over the hill.

There's a cloud of black in the north,
The aurora is smouldering behind,
There are stars in the parting clouds,
And a touch of frost in the wind.

Down in the icy dew

The crickets are cheering shrill :
There is time for another song,
Though winter is over the hill."