FIRES IN ILLINOIS. How bright this weird autumnal eve— While the wild twilight clings around, Clothing the grasses everywhere, With scarce a dream of sound! The high horizon's northern line, I stand in dusky solitude, October breathing low and chill, And watch the far-off blaze that leaps At the wind's wayward will. These boundless fields, behold, once more, Sea-like in vanished summers stir; From vanished autumns comes the FireA lone, bright harvester! I see wide terror lit before Wild steeds, fierce herds of bison here; And, blown before the flying flames, The flying-footed deer! Long trains (with shaken bells, that move Along red twilights sinking slow) Whose wheels grew weary on their way Far westward, long ago: Lone waggons bivouacked in the blaze, That, long ago, streamed wildly past; Faces, from that bright solitude, In the hot gleam aghast! A glare of faces like a dream, No history after or before, Inside the horizon with the flames, The flames-nobody more! That vision vanishes in me, Sudden and swift and fierce and bright; The horizon lightens everywhere, Far church spires twinkle at the sun, No longer, driven by wind, the Fire WILLIAM WINTER. [Born at Gloucester, Massachusetts, 15th July 1836. Author of The Convent, and other Poems (Boston 1854); The Queen's Domain, and other Poems (1858); My Witness; a Book of Verse (1871); Shakespeare's England (Edinburgh, 1886): and Wanderers a collected volume of his poems published (1889) by David Douglas & Co., Edinburgh, and Ticknor & Co., now Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, by whose kind per mission the poems below quoted are given.] MY QUEEN. He loves not well whose love is bold! He keeps his state,-do thou keep thine, But all my life will reach its hands Thy eyes will be the heavenly lights; But thou thyself shalt come not down ADELAIDE NEILSON. (Died August 15, 1880.) AND oh, to think the sun can shine, D That o'er her head the night wind sighs, That those sweet lips no more can smile, That dust is on the burnished gold Roll on, grey earth and shining star, DAVID GRAY. [Born at Edinburgh, Scotland, 8th November 1836. Came to America in 1849. Died at Binghampton, New York, 18th March 1888. His poems, essays, letters of travel and autobiography, have been collected in two admirable volumes by Mr J. W. Larned, librarian of Buffalo. The poems quoted are given by kind permission of Mrs David Gray and Mr Larned.] TO J. H. (Col. John Hay). THE happy time when dreams have power to cheat No more their beauty-saving such as dies With the swift light of dying smiles, before OF C The eye that strains to watch can tell, for tears, How passing fair it shone-how dusk have grown the years. DIVIDE D. THE half-world's width divides us; where she sits Nor do I dream that in her happier breast And though I know that nearer may not be SIR JOHN FRANKLIN AND HIS CREW. TOLL the saintly minster bell, For we know they're now at rest; |