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,
With many a silent-leaping spire,
Seems a dark shore-a sea of flame-
Quick, crawling waves of fire!

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;
Another gentler vision fills
The solitude, to-night:

The horizon lightens everywhere,
The sunshine rocks on windy maize ;-
Hark, everywhere are busy men,
And children at their plays!

Far church spires twinkle at the sun,
From villages of quiet born,
And, far and near, and everywhere,
Homes stand amid the corn.

No longer, driven by wind, the Fire
Makes all the vast horizon glow,
But, numberless as the stars above,
The windows shine below!

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!
I would not have thee come too nigh:
The sun's gold would not seem pure gold
Unless the sun were in the sky:
To take him thence and chain him near
Would make his beauty disappear.

He keeps his state,-do thou keep thine,
And shine upon me from afar !
So shall I bask in light divine,
That falls from love's own guiding star ;
So shall thy eminence be high,
And so my passion shall not die.

But all my life will reach its hands
Of lofty longing toward thy face,
And be as one who speechless stands
In rapture at some perfect grace!
My love, my hope, my all will be
To look to heaven and look to thee!

Thy eyes will be the heavenly lights;
Thy voice the gentle summer breeze,
What time it sways, on moonlit nights,
The murmuring tops of leafy trees;
And I will touch thy beauteous form
In June's red roses, rich and warm.

But thou thyself shalt come not down
From that pure region far above;
But keep thy throne and wear thy crown,
Queen of my heart and queen of love!
A monarch in thy realm complete,
And I a monarch-at thy feet!

ADELAIDE NEILSON.

(Died August 15, 1880.)

AND oh, to think the sun can shine,
The birds can sing, the flowers can bloom,
And she, whose soul was all divine,
Be darkly mouldering in the tomb:

D

That o'er her head the night wind sighs,
And the sad cypress droops and moans;
That night has veiled her glorious eyes,
And silence hushed her heavenly tones:

That those sweet lips no more can smile,
Nor pity's tender shadows chase,
With many a gentle, child-like wile,
The rippling laughter o'er her face:

That dust is on the burnished gold
That floated round her royal head;
That her great heart is dead and cold-
Her form of fire and beauty dead!

Roll on, grey earth and shining star,
And coldly mock our dreams of bliss;
There is no glory left to mar,
Nor any grief so black as this!

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
Is past, dear friend, for me. As in old days,
So, still, at times, they throng their ancient ways
And trail their shining robes before my feet,
Or stand, half-lifted to their native skies
By the soft oval of white arms, and eyes
Closing on looks unutterably sweet,
Then the grim Truth beside me will arise
And slay them, and their beauty is no more,—

No more their beauty-saving such as dies
Into the marble of mute lips, or flies

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
Noonday has broadened o'er the prairied West;
For me, beneath an alien sky, unblest,
The day dies and the bird of evening flits.

Nor do I dream that in her happier breast
Stirs thought of me. Untroubled beams the star,
And recks not of the drifting mariner's quest,
Who, for dear life, may seek it on mid-sea,
The half-world's width divides us; yet, from far-

And though I know that nearer may not be
In all the years—yet O beloved, to thee
Goes out my heart, and, past the crimson bar
Of sunset, westward yearns away-away-
And dieth towards thee with the dying day!

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN AND HIS CREW.

TOLL the saintly minster bell,

For we know they're now at rest;
Where they lie, they sleep as well
As in kirkyard old and blest.