SEPTEMBER.

89

With its bright colours, intermixed with spots
Of darker green. Yes, it were sweetly sad
To wander in the open fields, and hear,
E’en at this hour, the noonday hardly past,
'The lulling insects of the summer's night;
To hear, where lately buzzing swarms were heard,
A lonely bee long roving here and there
To find a single flower, but all in vain;
Then, rising quick, and with a louder hum,
In widening circles round and round his head,
Straight by the listener flying clear away,
As if to bid the fields a last adieu;
To hear, within the woodland's sunny side,
Late full of music, nothing, save, perhaps,
The sound of nutshells, by the squirrel dropped
From some tall beech, fast falling through the leaves.

He hears the sound of the hunter's gun,

And rides on the echo back,
And sighs in his ear, like a stirring leaf,

And flits in his woodland track.
The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river,

The cloud, and the open sky-
He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver,

Like the light of your very eye.

}

“My life is like the summer rose

That opens to the morning sky,
But ere the shades of evening close,

Is scattered on the ground to die!
Yet on the rose's humble bed
The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see —
But none shall weep a tear for me!

My life is like the autumn leaf

That trembles in the moon's pale ray, Its hold is frail-its date is brief,

Restless-and soon to pass away! Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent-tree will mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree, But none shall breathe a sigh for me!

My life is like the prints, which feet

Have left on Tampa's desert strand;
Soon as the rising tide shall beat,

All trace will vanish from the sand,
Yet, as if grieving to efface
All vestige of the human race,
On that lone shore loud moans the sea,
But none, alas! shall mourn for me!