The hedges are all red with haws and hips, The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night.

OCTOBER.

My ornaments are fruits; my garments leaves,
Woven like cloth of gold, and crimson dyed;
I do not boast the harvesting of sheaves,
O'er orchards and o'er vineyards I preside.
Though on the frigid Scorpion I ride,
The dreamy air is full, and overflows
With tender memories of the summer-tide,
And mingled voices of the doves and crows.

NOVEMBER.

The Centaur, Sagittarius, am I,

Born of Ixion's and the cloud's embrace;
With sounding hoofs across the earth I fly,
A steed Thessalian with a human face.
Sharp winds the arrows are with which I chase
The leaves, half dead already with affright;
I shroud myself in gloom; and to the race
Of mortals bring nor comfort nor delight.

DECEMBER.

Riding upon the Goat, with snow-white hair,

I come, the last of all. This crown of mine Is of the holly; in my hand I bear

The thyrsus, tipped with fragrant cones of pine. I celebrate the birth of the Divine,

And the return of the Saturnian reign; My songs are carols sung at every shrine,

Proclaiming “Peace on earth, good will to men."

AUTUMN WITHIN.

Written April 9, 1874.

IT is autumn; not without,
But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
It is I that have grown old.

Birds are darting through the air,
Singing, building without rest;
Life is stirring everywhere,

Save within my lonely breast.

There is silence: the dead leaves
Fall and rustle and are still;
Beats no flail upon the sheaves,
Comes no murmur from the mill.

THE FOUR LAKES OF MADISON.

Written January 15, 1876.

FOUR limpid lakes, four Naiades
Or sylvan deities are these,

In flowing robes of azure dressed;
Four lovely handmaids, that uphold
Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold,
To the fair city in the West.

By day the coursers of the sun
Drink of these waters as they run

Their swift diurnal round on high;

By night the constellations glow
Far down the hollow deeps below,
And glimmer in another sky.

Fair lakes, serene and full of light,
Fair town, arrayed in robes of white,
How visionary ye appear!

All like a floating landscape seems
In cloud-land or the land of dreams,
Bathed in a golden atmosphere!

VICTOR AND VANQUISHED.

Written April 4, 1876.

As one who long hath fled with panting breath
Before his foe, bleeding and near to fall,
I turn and set my back against the wall,
And look thee in the face, triumphant Death.
I call for aid, and no one answereth;

I am alone with thee, who conquerest all;
Yet me thy threatening form doth not appall,
For thou art but a phantom and a wraith.
Wounded and weak, sword broken at the hilt,

With armor shattered, and without a shield,
I stand unmoved; do with me what thou wilt;
I can resist no more, but will not yield.

This is no tournament where cowards tilt;
The vanquished here is victor of the field.

MOONLIGHT.

Written December 20, 1878.

As a pale phantom with a lamp
Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud
In all the splendor of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more
Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed. One mass of shade,. The elm-trees drop their curtains down ; By palace, park, and colonnade

I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground beneath my feet
Is clothed with a diviner air;
While marble paves the silent street
And glimmers in the empty square.

Illusion Underneath there lies
The common life of every day;
Only the spirit glorifies

With its own tints the sober gray.

In vain we look, in vain uplift

Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind;
We see but what we have the gift
Of seeing; what we bring we find.

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE.

[A FRAGMENT.]

The Children's Crusade was begun March 23, 1879, but was left unfinished. It is founded upon an event which occurred in the year 1212. An army of twenty thousand children, mostly boys, under the lead of a boy of ten years, named Nicolas, set out from Cologne for the Holy Land. When they reached Genoa only seven thousand remained. There, as the sea did not divide to allow them to march dry-shod to the East, they broke up. Some got as far as Rome; two ship-loads sailed from Pisa, and were not heard of again; the rest straggled back to Germany.

I.

WHAT is this I read in history,
Full of marvel, full of mystery,
Difficult to understand?

Is it fiction, is it truth?
Children in the flower of youth,
Heart in heart, and hand in hand,
Ignorant of what helps or harms,
Without armor, without arms,
Journeying to the Holy Land!