No end to any Row,

No indications where the Crescents go,
No top to any steeple,

No recognitions of familiar people,
No courtesies for showing 'em,
No knowing 'em,

No travelling at all, no locomotion,
No inkling of the way, no motion,
"No go," by land or ocean,
No mail, no post,

No news from any foreign coast,

No park, no ring, no afternoon gentility,

No company, no nobility,

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member,

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flow'rs, no leaves, no birds.
November!

Thomas Hood.

OWN swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,

DOWN

From the snow five thousand summers old;

On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;

The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;

The little bird sits at his door in the sun;
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,

And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives.

His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,—
In the nice ear of nature which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year,

And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
Ah, God of wisdom! hath the sea
Yielded its dead to humble me!

My boy!.... my Jacob . . . . Turn again!

'

NOVEMBER,

Bret Harte.

No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day,

No sky, no earthly view,

No distance looking blue,

No road, no street, no "t' other side the way,"

And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For other couriers we should not lack;

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,— And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,

Everything is upward striving;

'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-
'Tis the natural way of living.

Who knows whither the clouds have fled?

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake;
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.

James R. Lowell.

WINTER.

DOWN swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,

From the snow five thousand summers old;

On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;

The little brook heard it and built a roof
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;

All night by the white stars' frosty gleams
He groined his arches and matched his beams;
Slender and clear were his crystal spars
As the lashes of light that trim the stars;
He sculptured every summer delight
In his halls and chambers out of sight;
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipped
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;

Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
But silvery mosses that downward grew;
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear,
For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops
And hung them thickly with diamond drops,
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one;

No mortal builder's most rare device
Could match this winter-palace of ice;
'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay
In his depths serene through the summer day,
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky,
Lest the happy model should be lost,
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry

By the elfin builders of the frost.

Within the hall are song and laughter;

The cheeks of Christmas grow red and jolly; And sprouting is every corbel and rafter

With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide;

The broad flame-pennons droop and flap
And belly and tug as a flag in the wind;
Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap,

Hunted to death in its galleries blind;
And swift little troops of silent sparks,
Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear,
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks
Like herds of startled deer.

But the wind without was eager and sharp,
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp,
And rattles and wrings

The icy strings,

Singing, in dreary monotone,

A Christmas carol of its own,

Whose burden still, as he might guess,

Was "Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!"

James R. Lowell.

ADVERTISEMENT OF A LOST DAY.

LOST! lost! lost!

A gem of countless price,

Cut from the living rock

And graved in Paradise;