Through forest ways with rustling leaves o'erspread

The pine-boughs whispered low of bodings dread,

And all the air a mystery seemed to fill.
But in the shadows of enfolding night,
From out the bosom of the frosty air,
Fell a baptismal robe of beauty rare;
And when, at kiss of dawn, awoke the earth,
Each leaf and pine-bough, clad in vesture white
Told of the peaceful hour of Winter's birth.

ROBERT BURNS.

JANUARY 25, 1885.

BORN unto toil and framed in rustic mold,
There stirred within him, masterful and strong,
The impulse of a heaven-sent gift of song.
In strains now blithe, now sad, his verses told
The simple rugged nature, grandly bold

In honest manhood's cause to battle wrong;
The joys that unto homely lives belong;
Though oft his days were dark and skies were cold,
What heed we of the wintry winds to-night

When hearts within are warm with friendly cheer? We sing his songs, and dwell in scenes more fair, Where summer's treasures deck the meadows bright,

Where daisies bloom, and glittering waves are clear,

By banks o' bonnie Doon and brigs of Ayr.

THOU mystery of life! O, faltering thought,
That, seeking, fain would find the secret dower
Of thy eternal, unborn source and power,
Thy mystic vital essence, ne'er forth wrought,
Though by all science's tireless searching sought.
Who hid thy secret in the acorn's cell,

The seed of flower and the bird's egg-shell ?
Whenceforth by subtle energy are brought
Strength, beauty and glad-voiced trill of songs.
Vain finite mind of scientist or sage,
Vain strife of human thought in every age,

One only answer is; there truth belongs;
Lo, I am life, life's PRINCE! Lo, thou mayst see
Life's source and power personified in ME.

NATURE'S ÆOLIAN.

WHERE sloped the hillside from the upper glade,
I sought cool rest within a maple shade;
In pictured beauty there before me lay
The varying landscape on that summer day.
Just at my right, swift plunged a noisy rill
In mimic torrent from the rugged hill,

Till, winding down, it coursed through meadows green

In laughing ripples and in glittering sheen.
Nature's own music in melodious treat
Filled all my senses with their voices sweet.
From the far pasture of the woody dell
Came soft vibrations of the tinkling bell;
And from the meadows, and the flowery leas,
With the chirp of insects and the hum of bees,
Came the sweet discord of unmeasured notes
From feathered songsters, with uplifted throats.
From the soft rustle of the swaying trees,
And their leaves' flutter in the gentle breeze,
There came co-mingling and falling round
The ceaseless cadence of symphonious sound.
While thus entranced with all this wordless psalm,
My nature softened in its mellow balm;
There soon came stealing o'er my grateful sense
(My soul beguiling with its recompense)
Half conscious sleep; then did the music seem
Vague as the vision of a forgotten dream.
The song of bird, and bee, and babbling rill,
The leaves' soft murmur, and the tinkling bell,
By strange transition in the passive mind,
Changed then to music of another kind.
Out of old years with their memories fraught,
Again came visions and unbidden thought.
I sat in a classic hall amid the throng
Who came to worship at the shrine of
There standing forth, the “Prima Donna” made
Her voice ring grandly through the great arcade,
Then sweet and low, borne faintly through the air,
The notes came softly to the people there,
Until to all did that grand song impart
The strange enchantment of her wondrous art.

song.

Again I sat where somber shadow falls
Through Gothic arches in sacred temple walls;
While from the organ, in its swelling sound,
To the soul came speaking in notes profound,
The song of angels, while by human tongue
The words were vocal, as the song was sung.
'Twas "Gloria in Excelsis" to the Lord of grace,
Who gave salvation to our ruined race.

Again I stood within the tented camp
Where armies, marshaled with their heavy tramp,
Gathered for war, for the bloody strife,

Where foemen meet and stake life against life.
I heard the loud clang of the bugle call;
I saw the brave men in red carnage fall;
I heard the shout, and heard the groan,
The swelling sigh and the dying moan;
The battle was won, but in darkness o'er all
Mantled the smoke, like a funeral pall;

Then I heard the low music of muffled drums,
And I heard the sad wail from ruined homes.

But the spell was broken, the dream passed away, And my thoughts came back to the conscious day; Then the bees, the birds and the brooklets' roar Made nature's glad music as e'en before.

ROBERT CAMERON ROGERS.

HE following poem was read at an opening of

Rogers is one of Buffalo's younger poets of much promise. Editor.

THE DANCING FAUN.

WHEN was unwrapped the ashen winding sheet
That swathed Pompeii, the city of the dead,
And once again the southern azure shed

Its light through ruined court and empty street,
Lo! from the darkness where no human tread
Had echoed for a score of centuries,
Appeared a multitude of gracious shapes,
A pageant of the long lost deities,

Hermes and Pan, and Bacchus crowned with

grapes,

And all the pleasant demi-gods and fauns
Who thronged the woods and kept the fountains

pure.

They could not die; no fear of time had they,
For they were born of art and must endure
While art should live. The stricken city lay
About them, yet they took nor note nor care
of unseen evenings and of darkened dawns;
In passing years they had no place, no part,
Until at last the soft Italian day
Peered in upon them, standing silent there,
Divine in the divinity of art.

And one there was, a faun, among the throng,
With limbs for ever leaping into dance,

With head thrown back, as though he heard, perchance,

The far off echo of some lost Greek song.

The Dancing Faun.

Thou dancer of two-thousand years,
Thou dancer of to-day,
What silent music fills thine ears,
What Bacchic lay,

That thou shouldst dance the centuries
Down their forgotten way?

What mystic strain of pagan mirth
Has charmed eternally

Those lithe, strong limbs that spurn the earth?
What melody

Unheard of men has Father Pan

Left lingering with thee?

And where is now the wanton throng
That round thee used to meet?
On dead lips died the drinking song,
But, wild and sweet,

That silent music urged thee on
To its unuttered beat.

And, when at last Time's weary will
Brought thee again to sight,
Forth camest thou dancing, dancing still,
Into the light,

Unwearied from the murk and dusk

Of centuries of night.

Alas for thee, alas again,

The early faith is gone!

The gods no more are seen of men;
All, all are gone!

The shady forests no more shield
The satyr and the faun.

On Attic slopes the bee still hums,
On many an Elian hill

The wild grape swells, but never comes
The distant trill

Of reedy flutes, for Pan is dead;
Broken his pipes and still.

Broken his pipes, his sweet notes dead,
Save those that charm thine ear,
And thine alone; his train is fled;
His groves are drear;

I speak to heedless ears-ah, well,
I would not have thee hear!

71

Ah, gracious art, whose creatures do not die,
We too have heard the far-off magic song,
We too have caught the spirit of the long,
Soft southern days and sheen of sapphire sky;
And so we listen, like the dancing faun,
We in our snow-bound new-world haunts, and hear
Thy music nearer coming-near, more near-
And feel the promise of thy brightening dawn.