=_Alfred B. Street, 1811-._= (Manual, pp. 522, 531.)

From his “Poems.”

=_385._= AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE.

                              Overhead
  There is a blending of cloud, haze, and sky;
  A silvery sheet, with spaces of soft hue;
  A trembling veil of gauze is stretched athwart
  The shadowy hill-sides and dark forest-flanks;
  A soothing quiet broods upon the air,
  And the faint sunshine winks with drowsiness. 
  Far sounds melt mellow on the ear:  the bark,
  The bleat, the tinkle, whistle, blast of horn,
  The rattle of the wagon-wheel, the low,
  The fowler’s shot, the twitter of the bird,
  And even the hue of converse from the road.

* * * * *

                     The sunshine flashed on streams,
  Sparkled on leaves, and laughed on fields and woods. 
  All, all was life and motion, as all now
  Is sleep and quiet.  Nature in her change
  Varies each day, as in the world of man
  She moulds the differing features.  Yea, each leaf
  Is variant from its fellow.  Yet her works
  Are blended in a glorious harmony,
  For thus God made his earth.  Perchance His breath
  Was music when He spake it into life,
  Adding thereby another instrument
  To the innumerable choral orbs
  Sending the tribute of their grateful praise
  In ceaseless anthems towards His sacred throne.

* * * * *

From “Drawings and Tintings.”

=_386._= THE FALLS OF THE MONGAUP.

  Struggling along the mountain path,
    We hear, amid the gloom,
  Like a roused giant’s voice of wrath,
    A deep-toned, sullen boom: 
  Emerging on the platform high,
  Burst sudden to the startled eye
  Rocks, woods, and waters, wild and rude—­
  A scene of savage solitude.

  Swift as an arrow from the bow;
    Headlong the torrent leaps,
  Then tumbling round, in dazzling snow
    And dizzy whirls it sweeps;
  Then, shooting through the narrow aisle
  Of this sublime cathedral pile,
  Amidst its vastness, dark and grim,
  It peals its everlasting hymn.

  Pyramid on pyramid of rock
    Towers upward, wild and riven,
  As piled by Titan hand, to mock
    The distant smiling heaven. 
  And where its blue streak is displayed,
  Branches their emerald net-work braid
  So high, the eagle in his flight
  Seems but a dot upon the sight.

  Here column’d hemlocks point in air
    Their cone-like fringes green;
  Their trunks hang knotted, black and bare,
    Like spectres o’er the scene;
  Here lofty crag and deep abyss,
  And awe-inspiring precipice;
  There grottoes bright in wave-worn gloss,
  And carpeted with velvet moss.

  No wandering ray e’er kissed with light
    This rock-walled sable pool,
  Spangled with foam-gems thick and white,
    And slumbering deep and cool;
  But where yon cataract roars down,
  Set by the sun, a rainbow crown
  Is dancing, o’er the dashing strife—­
  Hope glittering o’er the storm of life.