The wind-flower and the violet,
    They perished long ago,
  And the brier-rose and the orchis died
    Amid the summer glow;
  But on the hill the golden-rod,
    And the aster in the wood,
  And the yellow sun-flower by the brook
    In autumn beauty stood,
  Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven,
    As falls the plague on men,
  And the brightness of their smile was gone
    From upland, glade, and glen.

  And now when comes the calm, mild day,
    As still such days will come,
  To call the squirrel and the bee
    From out their winter home;
  When the sound of dropping nuts is heard,
    Though all the trees are still,
  And twinkle in the smoky light
    The waters of the rill,
  The south wind searches for the flowers
    Whose fragrance late he bore,
  And sighs to find them in the wood
    And by the stream no more.

  And then I think of one who in
    Her youthful beauty died,
  The fair meek blossom that grew up
    And faded by my side;
  In the cold, moist earth we laid her,
    When the forest cast the leaf,
  And we wept that one so lovely
    Should have a life so brief. 
  Yet not unmeet it was that one,
    Like that young friend of ours,
  So gentle and so beautiful,
    Should perish with the flowers.

  THE UNIVERSAL TOMB.

  [From Thanatopsis.]

  Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
  Shalt thou retire alone, nor could’st thou wish
  Couch more magnificent.  Thou shalt lie down
  With patriarchs of the infant world—­with kings,
  The powerful of the earth—­the wise, the good,
  Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
  All in one mighty sepulcher.  The hills,
  Rock-ribb’d and ancient as the sun,—­the vales
  Stretching in pensive quietness between;
  The venerable woods—­rivers that move
  In majesty, and the complaining brooks
  That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
  Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—­
  Are but the solemn decorations all
  Of the great tomb of man.  The golden sun,
  The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
  Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
  Through the still lapse of ages.  All that tread
  The globe are but a handful to the tribes
  That slumber in its bosom.  Take the wings
  Of morning, traverse Barca’s desert sands,
  Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
  Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
  Save his own dashings—­yet the dead are there: 
  And millions in those solitudes, since first
  The flight of years began, have laid them down
  In their last sleep—­the dead reign there alone.

* * * * * *