JULY 31.


ROSEMARY.

Indian summer has gone with its beautiful moon.
And all the sweet roses I gathered in June
Are faded. It may be the cloud-sylphs of Even
Have stolen the tints of those roses for Heaven.
O bonnie bright blossom! in the years far away.
So evanished thy bloom on an evening in May.
The sunlight now sleeps in the lap of the west,
And the star-beams are barring its chamber of rest.
While Twilight is weaving her blue-tinted bowers
To mellow the landscape where slumber the flowers.
I would fain learn the music that won thee away,
When the earth was the beautiful temple of May;
For our fancies were measured the bright summer long
To the carols we learned from the lark's morning song.
They still haunt me--those echoes from Child land--but now
My heart beats alone to their musical flow.
_Then_ I never looked up to the portals on high,
For our Heaven was here; and our azure-stained sky
Was the violet mead; the cloud-billows of snow
Were the pale nodding lilies; the roses that glow
On the crown of the hill, gave the soft blushing hue:
The gold was the crocus; the silver, the dew