VII.


'Tis Autumn,--and Nature the forest has hung
With arras more gorgeous than ever was flung
From Gobelin looms,--all so varied, so rare,
As never the princeliest palaces were.
Soft curtains of haze the far mountains enfold,
Whose warp is of purple, whose woof is of gold,
And the sky bends as peacefully, purely above,
As if earth breathed an atmosphere only of love.

But thick as white asters in Autumn, are found
The tents all bestrewing the carpeted ground;
The din of a camp, with its stir and its strife,
Its motley and strange, multitudinous life,
Floats upward along the brown slopes, till it fills
The echoing hollows afar in the hills.

'Tis the twilight of Sabbath,--and sweet through the air,
Swells the blast of the bugle, that summons to prayer:
The signal is answered, and soon in the glen
Sits Colonel Dunbar in the midst of his men.

The Chaplain advances with reverent face,
Where lies a felled oak, he has chosen his place;
On the stump of an ash-tree the Bible he lays,
And they bow on the grass, as he solemnly prays.

Underneath thine open sky,