Waves high its fruitage blest,
'Mid bowers with fadeless beauties rife,--
Look up, and claim thy rest!




FROST-FLOWERS.


Over my window in pencillings white,
Stealthily traced in the silence of night--
Traced with a pencil as viewless as air,
By an artist unseen, when the star-beams were fair,
Came wonderful pictures, so life-like and true
That I'm filled with amaze as the marvel I view.

Like, and yet unlike the things I have seen,--
Feathery ferns in the forest-depths green,
Delicate mosses that hide from the light,
Snow-drops, and lilies, and hyacinths white,
Fringes, and feathers, and half-opened flowers,
Closely-twined branches of dim, cedar bowers--
Strange, that one hand should so deftly combine
Such numberless charms in so quaint a design!

O wondrous creations of silence and night!
I watch as ye fade in the clear morning light,--
As ye melt into tear-drops and trickle away
From the keen, searching eyes of inquisitive Day.