may,
And, answering to the call,
The insect chorus swells and dies away
With a fine piping noise.
As if some younger singing notes cried out,
As do mischievous boys--
Startling their playmates with a pained voice,
Or sudden thrilling shout,
Followed by laughters, full of little joys.

Perchance a lurking breeze
Springs, just awakened to its wayward play,
Tossing the sober trees
Into a frolic maze of ecstasies,
And snatching at the gay
Banners of Autumn, strews them where it please.

The sunset colors glow
A second time in flame from out the wood,
As bright and warm as though
The vanished clouds had fallen, and lodged below
Among the tree-tops, hued
With all the colors of heaven's signal-bow.

The fitful breezes die
Into a gentle whisper, and then sleep;
And sweetly, mournfully,
Starting to sight, in the transparent sky,
Lone in the upper deep,
Sad Hesper pours its beams upon the eye;
And for one little hour,
Holds audience with the lesser lights of heaven;
Then to its western bower
Descends in sudden darkness, as the flower
That at the fall of Even
Shuts its bright eye, and yields to slumber's power.

Soon, with a dusky face,
Pensive and proud as an East Indian queen,
And with a solemn grace,
The moon ascends, and takes her royal place
In the fair evening scene;
While all the reverential stars, apace,
Take up their march through the cool fields of space,
And dead is the sweet Autumn day whose close we've seen.

PALO SANTO.

In the deep woods of Mexico,
Where screams the "painted paraquet,"
And mocking-birds flit to and fro,
With borrowed notes they half forget;
Where brilliant flowers and poisonous vines
Are mingled in a firm embrace,
And the same gaudy plant entwines
Some reptile of a poisonous race;
Where spreads the _Itos'_ icy shade,
Benumbing, even in summer's heat,
The thoughtless traveler who hath laid
Himself to noonday slumbers sweet;--
Where skulks unseen the beast of prey--
The native robber glares and hides,--
And treacherous death keeps watch alway
On him who flies, or he who bides.

In these deep tropic woods there grows
A tree, whose tall and silvery bole