No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

TO AN ALASKAN GLACIER

By Charles Keeler

UT of the cloud-world sweeps thy awful form,

Vast frozen river, fostered by the

storm

Up on the drear peak's snowencumbered crest,

Thy sides deep grinding in the
mountain's breast

As down its slopes thou ploughest to the sea
To leap into thy mother's arms, and be
There cradled into nothingness. How slow,
How imperceptible, thy ceaseless flow,
As one with an eternity unspent

Wherein to round thy task of wonderment!
Thy strength resistless is as will of fate

;

The granite ground to sand beneath thy weight,
The mountains hollowed out with furrows deep,
The sculptured peaks that totter from their steep,
All bear the matchless impress of thy skill,
Grim mountain hewer! With a sudden thrill

Great bergs crash thunderously beneath the tide, And, slow emerging, o'er the waters ride

Like boats of pearl slow floating to their doom,
Which, fondly, the soft lapping waves consume.

I walked erstwhile upon thy frozen waves,
And heard the streams amid thy ice-locked caves ;
I peered down thy crevasses blue and dim,
Standing in awe upon the dizzy rim.
Beyond me lay the inlet still and blue,
Behind, the mountains loomed upon the view
Like storm-wraiths gathered from the low-hung sky.
A gust of wind swept past with heavy sigh,
And lo! I listened to the ice-stream's song
Of winter, when the nights grow dark and long,
And bright stars flash above thy fields of snow,
The cold waste sparkling in the pallid glow,

Or, when the storms wail round thy peaks and spires,

Playing weird notes upon thy ice-wrought lyres
Until the shuddering pinnacles, astrain,

Tumble and crash amidst the seething main.
Years, centuries and eons thou hast known,
Waxing and waning in the wilds alone,
Hoar mountain sculptor, shaper of the earth!
The crystals of the snow which gave thee birth,
Renewing still thy life, are o'er thee spread,
And, as they fall, thou quiverest in thy bed,
Stretching thy vastness down its narrow way
And roaring like a god in fierce dismay;
Thus prisoned, eager in one mighty throe
To leap into the sea and end thy woe!

SUMMER DROUGHT
By J. P. Irvine

HEN winter came the land was lean and sere:

There fell no snow, and oft from wild and field

In famished tameness came the drooping deer,

And licked the waste about the troughs congealed.

And though at spring we ploughed and proffered seed,

It lay ungermed, a pillage for the birds: And unto one low dam, in urgent need,

We daily drove the suppliant, lowing herds. But now the fields to barren waste have run, The dam a pool of oozing greenery lies, Where knots of gnats hang reeling in the sun Till early dusk, when tilt the dragon-flies.

All night the craw-fish deepens out her wells, As shows the clay that freshly curbs them round;

And many a random upheaved tunnel tells

Where ran the mole across the fallow ground. But ah! the stone-dumb dullness of the dawn, When e'en the cocks too listless are to crow, And lies the world as from all life withdrawn, Unheeding and outworn and swooning low!

There is no dew on any greenness shed,

The hard-baked earth is cracked across the walks ;

The very burrs in stunted clumps are dead

And mullein leaves drop withered from the stalks.

Yet, ere the noon, as brass the heaven turns,
The cruel sun smites with unerring aim,
The sight and touch of all things blinds and burns,
And bare, hot hills seem shimmering into flame!

On either side the shoe-deep dusted lane
The meagre wisps of fennel scorch to wire;
Slow lags a team that drags an empty wain,
And, creaking dry, a wheel runs off its tire.

No flock upon the naked pasture feeds,

The sheep with prone heads huddle near the fence;

A gust runs crackling through the brittle weeds,
And then the heat still waxes more intense.

On outspread wings a hawk, far poised on high, Quick swooping screams, and then is heard no

more:

The strident shrilling of a locust nigh

Breaks forth, and dies in silence as before.

No transient cloud o'erskims with flakes of shade The landscape hazed in dizzy gleams of heat; A dove's wing glances like a parried blade,

And western walls the beams in torrents beat.

So burning low, and lower still the sun,
In fierce white fervor, sinks anon from sight,
And so the dread, despairing day is done,
And dumbly broods again the haggard night.

T last the toil encumbered days

are over,

And airs of noon are mellow

as the morn;

The blooms are brown upon the seeding clover,

And brown the silks that

plume the ripening corn.

All sounds are hushed of reaping and of mowing;
The winds are low; the waters lie uncurled;
Nor thistle-down nor gossamer is flowing,
So lull'd in languid indolence the world.

And mute the farms along the purple valley,

The full barns muffled to the beams with sheaves; You hear no more the noisy rout and rally Amongst the tenant-masons of the eaves.

A single quail, upstarting from the stubble,
Darts whirring past and quick alighting down
Is lost, as breaks and disappears a bubble,
Amid the covert of the leafy brown.