Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1855-10-13

The lingering sunlight says farewell,
Your purpe-fngered labor stop,
And hear q tale have TO tell.
II.
You sec that cottage in the glen,
ION desolate, forsaken shed
Whose mouldering threshold now and then,
Only few strange travellers tread.
No smoke is curling from its roof,
AT eve no cattle gather round,
No neighbor now, with dint Of hoof
Prints his glad visit on the ground.
happy home It was Of yore:
At morn the fioclxs went nibbling by,
And Farmer Wiley, at his door,
OFT made their reckoning with his eye.
Where yon rank alder trees have sprung,
And birches cluster thick and tall,
Once the stout apple oserhung,
With his red gifts, the orchard wall.
Right fond and pleasant, in their ways,
The gentle Wiley people were,
| knew them in those peaceful days,
And Mary--every one knew her.
Ill
Two summers now had scared the hills,
Two years Of little rain or dew;
High up the courses Of the rils
The wild-rose and the raspberry grew.
The mountain sides were cracked and dry,
And frequent assures on the plain,
Like mouths, gaped open to the sky
As though the parehed earth prayed for rain.
One sultry August afternoon,
Old Wiley, looking toward the west,
Said-"we shall hear the thunder soon:
OH if it bring us rain tits blest."
And even with his word, smell
OF sprinked fields passed through the air,
And from single cloud there fell
few large drops-the rain was there.
Ere set of sun thunder-stroke
Gave signal to the foods to rise:
Then the great seal Of Heaven was brokel
Then burst the gates that barred the skiesl
While from the west the clouds rolled on,
And from the nor west gathered fast;
swell have enough Of rain qnon,'
Said Wiley eff this deluge last.''
For all these cliffs that stand sublime
Around, like solemn priests appeared,
Gray Druids Of the olden time,
Each with his white ana streaming beard
Till in one sheet of seethng foam
The mingling torrents joined their nights
But in the Willeys' quiet home
Was naught but silence and "Good night"
For soon they went to their repose,
anu IN tnelf DEUS, all SAFE anu WafuS
Saw not how fast the waters rose,
Heard not the growing of the storm.
But just before the stroke of ten,
Old Wiley looked into the night,
And called upon his two hired men,
And woke his wife, who struck light;
Though her hand trembled, as she heard
The horses whinnying in the stall,
And-"children!" was the only word,
That woman from her lips let fall.
"AIotherl'' the frighted infants cried,
"What is iti has whirlwind comet"
Wildly the weeping mother eyed
Each little darling, but was dumb.
sound! as though mighty gale
Some forest from its hold had riyen,
Mixed with rattling noise like hail,
God! art thou raining rocks from heaven!
A FASH oh Christi the lightning showed
The mountain moving from his seatl
Out! out into the slippery road
Into the wet with naked feet
No time for dress-for life for life!
No time for any word but this:
The father grasped his boy-hs wife
Snatched her young babe--but not to kiss.
And Mary with the younger girl,
barefoot and shivering IN their smocks,
Sped forth amid that angry whirl
Of rushing waves and whelming rocks.
For down the mountains crumbling side,
Full half the mountain from on high
Came sinking, like the SHOWS that slide
From the great Alps about July.
And with IL went the lordly ash,
And with it went the kingly pine,
Cedar and oak amid the crash,
Dropped down like clippings Of the vine.
Two rivers rushed-the one that broke
His wonted bounds and drowned the land,
And one that streamed with dust and smoke,
A food Of earth, of stones and sand
Then for time the vale was dry,
The soil had swallowed up the wave;
Till one star looking from the sky,
A signal to the tempest gave:
The clouds withdrew, the storm was o'er,
Bright Aldebaran burned again,
The buried river rose once more,
And foamed along his gravelly glenI
~.
AT morn the men of Conway felt
Some dreadful thing had chanced that night,
And those by Breton woods who dwelt
Observed the mountains altered height.
Old Crawford and the Fabyn lad
Came down from Amonoosuck then,
And passed the Notch--ah! strange and sad
1t was to see the rayaged glen.
But having toiled for miles, in doubt,
With many q risk Of limb and neck,
They saw and hailed with joy and shout
The Wiley House amid the wreck.
That avalanche Of stones and sand,
Remembering mercy IN It's wrath,
Had parted, and on elther hand,
Pursued the ruin Of its path.