The Richmond palladium. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1855-1875, 1866-11-01
The Closing Scene.


The following is pronounced by the Westminster
Rerier to be unquessonaby the finest American poem
sv written:
Within the sober realms of leaaess trees,
The year inhaled the dreamy air;
Like tanned reaper in his hour of ease,
When all the fields lying brown and bare.
The gray barns Ioosing from their hazy hills
Ger the dun iuang in the rales
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills.
On the dull thunder of alternate falls.
All sights were mellowed and all sounds subdued,
The hills seemed further and the streams sang
As in a dream the distant woodman hewed
His winter log, with many muffied blow.
The embattled forests erewhiie armed with gold,
Their banners bright with every mataral hue,
Now stood like sad beaten host of old;
Withdrawn afar in Times remotest blue.
On sou Der wings the vuture tried his fight
The dove heard his signing mates COM
plant;
And ike star, slow dropping in the light,
The village church vane seemed to pale and faint.
The sentine-cock upon the hills crew-crew
Fhrice- and all stler than before;
Silent, till SEINE replying warbler blew
His alien horn, and then heard more.
W here erst the Jay WITHIN the elm ; tai crest
Made garrulous trouble round her unfedged
young;
And where the oriole hung her swaying nest,
By every light wind ike censor swung;
Where sang the noisy martins of the caves,
The busy swolows cricling
Foreboding, the rustic mind believes,
An early harvest and plenteous year;
Where every bird that walked the verna feast,
Shook the sweet slumDer from its wings at morn;
To the reaper of the rosy lust;
All now sunless, empty and forlorn.
Alone, from the stubble, pped the quail;
And croaked the crow through all the dreary
gloom;
Alone, the pheasant, drumming in the vale,
Made echo in the distant cottage loom.
There was no bud no bloom upon the bowers;
The spiders moved their thin shrouds night by
night
The thistle down, the only ghost of flowers,
Sailed slowley by-passed noisessly out of sight.
Amid all this-n this most dreary air,
And where the woodbine shed upon the perch
Its crimson leaves, as ii the year stood there;
Firing the blood NTH its inverted torch;
Amid all this the center of the scene,
The white haired matron, with monotonous tread,
Piled the swift wheel, and with her joyous mein,
Sat Ike fate, and watched the flying thread.
She had known sorrow. He had walked with her,
Oft supped. and broke with her the a.hen crust,
And in the deadleayes still she heard the stir
OF his thick mantle trailing in the dust.
While vet her cheek was bright with
bloom,
Her countrr summoned and she gave her all;
And twice war bowed to her his sable plume
Re-gaye the sword rust upon the WALL
Re-gaye the sword. but not the hand that drew,
And struck tor liberty the dying blow;
Nor him who to his sire and country true,
Fell mid the ranks of the invading Toe.
Long, but not loud, the dropping wheel went on,
Like the low murmur OF a hive at noon;
Long but not loud the memory of the gone
Rreathed through her lips sad and tremuious
Stlast the thread was snapped, her head was
bowed;
Life dropped the distaf through her hands serene,
And loving neighbors smoothed her carn shroud;
While death and winter closed the autumn scene.