Esther M. Bridge

                                      [Written for the EMPORIA NEWS.]
                                                  INDIAN SUMMER.
                                             BY ESTHER M. BRIDGE.

Indian summer’s varied colors
Dye the woodland’s stalwart throng.
While in mellow light or shadow,
Dreaming hours pulsate along.
Cheating with their genial beaming
Larks, to trill a hurried song.
Turkeys bronze, and deer high antlered,
Now invade these woodlands bright,
While large flocks of grouse, and partridge
On our fine prairies light,
And long strings of birds migrating
Seek the streams at morn and night.

Every day brings novel phases,
O’er the landscape far and near,
Challenging our admiration,
For the time; then disappear,
Like some fickle artist changing,
Not content ’till all is sear.

So this rich, warm, changeful glowing
Overspreading with its blush
All the face of our wild landscape,
Is the fleeting hectic flush
E’re the dying of the verdure,
E’re stern winter’s frozen hush.
Fain we’d stay the dissolution,
And evade the winter’s gloom;
But to cheer us through its darkness,
We will store in memory’s room
Many sweet, unchanging pictures,
Of the years’ bright perfect bloom.
We will view them; with a longing
For the first bright gleam of spring,
When all beauty resurrected,
Is impelled its joy to sing.
When the forest and the prairie
All their lovely tributes bring.

                                 Arkansas City, Kansas, October 28, 1870.