From brazen sunflowers, orb and fringe,
The burning burnish dulls and dies:
Sad Autumn sets a sullen tinge
Upon the scornful peonies:
The dewy frog limps out, and heaves
A speckled lump in speckled bowers:
A reeking moisture clings, and lowers
The lips of lapping leaves.
Ah, well-a-day!
Ere the cock crow,
Life's charm'd array
Reels all away.
IN spring and summer winds may blow,
And rains fall after, hard and fast;
The tender leaves, if beaten low,
Shine but the more for shower and blast.
But when their fated hour arrives,
When reapers long have left the field,
When maidens rifle turn'd-up hives,
And their last juice fresh apples yield,
A leaf perhaps may still remain
Upon some solitary tree,
Spite of the wind and of the rain:
A thing you heed not if you see.
At last it falls. Who cares? Not one:
And yet no power on earth can ever
Replace the fallen leaf upon
Its spray, so easy to dissever.
If such be love I dare not say,
Friendship is such, too well I know,
I have enjoy'd my summer day;
'Tis past; my leaf now lies below.
DELICATE leaves, with your shifting colours,
Crimson and golden, or russet brown,
Under what sunsets of calm October,
Out of what groves were ye shaken down?
When the sun, dying in red and amber,
Tinted the woods with the hues he wore,
As the stain'd light in a great cathedral,
Through the east window, falls on the floor.
In your high homes where the tall shafts quiver,
And the green boughs, like a trellis, cross,
When ye grow brighter, and change, and wither,
Symbols ye are of our gain and loss.
Hopes that we cherish'd, and grand ideals,
Dreams that to colour and substance grew,
Ah! they were lofty and green and golden,
Now they lie dead on our hearts like you.
Silent as snow from his airy chamber,
Down on the earth drops the wither'd leaf,
Silently back, on the heart of the dreamer,
Noticed of none, falls the secret grief.
Yet ye deceive us, beautiful prophets;
For like one side of an ocean shell,
Cast by the tide on a dripping sand-beach,
Only a half of the truth ye tell.
Much of decadence and death ye sing us,
Rightly ye tell us earth's hopes are vain,
But of the life out of death no whisper,
Saying, We die, but we live again.'
Bring us some teacher, O leaves autumnal-
Some voice to sing, from your crimson skies,
Of the home where our hope is immortal,
Of the land where the leaf never dies.
THE DOG'S GRAVE.
LIE here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath a covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love, that here no stone we raise :
More thou deserv'st; but this man gives to man,
Brother to brother, this is all we can.
Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear
Shall find thee through all changes of the year:
This oak points out thy grave; the silent tree
Will gladly stand a monument of thee.
We grieved for thee, and wished thy end were past
And willingly have laid thee here at last:
For thou hadst lived till everything that cheers
In thee had yielded to the weight of years;
Extreme old age had wasted thee away,
And left thee but a glimmering of the day;
Thy ears were deaf, and feeble were thy knees,-
I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze,
Too weak to stand against its sportive breath,
And ready for the gentlest stroke of death.
It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed;
Both man and woman wept when thou wert dead;
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were
Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share;
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely anywhere in like degree!
For love, that comes wherever life and sense
Are given by God, in thee was most intense;
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us Men, but to thy Kind:
Yea, for thy fellow-brutes in thee we saw
A soul of love, love's intellectual law :-
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And, therefore, shalt thou be an honoured name!
THE DEPARTURE OF THE BIRDS.
HEN Autumn scatters his departing gleams,
Warn'd of approaching Winter, gather'd play
The swallow-people; and toss'd wide around,
O'er the calm sky, in convolution swift,
The feather'd eddy floats: rejoicing once,
Ere to their wintry slumbers they retire;
In clusters clung, beneath the mouldering bank,
And where, unpierced by frost, the cavern sweats.
Or rather into warmer climes conveyed,
With other kindred birds of season, there
They twitter cheerful, till the vernal months
Invite them welcome back: for, thronging, now
Innumerous wings are in commotion all.
THE CHURCHYARD.
OUR ancient church! its lonely tower,
Beneath the loftier spire,
Is shadowed when the sunset hour
Clothes the tall shaft in fire;
It sinks beyond the distant eye,
Long ere the glittering vane,
High wheeling in the western sky,
Has faded o'er the plain.
Like sentinel and nun, they keep
Their vigil on the green;
One seems to guard, and one to weep,
The dead that lie between ;
And both roll out, so full and near,
Their music's mingling waves,
They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear Leans on the narrow graves.
The stranger parts the flaunting weeds,
Whose seeds the winds have strown
So thick beneath the line he reads,
They shade the sculptured stone ;
The child unveils his clustered brow,
And ponders for a while
The graven willow's pendent bough,
Or rudest cherub's smile.
But what to them the dirge, the knell?
These were the mourner's share;-
The sullen clang, whose heavy swell
Throbbed through the beating air;-
The rattling cord,—the rolling stone,-
The shelving sand that slid,
And, far beneath, with hollow tone,
Rung on the coffin's lid.
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