Part 1 — AUTUMN.
Reading edition
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BY ALBERT PIKE.
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It is the evening of a pleasant day
In these old woods. The sun profusely flings
His flood of light through every narrow way
That winds around the trees. His spirit clings,
In orange mist, around the snowy wings
Of many a patient cloud, that now, since noon,
Over the western mountains idly swings,
Waiting when night shall come—alas! too soon!
To veil the timid blushes of the virgin moon.
The trees with crimson robes are garmented:
Clad with frail brilliants by the Autumn frost,
For the young leaves, that Spring with beauty fed,
Their greenness and luxuriance have lost,
Gaining new beauty at too dear a cost:
Unnatural beauty, that precedes decay.
Too soon, upon the harsh winds wildly toss’d,
Leaving the naked trees ghost-like and gray,
These leaf-flocks, like vain hopes, will vanish all away.
How does your sad, yet calm and cheerful guise,
Ye melancholy Autumn solitudes,
With my own feelings softly harmonize!
For though I love the hoar and solemn woods,
In all their manifold and changing moods—
In gloom and sunshine, storm and quietness,
By day, or when the dim night on them broods;
Their lightsome glades, their darker mysteries—
Yet the sad heart loves a still, calm scene like this.
Soon will the year like this sweet day have fled,
With swift feet speeding noiselessly and fast,
As a ghost speeds, to join its kindred dead,
In the dark realms of that mysterious vast,
The shadow-peopled and eternal past.
Life’s current deathward flows—a rapid stream,
With clouds and shadows often overcast,
Yet lighted often by a sunny beam
Of happiness, like sweet thoughts in a gloomy dream.
Like the brown leaves, our lov’d ones drop away,
One after one, into the dark abyss
Of Sleep and Death. The frosts of Trouble lay
Their withering touch upon our happiness,
Even as the hoar frosts of the Autumn kiss
The green lip from the unoffending leaves;
And Love and Hope and Youth’s warm cheerfulness
Flit from the heart—Age lonely sits and grieves,
Or sadly smiles, while Youth fondly his day-dream weaves.
Day draweth to its close—night cometh on—
Death standeth dimly on Life’s western verge,
Casting his shadow o’er the startled sun—
A deeper gloom, that seemeth to emerge
From gloomy night—and bending forth, to urge
His eyeless steeds, fleet as the tempest’s blast:
And hear we not eternity’s dim surge
Thundering anear? At the dread sound aghast,
Time hurries headlong, pale with frantic terror, past.