XX. Autumn.

Autumn is a favorite season with American poets; they have taken great delight in singing the high-toned magnificence of the season, as well as that delicacy and sweetness of aspect which so often adds an exquisite charm to the brilliancy of autumnal beauty under our native skies. The poets of Europe have scarcely sung the delights of Spring with more eloquent fervor. We can not wonder that such should be the case; from the first tinge of peculiar coloring to the last smile of the Indian Summer, the season is full of interest and beauty, of ever-varying aspects. It has been with real reluctance that we have been compelled to turn aside from many beautiful passages of American verse which we had originally hoped to have inserted in this division of the volume; but fortunately they lie already within every reader’s reach, in other forms.

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TO AUTUMN NEAR HER DEPARTURE.

Thou maid of gentle light! thy straw-wove vest,

And russet cincture; thy loose pale-tinged hair;

Thy melancholy voice and languid air,

As if shut up within that pensive breast,

Some ne’er-to-be-divulged grief was prest;

Thy looks resign’d, that smiles of patience wear,

While Winter’s blasts thy scattered tresses tear;

Thee, Autumn, with divinest charms have blest

Let blooming Spring with gaudy hopes delight,

That dazzling Summer shall of her be born;

Let Summer blaze, and Winter’s stormy train

Breathe awful music in the ear of night;

Thee will I court, sweet dying maid forlorn,

And from thy glance will catch th’ inspired strain.

Sir Egerton Brydges, 1762–1837.

AUTUMN.

ODE.

I.

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand shadowless like Silence, listening

To Silence, for no lonely bird would sing

Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,

Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;

Shaking his languid locks, all dewy bright,

With tangled gossamer that fell by night,

Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

II.

Where are the songs of Summer? With the sun,

Oping the dusky eyelids of the South,

'Till shade and silence waken up as one,

And Morning sings with a warm, odorous mouth.

Where are the merry birds?—away, away,

On panting wings, through the inclement skies,

Lest owls should prey,

Undazzled at noon-day,

And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes.

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III.

Where are the blooms of Summer? In the West,

Blushing their last to the last sunny hours,

When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest,

Like tearful Proserpine, snatch’d from her flow’rs,

To a most gloomy breast.

Where is the pride of Summer—the green prime—

The merry, merry leaves all twinkling?—there

On the moss’d elm; there on the naked lime

Trembling—and one upon the old oak-tree!

Where is the Dryad’s immortality?

Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,

Or wearing the long, gloomy Winter through

In the smooth holly’s green eternity.

IV.

The squirrel gloats on his accomplish’d hoard;

The ants have cramm’d their garners with ripe grain,

And honey-bees have stored

The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells;

The swallows all have winged across the main;

But here the Autumn melancholy dwells,

And sighs her tearful spells

Among the sunless shadows of the plain:

Alone, alone,

Upon a mossy stone,

She sits and reckons up the dead and gone

With the last leaves for a lone-rosary,

While all the wither’d world looks drearily,

Like a dim picture of the drowned past

In the hush’d mind’s mysterious far away,

Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last

Into the distance, gray upon the gray.

V.

O go and sit with her, and be o’ershaded

Under the languid downfall of her hair;

She wears a coronal of flowers faded

Upon her forehead, and a face of care;

There is enough of withered everywhere

To make her bower, and enough of gloom,

There is enough of sadness to invite,

If only for the rose that died, whose doom

Is Beauty’s—she that with the living bloom

Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light.

There is enough of sorrowing, and quite

Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear—

Enough of chilly droppings from her brow—

Enough of fear and shadowy despair

To frame her cloudy prison for the soul!

Thomas Hood.

326

ODE

TO WILLIAM LYTTLETON, ESQ.,

TOWARD THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR 1748.

How blithely passed the summer’s day!

How bright was every flower!

While friends arrived in circles gay

To visit Damon’s bower!

But now with silent step I range

Along some lonely shore;

And Damon’s bower (alas the change!)

Is gay with friends no more.

Away to crowds and cities borne,

In quest of joy they steer;

While I, alas, am left forlorn

To weep the parting year!

O pensive Autumn, how I grieve

Thy sorrowing face to see!

When languid suns are taking leave

Of every drooping tree.

Ah! let me not with heavy eye

This dying scene survey!

Haste, Winter, haste; usurp the sky;

Complete my bower’s decay!

Ill can I bear the motley cast

Yon sickening leaves retain,

That speak at once of pleasure past,

And bode approaching pain.

Ah, home unblessed! I gaze around,

My distant scenes require,

327Where, all in murky vapors drown’d,

Are hamlet, hill, and spire.

Though Thomson, sweet, descriptive bard!

Inspiring Autumn sung;

Yet how should he the months regard,

That stopp’d his flowing tongue?

Ah, luckless months, of all the rest,

To whose hard share it fell!

For sure his was the gentlest breast

That ever sung so well.

And see, the swallows now disown

The roofs they loved before;

Each, like his tuneful genius, flown

To glad some happier shore.

The wood-nymph eyes with pale affright

The sportsman’s frantic deed,

While hounds, and horns, and yells unite

To drown the Muse’s reed.

Ye fields! with blighted herbage brown;

Ye skies! no longer blue;

Too much we feel from Fortune’s frown,

To bear these frowns from you.

Where is the mead’s unsullied green?

The zephyr’s balmy gale?

And where sweet Friendship’s cordial mien

That brighten’d every vale?

What though the vine disclose her dyes,

And boast her purple store,

Not all the vineyard’s rich supplies

Can soothe our sorrows more.

He! he is gone, whose moral strain

Could wit and mirth refine;

He! he is gone, whose social vein

Surpass’d the power of wine.

Fast by the streams he deign’d to praise,

In yon sequester’d grove,

To him a votive urn I raise,

To him and friendly love.

328Yes, there, my friend! forlorn and sad,

I 'grave your Thomson’s name;

And there his lyre, which Fate forbad

To sound your growing fame.

There shall my plaintive song recount

Dark themes of hopeless woe;

And faster than the drooping fount,

I’ll teach mine eyes to flow.

There leaves, in spite of Autumn, green

Shall shade the hallow’d ground;

And Spring will there again be seen,

To call forth flowers around.

But no kind suns will bid me share

Once more his social hour;

Ah, Spring! thou never can’st repair

His loss to Damon’s bower.

William Shenstone, 1714–1763.

SONG.

FROM THE GERMAN.

Tell me where’s the violet fled,

Late so gayly blowing;

Springing 'neath fair Flora’s tread,

Choicest sweets bestowing?

Swain, the vernal scene is o’er

And the violet blooms no more!

Say, where hides the blushing rose,

Pride of fragrant morning;

Garland meet for beauty’s brow,

Hill and dale adorning?

Gentle maid, the summer’s fled,

And the hapless rose is dead!

Bear me then to yonder rill,

Late so freely flowing,

Watering many a daffodil

On its margin glowing;

Sun and wind exhaust its store;

Yonder rivulet glides no more!

329Lead me to the bowery shade,

Late with roses flaunting;

Loved resort of youth and maid,

Amorous ditties chaunting;

Hail and storm with fury shower.

Leafless mourns the rifled bower!

Say, where bides the village maid,

Late yon cot adorning?

Oft I’ve met her in the glade,

Fair and fresh as morning.

Swain, how short is beauty’s bloom!

Seek her in the grassy tomb!

Whither roves the tuneful swain,

Who of rural pleasures,

Rose and violet, rill and plain,

Sung in dulcet measures?

Maiden, swift life’s vision flies,

Death has closed the poet’s eyes!

Translation of Beresford. Johan Georg. Jacobi, 1740–1814.