University of Virginia Library

“Sweet is the quiet prime of Autumn time!”
A voice, like happy boyhood's, seemed to sing,
As half unconscious of the idle rhyme,
He carolled gaily, like a thoughtless thing.
“Sweet Autumn time! though jocund Spring be gone,
And Summer's fuller glories, one by one,—
Spring, with her lavish wealth of early flowers,
And early music in her festal bowers;
Her brief, resplendent rainbows, and her breeze
Rich with the breath of blossom-bearing trees,
Which drink the genial sunlight, as 'twere wine
Poured from a golden chalice half divine!
Summer, with languishing yet ardent looks
That stilled the fretful brawling of the brooks,
Till lightnings, born of many a labouring cloud,
Elanced their fires, and thunders, low or loud,—
Shook to the grateful earth the loosened rain,
And woke the waters into voice again.
When unmown meadow-lands were full and fair,
When slumbrous sounds were in the stirless air
Of bee that wavered on its sunny way,
Or weary song-birds' half forgotten lay;
When pleasure dimpled on the shadowy pool,
And tangled wood-haunts, still, remote, and cool,
Seemed full of sylvan visions, quaint and wild,
The dainty dream-life of the poet child,—
Though these are gone, Autumnal season, thou
Wilt be my teacher and companion now.
Thy fields all golden with the ‘embattled’ grain;
Thy woods that glow with many a gorgeous stain;
Thy homestead orchards with fair fruit that blush;
Thy jet-bright berries on the bramble bush;
Thy rough, ripe, clustering nuts, that hang between
The lowly umbrage of the hazel green;
Thy shifting shadows on the silent waste;
Thy lightsome, lonely, lofty clouds that haste
Athwart the ethereal wilderness, and stray
Like wild flocks scattered on a trackless way!
These, and thy buoyant winds that come and go
While corn, fruit, foliage, waver to and fro;—
These, while the sturdy swain with skilful ease
Reaps the proud produce of the fertile leas,
Flinging his merry harvest songs around
With the unstinted tribute of the ground,—
These can delight, can thrill with nameless joy
The restless spirit of the roving boy.”