Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

September holds the scene,
Month of the Once-hath-been,
Pale pause of thought between
The rosetide and the rime:
The fields are blank and bare;
The woods in the soft air
Stand silent everywhere;
It is the Autumn-time.

In all the leaf-strewn ways
There floats a filmy haze,
As of the bygone days
Memorial, dim and dear:

Afar, on field and row
The light slopes long and low,
A peaceful, pensive glow,
The sunset of the year.

The leaves are like to fall:
Upon the treetops tall
They waver, dying, all,
Stirred by an unseen breeze:
The scent of their decay,
In the still air astray,
Ghost-hands on me doth lay,
That hold the dreamworld's keys.

The air is full of dreams;
Beneath the level beams
I go; my dull heart teems
With thoughts of days bygone;
The past is strong in me;
I have no care to see
The things which are to be,
The days which yet shall dawn.

Head bowed beneath Time's law,
Can this be I that saw
The rose-red morning daw
In Youth's enchanted clime,
That heard the bluebird sing
In that sweet time of Spring,
That once had voice and wing,
To profit by the Prime?

The heart in me is mute;
There lies my broken lute;
Even the robin's flute
Is dumb in me to-day;

Rememorance's store
I reckon o'er and o'er
Nor look to see once more
The miracle of May.

Alack, for Time hath taught
This lesson to my thought,
That all which shall be wrought
Already hath been done;
That pleasantness and pain
But pass to come again,
Even as the sun the rain
Ensues, the rain the sun;

That all things here below,
Unchanging, come and go,
One law of ebb and flow
Ensuing, first and last,
What we the Present name
As what before it came,
And what shall come the same,
The Future as the Past.

Wherefore the wise from earth
Will look for no God-birth,
No wonder-working stirth
Of vantage or increase,
Content, with sorrow healed,
To garner from Time's field
The best that Life can yield,
Soft Autumn's saddened peace.