LIFE IS A FADING LEAF.
“We all do fade as a leaf.”—Isa. lxiv. 6.
Chill o'er yon heath autumnal shadows fall,
The dusky twilight reigns with deeper sway,
While soft dejection seems to mantle all,
Like nature mourning for the death of day.
As hectic hues on pale consumption's form,
Red tints of ruin deck the flower and tree,
And low winds murmur like a wailing storm,
Or dirges o'er the dead entomb'd at sea.
Where is the flush, by vernal radiance clad,
That late o'er all the glowing landscape smiled,
Making the heart of hoary age as glad
As though 'twere backward into youth beguiled?
'Tis gone, that bright and beauteous glow,
Which o'er the teeming breast of nature threw
A charm that bad the bleakest mind o'erflow
With feelings exquisite, and fancies new.
There is a deadness, clothed by wintry awe,
Encircling now what then with bloom was bright;
And where the freshness of young spring we saw,
Floats the chill moisture of the coming blight.
Here as we roam adown yon woodland-dell,
The stricken leaves in yellow showers descend,
And each one seems to sigh a sad farewell,
Like love-tones murmur'd o'er a dying friend.
Meet emblem this of transient life's decay,
How all things perish which we prize below;
Where, like sear'd foliage, youth soon fades away,
And wither'd hopes bestrew the path of woe.
We learn mortality where'er we look,
The dust we tread subserves a moral plan,
And when aright we read creation's book,
Lo! all its pages are address'd to man.
Summer and winter, autumn and mild spring,
May each instruct us by their beauteous lore;
Each to our soul a sacred lesson bring,
And buried warnings into life restore.
In some high mood of melancholy thought
Nature herself doth almost human grow,
And mirror back what Mind to her hath brought,
And leave men wiser than mere sages know.
And well it tempers with a sober hue
The gayest scenes that youthful passions find,
To cast o'er coming death a pensive view,
And breathe the quiet of a prayerful mind.
Dejection makes the autumn of the soul,—
But let autumnal feelings have their sway,
And, shrink not, Christian! from their just control,
But grasp their blessing, ere they glide away.
Yet may not wintry skies, nor leafless bower
Oppress the spirit with too damp a gloom;
For in man's being lurks a vital power,
By Christ obtain'd, victorious o'er the tomb.
Thus, though man wither like an orphan leaf
Which lies forgotten in the lonely dust,
His dead corruption is a moment brief,—
For, hark the trumpet! and arise he must.
'Tis here the parable of nature's death
Fails to adumbrate what our doom shall be;
Life does not perish with corporeal breath,
But live once more to look on Deity!
Earth, air, and ocean, wood and wildest shore,—
Sleep in the dust where mortal embers may,
When rings the trumpet, each shall back restore
The deathless atoms of departed clay.
Creation finds an everlasting grave;
Where fall the dead leaves, they for ever lie,
No resurrection-winds shall o'er them wave,
And show their beauty to a new-born sky:
But, Man shall triumph o'er an endless tomb;
When God's loud clarion wakes his sleeping frame,
A dread eternity must be his doom,
In heaven immortal, or in hell, the same!
