University of Virginia Library

Through Nature's realms benignant heaven
Has various times and seasons given;
But each so ranged as to produce
With separate emblems, separate use.
And first the fairy hands of Spring
Around her grateful odours fling,
And nourish every nascent flower
That blooms but for its transient hour,
Then sheds at eve upon the earth,
The treasures with them seed to pay
The tribute of a future day.
And does it seem a useless waste
To nurture sweets so quickly past?
Autumn would seek her fruits in vain,
If gay Spring's evanescent train
In Winter's lingering frosts were bound,
Or strewn by blights upon the ground.
And when the race of Spring is run,
Faded her flowers, her blossoms gone,
With bursting germ the infant fruit,
So long the blossoms' sheltered root,
Needing no more their fostering care,
Strewn their last fragrance on the air,
Boldly prepares its thickening rind,
To meet the mingled sun and wind,
Of late that have proclaimed on earth,
The death of Spring, and Summer's birth;
Perhaps to live, perhaps to die,
The victims of temerity.
Then Summer's sun, whose ardent heat
Destroys each fair, but fading sweet,
That formed the gay, luxuriant train
Of Spring's too short, but gentle reign,
Smiles with benignant ray upon
The hardier flower it calls its own,
And each rich plant of deeper dye,
That emblems proud maturity.—
To that fierce sun's expiring beam,
Quickly succeeds a milder gleam,
Embrowning in a softer shade,
The hawthorn hedge, and copsewood glade;
Where rests the wearied hand of toil,
From gathering in the varied spoil,
That Spring and Summer's heat and rain
Prepare for Autumn's festal train.
No season this for vernal bloom,
For varied dyes, or rich perfume;
The charms its mellower tints produce,
Have less of splendour, more of use.
Though trees no longer blossom fair,
The clustering fruit hangs ripened there.
Where mingled once at spring-tide grew
The corn blade green, and floweret blue,
The stem we passed neglected by,
Lured by the harebell's lovelier dye,
Now that its rival's charms are fled,
Rears proudly high its yellow head,
With grains of present plenty rife,
Teeming with seeds of future life;
And reads to man monition high,
Of pleasures blooming but to die,
Whilst Virtue's seeds to culture given,
Lie hid in earth, to bloom in heaven.
Nor this the only lesson read,
When Autumn's leaves are withered;
As fall they round us one by one,
Their death may warn us of our own,
Or call to mind each name endear'd
Of kindred loved, of friends rever'd
Who, withered like an Autumn-leaf,
Hear not our bursting sobs of grief
More than the wintry winds that rave
O'er the dread stillness of the grave.
This read to Man!—her lowering sky
To Nature speaks of changes nigh;
For winds that lay her tresses low,
Will soon in hoarser murmurs blow;
And rains that on her parting hour
Weep in a sad but mingled shower,
As though the tears of Nature, chill'd
By adverse power, but half distill'd
Their dewy sorrows on the earth,
And half were frozen in their birth—
Those mingled rains no longer flow,
But fall in deepening showers of snow,
Which frozen on the sullen plain
Are swept by drifting winds in vain.
Fades too each rich, but sombre dye
That mellowed Autumn's evening sky;
No golden corn its head uprears,
No fruit of deeper tint appears;
Withers each leaf and wilding flower,
That lingered till her parting hour;
For all that rendered Nature gay,
With that sad hour have passed away;
And wears she now her robes of gloom,
To mourn o'er vegetation's tomb,
As the dread mandate is sent forth
To rouse the tempests of the north;
That come with ruthless haste to clear
Each lovelier emblem from the year,
Scarce leaving as memento brief
The parted Autumn's withered leaf.
Then Frost, with all his gelid train,
Proclaims dark Winter's cheerless reign.
Cheerless to him at least whose care
Failed him in Summer to prepare
Those generous stores that have the charm,
Each wintry terror to disarm,
Night's lengthened tedium to beguile,
And bid her barren desert smile.
Though not to him these terrors rise,
Whose toils beneath more element skies,
Fail not for Winter to secure
Each blessing labour can procure.
For seated by his blazing fire,
He bids each gloomy thought retire;
And careless hears the tempest blow,
And views with joy the deepening snow
That fosters, in its secret birth,
Each teeming seedling of the earth,
Preserved to shoot in future Spring,
Fair Nature's earliest offering.

Thus will Man's life, his talents all,
Know bud of Spring, and Winter's fall,
Maturing Summer's genial heat,
And sober Autumn's cool retreat;
If sudden blights, or ills that rise
From cold damp winds or parching skies,
In Summer's prime, or Spring's gay bloom
Haste not the Winter of the tomb.—
In Spring the buds of Virtue shoot,
Which ripen into Autumn fruit;
Rises in Spring each sudden blight,
That nips those flowers of pure delight,
Yet leaves to blossom wild and free,
The weeds of Vice and Misery.—
If on our path the Muse has smil'd,
Blooms in our Spring her blossoms wild,
Perhaps to live like fragile flower,
The children of the passing hour;
Or haply destined to survive,
As long a date as Spring can give.
But year on year careering fast,
The Spring of Life is swiftly past,
And Summer gives not lengthened hours
To culture nought but fading flowers.
To those maturer hours belong
The moral strain, the loftier song,
That scorns the sweet, but idle theme
Of fond enthusiast's youthful dream.
And God and Men alike demand
No trivial labours at his hand,
To whom are splendid talents given—
To teach to man the ways of heaven;
To frame in senates righteous laws,
In courts to plead the rightful cause;
Instructors of the mind of youth,
To train it in the paths of Truth;—
On them as Learning's sun has shone,
The fields of Science are their own;
So be they cultured, to produce
Meet harvest for the public use.
But not alone from grafted shoot
Does Autumn ask her clustered fruit:
To plants of wilder growth we owe
The dewberry, and the ripened sloe.
And thus though Life's autumnal hours
Have richer fruits from higher powers,
No soil so barren but will give
Some scion root, and bid it live.
Though few have splendid talents given,
All share the bounteous gifts of heaven;
And all must answer their abuse,
As all may profit by their use.
For he whose Spring of life is spent
In culturing talents kindly lent,
For whom each fruit of Virtue pure,
The rays of Summer suns mature,
In Autumn gathers rich increase,
For Winter stores of rest and peace,
And seeds, he may reserve to bring
A tribute to returning Spring.
To us that Spring returns not here,
But, destined for a higher sphere,
As seeds of Virtue live to bloom
In fairer realms beyond the tomb,
The seeds of Vice—they die not there,
Meet semblance of the choking tare,
They, at the final harvest home,
Are gathered to their dreadful doom.
But cease we here a moral strain
The Muse perhaps has woke in vain.
Our semblances have wandered wide,
And meeter now were they applied
To emblem this unpolished page,
The product of our greener age,
Which seems to ask from Stranger's eye,
The glance of mildest leniency.
In Spring's fair morn around us blew,
Poetic flowers of every hue;
And hours of idlesse to beguile,
Or win approving Beauty's smile,
Oft have we plucked the violet blue,
And rosebud, wet with morning dew;
The one, its transient fragrance o'er,
To fade and to be seen no more;
Whilst the wild bud, more richly blest,
On some fair bosom sinks to rest,
And thence by partial hand removed
To treasured store of gifts beloved,
Perchance may live to distant hour,
A withered, yet a cherished flower.
And when, in more reflective mood,
We've pondered on that general good,
Which still should be the purpose high,
That wakes the fire of minstrelsy,
Our hands have touched with bolder stroke
Harps that a loftier music woke
At sacred Virtue's honoured name,
Or mild Religion's holier flame;
In hopes such blossoms might produce
Fruitage for life's autumnal use;
Or like perennial daisy bloom
On the drear Winter of the tomb.
But ah! our days of Spring are gone,
And some few Summer suns have shone
On hours with parting sigh resign'd
To higher culture of the mind.
For Life's changed scene can wear no more
The fairy garb which once it wore.
Each dear illusion of our youth,
Shrinks from the searching eye of Truth;
And with them there have passed away,
The loftier song, the lighter lay;
And we perhaps are doomed to sever
Chords that must now be dumb for ever;
And this may be the parting strain
Of harp that ne'er shall wake again.
For mindful why to man were given
His time, his powers by bounteous heaven—
Willing to pay the debt we owe,
With unreluctant hand we throw
Talents to self confined no more,
Our mite—into the public store;
And now with mingled hope and fear,
Engage in life's more active sphere.
Yet ere to duty is resign'd
An art that charmed our youthful mind,
That formed for love a guerdon fair,
And smoothed the ruffled brow of care,
We twine in this poetic wreath
The purple blossom of the heath,
And many a lovelier wilding flower
That bloomed in Spring's too fleeting hour;
With some, whose deeper, richer dye,
Was nurst by Summer's natal sky,
Alike to live their little day,
Charm a few eyes, then fade away—
By all forgot save those who knew
Each spot where first these wildings grew;
Or they, whose partial lips approve
The chaplet wreathed by those they love;
These on the eternal lists of Fame,
May wish to place each friendly name
With care from public ken conceal'd,
And only to themselves reveal'd
By strains which tell of hope and fear
Once poured in listening Beauty's ear,
Or those which soothed the hours of care
'Tis Friendship's privilege to share.
But vain the wish—not these the lays
That merit an extended praise.
For e'en their parents cast behind
Each partial feeling to the wind,
And scarcely wish such flowers to live
A longer date than Spring will give.
Now bent their powers to higher aim
Of usefulness, if not of Fame,
That thus, if any lengthened hours
Be their's beyond these fading flowers,
Their Summer may be duly stored
With fruit for Autumn's genial board;
Then when her leaves have fallen around
And Life in wintry frost is bound,
They'll view unmoved the gathering gloom,
And sink with calmness to the tomb.