The Fall of the Leaf :: :: University of Virginia Library

Its drowsy course, and round his hoary head
The moth, benighted, flies?—Why bends his eye
Full towards the west?—To see thy shadowy car
Sink in the bosom of the Atlantic waste!
Long has he watch'd the progress of thy course:
Nor will he slumber on his bed of moss,
Till in the east, dark Memnon's mother calls
Each fragrant zephyr from the pearls, that gem
The lips of roses, to enrich the ray,
That tips with coral every cloud of morn.—
To him thy waning is more beautiful
Than is thy high meridian. The stem
Of oak gigantic, wither'd by the blast,
More sacred is, than when it rear'd its head,
Peerless and proud, the monarch of the plain.
Th' embattled tower, o'ergrown with bearded moss,
And by the melancholy skill of time,
Moulded to beauty, charms his bosom more
Than all the palaces of princes.—Rocks,
Which raise their crested heads into the clouds,
Piled in rude grandeur, form a scene sublime,
More rich, more soothing to his pensive soul,
Than Rome, with all its palaces and ruins;
When through the lucid atmosphere of Claude,

In awful state, the glowing sun descends,
And every fragment wears the golden hue,
That robes the concave of Italian skies.