FALL OF THE LEAF.
I.
The leaves, the pleasant and green leaves that hung
Abroad in the gay summer woods, are dead;
They do not hear the morning carols sung
By the sad birds that miss the blooms they shed;
They know not of the vacancy they leave,
The cheerlessness of trees to which they clung—
How even the winds for their departure grieve,
How birds grow silent; how the groaning boughs
Rock sorrowful, the sport of every breeze;
And as a nun that takes the proper vows,
How nature hoods her beauty in her woe,
And silent walks beneath the naked trees,
Much wondering that she still survives the blow.
With such a silent sorrow on each tongue,
I marvel that their last dirge be not sung!
II.
Shall not the vagrant and light wooing breeze,
Fresh from its native seas
In the Pacific, wandering with the sun,—
While hurrying onward through the well-known trees
That now no more, as in sweet days of yore,
Yield shade and comfort to the desolate one,—
Prepare his dirge, and on the midnight gale
In token of his perish'd luxuries,
Pour forth his wail!
And yield, in very ecstasy of grief,
One fond lament above the perishing leaf!
III.
He hath not stay'd his flight,
But, tracking the lone land bird, he hath bent
His insusceptible wing throughout the night,
Far as the fancy's sight
Might trace the dim lines of the firmament—
And, ere the gray dawn from his ocean-bed
Rush'd to the visible heaven, hath turn'd his plume
To where the flowers, in a sweet tremulous bloom
Were wont to yield perfume,—
And, as an exile o'er whom hangs the doom,
He comes to find them dead.
IV.
And hath he then no wail?—
And folding round him not his mourning wing,
Will he forbear to sing
The melancholy anthem and sad tale?
Shall he not say, he, who forever grieves,
The story of the leaves?
And, with a tone to match the sad complain,
And desolate aspect of the world around,
Shall he not pour along the waste that strain
Of wild and incommunicable sound,
Such as in Mexique gulf the seaman hears,
Like scream of unknown sea-bird in his ears,
Vexing the black profound?
V.
He hath a voice for sorrow as delight;
For death as life; for night as for the dawn:
He sings the ruin which is in his sight,
He wails the perish'd beautiful and gone!
The plaint he pours, though cold to human sense,
And wild and vague, hath yet a magic tone
For the dumb nature full of competence,
And dear to her alone:
Yet, even to human thought it still must wear
The semblance of a moan,
The wild gush of a heart, that, in its woe,
First finds its voice: one asks not words to show
The speech of anguish; and, as now we hear,
The Fancy readily deems, that while he grieves
His home all desolate, his soul all drear,
The wanderer wails the leaves.
VI.
“Never—oh! never more,
Unburied honors of the pilgrim year,—
In glossy and bright garb of innocent green,
With crispéd veins from nature's palmy print,
And each sweet scent and lovely tinge and tint,
Shall ye appear,
The roving sense to charm, the eye to cheer
The time—sweet time!—that ye and I have seen,
Is o'er, forever o'er!
Ye feel me not—I press ye—never more;
My early joy, your loveliness,—how brief!
I may forget ye on some happier shore,
But, on your fruitless now, and scentless bier,
I leave my tear!”
VII.
Away! away!
Far in the blaze of the descending day,
After that brief lament he spreads his wings—
Now that the summer charm that led astray
The licensed rover of wild Indian seas,
No longer clings
With blossoming odor, wooing his wild flight—
And, but the ruin of the leafless trees
Is there in token of the common blight!
Ah! who hath not been hopeless like the breeze?
Whose leaves and flowers, secure against the doom,
Have ever, through all seasons, kept their bloom,
Nor perish'd in a night?
