University of Virginia Library

The Autumn Leaf

Thou fair yet lifeless leaf! on whom decay
Seems beautiful, red glowing as thou hangest
Beneath the earliest touch of autumn's hand;
I pluck thee fluttering from thy parent vine,
Before the rude wind tears thee from its fond
Embrace to toss thy form, in idle play,
Shrivelled and brown upon the winter air:
For thou art as a tablet to the thoughts
That now are gushing fresh, as if my soul
Had drank new life amid these lofty shades,
And felt its being moved by sympathy
With Unseen power.
Brief monitor of frail humanity!
Why has decay that steals from off the cheek
The bloom of health, traces the aged brow
With lines of care dimming the burning eye,
And snatching from the form its lofty grace,
Why has it wrought on thee so fair a change;
And why in tints of beauty robed thy form
Brighter than decked before thy vernal prime?
Heaven's teachings are not lost on humble heart
Though written on the leaves, and strown upon
The faithless winds, still will its messages
Forever reach the heart that loves its God.
'Twas well to touch thy death with gayest hues
Even as the day sinks wrapt in gorgeous clouds,
For thou wert born to live but on the eye,
A thing of outward sense; of whose green youth,
And vigorous noon, and glittering age the child,
In lisping words, recounts. Thou wast not born,
Like him who gazes on thy splendor now,
To light a hidden soul with brighter hues
Than wait upon the colored dawn and hang
Upon the dying leaf; and, while decay
Deals rudely with his outward life, and clouds
Impatient gather to obscure its glory,
To shape like him, from out a world of change
A spirit into those eternal forms
Of Love, and Majesty, and Beauty, which,
Though here by feeble glance of sense unseen,
The all holy eyes of God approve.