The Comrades :: :: University of Virginia Library

Feel sad in autumn? Faith, not I!
Life is too thronged, too brief, sighs are too vain,
To waste it in a sigh.
Why sad? Because the tumbled woodlands moan;
And the last summer birds have flown;
And curfew has rung, and quenched each flower its fire;
And, yellow and brown,
From oak and elm the foliage flutters down,
And drifts of leaves, rain-rotten, mask the mire;
And the robin pipes alone
Between the plumps of rain;
And all things seem to grieve and to regret
Sweet dawns and dreamy days and suns for ever set?

'Tis but our childish fancies which invest
Nature with our unrest.
There is no pathos in the falling leaves;
No sorrow in the rain or wind.
Why should the year not close
As gaily with the snow as with the rose?
'Tis but the inveterate primeval mind
Which dreams that Nature feels like man and grieves.

Nay, rather were not this a mournful thing?
Conceive the year reversed;
The seasons, last made first,
Worked backward thro' the summer to the spring;
Snow sifted; dead leaves caught,
Whirled, red and yellow, back to branch and spray;
Changed with the magic ease of thought
To emerald coverts of an August day;
And thro' the wondrous hours
The ripe fruit soured, then turned once more to flowers,
The flowers to buds, and these again withdrawn
Some starry night of May or April dawn;
And flake by flake with them
The dwindling leaves close crumpled to the stem,
Till every tree stood bare,

And in the biting February air
We saw the snowdrop, lastling of the year,
Shut in the wintry drift, and disappear!

Autumn would surely then
Be the miraculous season among men;
But who would care ot sing
The dolour of the retrogressing spring—
The spring which gave no more, which but withdrew
Within an icy bosom
The blue-bird's piping and the apple-blossom,
And all the hope the old glad order knew?