Poems and Lancashire Songs :: :: University of Virginia Library

Brown Autumn sings his anthem drear
O'er Summer's waning pride;
And the water-lily to its bier
Droops by the brooklet side:
The hour has come, my floral gem,
That beckons thee away,
To join these relics of the bower,
In neighbourly decay.

II

I saw thy bud, with orient tip,
Peep forth in beauty rare;
I saw the dewdrops throng thy lip—
Thou sweetheart of the air!

108

But brief, alas, the charm it wrought
In this delighted eye;
For, 'twas unmingled with a thought
That thou wert doomed to die.

III

The golden sunshine smiled to see
How beautiful thou grew;
Rich with thy perfume, o'er the lea
The whispering breezes flew;
The wild bee well might linger long
Within thy rosy folds,—
'Twas there he purchased, for a song,
The sweetest wealth he holds.

IV

But Summer's golden glory's o'er;
All nature seems to moan:
Both leaf and flower have had their hour,
And home again are gone;

109

The greenwood's tresses, fallen away,
Upon the ground are laid:
And chill winds in the sear leaves play
The requiem of the dead.

V

Not long, at best, oh fading flower,
Has man to stay behind;
Cold death may still at any hour
The fever of his mind;
May check his frets of joy and grief,
Extinguish all his pride,
And lay him, like a blighted leaf,
To moulder at thy side.

VI

But go thy way; 'twas ever so
With what's beneath the sky;
We do not all so sweetly grow,
But, we as surely die:

110

Companions, in a graveward throng,
Upon a rugged way,
Where trouble cannot keep us long,
Though joy doth never stay.

VII

Go, rest in peace thy weary head,
Death's silent winter through;
New spring shall cheer thy lonely bed,
And wake thy life anew:
So thou, my soul, shalt rise again,
To breathe a purer breath,
In climes beyond the fatal chain
That binds this realm of death.