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58
A FRAGMENT.
Bare of their gathered grain, the autumn fieldsSadden fond Memory—to whose eye they paint
The blank, waste Present, shorn of golden years
Now garner'd in the granaries of the Past;
And these look peace!—but peaceful not around
The Boreal bleak his boisterous course pursues,
Whirls through the boughs, and crops the shivering leaves
Which—saffron-dyed by time, or blighted black,
Or taken emerald-tinted—to the ground
Fall: like as when men's fluttering lives are reap'd
By Death's fell blast, they topple down decay'd
By age, or by the rude world's bitter breath
Untimely sered, or else yet verdant loosed
(By unseen Hands compassionate!) from care!
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