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I I SAW old Autumn in the misty morn | |
| Stand shadowless, like silence, listening | |
| To silence, for no lonely bird would sing | |
| Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, | |
| Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;— | 5 |
| Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright | |
| With tangled gossamer that fell by night, | |
| Pearling his coronet of golden corn. | |
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II Where are the songs of Summer?—With the sun, | |
| Oping the dusky eyelids of the south, | 10 |
| Till shade and silence waken up as one, | |
| And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. | |
| Where are the merry birds?—Away, away, | |
| On panting wings through the inclement skies, | |
| Lest owls should prey | 15 |
| Undazzled at noon-day, | |
| And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. | |
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III Where are the blooms of Summer?—In the west, | |
| Blushing their last to the last sunny hours, | |
| When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest | 20 |
| Like tearful Prosperpine, snatch’d from her flow’rs | |
| To a most gloomy breast. | |
| Where is the pride of Summer,—the green prime,— | |
| The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three | |
| On the moss’d elm; three on the naked lime | 25 |
| Trembling,—and one upon the old oak tree! | |
| Where is the Dryad’s immortality?— | |
| Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew, | |
| Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through | |
| In the smooth holly’s green eternity. | 30 |
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IV The squirrel gloats on his accomplish’d hoard, | |
| The ants have brimm’d their garners with ripe grain, | |
| And honey bees have stor’d | |
| The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; | |
| The swallows all have wing’d across the main; | 35 |
| But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, | |
| And sighs her tearful spells | |
| Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain, | |
| Alone, alone, | |
| Upon a mossy stone, | 40 |
| She sits and reckons up the dead and gone | |
| With the last leaves for a love-rosary, | |
| Whilst all the wither’d world looks drearily, | |
| Like a dim picture of the drowned past | |
| In the hush’d mind’s mysterious far away, | 45 |
| Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last | |
| Into that distance, gray upon the gray. | |
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V O go and sit with her, and be o’ershaded | |
| Under the languid downfall of her hair: | |
| She wears a coronal of flowers faded | 50 |
| Upon her forehead, and a face of care;— | |
| There is enough of winter’d everywhere | |
| To make her bower,—and enough of gloom; | |
| There is enough of sadness to invite, | |
| If only for the rose that died,—whose doom | 55 |
| Is Beauty’s,—she that with living bloom | |
| Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light;— | |
| There is enough of sorrowing, and quite | |
| Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,— | |
| Enough of chilly droppings for her bowl; | 60 |
| Enough of fear and shadowy despair, | |
| To frame her cloudy prison for the soul! | |
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