Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79. | | | | Southern States: Shenandoah, the Valley, Va. | | A November Nocturne | | Margaret Junkin Preston (1820–1897) |
| | | THE AUTUMN air sweeps faint and chill | |
| Across yon maple-crested hill; | |
| And on my ear | |
| Falls, tingling clear, | |
| A strange, mysterious, woodland thrill. | 5 |
| |
| From outmost twig, from scarlet crown, | |
| Untouched with yet a tinct of brown, | |
| Reluctant, slow, | |
| As loath to go, | |
| The loosened leaves come wavering down. | 10 |
| |
| And not a hectic trembler there, | |
| In its decadence doomed to share | |
| The fate of all, | |
| But in its fall | |
| Flings something sob-like on the air. | 15 |
| |
| No drift or dream of passing bell, | |
| Dying afar in twilight dell, | |
| Hath any heard | |
| Whose echoes stirred | |
| A tenderer pathos of farewell. | 20 |
| |
| A silent shiver, as of pain, | |
| Goes quivering through each sapless vein; | |
| And there are moans | |
| Whose undertones | |
| Are sad as autumn-midnight rain. | 25 |
| |
| If then, without a dirge-like sigh, | |
| No lightest-clinging leaf can die,— | |
| Let him who saith | |
| Decay and death | |
| Need bring no heart-break, tell me why. | 30 |
| |
| Each graveyard gives the answer: there | |
| I read “Resurgam” everywhere; | |
| So easy said | |
| Above the dead,— | |
| So weak to anodyne despair! | 35 | | | |
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