| |
| NEAR my window, rustling in the breeze, | |
| Stand the autumn trees; | |
| Golden sunlight from a depth of blue | |
| Warms the earth of tawny hue, | |
| And constant Nature calls to mind the time | 5 |
| I adored her in another clime. | |
| O, those ripening hours by Neckar’s stream, | |
| When I sat amid the gleam | |
| Of purple vine-leaves drunken with the sun; | |
| Gazing from some peak I won | 10 |
| Into valleys dropping brown, and deep | |
| Where the shadows sleep | |
| Among chestnuts and the cones of pine; | |
| Looking at the tender line | |
| Of misty hills in distant France, | 15 |
| As they tossed me back the glance | |
| Of Nature’s vintage-maker, o’er the plain | |
| Seemingly steeped in golden rain, | |
| O’er the Rhine, and back to Neckar’s hills | |
| Where the radiance fills | 20 |
| The thunder-riven clefts of tower and keep, | |
| Battered rooms of queens upon the steep: | |
| Thus restored, as if some olden day | |
| Had left its princely sunset here to stay, | |
| Since the princely chambers must decay. | 25 |
| See, the chasms are mended | |
| With the vapor splendid, | |
| Till they ’re solid for the ivy’s foot, | |
| Seem new vantage for the harebell’s root. | |
| O, that golden afternoon, | 30 |
| When unto the mountain-spur | |
| Whence Tilly rained his murder down, | |
| Floated up like gossamer | |
| Above the sleepy, silent town, | |
| That harvest tune! | 35 |
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