AUTUMN ON STATEN ISLAND.
The autumnal breeze was sharp, when first I sought
Thy friendship, sweetest Island of the main,
Yet still in sunny nooks, with verdure fraught,
Wore lingering flowers of summer's blissful reign,
Whose grateful fragrance cheered the faded plain,
And sheltered knoll, that seemed the Frost to fear;
For that invader, with his fatal train,
Had touched the aspiring boughs with umber sere,
And, stern and cold, announced the funeral of the year.
Yes; that prophetic flush, so strange and brief,
Which, like the hectic, shows the Spoiler nigh,
Hung here and there, upon the forest leaf,
And tinged the maple with a blood-red die,
While through the groves there came a mournful sigh
Of hollow winds, bewailing Nature's doom;
But still the brightness of the unclouded sky
Did with its spirit-glance reprove the gloom,
Like that immortal Faith which shrinks not at the tomb.
