Poems (Hooper)/Autumnal Lyrics
AUTUMNAL LYRICS.SEPTEMBER.
O fairest of the seasons, thou art here! We crown thee queen, and joy to greet thy sway!Thou lay'st thy cool hand on the brow of Earth And the fierce summer fever dies away.
O linger with us, Autumn! Sighing Spring Goes like a weeping phantom through the land;And Summer comes enrobed in Tropic flame; And chill the clasp of Winter's frozen hand.
But thou, O thou of sunsets cold and clear! And veiléd skies, soft as a mother's smile,Dost loving bend o'er this thy favored land, Leave us not yet. O linger still awhile!
The forest caught the colors of the clouds When the last summer sunsets died away;And now as bright a couch is spread to greet The dying year as waits the dying day.
Leave us not yet. Still for a little space Pause o'er the land that gladdens 'neath thy reign.But vain our prayer. E'en now the herald winds Sound the approach of Winter's icy train.
Spring into Summer ripens; Summer dies In thy embrace, O golden-glowing Fall!But Nature pauses with her last best gift: O'er Autumn's bosom Winter folds the pall.
OCTOBER.
The sunset of the seasons glows around us, And Autumn wanders musing through the bowers,Dropping o'er mount and forest hues resplendent, Once worn in pride by Summer's vanished flowers.
The Summer, slow retreating from the heavens, Returns a space, earth's beauty to behold,And through the mist of parting tears she sendeth One last fond smile to haunts beloved of old.
Like the Egyptian queen in ancient story, That garbed herself all royally to die,The year around her folds her robes of beauty And stands a queen beneath the pallid sky;
And round her regal form, like hushed attendants, The forests stand in anguished moanings tost,For 'neath her splendor heaves to death her bosom, Smote by the aspic of th' untimely frost.
Like Casar, soon will come the chill December, To gaze upon her form whence life is fled;And the wild winds that wail around her dying Will shriek in anguish o'er the bright Year dead.
NOVEMBER.
The day, new Niobe, has wept to death— Gray stonelike clouds are piled above her tomb;Like some wild weeper rushing forth distraught, The east wind hurries, sobbing, through the gloom.
The old trees raise their skeleton arms to heaven, Praying for sunshine, and the sky has none;The sea is mourning for the Summer's death; Far in the distance sounds his sullen moan.
But yester-e'en the woods in beauty stood; The sun looked down on earth with veiléd rays;Bright vestured Autumn walked amid the bowers, And the shy maple blushed beneath his gaze.
Gone now the glory. Through the naked boughs The storm-wind rushes with a sobbing moan;Stripped of his gold and crimson, Autumn stands, A chainéd captive, before Winter's throne.
A little longer, and the year shall lay A snowy slab above her bright son's head,And Winter write, with frozen hand and slow, "Here, slain by me, lies Autumn with the dead!"