Poems Sigourney 1827/Autumn Winds
AUTUMN WINDS.
Sweep on, rude winds, and rend the leafy crown
That withering Autumn loves,—and lift the sea
Up in loud wrath, and crest the foaming waves,
And make the tall ship own herself a reed.—
Go forth and vex the mariner, and give
Perchance his riches to the faithless deep:—
And then return, and sigh yourselves away
With such a syren guile, as if ye scarce
Could shut the sleeping rose.—This is your wont,
Ye boist'rous whisperers of your Maker's wrath,
Who vaunt yourselves amid the troubled clouds
One awful moment, and the next are gone
Ye know not whither.—
—Man is like to you.—
His whirlwind passions nerve him, and he tears
The realm of nature,—marks his path with wrecks,
And chasms, and sepulchres,—and then returns
From war's dire game,—perchance to sigh away
His soul in love like the soft summer gale
On Beauty's cheek,—and then lies down to mix
With the same dust that soil'd his chariot wheels.—
—Oh Thou! who holdest in Thy powerful hand
Both the wild tempests, and the breath that moves
This mass of clay,—let us not madly trust
Our treasure to the winds, and weep at last
The harvest, when the whirlwind wasteth it:—
Nor let the blossom of our nurtured hopes
Which we have sown on earth with tears and prayers
Go up as chaff on the Dividing Day.