I

Autumn is come! decay's faint tints are spreading
Over the beautiful in nature; slow
The moss-limbed trees their latest leaves are shedding,
Mellowed to tenderer tints, — the golden glow
Of melancholy beauty, for we know
The hectic of decline has tinged her cheek,
With a last lustre, haloing ere it go;
Hues that all voiceless, passionately speak
Their moral to the heart, most eloquent when weak.

II

Autumn is come: the gladness of the spring,
The revellings of summer hours, are sped;
Life-motes that sported on light pleasure's wing,
Dream-like, are passed; they breathed, and they are dead,
Sole record memory leaves of pastime fled:
The sky expands o'er all its azure hue,
But, like a friend estranged, his welcome fled,
The sun sheds warmth no more; those leaves that grew
So greenly fresh and free, his rays shall not renew.

III

Time's withering hand thus falls on us unseen;
Yet gently with our parting strength declines
The power of enjoyment; what has been,
Is with the past unmourned: if age repines,
'Tis with a grief suppressed till it rejoins
The loved, and lost, that life's sole treasures gave.
How placidly yon tree its leaves resigns
Now to the lightest airs! no more to wave
In music to the breeze, but sleep in earth's dark grave;

IV

Or, onward whirled by storms, to rest at last
In some lone dell, or hurried down the brook,
Or eddying heaped in sunless caverns cast,
To moulder there: deem ye no eye doth look
Upon them still? O, not the wildest nook
Hides aught from Nature's all-pervading eyes!
Nothing is written in her starry book
In vain, but lives again, and never dies,
And mingles with the world's eternal harmonies.

V

And thou, most sad, yet lovely Autumn! thou
Dost bear thy part God's solemn choirs among,
And wild and deep thy voice is sounding now;
Hark! like an organ how it swells along,
Prophetic truths that vibrate through the song;
The woods and waters answer back, and say,
" Behold, ye, who dare boast yourselves as strong,
See how the mighty in their strength decay;
O race of mortal men, even thus ye pass away!"

VI

Spirit of harmony and love! thou stealest
Over the face of nature and the heart
Like fading twilight then while thou revealest
Beauty that tints the beautiful; Thou art
The limner that last touches dost impart,
Thy pencil mellowed by Time's sober hand,
Deepening each tenderer tone ere it depart;
Ere the grey Anarch leaves his hidden stand,
And sweeps his ruthless scythe, and shakes his warning sand.

VII

And thou dost image our mid-way of life,
The outward and the inner change, when we
Feel all too late how useless was the strife
To realise our dreams of youth; we see
The ruins of our yesterdays in thee,
Till grief is tempered to a solemn joy:
We have not revelled to satiety,
But feel our life has charms that cannot cloy;
Strength, faith, and hope, and love, that nothing may destroy.

VIII

O, while around me now the leaves are dying,
The rich red leaves of the departing year,
While the trees answer, to my voice replying,
As the air sighs along their branches sere;
Now while the feeling of decadence here
Sinks in the heart, yet with a softened tone,
Even as thou in beauty dost appear,
Lovely, yet sad, and desolate, and lone,
Here let me with thy Spirit mingle, too, my own.

IX

I would, as thou, meek Autumn! be a spirit,
Had I like thee as limitless a goal;
Could I thy throne of glorious hues inherit,
Like thee be felt a blessing on the whole;
So over nature I might pour my soul,
Idolatrous of beauty, so I could
Wander with thee, and muse without control,
By stream, or vale, or in Hesperian wood,
Alone with thee and love, with God and solitude;

X

Alone with my own soul which He has blended
With thee, and of a nature as divine:
I feel thy spirit has on me descended,
I shed o'er thee the beauty that is mine;
For what art thou, wild Autumn! but the shrine,
Filled with the kindred life which we respire?
We give thee passionate love that is not thine;
Thou vibratest before us Nature's lyre,
Mute, till awaked to life by thought's enkindling fire!

XI

By the vast memories thou dost create,
The rise and fall of empires typed by thee;
By the irrevocable laws of fate,
The fading of our own humanity,
Imaged on thy rich ground so tenderly;
By the affections that life's trials soothe,
Loves, hopes, and joys, that soon shall cease to be;
By the signs shown of thy departed youth,
I read thee as thou art, the mirror of the truth.

XII

Then be my bosom like yon open sky,
Or the clear river, or ethereal air.
Thy image glassed in its infinity,
Let me my faith and strength from thee repair,
Shrine of oracular god responding there,
That I am stamped as an immortal thing
To join the love and beauty that I share;
Like thee a Spirit ever on the wing,
Changing, yet still the same, through life's eternal spring.