No beautiful star will twinkle
To-night through my window-pane,
As I list to the mournful falling
Of the leaves and the autumn rain.

High up in his leafy covert
The squirrel a shelter hath;
And the tall grass hides the rabbit,
Asleep in the churchyard path.

On the hills is a voice of wailing
For the pale dead flowers again,
That sounds like the heavy trailing
Of robes in a funeral train.

Oh, if there were one who loved me —
A kindly and gray-haired sire,
To sit and rehearse old stories
To-night by my cabin-fire —

The winds as they would might rattle
The pane, or the trees so tall —
In the tale of a stirring battle
My heart would forget them all.

Or if, by the embers dying,
We talked of the past, the while,
I should see bright spirits flying
From the pyramids and the Nile.

Echoes from harps long silent
Would troop through the aisles of time.
And rest on the soul like sunshine,
If we talked of the bards sublime.

But, hark! did a phantom call me,
Or was it the wind went by?
Wild are my thoughts and restless,
But they have no power to fly.

In place of the cricket humming,
And the moth by the candle's light,
I hear but the deathwatch drumming —
I 've heard it the livelong night.

Oh for a friend who loved me —
Oh for a grey-haired sire,
To sit with a quaint old story
To-night by my cabin fire!