Fugitive Poetry. 1600–1878/Autumnal Decay

Autumnal Decay.

Thou desolate and dying year!
Emblem of transitory man,
Whose wearisome and wild career,
Like thine, is bounded to a span;
It seems but as a little day
Since Nature smiled upon thy birth,
And spring came forth in fair array,
To dance upon the joyous earth.

Sad alteration!—Now how lone,
How verdureless is Nature's breast;
Where ruin makes his empire known,
In autumn's yellow vesture drest:
The sprightly bird, whose carol sweet
Broke on the breath of early day—
The summer flowers she loved to greet—
The bird—the flowers—oh, where are they?

Thou desolate and dying year!
Yet lovely in thy lifelessness,
As beauty stretched upon the bier
In death's clay-cold and dark caress;
There's loveliness in thy decay,
Which breathes, which lingers round thee still,
Like memory's mild and cheering ray
Beaming upon the night of ill.

Yet—yet the radiance is not gone
Which sheds a richness o'er the scene,
Which smiles upon the golden dawn
When skies were brilliant and serene—
Oh! still a melancholy smile
Gleams upon Nature's aspect fair,
To charm the eye a little while,
Ere ruin spreads his mantle there!