Fugitive Poetry. 1600–1878/Yellow Leaves

Yellow Leaves.

The leaves are falling from the trees,
The flowers are fading all;
More chill and boisterous is the breeze,
More hoarse the waterfall:
The sky, o'ermantled now with clouds,
Looks grey, and waned, and pale;
The mist fog spreads its hoary shrouds
O'er mountain, grove, and vale.

How lapse our years away! how fade
The raptures of the mind!
Onward we pass to storm and shade,
And leave blue skies behind:
Like yellow leaves, around us fall
The friends best loved and known;
And when we most have need of all,
We oft are most alone.

Still more alone! blithe Spring comes round
Rich Summer-tide smiles by,
And golden Autumn paints the ground,
Till Winter's storm-blasts fly.
One after one, friends drop away,
As months on months roll on:
And hour by hour, and day by day,
The old are more alone.

Still more alone! alas! 'tis vain
New hopes, new hearts to find,
What magic can restore again
The visions of youth's mind?
Age walks amid an altered world,
'Mid bustling crowds unknown:
New scenes hath Novelty unfurled,
And left the old alone!

"Sere leaves that dangle from Life's tree,"
The old might well have said,
"A relic of the past are we;
A remnant of the dead;
Like emblems of forlorn decay
We linger till the last;
But death's long night shall turn to day,
When Time itself is past!"