ODE: AUTUMN. I. I SAW old Autumn in the misty morn Pearling his coronet of golden corn. II. Where are the songs of Summer?-With the sun, Oping the dusky eyelids of the south, Till shade and silence waken up as one, And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. On panting wings through the inclement skies, Undazzled at noon-day, And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. III. Where are the blooms of Summer ?-In the west, Blushing their last to the last sunny hours, When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest Like tearful Proserpine, snatch'd from her flow'rs Where is the pride of Summer,—the green prime,— In the smooth holly's green eternity. IV. The squirrel gloats on his accomplish'd hoard, The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain, And honey bees have stor'd The sweets of summer in their luscious cells; The swallows all have wing'd across the main ; But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, And sighs her tearful spells Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Upon a mossy stone, She sits and reckons up the dead and gone Whilst all the wither'd world looks drearily, Like a dim picture of the drowned past Into that distance, grey upon the grey. V. 0 go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded Under the languid downfal of her hair : She wears a coronal of flowers faded Upon her forehead, and a face of care ;- If only for the rose that died,-whose doom Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,- To frame her cloudy prison for the soul ! BALLAD. SPRING it is cheery, Winter is dreary, Green leaves hang, but the brown must fly; When he 's forsaken, Wither'd and shaken, What can an old man do but die? Love will not clip him, Maids will not lip him, Maud and Marian pass him by; Youth it is sunny, Age has no honey, What can an old man do but die ? |