AUTUMN.
ODE.
I.
I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To Silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;
Shaking his languid locks, all dewy bright,
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
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.
Where are the merry birds?—away, away,
On panting wings, through the inclement skies,
Lest owls should prey,
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,
To a most gloomy breast.
Where is the pride of Summer—the green prime—
The merry, merry leaves all twinkling?—there
On the moss’d elm; there on the naked lime
Trembling—and one upon the old oak-tree!
Where is the Dryad’s immortality?
Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,
Or wearing the long, gloomy Winter through
In the smooth holly’s green eternity.
IV.
The squirrel gloats on his accomplish’d hoard;
The ants have cramm’d their garners with ripe grain,
And honey-bees have stored
The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells;
The swallows all have winged across the main;
But here the Autumn melancholy dwells,
And sighs her tearful spells
Among the sunless shadows of the plain:
Alone, alone,
Upon a mossy stone,
She sits and reckons up the dead and gone
With the last leaves for a lone-rosary,
While all the wither’d world looks drearily,
Like a dim picture of the drowned past
In the hush’d mind’s mysterious far away,
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last
Into the distance, gray upon the gray.
V.
O go and sit with her, and be o’ershaded
Under the languid downfall of her hair;
She wears a coronal of flowers faded
Upon her forehead, and a face of care;
There is enough of withered everywhere
To make her bower, and enough of gloom,
There is enough of sadness to invite,
If only for the rose that died, whose doom
Is Beauty’s—she that with the living bloom
Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light.
There is enough of sorrowing, and quite
Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear—
Enough of chilly droppings from her brow—
Enough of fear and shadowy despair
To frame her cloudy prison for the soul!
Thomas Hood.
