I.
Full of beautiful blossoms
Stood the tree in early May:
Came a chilly gale from the sunset,
And blew the blossoms away,—
Scattered them, through the garden,
Tossed them into the mere:
The sad tree moaned and shuddered,
"Alas! the fall is here."
But all through the glowing summer
The blossomless tree throve fair,
And the fruit waxed ripe and mellow,
With sunny rain and air;
And when the dim October
With golden death was crowned,
Under its heavy branches
The tree stooped to the ground.
In youth there comes a west wind
Blowing our bloom away,—
A chilly breath of Autumn
Out of the lips of May.
We bear the ripe fruit after,—
Ah, me! for the thought of pain!—
We know the sweetness and beauty
And the heart-bloom never again.
II.
One sails away to sea,—
One stands on the shore and cries;
The ship goes down the world, and the light
On the sullen water dies.
The whispering shell is mute,—
And after is evil cheer:
She shall stand on the shore and cry in vain,
Many and many a year.
But the stately, wide-winged ship
Lies wrecked on the unknown deep;
Far under, dead in his coral bed,
The lover lies asleep.
III.
In the wainscot ticks the death-watch,
Chirps the cricket in the floor,
In the distance dogs are barking,
Feet go by outside my door.
From her window honeysuckles
Stealing in upon the gloom,
Spice and sweets embalm the silence
Dead within the lonesome room.
And the ghost of that dead silence
Haunts me ever, thin and chill,
In the pauses of the death-watch,
When the cricket's cry is still.
IV.
She stands in silks of purple,
Like a splendid flower in bloom;
She moves, and the air is laden
With delicate perfume.
The over-vigilant mamma
Can never let her be:
She must play this march for another,
And sing that song for me.
I wonder if she remembers
The song I made for her:
"The hopes of love are frailer
Than lines of gossamer":
Made when we strolled together
Through fields of happy June,
And our hearts kept time together,
With birds and brooks in tune,—
And I was so glad of loving,
That I must mimic grief,
And, trusting in love forever,
Must fable unbelief.
I did not hear the prelude,—
I was thinking of these old things.
She is fairer and wiser and older
Than——What is it she sings?
"The hopes of love are frailer
Than lines of gossamer."
Alas! the bitter wisdom
Of the song I made for her!
V.
All the long August afternoon,
The little drowsy stream
Whispers a melancholy tune,
As if it dreamed of June
And whispered in its dream.
The thistles show beyond the brook
Dust on their down and bloom,
And out of many a weed-grown nook
The aster-flowers look
With eyes of tender gloom.
The silent orchard aisles are sweet
With smell of ripening fruit.
Through the sere grass, in shy retreat,
Flatter, at coming feet,
The robins strange and mute.
There is no wind to stir the leaves,
The harsh leaves overhead;
Only the querulous cricket grieves,
And shrilling locust weaves
A song of summer dead.