September 21.
The Season.
Swallows and martins are still very numerous, the general migration not having begun. They roost in immense numbers on buildings, round about which martins fly some times in such quantities as almost to darken the air with their plumes. Sparrows, linnets, various finches, and also plovers, are now seen about in flocks, according to an annual habit, prevalent among many kinds of birds, of assembling together in autumn.[347]
The accompanying stanzas applicable to the season, are extracted from an original poem, entitled “The Libertine of the Emerald Isle,” which will, probably, be published early in the next year.
Autumn.
For the Every-Day Book.
The leaves are falling, and the hollow breeze
At ev’ning tide sweeps mournfully along,
Making sad music, such as minor keys
Develope in a melancholy song:
The meadows, too, are losing by degrees
Their green habiliments—and now among
The various works of nature there appears
A gen’ral gloom, prophetic of the year’s
Approaching dissolution:—but to me
These sombre traits are pregnant with delight,
And yield my soul more true felicity
Than words can justly picture:—they invite
My mind to contemplation—they agree
With my heart’s bias, and at once excite
Those feelings, both of love and admiration,
Which make this world a glorious revelation!
Hence—not unfrequently when all is still,
And Cynthia walks serenely through the sky,
Silv’ring the groves and ev’ry neighb’ring hill,
I sit and ponder on the years gone by:
This is the time when reason has her fill
Of this world’s good and evil, when the eye
Of contemplation takes a boundless range
Of spheres that never vacillate or change!
Sweet Autumn! thou’rt surrounded with the charms
Of reason, and philosophy, and truth,
And ev’ry “sound reflection” that disarms
This life of half its terrors:—in our youth
We feel no sense of danger, and the qualms
Of conscience seldom trouble us forsooth,
Because the splendour of its reign destroys
Whatever checks our sublunary joys?
But thou art far too rigid and severe
To let these errors triumph for a day,
Or suffer folly, in her mad career,
To sweep our reas’ning faculties away!
Thou pointest out the fun’ral of the year,
The summer’s wreck and palpable decay,
Stamping a “moral lesson” on the mind,
To awe, restrain, and meliorate mankind!
But men are callous to thy warning voice,
And pass thee by, regardless of thy worth,
Making a false and perishable choice
Of all the fleeting pleasures of the earth:
They love gross riot, turbulence, and noise,
The Bacchanalian’s ebriating mirth,
And when the autumn of their lives creeps on,
Their wit has vanish’d, and their strength is gone!
But had they been observant of thy pow’rs,
And ponder’d o’er thy ruin and decay,
They might have well applied them to those hours
Which nothing, for an instant, can delay;
But whilst health, strength, and competence are our’s,
And youth is basking in the summer’s ray,
Life’s autumn scenes reluctantly are view’d,
And folly’s visions joyously pursued!
B. W. R.