To me the autumn is never drear,
It bears the glory of hopes fulfilled.
Though the flowers be dead,
There are seeds instead,
That, with the spring of the dawning year,
With life will find all their being thrilled.
You tread the wood, and the wind behold
Tear down the leaves from the crackling bough
Till they make a pall,
As they thickly fall,
To hide dead flowers. The air seems cold,
No summer gladdens the forest now.
HOPE AND DESPAIR
I tread the maze of the changing wood,
And though no light through the maples plays,
Yet they glow each one,
Like a rose-red sun,
And drop their leaves, like a glittering flood
Of warm sunbeams, in the woodland ways.
Poor human heart, in the year of life
All seasons are, and it rests with thee
To enjoy them all,
Or to drape a pall
O'er withered hopes, and to be at strife
With things that are, and no brightness see.
CARLOTTA.
Poor, lone Carlotta, Mexico's mad Queen,
Babbling of him, amid thy vacant halls,
Whose ears have long been heedless of thy calls;
Sad monument of pomp that once hath been,
Thy staring eyes mark ever the same scene
Of levelled muskets, and a corpse which falls,
Dabbled in blood, beneath the city walls—
Though twenty years have rolled their tides between.
Not of this world thy vengeance! They have passed,
Traitor and victim, to the shadow-land.
Not of this world thy joy; but, when at last
Reason returns in Paradise, its hand
Shall join the shattered links of thought again,
Save those that form this interval of pain.
EQUALITY.
Mad fools! To think that men can be
Made equal all, when God
Made one well nigh divinity
And one a soulless clod.