Lo! Sad-eyed Autumn walks o’er all the land,
Tenderly touching with caressing hand,
Each quivering leaflet, hung from parent stem,
Bearing a radiant dew-kissed diadem;
And tasselled ruddy gold and variant shade
Droop o’er Psyche as in Arcadian glade
She doth recline, and Autumn’s lover—Wind—
Chants solemn dirge for Summer, left behind
To music of dead leaves, with tears of rain,
While whispering, “Summer cometh yet again,
And Autumn lingereth but a little while,
With glance compassionate on flowers that smile
In winsome beauty ere their blooms decay
And change when Winter cometh cold and grey.”
See! Satin-winged sweet butterflies have flown
Like fairy sprites, to choose a graceful throne
On crimson rose or soft hydrangea blue,
Emblems of the transition we must view.
These tender spirits through the fleeting hours
Cull the sweet essence from the glorious flowers,
And the short seasons pass and may not stay—
Ephemeral pleasures, too, must pass away.
So, did not Autumn Winter meet, and Winter Spring,
Dear Summer’s charms would vanish nor hope bring
Then melancholy Autumn with her Wind may sigh,
For Spring, her smiling sister, cometh by-and-bye.
TO SLEEP.
Sweet seraph! Borne upon the wings of love,
Softly thou cometh from the realms above,
With kiss as light as air, and gentler breath,
More beauteous thou than thy pale brother Death,
Yet not so calm as he, though both bestow
A wondrous loveliness o’er cheek and brow;
He with a regal majesty so marble cold
In immobility of matchless grace doth mould
Each feature with the waxen beauty of the tomb,
While thou dost lend the blush of living bloom,
And the soft dew of Heaven doth linger there,
And lovely Peace imprints her image fair.
When eve in crimson splendour of delight
Falleth, thou Spirit of the starry night,
And they, all million-eyed in radiance shine,
Like scattered silver seeds o’er fields divine,
Thou to dear children giveth dreamless rest,
Softly embraced upon thy tender breast,
While care-worn sufferers on the tideless sea
Of blissful dreams forget their misery,
And bask in visions of the verdurous hills
Of some enchanted isle where flashing rills,
Gushing sweet music, to the green vales flow,
Where cool, slim palms their graceful shadows throw—
Angel of love, by dear Compassion led,
To fold in deep repose each weary head.
Nature’s sweet nurse, oh ever near us stay
Till, life’s dreams o’er, “the shadows flee away.”
WHAT IS MAN?
Monarch of all the animals is man, but what his goal?
Being material, yet endowed with an immortal soul,
Whence comes he? Hath he lived before? He knoweth not,
But if he be immortal, must be Heaven-begot.
To live for naught in the great cosmic plan
Would prove him lesser than his claim as man.
Alone he stands amid his empire, clothed with speech,
And attributes of reason and intelligence to reach
The heights sublime, for he alone surveys
The skies or lifts his eyes to mark the boundless ways
Of the vast galaxy of the celestial star-strewn plains,
He of the mighty animal kingdom o’er which he reigns,
He who is but the veriest echo of the Almighty sound,
A faint reflection of his Maker, but who yet is bound
By ties unbreakable, for doth he not receive
The realm of thought from Him, the air to breathe?
The glorious constellations move in their appointed place
To the deep throbbing heart-beats of the universe.
The planets, trembling arteries of the spacious whole,
With each frail mortal the molecule called soul,
And he in turn respondeth to the Almighty thought,
Each entity distinct, yet like the other wrought;
Creature of elements mysterious, half divine!
Emotional, fearful, yet vibrating to the electric line
Of the invisible, which holds him startled at the flight
And magnitude of thought soaring beyond the night
Of mundane things; then asks himself—as thousands more—
If death the end of all created beings is, wherefore
All the ennobling longings in the human mind innate
And love of nature and which all things beautiful elate,
This spark of immortality flaming with fitful gleams
Of vague remembrance of a pre-existence, seems
To shape itself into a dream which comes and goes.
And when the influence of the Almighty over spirit throws
The searching rays of the great Omnipresent power
In Whom we live, to Whom we kneel in sorrow’s hour,
Who bids the ministers of all the Heavenly Argosies
Of Faith, and Hope, and Mercy, on the ethereal spheres
Enthroned with Justice, Truth and Liberty,
To teach man that, though mortal, immortality
Is his, Oh not, for nought, the powers of death and life,
Oh not, for nought, it is the everlasting strife
’Twixt mind and matter, if we be—as some would deem—
Nought but the moving shadows of a melting dream,
Why live, why love, why breathe the unconscious prayer?
Because, deep down in the human heart, we feel God there;
And dare the shadow of his Maker,—man—profess
That he can build this empire without him to bless.
THE BLUE MOUNTAINS, NEW SOUTH WALES.
Imperial battlements, whose frowning brows
Look ever into space and watch the dawn
In roseate loveliness above the snows
Of feathery cloudlets which thy breasts adorn.
Ye regal forms! Whose jagged chasms bear
The scars of ages, scored by tempests’ rage
When cataclysms thundering rent the air—
Thou mammoth ruins of a bygone age.