Some weeks elapsed e'er everything was straight;
The shorter days were slowly coming round,
And all things told the year was getting late,
And evening mists fell heavy to the ground.
The distant woods were getting seared and browned,
And Autumn seemed abandoning her reign,
While leaf by leaf fell with a rustling sound,
That elegy of all the spreading plain,
And Winter, with his glistering crown, was near again.
XXXI.
The groves were still, save when the startled breeze,
Like a sad smile which comes then fades away,
Swept faintly o'er the amber of the trees,
And Nature's wheels moved slow and Life was gray:
Sadly and surely, like the darkening day,
Came dreary tokens of th' impending gloom;
Fainter and fainter waned the solar ray
And all was heavy as the slumbering tomb,
Far thro' the hazy air did th' distant woodlands loom.
XXXII.
The lonesome, lingering rose was drenched with dew,
With hanging head aggrieving for its mate,
It wept above the ground on which it grew,
With smiles all past and life disconsolate:
There was the flower that clambered o'er the gate
Shrunk like the furrows of an old man's tear,
Each leaf had fallen at the touch of fate
And sunk to die upon its autumn bier,
And every breeze was sighing for the death-dealt year.
XXXIII.
Be still, O heart, for Death steps noiseless nigh,
Hist to the dirges o'er the sleeping sea!
Dim funeral trains pass melancholy by
And monotone their mournful minstrelsy.
It is the grave that opes by Heav'n's decree,
And steeps each thing in its sepulchral breath,
The self-same grave that soon must yawn for thee,
The grave wherein all darkness slumbereth,
While all around is fastened in the fangs of Death.
XXXIV.
The garments of the arbour fell to earth,
The arbour was deserted and the lawn
Knew no repast of eve, no song of mirth,
No noonday lounge, for summer days were gone.
The villa of its mantle all was shorn,
No blinking puppy stretched upon the grass
Enjoying sleepily the sunny morn,
No sportive kitten frolicked there—alas!
No gaudy-tinted butterfly that way did pass.
XXXV.