See the leaves around us falling,
Dry and wither’d to the ground;
Thus to thoughtless mortals calling,
In a sad and solemn sound.
On the tree of life eternal,
O let all our hopes be laid;
This alone, for ever vernal,
Bears a leaf that shall not fade.
Horne.
To me, no season of the year brings with it so many solemn and instructive reflections as Autumn. When I look around me and see everything looking so barren and desolate, I cannot help feeling sad. The fields which a few months since looked so gay and beautiful, with their flower-dressed meadows and waving grain, are now parched and dead. The busy scythe of the reaper has laid many a proud stalk level with the ground, and the frugal husbandman has gathered his abundant harvest into his garner, or left it carefully stacked in the field to breast the storms of the approaching Winter. The variegated blossoms of the apple-tree have matured, ripened, and fallen to the ground. The garden which, a short time since, sent forth such delightful fragrance, now lies barren and bare. The leaves have fallen one by one from the sturdy oak, and left it in its lonely barrenness to battle with the piercing winds and howling tempests of the winter king. I have sat by my window and seen the green leaf of Summer first fade into a pale amber color, grow darker and darker by degrees, till it finally turned to a beautiful russet, and then flutter to the ground. When I first noticed the tree, it was covered with a heavy foliage. In a few days it became thinner and thinner; in a few more days a few leaves lingered on its topmost boughs, and at last they, too, fell to the ground, and left it perfectly solitary.