AUTUMNAL DIRGE.
Then die, thou Year—thy work is done:
The work ill done is done at last.
Far off, beyond that sinking sun,
Which sets in blood, I hear the blast
That sings thy dirge, and says—"Ascend,
And answer make amid thy peers,
(Since all things here must have an end,)
Thou latest of the famine years!"
I join that voice. No joy have I
In all thy purple and thy gold,
Nor in the nine-fold harmony
From forest on to forest rolled:
Nor in that stormy western fire,
Which burns on ocean's gloomy bed,
And hurls, as from a funeral pyre,
A glare that strikes the mountain's head;
And writes on low-hung clouds its lines
Of cyphered flame, with hurrying hand;
And flings amid the topmost pines
That crown the steep, a burning brand.
Make answer, Year, for all they dead,
Who found not rest in hallowed earth,
The widowed wife, the father fled,
The babe age-stricken from his birth.
Make answer, Year, for virtue lost;
For Faith, that vanquished fraud and force,
Now waning like a noontide ghost;
Affections poisoned at their source:
The labourer spurned his lying spade;
The yeoman spurned his useless plough;
The pauper spurned the unwholesome aid,
Obtruded once, exhausted now.
The weaver wove till all was dark,
And, long ere morning, bent and bowed
Above his work with fingers stark;
And made, nor knew he made, a shroud.