OCTOBER.
BY MISS ALICE CAREY.
Not the light of the long blue summer,
Nor the flowery huntress, Spring,
Nor the chilly and moaning Winter,
Doth peace to my bosom bring,
Like the hazy and red October,
When the woods stand bare and brown,
And into the lap of the south land,
The flowers are blowing down;
When all night long, in the moonlight,
The boughs of the roof tree chafe,
And the wind, like a wandering poet,
Is singing a mournful waif;
And all day through the cloud-armies,
The sunbeams coquettishly rove—
For then in my path first unfolded
The sweet passion-flower of love.
With bosom as pale as the sea-shell,
And soft as the flax unspun,
And locks like the nut-brown shadows
In the light of the sunken sun,
Came the maiden whose wonderful beauty
Enchanted my soul from pain,
And gladdened my heart, that can never,
No, never be happy again.
Far away from life's pain and passion,
And our Eden of love, she went,
Like a pale star fading softly
From the morning's golden tent.
But oft, when the bosom of Autumn
Is warm with the summer beams,
We meet in the pallid shadows
That border the land of dreams,