ELEGY IN AUTUMN

IN MEMORY OF
Frank Dempster Sherman

BY
Clinton Scollard

NEW YORK
Frederic Fairchild Sherman
MCMXVII

ELEGY IN AUTUMN

I

Brother in song, you who have gone before

Along far incommunicable ways,

Leaving me here upon this mortal shore,

A bondman to the tyrant nights and days,

Across the distance, hail!

Though Time may sever, and we meet no more,

Yet what shall Time avail!

II

’Twas Autumn when we first set hand to hand,

And eye to eye, in loyal comradeship;

Drowsed with a draught of Beauty seemed the land,

As it had raised a golden cup to lip;

But you embodied Spring,

Its harvest hopes, its deeds in joyance planned,

Its brave adventuring.

III

I can recall your buoyance,—can recall

The star-sown hours beneath the Cambridge trees,

When o’er us wheeled the bright processional

Of bold Orion and the Pleiades,

And how we strolled along

Laughterful, and oblivious to all

Save the sweet thrall of Song.

IV

Youth has its visions and its fervors; yours

Were lovingly enlinked with Poesy;

You dreamed the dream that many an one allures,

The vernal dream where life is harmony.

And though the years estranged

Your full allegiance, something still assures

My heart you never changed.

V

What merriment was ours those shut-in nights

When Winter, clamorous at the casement, cried!

What dear association, what delights

As we in friendly emulation vied,

While Aspiration’s cruse

Was brimmed for us, beholding on dim heights

The presence of the Muse!

VI

And then there opened wider paths to tread

When Love, with Song, beguiled you on and on,

While Art around your feet unfaltering shed

Its luminous light, irradiant as the dawn;

Though you saw many part

From deities long worshipped, you were wed

Inalienably to Art.

VII

What though the rigid chains of circumstance

Oft held you in the trammels of the town,

Your heart went woodward where the fairies dance

What time the moon its silvery sheen sifts down.

You loved the reeds and rills,

The sea, the shore, their glamour and romance,

And all the climbing hills.

VIII

And when you made escape, and sensed the wild

Aromas beat about you, when you fared

By tracks unwonted, like an unleashed child

You gleefully your gay abandon shared.

Care from your shoulders thrown,

You seemed an Ariel spirit, long exiled,

Come back unto its own.

IX

With gracious Memory again I go

To tread with you where meads are green and gold,

Where upland slopes are strewn with daisy-snow,

And bee-balm torches light the flocks to fold,

And willow branches wave

Above Oriskany, singing far below

Its liquid summer stave.

X

Now south we sail where stormy currents meet

Round the wind-harassed cape of Hatteras,

Beyond whose beacons, when the tides retreat,

The wide sea-mirror is like burnished glass;

There, ’mid the drowsy calms,

As Ponce de Leon did of yore, we greet

The tall Floridian palms.

XI

Here down the live-oak aisles ’tis ours to stray

With wraiths of many a stern conquistador,

Those vanished warriors of an elder day

When gray San Marco bore the brunt of war;

Here we in revery lean

Upon the ramparts beetling o’er the bay,

And watch the shifting scene;—

XII

The boats that dip and dart like living things,

Seeking the open sea beyond the bar;

The graceful gulls with sunlight on their wings

Up the Matanzas soaring fleet and far

Where inlets deep beguile;

And o’er the waters undulant shimmerings

The low coquina isle.

XIII

Then, at the drooping of the twilight hour,

We wander in the ancient plaza where

We breathe the attar of the jasmine flower

Like incense on the altar of the air;

And list, as music swells

Down drifting from the old cathedral tower,

The arpeggio of the bells.

XIV

We linger by the sea-wall while the tide

Below us murmurs like a sad refrain,

Bearing from outer ocean reaches wide

The lore and legend of the Spanish main,

Nor leave that spot serene

Till Sleep, as with the mantle of the bride,

Wraps fair Saint Augustine.

XV

Days dedicate to rapturous things were these;

It was as though Youth came again, and brought

Past aims, past ardors and past ecstasies,

And toward the shrine of Beauty turned our thought.

And there were after times

Of exultation, prismic harmonies,

When hours ran by in rhymes.

XVI

Once, ’mid cathedral Carolinian pines,

We saw the Springtide, at its radiant birth,

Kindle to fragrant gold the coiling vines,

And make a garden of the wakened earth;

And every morning heard

Within the treetops, melody linked with mirth,

The hidden mocking-bird.

XVII

And while the cardinal through the waving bredes

Of pendulous moss swift flitted like a flame,

Back flooded to our minds the illustrious deeds,

Emblazoned on the honor-scroll of Fame,

When Liberty was won,

Hearkening the Ashley whisper to its reeds

The name of Marion.

XVIII

From Gloucester cliffs and brown Nantucket dunes

The mountains lured you, and the mountain star;

For us the Woodland sang its lyric runes

Where’er we followed it, or near or far,

In sun or shadow cool,

Or loitered through long languorous afternoons

By Dian’s darkling pool.

XIX

Far up the valley Wittenberg’s vast form,

Its summit beckoning, with you I view,

And above sweeping slopes where wild bees swarm

Glimpse timid deer at dawn and fall of dew;

Through Panther Kill we roam,

And mark the purple streamers of the storm

Ascend behind the Dome.

XX

And, too, in bookmen’s mines of dusty ore

Ever shall I remember how we delved,

Plucking from out the musty treasure-store

Rich rarities within the darkness shelved,

Elated if we found

Leaves that some name we long had honored bore

In frayed morocco bound.

XXI

Thus, step by step, we trod adown the years,

Thus, side by side, with ne’er a break between;

We shared our laughter and we shared our tears,

Nor deemed inexorable Fate might intervene

To sever the strong cord

That bound us, Fate with its “abhorrèd shears,”

That is man’s over-lord.

XXII

You that in Autumn came, in Autumn went;

How vain to say the mourning word! how vain

To beat the bars of that arbitrament

That metes to mortals pleasurement or pain!

How vain!—how vain!—and yet

We beat upon them, and we only gain

The poignance of regret!

XXIII

Autumn again with all its loveliness;

Autumn again that brought an end to joy,

Despite the sight of earth in amber dress,

And airs that bear the blitheness of a boy!

Autumn, and leaves that toss

In bright brief triumphing, while they express

The brooding sense of loss.

XXIV

Autumn again down every winding way

That, in the days gone by, our footsteps pressed!—

Instead of woven amaranth would I lay

Above your dust—you gone by paths unguessed—

Love’s deathless asphodel;

Until some happier hour,—when, who shall say?—

Brother in song, farewell!

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES
PRIVATELY PRINTED ON ITALIAN HAND-MADE
PAPER DURING OCTOBER MCMXVII

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.