Autumn

When yellowing woods let fall their sapless leaves, And, breathing softly from the mild South-west, The Indian Summer mitigates the air, Me it delights, leaving the towers of men, With devious feet, and void of fixed intent, To wander far into the country still; My path, some grassy road untrodden lone, Which leads the steps through woods of dwarfish pines, Where dwells unscared the solitary jay, And sings the cricket, sole inhabitants. In these sweet solitudes the soul becomes Tranquil as seas mid happy isles embayed; Here weary hearts a balsam for their woes, In whispering boughs and silent skies can find.

And here, amid the calm and liberal air, The heated brain grows cool from contact free; How sweet to live a sylvan eremite, By some sequestered lake in forests hid, Or pebble-paven urn, the cradle cool Of tiny brook, or gently lapsing stream. Legends there are of fallen kings, who held Their exiled courts beneath the forest boughs; Better their faded state in such pure haunts, Than when it shone in haughty palaces!

O power of Music! whence thy spell On man and brute, on soul and heart? What spirit haunts the chorded shell, Whose murmurs every passion start? The silent tenants of the sea, The brinded pard and serpent, own Thy sway—their fierceness tamed by thee, They cower and writhe about thy throne.

Thy lordly breath to war can yield A glory wild, a nameless charm; The sworded ranks, the embattled field Thou fill’st with bosoms high and warm; The gorgeous palaces of old Thy magic numbers cause to rise, And faces, which the valley’s mould Has hidden long from weeping eyes.

The depths of love, its wild despair, By thee are told, are breathed by thee, And while thy whispers fill the air, A better world we seem to see; Some happier region undefiled, Where youth and beauty aye abide— Where sin the spirit ne’er beguiled, And joy fills up the circuit wide.