LIFE, glorious spirit! walked by Eden's stream
Exultingly, and with a bounding tread;
Flowers grew beneath his footsteps, his breath shed
Vitality on air, his lucent eyes
The sky and earth reflected in their gleam :
He stretched his hand forth, and in ecstasies
Of joy absorbed, exclaimed, "All this is mine,"
A deep Voice sighed behind, "Not wholly thine!"
He turned; within his shadow on the ground
Another walked, a potency that drew
Its life from him, and gave: beside a yew
He stood, and rolled his solemn eyes around:
"Thou hast said well, but we must share one throne;
Thou quicken'st, but canst not preserve the breath
Thou givest, frail and fleeting as thine own;
Thy birth and resurrection are from Death ;
All through my gates their being still pursue;
I aid the work thou canst not do alone;
I destroy not, nor wither, but renew."
AUTUMN is come! decay's faint tints are spreading Over the beautiful in nature; slow
The mossy trees their latest leaves are shedding, That mellow to a richer, tenderer glow, Yet wild and melancholy, for we know The hectic of decline doth tinge her cheek, And o'er it beauty's last expression throw : Hues that all voiceless, feelingly yet speak Their moral to the heart, most eloquent when weak.
Autumn is come, the gladness of the spring,
The revellings of summer hours are sped;
Life-motes that sported on light pleasure's wing,
Dream-like are passed, they revelled, they are dead,
Sole record memory leaves o'er pastime fled:
The sky expands o'er all its azure hue,
But like a heart estranged the sun doth shed
His light, but not his warmth; those leaves that grew
So wildly fresh and free, his rays may not renew.
Time's withering hand thus falls on us unseen,
Yet gently with our parting strength declines.
The power of enjoying what has been:
So is the past unmourned; if age repines,
"Tis with a grief suppressed till it rejoins
The loved, the lost, that life's sole treasures gave;
How placidly yon tree its leaf resigns
Now to the lightest airs! no more to wave In music to the breeze, but sleep in Earth's dark grave;
Or onward whirled by storms, to rest at last
In some lone dell, or hurried down the brook;
Or eddying heaped in sunless caverns cast,
To moulder there: deem ye no eye doth look
Upon. them still? oh, not the wildest nook
Hides aught from Nature's all-pervading eyes!
Nothing is written in her starry book
In vain, but lives again, and never dies;
And mingles with the world's eternal harmonies.
And thou, most sad, yet lovely Autumn! thou
Dost bear thy part God's solemn choirs among,
And wild and deep thy voice is sounding now;
Hark! like an organ how it peals along,
Prophetic truth that vibrates through the song: The woods and waters answer back, and say,
'Behold, ye, who dare boast yourselves as strong, See how the mighty in their strength decay: O race of mortal men, even thus ye pass away!"
Spirit of feeling, harmony, and love!
Thou stealest over Nature and the heart
Like fading twilight, shedding from above
Beauty upon the beautiful, thou art
The limner that last touches dost impart,
The pencil mellowed by Time's sober hand,
Tingeing each golden shade ere it depart;
Ere the grey Anarch leave his hidden stand,
And sweeps his ruthless scythe, and shakes his warn-
ing sand.
And thou dost image our mid-way of life,
The outward and the inner change: when we
Feel all too late how useless was the strife
To realise our dreams of youth, we see
The ruins of our yesterdays in thee,
Till grief is tempered to a holier joy:
We have not revelled to satiety,
But feel that life hath charms which cannot cloy; Strength, faith, and hope, and love that nothing may destroy !
Oh, while around me now thy leaves are dying,
The rich red leaves of the departing year:
While the trees answer to my voice replying,
As the air sighs along their branches sear;
Now while the feeling of decadence here
Doth sink within the heart, yet with a tone
Softened, as thou in beauty dost appear,
Lovely, yet sad, and desolate, and lone,
Here, let me with thy Spirit mingle, too, my own.
I would, as thou, meek Autumn! be a spirit,
Had I like thee as limitless a goal;
Could I thy throne of glorious hues inherit:
Like thee be felt a blessing on the whole:
So I might pour forth o'er thy wealth my soul,
Idolatrous of thy beauty: so I could
Wander with thee, and muse without control,
By stream, or vale, or in Hesperian wood,
Alone with thee and love, with God and solitude!
Alone with my own soul which He hath blended With thee, and of a nature as divine:
I feel thy spirit hath on me descended,
I shed o'er thee the beauty which is mine;
For what art thou, wild Autumn! but the shrine,
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