Sorrow and Joy that interweave
The raven with the golden locks,
Fall brings to them who smile and grieve—
Their soul’s Autumnal Equinox.
Tracking the pastures to the pebbled marge
Of Ocean, though rank grasses brown and sere,
With chill winds—wearied of their chase at large
Over the salt, wide-waving hemisphere—
Moaning around me of the dying year,
Themselves in long reeds dying,—
In concert with their sighing
I felt a low strain’s tremulous hum,
Along the misty grandeut come
Of that uncross’d and solemn voiced sea
Whereone we drive, and it went over me,
A wave of low-toned music, in spray-rain
Breaking, and rippling back into a sad refrain;
And when the moan’d thought took the pen’s constraint,
It pined away to this Autumnal plaint.
O sad-sweet Autumn 0 more sad than sweet!
Swarthy Guerrilla nurst in Ruin's lair;
Insatiate spoiler of the loved and fair —
The all too fleet;
Grim prophet, still with fixed and rigid finger
Pointing to that inexorable tread,
Whose sullen beat —
Measured and firm with fate that will not linger—
Summons the living to the dead;
O why, red Autumn, with such eager joy
Wilt thou destroy
The blended beauties of the golden year,
Rounding with grief our joy-curved planisphere ?
With heavy heart and humid eye,
I mark the pallid glories die, —
The fading of the woven hues
That ran through summer's busy loom;
The fainting of the unseen flowers of song,
That all the glad months long
Were uttered beauty and melodious bloom,
Whose fragrance came in music. If I choose
I cannot stint my sadness, when I muse
How these are slain by thy keen breath,
O pander of the Tomb,
O parasite of Death!
The winds moan in the fields, and make
The firstlings of Decay sing auto-dirges,
And premonitions which green life may take,
Sighingly as the seared; moan, too, the surges,
Along thick-weeded rocks, while salt-cold tears
Silverly trickle down the Sea-King's beard,
A tinkle in the moaning, faintly heard,
Sad as the clash of gems round Wealth's or Beauty's bier;
The very hearth-fire moans and sobs, as though
Its fluttering pulses quivered with our wo,
That made its rosy lips grief-garrulous,
So sadly well they are attuned with us.
The sun walks up the leaden sky, and down,
In a pale amber ring
Storm-heralding,
Nor can his fires avail to fling
The portent from him, that hath cast its frown
Over their burning, with his flight to roll
And round 'him still to cling,
Like some foreshadowed doom around a Prophet's soul.
I moan, too, in these meanings,
I answer in like wise
The hollowest intonings
Of their most hollow sighs.
My spirit in the shadow trips,
Stumbling on doubts, and into darkness slips
I moan, but not because I see
Dear Summer waning patiently
To a most sad eclipse
Of all she hath most fair,
While low sighs part her pallid lips,
And lift her fading hair;
Not that the keen-edged air
Shaves to the level of the foot of Death
The heights of Beauty, with its cutting breath:
Though these were sad enough to start
The sobbing Grief, — young nursling of my heart, —
From the short sleep of her self-wearying:
But for the deeper sting
Of their predictive menace, like a dart
Shot from the random bow of the dread Archer,
And falling short
By one suspended plunge of his swift ashen charger :
But for the quickened stirring
Of allayed pangs, and tears for human loss ;
For the too fast recurring
Of doubts foregone and sorrows trailed across
The soul's Serene, like clouds across the sun,
Which, if not deep as very night,
Still by that ring of half-quenched light
Portend a stormier darkness glooming on.
Thrice ere the round moon's ebbing light waned thrice
To its decay, the tramp of the White Horse
Hath trod out jewels from my crown of love:
Thrice the pale Rider, stooping, from above,
His brows, that mock remorse,
Hath torn my loved ones off with hand of ice ;
I mourn to lose from earth and me
The fearless-faithful and the humbly good. —
To be toss'd forward on the bounding sea
Three billows more
From sight of shore,
Towards the long waste of utter solitude.
Thrice to her grave beyond the western line
Of utmost day. the dying moon had gone,
Thrice rose again into her silver dawn,
And smiled by turns on graves that cover Mine,
Even at my feet unyielding. So divine
Her silent strength is, lightly as a fawn
She leaps the pits where lurking ruins yawn ;
And walks enwreathéd in her virgin shine.
So cloud-like heavy are our lives, we sink
Darkened and darkening to the sheer Unknown,
Now rain down sorrows from the looming brink
For other's fate, then follow to our own;
And scarce one Spirit from these fogs of Sense
Can flash out a pure gleam on its own Where or Whence !
Thus while the Autumn's breath,
Surcharged with frosty death,
Ruffled Atlantic's bosom to a moan.
Deeper and deeper still,
With more prevailing chill,
The sighing plaint o'erswept, and heaved my own;
It marr'd the mirror, but quenched not the sun;
High over all the orb of Faith went on,
And now I bless the showering down of grief,
For but in rain dark skies find blue relief.
Anon the waters sang a blither tune,
Leaped on the beach, and with low rustling laugh'd;
The sun, gone up into his Hall of Noon,
Kiss'd the dun clouds into a rosy swoon —
Light-drunk and blushing with the wine they quaffed:
Sang the long reeds love-softly, in a lull
Of the faint breeze pluck'd of its frosty tooth;
And the red kindling forest looked, in sooth,
More dreamily calm and queen-like beautiful,
Than in its prime of youth.
Forth from its iron cell
The fire laughed long and well;
With gleeful crackling, full of merry hints
Of Mirth and social cheer
To crown the garnered year.
What time Joy scarcely dints,
With rapidest footprints,
The virgin snow and twinkling atmosphere.
The heart put off its heavy guise
Of sorrow slowly, and, grown Autumn-wise,
Felt change its murmur to a song of Faith.
And calm-eyed triumph over frost and death.
Shame be, it said, that any heart should keep
The felon grief within its sanctuary,
To love and life, to God, and to the very
Heart feeding it, a traitor stained and deep.
More shame that a grown soul supinely lingers
With backward looking to the doubts that haunted
Dawn's twilight, while, around him and undaunted,
The Powers of Nature, like love-covenanted
Pure Angels pointing God ward with white fingers,
All tell of Life, themselves but strong Life-bringers.
Autumn is not decay, but mellowing
Of the crude germs that glorify the Spring
In its new dawn; it is not death,
But life's fruition. Nothing perisheth,
But in its husk and shroud, against the waste
Of storm and winter, guards the immortal spark;
Round the full year is Life by new Life chased,
Nor throbs more glad, in Summer's arms embraced
Than when her own ice-woven zone
Is round her, cold and stark.
To spirits who have sown
Their seed in spring-time, and in summer done
Their summer-task, the Autumn is not sad.
They know from whence all Winter-joys are had,
And winter hopes; they know, and they alone,
Let flowers go down to wilt on Flora's tomb,
They have fruits now; and every fruitless bloom
Whose dower is sweetness, they have harvested,
And it lives in them by sweet thoughts it shed,
Like refined odor, though its leaves are dead.
If death strike down the loved, they do not say
"The chain is snap'd!" but "We are drawn
By one link more anear the heights, where dawn
The fore-sent glories of the eternal Day."
Under the loosening clasp of leaves,
That tremble like a flickering flame,
The little Buds bind fast, in cone-like sheaves,
The life, whose loss the mourner grieves,
Yet in new springs to greet with new acclaim:
And the wise gather strength from these
To wrestle with the doubts that come
Like clouds, whose tempest-pinions hum
In gales of the heart's Autumn. When he sees
That nothing ends, but all prepares to be,
That Nature makes the flower and tree
Immortal, he believes from thence
That a more lofty Excellence
Shall reap a higher Immortality.
Then was I glad when I remembered this,
That even the outward charm of common things
Is born of Beauty who is conquerless ; —
Who from her fall with ample vigor springs
To claim anew her kindred and her crown;
Then the full heart saw all its grief struck down;
No room was left for breathings of distress,
For winds, to sigh, must traverse emptiness.
In lighter mood I measured back
Along the fields my morning track.
Full many flowers, that overcame the wrath
Of stormy winds, hung nodding round my path,
Where alder-banks with ruby jewels crown'd,
Stretching their green arms round,
Fenced narrow patches into warm enclosures,
And on the low rim of the pool of osiers
When he sees
That nothing ends, but all prepares to be,
That Nature makes the flower and tree
Immortal, he believes from thence
That a more lofty Excellence
Shall reap a higher Immortality.
They peeped and glittered to the noon's grave smile —
Brave bands in Beauty's shattered rank and file—
And glad brown-breasted birds sang momently the while.
She seemeth now the soul of every scene,
Dear Beauty, fearless and the same forever
That she hath been, high and serene,
And faithless to her children never,
Whether old Winter shakes his hoary beard
In wrath at her blithe coming, or the weird
June winds kiss out the love -faint dews that quiver
With overfulness of delight, insphered
By the flush'd arms of Roses, —
Still like a Queen
With dauntless mien,
She champions the soul's best faith.
When, round her reign, the strength of Autumn closes
With blight and death,
And the wild rout of grief and doubt
Assails the soul that on her life reposes,
For many a sweetness lost
She wrings from wind and frost
A glorious victory; and such boot they render
Into her cunning hands, the fading year
Glides down the slant path of its grave anear.
In more than primal splendor.
If so transcendant gleamings flash
From one brief jarring of the gate of death,
Then, the cheered spirit saith,
Let its rough hinges crash
What time they will to welcome me
Into its glorious realm of holy mystery!
When the scared flocks of tender flowers grow pale,
As the wolf-winds come howling through the vale;
And o'er her pure consuming cheeks droop down
The fairest buds of Flora's jewelled crown,
From which her vain tears wash their hues, to stain
That cheek in mockery of its own, again,
Unconquered Beauty cheers the stricken Queen
With purple stars that from the hedges lean,
In varied constellations; and, between,
With pomp of gold to shame the wrinkled sod,
Fuller than Aaron's blooms a slender rod:
Even Spring's young darling dares the growing cold —
Brave Dandelion with his shield of gold, —
Come back like things of childhood to the old,
When all beside is slipping from their hold; —
And humble flowers that wait unknown till fame
Rewards the worthy with a song and name,
By trampled way-sides tempt the avenging blast:
To Beauty's banner faithful to the last.
When her deep blush at Autumn's traitor kiss
Fades to white death, and dies the poor betrayer,
Scorned of the tyrant whom he served to slay her,
Slowly she sinks, in utter silentness,
To her life-guarding tomb,
Wept o'er by every withered bloom,
Whose feathered seedlings ride upon the gale,
Full of unconscious nerve to re-assail
Their haughty captor, and to plant once more
Her rescued banner where it waved before.
The Autumnal Equinox