THE VISITINGS OF TRUTH KNOWN ELSEWHERE.

Spending abroad these varied autumn days,

Their melancholy legend I deny.

They keep a vanished treasure I will seek,

And follow on a track of mystic hopes.

While watching in thy atmosphere, I see

The form of beauty changes, not its soul.

When with the Spring, the flying feet of youth

Spurning the present as it passed, and me,

I thought the world a mere environment

To hold my wishes and my happiness.

I have forgot that foolish, vain belief,

Now in my sere and yellow leaf, serene,

I offer Autumn all my homage now.

The eddies, whirling, rustling in my path,

Lure me like sprites, and from the leaves a voice:

“Say not our lesson is decay; we fall,

And lo, the naked trees in beauty lift

Their delicate tracery against the sky.

On the pale verdure of the grass we spread

A shining web of scarlet, bronze, and gold;

When the rain comes, the oaks uphold us still.

The holly shines, and waits the Christmas chimes,

Beneath the branches of the evergreens.”

November's clouds without a shadow lift

The purple mountains of its airy sphere,

And all my purpose waits upon them now.

Day fades — a rose above the darkling sea,

And from the amber sky clear twilight falls;

The orange woods grow black, and I go forth,

And as I go, the noiseless airs pass by,

And touch me like the petals of a flower;

The cricket chirps me in the warm, dry sod,

Drowsy, and I would pipe a cheery strain;

But from the pines I hear the call of night,

And round the quiet earth the stars wheel up,

With me eternal, and I stay beneath,

Until I fade into the fading plain.