AUTUMN

by: Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

SAW old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand shadowless like Silence, listening

To silence, for no lonely bird would sing

Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,

Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;--

Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright

With tangled gossamer that fell by night,

Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

 

Where are the songs of Summer?--With the sun,

Oping the dusky eyelids of the South,

Till shade and silence waken up as one,

And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth.

Where are the merry birds?--Away, away,

On panting wings through the inclement skies,

Lest owls should prey

Undazzled at noonday,

And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes.

 

Where are the blooms of Summer?--In the West,

Blushing their last to the last sunny hours,

When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest

Like tearful Proserpine, snatch'd from her flow'rs

To a most gloomy breast.

Where is the pride of Summer,--the green prime,--

The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three

On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime

Trembling,--and one upon the old oak-tree!

Where is the Dryad's immortality?--

Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,

Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through

In the smooth holly's green eternity.

 

The squirrel gloats on his accomplish'd hoard,

The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain,

And honey bees have stored

The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells;

The swallows all have wing'd across the main;

But here the autumn Melancholy dwells,

And sighs her tearful spells

Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.

Alone, alone,

Upon a mossy stone,

She sits and reckons up the dead and gone

With the last leaves for a love-rosary,

Whilst all the wither'd world looks drearily,

Like a dim picture of the drownèd past

In the hush'd mind's mysterious far away,

Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last

Into that distance, gray upon the gray.

 

O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded

Under the languid downfall of her hair!

She wears a coronal of flowers faded

Upon her forehead, and a face of care;--

There is enough of wither'd everywhere

To make her bower,--and enough of gloom;

There is enough of sadness to invite,

If only for the rose that died, whose doom

Is Beauty's,--she that with the living bloom

Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light:

There is enough of sorrowing, and quite

Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,--

Enough of chilly droppings for her bowl;

Enough of fear and shadowy despair,

To frame her cloudy prison for the soul!

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