WE, too, have autumns, when our leaves Drop loosely through the dampened air, When all our good seems bound in sheaves, And we stand reaped and bare. Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go; At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow. But each day brings less summer cheer, Crimps more our ineffectual spring, And something earlier every year Our singing birds take wing. As less the olden glow abides, And less the chillier heart aspires, With drift-wood beached in past springtides We light our sullen fires. By the pinched rushlight's starving beam We cower and strain our wasted sight, To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam, In the long arctic night. It was not so -- we once were young -- When Spring, to womanly Summer turning, Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung, In the red sunrise burning. We trusted then, aspired, believed That earth could be remade to-morrow; -- Ah, why be ever undeceived? Why give up faith for sorrow? O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE GRANDMOTHER'S APOLOGY by ALFRED TENNYSON MANDRAKE'S SONG; FRAGMENT by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES LYNTON VERSES: 1 by THOMAS EDWARD BROWN THE CHARITY BALL by GEORGE GORDON BYRON THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN: 8. THE LEGEND OF PHILLIS by GEOFFREY CHAUCER |