THE stillness that doth wait on change is here, Some pause of expectation owns the hour; And faint and far I hear the sea complain Where gray and answerless the headlands tower. Slow fails the evening of the dying year, Misty and dim the waiting forests lie, Chill ocean winds the wasted woodland grieve, And earthward loitering the leaves go by. Behold how nature answers death! O'erhead The memoried splendor of her summer eves Lavished and lost, her wealth of sun and sky, Scarlet and gold, are in her drifting leaves. Vain pageantry! for this, alas, is death, Nor may the seasons' ripe fulfilment cheat My thronging memories of those who died With life's young summer promise incomplete. The dead leaves rustle 'neath my lingering tread. Low murmuring ever to the spirit ear: We were, and yet again shall be once more, In the sure circuits of the rolling year. Trust thou the craft of nature. Lo! for thee A comrade wise she moves, serenely sweet, With wilful prescience mocking sense of loss For us who mourn love's unreturning feet. Trust thou her wisdom, she will reconcile The faltering spirit to eternal change When, in her fading woodways, thou shalt touch Dear hands long dead and know them not as strange. For thee a golden parable she breathes Where in the mystery of this repose, While death is dreaming life, the waning wood With far-caught light of heaven divinely glows. Thou, when the final loneliness draws near, And earth to earth recalls her tired child, In the sweet constancy of nature strong Shalt dream again—how dying nature smiled. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO JOHN KEATS, POET, AT SPRING TIME by COUNTEE CULLEN IN ANSWER TO QUESTION FROM GREEK GRAMMAR: WHAT FUTURES SPEAK by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD WELCOME TO EGYPT by MATHILDE BLIND LITTLE GREGORY by THEODORE BOTREL NIGHT AND MORNING SONGS: 9. A MAD MAID'S SONG by GORDON BOTTOMLEY THE RIVER FIGHT; APRIL 18, 1862 by HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL ON SEEING THE BEAUTIFUL SEAT OF LORD GALLOWAY by ROBERT BURNS |