Classic Poem

" IT was a day that sent into the heart
A summer feeling! " — and, may memory, now,
Its own inspiring influence so impart
Unto my fancy, as to teach me how
To give it fitting utterance. Aid me, thou
Most lovely season of the circling year!
Before my leaf of life, upon its bough,
In the chill blasts of age shall rustle sere
To frame a votive song to hours so justly dear.

Autumn! soul-soothing season! thou who spreadest
Thy lavish feast for every living thing;
Around whose leaf-strew'd path, as on thou treadest,
The year its dying odours loves to fling,
Their last faint fragrance sweetly scattering;
Oh! let thy influence, meek, majestic, holy,
So consciously around my spirit cling,
That its delight may be remote from folly,
In sober thought combined with gentle melancholy.

If, in the morning of my life, to Spring
I paid my homage with a heart elate;
And with each fluttering insect on the wing,
Or small bird, singing to its happy mate,
And Flora's festival, then held in state; —
If joyous sympathy with such was mine;
Oh! still allow me now to dedicate
To thee a tenderer strain: that tone assign
Unto my murmuring lyre, which nature gives to thine; —

A tone of thrilling softness, as if eaught
From light winds sweeping o'er a late reap'd field;
And, now and then, be with those breezes brought
A murmur musical, of winds coneeal'd
In coy recesses, by escape reveal'd: —
And, ever and anon, still deeper tone
Of Winter's gathering dirge, at distance peal'd
By harps and hands unseen, and only known
To some enthusiast's ear when worshipping alone.