Classic Poem

Oft have I thought that o'er the gleaming
Golden-eyed flower of the marguerite
There passes, amid her nightly dreaming,
Transfiguration strange and sweet;
That breathing away her soul in payment
She takes the empurpled autumn air.
And weaving thence new heavenly raiment,
Comes back to life as the Aster fair.

Or again I have thought in wayside musing,
That I saw in the flower's upturned eye
The hills' deep violet interfusing
With gold of the summer's fading sky;
As though a drop of the sun, forgetting
Its birthplace far at the noonday's height,
Had fallen and framed for itself a setting
In starry rays of sapphire light.

But throughout all such fleeting trances,
One thought returns at each period.
Through every mood this flower advances,
Sill ushered in by the Golden Rod
To Flora's court, the sweet last comer,
Rich drest, as a herald, going between
Winter half-wakened and waning summer,
'Twixt what is coming and what has been.

O last of the freeborn wildflower-nation!
O last in the hedgerow here to-day!
Three names are thine, and they fit thy station,
Each making known in its simple way
Winter at hand, thine overcomer;
Thy bright hours gone; and thy starry crest;—
There is Frost-Flower, Aster, and Farewell-Summer,
But Farewell-Summer suits thee best.

Sad Flower! on thy lips we lay the burden
Of that sad word we cannot say.
Thou comest with short late life for guerdon,
To mourn for the summer passed away,
Through Nature's grief-hushed voice invited
To stand by the perished flowers of the dell,
By the forest's funeral pyre new-lighted
And speak the thrice-wailed word Farewell.

Frayed and pinched by the frost's first fingers,
Thou waitest unpitied, poor and lone,
As one who the welcome of life outlingers,
Scarcely counting himself his own.
Not one tired bee, one golden hummer,
To soothe thee to sleep with droning spell,
Alone thou sighest, O dear dead Summer,
And all that is Summer's, fare you well.

As Apollo wrote, while his woe flowed faster,
His sad “ai ai.” on the hyacinth leaf,
So for dead Summer, O mourning Aster,
Thy purple is pale as with silent grief.
Love no more, and yet Love remembered,
Is the tale which thou, and they can tell,
Who sigh over hope's last fire low-embered,
O Love's lost summer, for aye farewell.

A path unfinished, with nothing thorough,
Is the way of life, if I deem aright,
'Twixt little hope and a deal of sorrow,
'Twixt heaven and hell, 'twixt day and night,
'Twixt arrows out of the darkness darted,
Hints of a coming winter frost,
And dreams of a summer time departed,
A glory vanished, an Eden lost.

O golden-eyed, sky-purpled Flower,
In the silent sunlight born to shine!
O fellow-heir to an equal dower!
Our lots are the same, both thine and mine;—
To come upon earth, a short-lived comer
Between a morning and evening bell,
To wake between winter and waning summer,
To see the world and to say,—Farewell.