Читать книгу Niagara, and Other Poems - Benjamin Copeland - Страница 11

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Crimson-and-gold, October’s boughs proclaim

The approaching Passion of the waning year;

By sacramental signs, for aye the same,

Pathetic portents show the end is near.

The landscape lessens in the shimmering haze;

The songless silence chants the season’s grief;—

Too soon shall follow, with the darkening days,

The fading field-flower and the falling leaf.

No more allures the lovely glade or glen;

A nameless sorrow haunts the lonely shore;

The frosts have fallen on the hearts of men;

The little children seek the woods no more.

For Nature holds us surely as her own,

In sleet and snow, or under skies of blue;

From birth to death we share her mirth or moan—

Forever to our faithful mother true.

Yet, in our loneliest hours, alike we feel

The comfort Heaven to wood and wold supplies—

A hope that doth the season’s sadness heal

And binds us closer still, in tenderest ties.

A kindred impulse stirs our common dust

To look beyond the winter’s dearth and dole,

And find in God, our Life, our Strength, our Trust,

The everlasting summer of the soul.