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Now, Autumn's mantle brown

Falls on the woods and fields, the leaves are sere,

And, like sad offerings to the rifled year,

They drop in clusters down:

The land is lone and bare;

The grateful trees themselves of leaves divest

To form a covering for earth's naked breast,

With reverential care;

For why should they be left

In all their foliage, when the sunshine's grace

Is gone from off the hills, and Nature's face

Is of its charms bereft?

The distance grey, becomes

Like a thin thread of silver, long drawn out;—

But hark the cheerful tabor, and the shout!

The sound of merry drums!

Now sportive Harvest-Home

By vintagers and villagers is held,

And heart-bright wine, and strong-lipped ale are welled,

Like water at the foam:

And labourers rejoice,

That fruits of field and orchard all are housed;

And the glad song of thankfulness is roused

From every manly voice!

The high ancestral hall—

Where Health delights to dwell, and generous Mirth

Holds, when the corn is gathered from the earth,

A grateful festival—

Adorns the waning scene.

Here may be heard, when in a musing mood,

The cawing of the old rooks in the wood,

That flanks it like a screen.

Is there not much to cheer

In the glad sounds that still from hill and vale,

And glen remote, come echoed on the gale

To greet th' excited ear?

Lo! o'er the changing sward

Sweep now the huntsmen in the rapid chace,

The deep-toned yell of hounds, mouthing the trace

Of the fleet deer, is heard.

In lone and hoary wood,

Where the wild cherry and the yellow elm

Commingled with the oak, the soul o'erwhelm

With visions many-hued;

There comes a solemn tone,

Like what is felt, in passing down the while

Some old cathedral's venerable aisle—

A feeling all its own!

But now, at close of day,

When the damp vapoury veil of eve is gone,

Of gathering winds, the mournful dirge-like moan,

Sounds wildly far away.

For winter casts its shade

Before it, and the year begins to feel

Its chilling influences on it steal,

Like touches of the dead!