Now from the well-filled barn, in gusty day, The flail’s loud beat is heard—a pleasing sound— And from the chaff the full unspotted grain Is winnowed by the stripling’s feeble hand. And while the dust is flying far and wide The wheat is gathered in, a precious store, Tempting the factor’s mercenary eye, And bidding famine with her sickly form Wander afar from Freedom’s hallowed soil; The timid quail, with well-fledged brood, draws near, Her tithe to claim from man’s productive toil, And barn-yard fowls their rich thanksgivings spend, Nor dream of days of want in time to come, When winter o’er the frozen earth shall claim Her sovereignty with cutting blast and snow. Autumn departs, and soon on hills of brown, In storms will break the dark solstitial morn. The grove has lost its verdure and its song, And withered leaves, in heaps, are mouldering round. Keen northern blasts, from Greenland’s gelid wastes, Wake the dark woods of stormy Labrador, And o’er Canadian wilds and ocean-lakes, Down Mississippi’s vales in fury howl. By Huron’s flood the savage wrapped in furs Gathers his tent of skins beneath the snow, And ’mid the smoke, for days, securely waits For the encrusting rain to plate the drift With glittering ice, that cracks not at his tread, Where he may chase the moose, whose hoofs break thro’ And leave upon the trail a track of blood. The miner on Superior’s pictured cliffs, Where sings the thunder its eternal hymn, Waits in his cabin rude for hours of spring, Giving up pleasure, and e’en health itself, That he may climb to fortune’s fickle height Through veins of copper, and up shafts of gold. The pilgrim’s son, in freedom, builds his cot, And hails a shadowy old world from the new, On the Pacific’s main, where blooming hills Hang o’er the flood, and catch the dying strain Borne on the waves from India’s coral strand. The farmer’s boy, long since amid the woods, Has plucked the hazel and the chestnut brown, And sharp-ribbed walnut, for his winter store, Leaving the staining butternut untouched, For the hoar-frost to peel its ragged shell. The sheep go wandering o’er the barren plains In search of welcome food, and where the scythe Between the pointed stones has passed along, Crop closer than the crooked blade of man The sallow loiterers of the autumn field. The red-breasts, gathered into flocks, no longer pipe Their sweetest songs beside the cottage door: And the vast family of sea-birds screech Their notes of sadness o’er the sounding sea. The rivers lift their voices, as the rain From chilly clouds falls on the dreary scene, And high above their banks in torrents swell, Sweeping the cottage and the well-filled barn, The dam, the bridge, and the old ivied mill, With stacks of grain and implements of man, In wild confusion onward to the sea. Sad are the notes of nature—doubly sad,