Where leaping o’er her brown and dizzy height, With robe of silver and a rainbow crown, Niagara sings her thunder-hymn to earth’s Remotest waters—where oft the poet’s eye Beholds, amid the shades of autumn eve, The Tuscarora in his phantom bark, Singing his death-song on the cataract’s brow. Or where, amid Virginia’s fertile vale, The Rockbridge in its grandeur towers above The little stream that runs so far beneath, That human ear ne’er caught its hoarsest brawl. There where the Deluge pierced the mountain chain And sent its wild pent river to the sea, The storm, with sternest music, calls its clouds, And through the giant arch remorseless sweeps Causing dread whirlpools of the misty air. Autumn departs, and earth in sadness mourns, And all around is desolate and chill. Empires have had their autumns, and are lost Beneath the dead and rustling leaves of time. Egypt, majestic in her ruin, sleeps Upon the Nile—the pyramids her history And her tomb. Idumea, ’mid her cliffs, Yawns in her gloom, an empty sepulchre. Tadmor is hid amid the desert sand; Balbec’s tremendous wall upon the waste, Shelters the spotted lizard and the owl; And Babylon, the mighty, is a heap By the Euphrates. Tyre has been swallowed By the tideless sea; Greece sits in darkness On her classic hills, ’mid templed groves, Her king a Saxon, and her children slaves. The Muscovite has found a shorter way To old Byzantium; and the lazy Turk That loiters there, is but a Turk in name. Dark Ethiopia knows her bounds no more; Carthage is but a pasture wild for goats; Persia now roams the waste in broken hordes; Imperial Rome, once mistress of the world, Is but a province, where a mitred priest Sits in the Cæsar’s chair without his crown; And the furr’d Russ directs the haughty race Of Ghengis Khan and fiery Tamerlane. Ages and kingdoms feel the sickle click, And bend their heads before the reaper’s tread. The Earth shall have her autumn, with the stars That sang in beauty at the birth of Time; And Death shall have his autumn, for he too Must die. The Heavens shall have their autumn, And be rolled back to their ancient nothingness. And all shall fade, and fall around, and die, But God, and the vast Hierarchy of souls. — Oh, death! when thou dost come with trembling limbs, Down the brown hills, where waves the ripened grain, And bear the aged exile home to God, While autumn’s wailing wind sings Harvest Home. When health’s bright roses slowly fade away, As flowers of spring-time breathed on by the frost; When dire consumption saps the roots of life, And slow but sure its victims steal along The shaded path that winds around the tomb; Or when by burning fever racked and parched, The prostrate form with joy awaits the call; Or when forsaken by the loved and false, The broken spirit sits beside the grave,