"Solemn, yet beautiful to view, Month of my heart! thou dawnest here, With sad and faded leaves to strew The Summer's melancholy bier; The moaning of thy winds I hear, As the red sunset dies afar, And bars of purple clouds appear, Obscuring every western star. "Thou solemn month! I hear thy voice, It tells my soul of other days, When but to live was to rejoice, When earth was lovely to my gaze Oh, visions bright--oh, blessed hours, Where are their living raptures now? I ask my spirit's wearied powers, I ask my pale and fevered brow. "I look to Nature, and behold My life's dim emblems rustling round, In hues of crimson and of gold-- The year's dead honors on the ground. And sighing with the winds, I feel, While their low pinions murmur by, How much their sweeping tones reveal Of life and human destiny. "When Spring's delightsome moments shone, They came in zephyrs from the West: They bore the wood-lark's melting tone, They stirred the blue lake's glassy breast Through Summer, fainting in the heat, They lingered in the forest shade; But changed and strengthened now, they beat In storm, o'er mountain, glen, and glade. "How like those transports of the heart, When life is fresh and joy is new; Soft as the halcyon's downy nest, And transient all as they are true! They stir the leaves in that bright wreath Which HOPE about her forehead twines, Till Grief's hot sighs around it breathe, Then Pleasure's lip its smile resigns. "Alas, for Time, and Death, and Care, What gloom about our way they fling Like clouds in Autumn's gusty air, The burial-pageant of the Spring The dreams that each successive year Seemed bathed in hues of brighter pride, At last like withered leaves appear, And sleep in darkness, side by side!" [10] Willis Gaylord Clark, for many years Editor of the Philadelphia Daily Gazette, and author of the "_Ollapodiana_" papers in the Knickerbocker Magazine. * * * * *