All things are current found On earthly ground, Spirits and elements Have their descents. Night and day, year on year, High and low, far and near, These are our own aspects, These are our own regrets. Ye gods of the shore, Who abide evermore, I see your far headland, Stretching on either hand; I hear the sweet evening sounds From your undecaying grounds; Cheat me no more with time, Take me to your clime. NATURE’S CHILD I am the autumnal sun, With autumn gales my race is run; When will the hazel put forth its flowers, Or the grape ripen under my bowers? When will the harvest or the hunter’s moon, Turn my midnight into mid-noon? I am all sere and yellow, And to my core mellow. The mast is dropping within my woods, The winter is lurking within my moods, And the rustling of the withered leaf Is the constant music of my grief. THE FALL OF THE LEAF[10] Thank God who seasons thus the year, And sometimes kindly slants his rays; For in his winter he’s most near And plainest seen upon the shortest days. Who gently tempers now his heats, And then his harsher cold, lest we Should surfeit on the summer’s sweets, Or pine upon the winter’s crudity. A sober mind will walk alone, Apart from nature, if need be, And only its own seasons own; For nature leaving its humanity. Sometimes a late autumnal thought Has crossed my mind in green July, And to its early freshness brought Late ripened fruits, and an autumnal sky. -------- The evening of the year draws on, The fields a later aspect wear; Since Summer’s garishness is gone, Some grains of night tincture the noontide air. Behold! the shadows of the trees Now circle wider ’bout their stem, Like sentries that by slow degrees Perform their rounds, gently protecting them. And as the year doth decline, The sun allows a scantier light; Behind each needle of the pine There lurks a small auxiliar to the night. I hear the cricket’s slumbrous lay Around, beneath me, and on high; It rocks the night, it soothes the day, And everywhere is Nature’s lullaby. But most he chirps beneath the sod, When he has made his winter bed; His creak grown fainter but more broad, A film of autumn o’er the summer spread. Small birds, in fleets migrating by, Now beat across some meadow’s bay, And as they tack and veer on high, With faint and hurried click beguile the way. Far in the woods, these golden days, Some leaf obeys its Maker’s call; And through their hollow aisles it plays With delicate touch the prelude of the Fall.