Autumn

Autumn once more begins to teach!
Sear leaves their annual sermon preach;
And with the southward-slipping sun
Another stage of life is done.

The day is of a paler hue,
The night is of a darker blue,
Just as it was a year ago;
For time runs fast, but grace is slow!

Life glides away in many a bend,
In chapters which begin and end;
Each has its trial, each its grace,
Each in life's whole its proper place.
Life has its joinings and its breaks,
But each transition swiftly takes
Us nearer to or farther from
The threshold of our heavenly home.

Years pass away; new crosses come;
Past sorrow is a sort of home,
An exile's home, and only lent
For needful rest in banishment.
It narrows life, and walls it in,
And shuts the door on many a sin;
'Tis almost like a calm fireside,
Where humbled hearts are fain to bide.

Thou comest, Autumn, to unlade
Thy wealthy freight of summer shade,
Still sorrowful as in past years,
Yet mild and sunny in thy tears,
Ripening and hardening all thy growth
Of solid wood, yet nothing loath
To waste upon the frolic breeze
Thy leaves, like flights of golden bees.

Have I laid by from summer hours
Ripe fruits as well as leaves and flowers?
Hath my past year a growth to harden,
As well as fewer sins to pardon?
Is God in all things more and more
A king within me than before?
I know not, yet one change hath come,
The world feels less and less a home.

My soul appears, as I get old,
More prompt in act, in prayer less cold;
Crosses, from use, more lightly press;
Mirth is more purely weariness;
With less to quarrel with in life,
I grow less patient with its strife;
I wish more simply, Lord! to be,
Ailing or well, always with Thee!