The Fall of the Leaf

Th’ autumnal winds had stripp’d the field
Of all its foliage, all its green;
The winter’s harbinger had still’d
That soul of song which cheer’d the scene:

With visage pale, and tottering gait,
As one who hears his parting knell,
I saw a youth disconsolate;--
He came to breathe his last farewell.

‘Thou grove! how dark thy gloom to me,
Thy glories riven by autumn’s breath;
In every falling leaf I see
A threatening messenger of death.

‘O Æsculapius! in my ear
Thy melancholy warnings chime:
Fond youth! bethink thee, thou art here
A wanderer--for the last--last time.

‘Thy spring will winter’s gloom o’ershade,
Ere yet the fields are white with snow;
Ere yet the latest flow’rets fade,
Thou in thy grave wilt sleep below.

‘I hear a hollow murmuring,
The cold wind rolling o’er the plain--
Alas! the brightest days of spring
How swift, how sorrowful, how vain!

‘O wave, ye dancing boughs, O wave!
Perchance to-morrow’s dawn may see
My mother weeping on my grave--
Then consecrate my memory.

‘I see, with loose, dishevell’d hair,
Covering her snowy bosom, come
The angel of my childhood there,
To dew with tears my early tomb.

‘Then in the autumn’s silent eve,
With fluttering wing, and gentlest tread,
My spirit its calm bed shall leave,
And hover o’er the mourner’s head.’

Then he was silent--faint and slow
His steps retraced;--he came no more:
The last leaf trembled on the bough--
And his last pang of grief was o’er.

Beneath the aged oaks he sleeps;--
The angel of his childhood there
No watch around his tombstone keeps.
But when the evening stars appear,

The woodman, to his cottage bound,
Close to that grave is wont to tread;
But his rude footsteps, echo’d round,
Break not the silence of the dead.