AUTUMN. 113 



Thus even the damp, dull days of autumn may produce 

 pleasure in our garden, even in what makes it dreary, and 

 it is wise to look on the bright side, and to dwell rather 

 on the changing glories of the season and the clear bright- 

 ness of its days and moonlight nights, than on the sadder 

 vein which it naturally suggests : — 



■ Nay, William, nay, not so ! the changeful year. 

 In all its due successions, to my sight 

 Presents but varied beauties, transient all. 

 All in their season good. These falling leaves, 

 That, with their rich variety of hues. 

 Make yonder forest in the slanting sun 

 So beautiful, in you awake the thought 

 Of winter, — cold, drear winter, when the trees 

 Each like a fleshless skeleton shall stretch 

 Its bare, brown boughs ; when not a flower shall spread 

 Its colours to the day, and not a bh'd 

 Carol its joyaunce ; but all nature wear 

 One sullen aspect, bleak and desolate, 

 To eye, ear, feeling, comfortless alike. 

 To me their many-coloured beauties speak 

 Of times of merriment and festival, 

 The year's best holiday : I call to mind 

 The schoolboy days, when in the falling leaves 

 I saw, with eager hope, the pleasant sign 

 Of coming Christmas. 



To you the beauties of the autumnal year 

 Make mournful emblems, and you think of man 

 Doom'd to the grave's long winter, spirit-broken. 

 Bending beneath the burden of his years. 

 Sense dull'd and fretful, ' full of aches and pains, 

 Yet clinging still to life. To me they shew 

 The calm decay of nature, when the mind 

 H 



