•J2 MAPLE LEAVES. 



Like this kindly season may life's decline come o'er me i 

 Past is manhood's summer, the frosty months are here ; 



Yet be genial airs and a pleasant sunshine left me, 



Leaf, and fruit, and blossom, to mark the closing year ! 



Dreary is the time when the flowers of earth are withered ; 



Dreary is the time when the woodland leaves are cast — 

 When upon the hillside, all hardened into iron, 



Howling like a wolf, flies the famished northern blast. 



Dreary are the years when the eye can look no longer 

 With delight on Nature, or hope on human kind : 



■Oh, may those that whiten my temples, as they pass me, 

 Leave the heart unfrozen, and spare the cheerful mind ! 



William Cullen Bryant. 



