Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 136.pdf/11

AUTUMN.

⁠The dying leaves fall fast,
Chestnut, willow, oak, and beech,
⁠All brown and withered lie.
⁠Now swirling in the cutting blast,
Now sodden under foot — they teach
⁠That one and all must die.

⁠This autumn of the year
Comes sadly home to my poor heart,
⁠Whose youthful hopes are fled.
⁠The darkening days are drear,
Each love once mine I see depart
⁠As withered leaves and dead.

⁠But is it all decay?
All present loss? — no gain remote?
⁠Monotony of pain?
⁠Ah no: I hear a lay
The robin sings — how sweet the note,
⁠A pure unearthly strain.

⁠And, of all flowers the first,
Beneath these leaves in spring shall blow
⁠Sweet violets blue and white.
⁠So all lost loves shall burst,
In springlike beauty, summer glow,
⁠In Heaven upon our sight.

Macmillan's Magazine.M. C. C.

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VIXI PUELLIS. (Hor. iii. 26.)

We loved of yore, in warfare bold
⁠Nor laurelless. Now all must go;
⁠Let this left wall of Venus show
The arms, the tuneless lyre of old.

Here let them hang, the torches cold,
⁠The portal-bursting bar, the bow,
⁠We loved of yore.

But thou, who Cyprus sweet dost hold,
⁠And Memphis free from Thracian snow,
⁠Goddess and queen, with vengeful blow,
Smite, — smite but once that pretty scold
⁠We loved of yore.

Spectator.Austin Dobson.

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AN UNEQUAL GAME.

A moment of loving and laughter,
⁠A jest and a gay good-bye.
If you one short week after
⁠Forget, why may not I?

To you but a moment's feeling,
⁠A touch and a tender tone;
A wound that knows no healing
⁠To me who am left alone.

A wound, and an aching wonder
⁠That lightly you go from me,
That we must be kept asunder
⁠By the cold abiding sea.

Blackwood's Magazine.

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AN OCTOBER GARDEN.

⁠In my autumn garden I was fain
⁠To mourn among my scattered roses:
⁠Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To autumn's languid sun and rain,
When all the world is on the wane!
⁠Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
⁠Nor heard the nightingale in tune.

Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
⁠You are but coarse compared with roses:
⁠More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;
⁠A rose it is tho' least and last of all,
⁠A rose to me tho' at the fall.

Athenæum.Christina G. Rossetti.

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FONS BANDUSIÆ. (Hor. iii. 13.)

O babbling spring! than glass more clear,
Worthy of wine, and wreath not sere,
⁠To-morrow shall a kid be thine
⁠With swelled and sprouting brows for sign,
Sure sign! of loves and battles near.

Child of the race that butt and rear!
Not less, alas! his life-blood dear
⁠Shall tinge thy cold wave crystalline,
⁠O babbling spring!

Thee Sirius knows not. Thou dost cheer
With pleasant cool the plough-worn steer,
⁠The wandering flock. This verse of mine
⁠Shall rank thee one with founts divine;
Men shall thy rock and tree revere,
⁠O babbling spring!

Spectator.

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AN AUTUMN SONG.

The wind is sighing,
The rose is dying,
The swallow is flying
⁠Over the sea;
The leaf is yellow,
The fruit hangs mellow,
The summer's knell, low,
⁠Sounds o'er the lea.

Winter is coming,
East winds are dumbing,
The golden bee's humming.
⁠The reaper's at rest;
Young Love, a rover
'Mong corn and clover,
His wanderings over,
⁠Flies to my breast.

Horace L. Nicholson.
St. James's Magazine.