Autumnalia

The crimson color laysAs bright as beauty's blush along the West,And a warm golden haze,Promising sheafs of ripe autumnal daysTo crown the old year's crest,Hangs in mid air, a half-pellucid maze,Through which the sun at set,Grown round and rosy, looks with Bacchian blush,For an old wine-god meet,Whose brows are dripping with the grape-blood sweet,As if his southern flushRejoiced him, in his northern-zoned retreat.

The amber-colored airMusical is with hum of tiny thingsHeld idly struggling there,As if the golden mists entangled wereAbout the viewless wings,That beat out music on their gilded snare.

If but a leaf, all gayWith Autumn's gorgeous coloring, doth fall,Along its fluttering wayA shrill alarum wakes a sharp dismay,And, answering to the call,The insect chorus swells and dies away

With a fine piping noise,As if some younger singing motes cried out,As do mischievous boys,Startling their playmates with a pained voice,Or sudden thrilling shout,Followed by laughter, full of little joys.

Perchance a lurking breezeSprings, just awakened to its wayward play,Tossing the sober treesInto a frolic maze of ecstacies,And snatching at the gayBanners of Autumn, strews them where it please.

The sunset colors glowA second time in flame from out wood,As bright and warm as thoughThe vanished clouds had fallen, and lodged belowAmong the treetops, huedWith all the colors of heaven's signal-bow.

The fitful breezes dieInto a gentle whisper, and then sleep;And sweetly, mournfully,Starting to sight, in the transparent sky,Lone in the upper deep,Sad Hesper pours its beams upon the eye;And for one little hour,

Holds audience with the lesser lights of heaven,Then to its western bowerDescends in sudden darkness, as the flowerThat at the fall of evenShuts its bright eye, and yields to slumber's power.

Soon, with a dusky face,Pensive and proud as an East Indian queen,And with a solemn grace,The moon ascends, and takes her royal placeIn the fair evening scene,While all the reverential stars, apace,Take up their march through the cool fields of space,And wed in the sweet day with night serene.

Ann Arbor, Mich., 1852.