Along the solemn arches of the wood—
Like whispers in a lonely lane at dark,
Or soothing hum of home-returning bee—
The boy, delighted, sets his secret snares,
Clearing broad paths amid the yellow leaves,
Where the cock-partridge may strut in pride
At earliest dawn, and find the fatal noose;
There, when the sun is peeping o’er the hills,
Tinging the woodland sea with gorgeous hues,
He goes, with eager step and anxious eye,
Beholds the path obscured, the sapling sprung,
And, ’mid the maple boughs, his mottled prey.
—
The Reaper pauses in the ample field,
Where a rich harvest smiles to bless his toil,
And rests beside the oak, beneath whose shade,
In ages past, the wandering Red Man slept;
There, while the sun poured down his fervent ray,
The happy laborer seeks to quench his thirst,
With crystal water from the lime-stone spring,
Or milk, from prudent housewife’s ample store—
Pure as it came from Nature’s healthy fount;
And while he sits the idle hours away,
He muses o’er his country and her fame,
And dares to claim her empire as his own.
And there, amid the grass, the children play
Around the sun-burnt maidens, as they twine
The bands to bind the golden armfuls tight,
And leave the bristling sheafs, with plenty crowned,
Standing in beauty on the fresh-reap’d hill.
The groaning wagon gathers up the grain
From auburn fields. The yellow sheafs are piled
In ponderous heaps, while one well skilled builds up
The toppling load, and when ’tis finished, sits
On its sere top, crowned with the ripened grain—
The Autumn’s King! And as the reaper’s hale
And rosy children shout for joy, he sings,
With mellow voice, the song of Harvest Home.
The sickle gleams no more amid the fields;
The cradled hills are open to the feet
Of Want’s poor gleaners and the hunter band;
And there the quail walks with her piping brood
Amid the stubble, teaching them to fly.
Amid the orchard, bending ’neath the load
That fair Pomona from her lap has strewn,
The busy husbandmen commence their tasks.
The red-cheeked apple, and the greening pale,
The golden-pippin, and the blue pearmain,
Baldwin and russet, all are toppled down,
And to the air a balmy fragrance give.
And there, the urchins playing all the while,
Select the choicest fruit for future use,
When the long winter night creeps o’er the hill,
And autumn’s golden brow is wrapped in gloom.
The cider-press, beneath the farm-house shade,
Now creaks, as round old Dobbin takes his way,
While from the massive vat the liquid pours,
And in abundant casks ferments and foams.
Hail, generous drink! fair Newark’s honest boast,
The laborer’s beverage in a northern clime,
Where freedom first, in deadly strife was born,
And where her last scarred-follower shall die—
If death to such e’er come.
Oft have I sighed for thee in spicy clime,
Where hung the clustering grape from every bough,
And where the nectar of the gods was free
As Croton-water in old Gotham’s Park.
Untainted with the liquid sin that flows
From the destroyer’s still, thy spirit lifts
The thirsty soul from earth—but not too high,
Nor leaves at morn a flush upon the brow.
An apple caused the first of earth to sin;
But thou, well made, and freed from earthly taint,
Raisest the weary spirit to its tone,
And givest to labor’s cheek the glow of health.
Now, in the rosy morn, the spotted hounds
Before the mounted Huntsmen hie away.
O’er fields and meadows, onward see them go,
Scaling the walls, and trampling down the corn.
And now they penetrate the forest shade,
And from the sylvan dell, and wood-capt hill,
The deep-mouthed bay with wild halloo is heard,
Swelling in cadence to the hunter’s horn.
In her retreat, amid the deepest shade,
Where the long grass is tender, and ne’er fails,
The red-deer hears, and starts, and lists again,
Till louder still the chase’s wild music sounds,
Then down the hill-side to the lake that spreads
Its broad unruffled bosom to the morn,
She takes her course; while on her haunches come
The bellowing pack, like gaunt and hungry wolves.
Now she has gained the stunted alder’s shade,
That line the margin of the waters clear,
And turning quickly round the wave-worn hill,
That towers abruptly o’er the narrow beach,
Dips her light hoofs in the unconscious wave,
And seeks the mountain-pass with lightning speed.
Hid from their sight, the scent in water lost,
The eager pack plunge headlong in the flood;
But soon recalled to duty, ’long the shore
They scour, till one more practiced than the rest,
Stops where the chase her sylvan pathway took,
And bellowing wildly, follows in her track,
With the whole party thundering at his heels.
The wily deer too long has got the start,
And now from distant hill-side sees the foe
Come panting up the dell with weary limb.
A moment only does she look, then turns
And glides in silence down the other side;
And when the Huntsmen gain the lofty height,
The deer is far away—the chase is o’er.
Oh! who can sing the glories of the woods,
When Indian Summer, like a death-smile, rests
On autumn’s sallow cheek too soon to fade.
In ages past, when thou didst gently come,
“With nights of frost, and noons of sultry heat,
When skies were blue as highly tempered steel,
And rivers clear as crystal, and the mist
Upon the mountains hung its silver veil;
When o’er the grass a fairy net-work spread,
And naught was green except the mountain pine,
The willow, and the bullrush by the brook”—
Our fathers feared—for then amid the wilds,
Called by the wampum-belt of varied hue,
The Indian warriors built their council-fire,
And in the war-dance joined with hellish rite,
Till morning broke upon the dusky woods.
Then, at the hour when mortals soundest slept,
And nature was at rest, they sallied forth,
Armed with the hatchet and the scalping-knife,
And trusty rifle, whose report was death.
The sleeping father woke to hear the cry
Of butchered wife, and infant rudely torn
From her clasped arms, to feel the war-club’s power.
One look he gave, and on his silvery head
The hatchet fell, and loosed the flood of life,
Then sinking down in death’s cold senseless sleep,
Added fresh fuel to the crackling flames
That spread around his lonely sylvan cot,
And lit, with hateful glare, the moaning woods.
Next morn the wandering hunter marked the waste,
And found amid the ashes, human bones,
An axe, a child’s steel rattle, and a lock
Of woman’s golden hair, still wet with blood.
—
The sun in mellow light sleeps on the hills,
The lazy river rolls in silence on,
The woods keep Sabbath, till the deep-mouthed bay
Of wandering fox-hound breaks upon the ear;
Or from the top of an old chestnut falls,
The tempting nut the startled squirrel drops,
Parting the fading leaves with pattering sound;
Or on the rotten log beside the stile,
The busy partridge beats her woodland drum.
The frost has tipt the trees with lovelier tints
Than pencil ever gave to forest scene;
There, green and gold in various hues combine,
Spotted with crimson where the maple stands,
And when the sun upon the hoar-frost shines,
The foliage sparkles, as though crystals hung
On every leaf, and trembled in the air.
The eye now penetrates the half-clad trees,
And spies the squirrel in his leafy house,
Or marks upon the limb the wish-ton-wish,
Who rests by day, that he may sweeter sing
His song at night, beside the cottage gate.
The thistle-seed, with wing of silver down,
Floats in the air, and flashes in the sun.
The dusky worm that feasted on the leaf
In the green spring-time, weaves his curious shroud,
And fastening it by thread of minute size,
To the tall poplar swings himself to sleep.
Type of the resurrection! lo, he hangs
Between the mortal and the spirit-land,
Till called by God, through Nature’s changeless laws,
He starts a winged creature clad in light,
With tints of morning blushing on his wings.
The fisher’s boat along the river glides,
Nor leaves a ripple in its shallow wake.
The wild swan sports in Anicosta’s wave,
And deems his shadow his departed mate;
The patient heron, on the wave-washed rock
For hours stands, watching his suspecting prey;
The wild-goose raises heavily to join
The gabbling cohort that is hastening on,
High in the air, to the bright summer-land,
Where the superb magnolia lifts its head.
And scents the gale—a wilderness of flowers.
The hardy ivy climbs the giant tree,
To place green garlands on its withered head;
The wild grape from the lofty walnut hangs
Its purple clusters tempting to the sight;
And by the swampy brook, the sunflower turns
Its golden eye in meekness toward its God;
The deer, from sylvan dell comes out to drink;
The buzzard on the dead tree patient waits,
For the returning tide to line the shore
With food well-suited to his groveling taste;
And o’er the bosom of the widening stream,
The lazy fish-hawk flaps his heavy wing.
—
Old age and childhood mark, with curious eye,
The lonely scene, and pass, with cautious tread,
Down the still pathway of the dying woods.
Now, round the mighty piles of corn they sit,
The aged ones, the young men, and the lads,
With here and there a son of Afric’s clime,
With eye that rolls in undiminished joy,
And mouth that ready waits to swell the laugh,
Or join the merry huskers’ drinking song.
And thus the labor of a week is done,
While wives and daughters, ’neath the farmer’s roof,
Spread out the festive board with viands rich,
And tempting to the eye of one who bears
The sweat of labor on his swarthy brow.
Now, from its yellow shuck, the ripened corn,
In well-filled ears, is drawn—a pleasant sight;
And while the village maidens pass along,
Stopping, where’er their fancy wills, to husk,
Red ears are placed within their anxious palms,
By roguish ones, who hid them for this hour;
And as they draw the crimson emblems forth,
Full many a kiss is printed on the cheek
Of rosy innocence, by lips that ne’er
Such liberty had dared to take before.
The clock strikes twelve, and from his cozy perch
Beside the fattest pullet, lo, the cock
Proclaims the approaching morn with shrillest crow!
The corn is husked, and now they gather round
The board, while lovely maidens wait to serve
With ready hand, the laborers of the eve.
Now from the lips of village sire ascends
The prayer for Heaven’s rich blessing on their food;
Thanks for the pouring out of plenty’s horn,
And gratitude for life and health—nay, more,
For liberty, without which all things else
Were vain. And while he stands with streaming eye,
And hand that palsy oft has clasped in vain,
His trembling accents fall upon the ear,
Like distant music at the close of day.
The service o’er, the merry feast begins,
Then joy runs riot round the sacred chair,
And dignified propriety is gay
As gipsy maiden, with her silver bells
Tinkling around her heels. At length the dawn
Recalls the joyous throng to other scenes;
And soon the last gay visiter has bade
His warm good-by—and the old house is still.
Left all alone, in calm security,
Straight in his oaken-chair of antique form,
Within his hall, the farmer sits and sleeps,
While the fierce house-dog watches at his feet.
Sweet hour of plenteous ease, when care puts off
His wrinkled brow, and charity and love,
The fairest sisters of the heavenly train,
Go hand in hand along the faded walks,
And sit at evening by the cottage door.
There the old soldier, covered o’er with scars,
Limping along unnoticed by the crowd,
Whose liberties were purchased with his blood,
Finds ’neath the whispering elms before the door
A welcome seat; and there the little ones,
Called from their play by watchful Towser’s growl.
And the patched dress that glory gives her sons,
Gather round their sire with mute surprise,
And list to tales of other days, when war,
With iron feet, swept thundering o’er the glade,
And reared his bloody altars on the hills.
And while they listen, lo! the soldier’s face
Grows less terrific, and his tatter’d dress
No longer seems to hide a vagrant’s form.
With stealthy look and silent step, they seek
The festive board, and silently return;
Then, while he wipes from his dim eye a tear,
They fill the old man’s pack with generous food,
Proffer the goblet full to his parched lips,
And play at “hide and seek” around his chair.
The heart of power may coldly beat when they
Who fought for freedom in her darkest hour,
In age and penury, appear to claim
The boon a monarch never yet refused;
But by the hearth-stones of his native land,
Where liberal thoughts and generous feelings dwell,
The valiant soldier ne’er shall find a churl
To bid him trudge, a rude unwelcome guest.
On Salem’s hill the Hebrews’ reign is o’er,
The silver trump of jubilee is still.
Timbrel and harp and soft-toned dulcimer
Have ceased their strains in Sharon’s rosy vale;
The scattered tribes in earth’s remotest bounds
Wander like sheep upon the mountain-side,
And Israel mourns her empire and her God.
The fisher, solitary, dries his net
On the green rock, amid the silver wave,
Where, robed in purple, sat imperial Tyre,
And through the autumn day beholds no sail,
To catch the scented breeze from Cypress Isle.
The hills of Judah, crowned with ruins gray,
Lift their brown summits to the deep blue air,
And cast their cooling shadows on the sea.
Hushed is the shepherd’s lute, the reaper’s shout,
The bleat of flocks, and patriarch’s song of praise,
The Harvester of years has o’er them past,
And hung his reaping-hook in Joseph’s tomb.
But though the trump of jubilee is still,
And Israel’s host in triumph meet no more
By Jacob’s well, or Siloa’s sacred brook;
Yet in the western world, where Freedom rears
Her banner o’er the altar of her God,
And all religions meet in peaceful mood,
At autumn’s close, the wanderers returned
To distant homes, to keep Thanksgiving Day.
Such was the custom of the Pilgrim band,
When first they trod that wild and wintry shore,
And such th’ observance of their sterling sons,
Who, scattered o’er the freeman’s heritage,
Remember their bold ancestry with pride,
And where they tread, make new New England’s bloom.
—
The days grow shorter, and the nights with frost
Creep shivering o’er the landscape’s fading green.
The village stage comes in at later hour,
From city, town, and distant boarding-school
Bringing a host of merry hearts, who seek
The joys of childhood by their native hearths;
And as it pauses at the welcome door
The inmates rush, uncovered, to the stile,
And there, ’mid kisses long and loud, is heard
The mother’s anxious inquiry for health,
The boisterous brother’s rude though hearty hail,
And happy father’s well-timed welcome home.
What joys, what transports centre in the hour
While the old mansion rings with childlike mirth.
—
For days the very atmosphere has teemed
With savory odor from the kitchen flue.
And now the day of praise begins, clear, cold and still.
While yet the sun sails up its morning path
The merry peal from village spire is heard,
And straightway pours the tide of life along,
Gathering fresh numbers from each ivied door,
Changing their greetings warm on every hand,
With those by Mammon or by glory called,
Whose wandering feet have homeward turned again:
And many a speaking eye reveals the tale
Of love long felt, but ne’er before expressed.
The church is still, and maiden modesty
Has smoothed her dress and re-arranged her curl,
Then from the choir the pealing anthem swells
With chorus grand—and voices long unused
To holy song join in the symphony
Of praise.
Prayer long and deep and eloquent ensues,
In which the earth, the nation, and the church,
The righteous and the wicked, rich and poor,
Remembrance find. And then a meet discourse,
Recounting changes of the variant year,
Paying a tribute just to absent worth,
And hanging garlands green on glory’s tomb.
The heart is touched—the mourner’s eye grows dim—
The proud are humbled, and the poor rejoice.
And when the speaker closes, with a charge
To pay due homage to the Mighty One
Who guides Arcturus and his boisterous sons,
Binds the sweet influence of the Pleiades,
And breaks Orion’s broad and sparkling bonds,
All hearts, with one accord, in reverence bow,
And pure thanksgiving peals from every tongue.
The service done, they seek their cheerful hearths
To spend the hallowed day in feasts of love.
The feast is set—and joy’s wild burst is o’er—
The mother’s eye has marked the vacant chair—
The father’s ear has missed his first-born’s step—
And where the church-yard sleeps, so still, they look
With hearts of grief, and eyes suffused with tears.
Evening with smiles and tales has come, and round
The social circle blind-man’s buff is played.
Wisdom and years are straightway laid aside,
And manhood lives its childhood o’er again,
Seeking the golden shadows of the days
Long passed away.
And now the youngest having sought repose,
Friend after friend drops in with cheerful heart;
The merry dance succeeds the merry game,
And the light foot with lighter heart keeps time.
Music is also there, with gentle tone,
Singing the favorite tunes of other days.
Age with its wrinkle, childhood with its smile,
Youth with its hope, and manhood with its care,
Joy blends with high esteem, and admiration
Kindles into love.
The old clock ticks the drowsy hours along—
The midnight comes—the joyous throng disperse—
Full many a head on sleepless pillow lies,
Till wearied out, with thinking o’er the past,
The mind surrenders to the body’s guide
And dreams of fancy dance before the eye.
Blest labor! thou dost fringe the poor man’s lids
With gold: and drive remembrance of his wrongs
Away—hang o’er his drowsy visions scenes
Of pleasantness, where round a cheerful cot
Wind paths of peace. Oh, Night! to him what are
The ills of day, if thou but shelter him
With brooding wing.—
Earth without labor—what a dreary waste!
Sadder to view than Asia’s barren plains
Or Afric’s sea of sand. He that would strike
Thy arm of sinews down, would make the field
A solitude, and crowded mart a den
Of thieves.—
When the moist sickle rests upon its hook,
And the rich stores of earth are gathered in,
The fair is held—a feast of fruits and flowers—
Of art’s fine workmanship and labor’s yield.
From the dark pines that fringe Aroostook’s wave
To the wild chapparal that rudely turns
The martial foot from Rio Bravo’s bank,
From the Atlantic’s many-peopled shore
To the Columbia’s vales of living green,
The joyful mandate rings, and man pours forth
His richest treasures to the gaze of day.
The nation sits in judgment on her arts,
Her choice productions and her fruitful glebes,
And cheers the laborer’s toil with voice of praise.
Thus man is dignified by honest toil,
And the dread curse pronounced in Time’s young spring
Becomes a blessing in its autumn day.
So may the laborer stand amid his race—
Taught that true knowledge elevates the soul,
That the poor carpenter ofGalilee
Once worked his task—then in the temple taught—
Then gave redemption to a guilty world—
And then resumed his station by his God!
Now from the well-filled barn, in gusty day,
The flail’s loud beat is heard—a pleasing sound—
And from the chaff the full unspotted grain
Is winnowed by the stripling’s feeble hand.
And while the dust is flying far and wide
The wheat is gathered in, a precious store,
Tempting the factor’s mercenary eye,
And bidding famine with her sickly form
Wander afar from Freedom’s hallowed soil;
The timid quail, with well-fledged brood, draws near,
Her tithe to claim from man’s productive toil,
And barn-yard fowls their rich thanksgivings spend,
Nor dream of days of want in time to come,
When winter o’er the frozen earth shall claim
Her sovereignty with cutting blast and snow.
Autumn departs, and soon on hills of brown,
In storms will break the dark solstitial morn.
The grove has lost its verdure and its song,
And withered leaves, in heaps, are mouldering round.
Keen northern blasts, from Greenland’s gelid wastes,
Wake the dark woods of stormy Labrador,
And o’er Canadian wilds and ocean-lakes,
Down Mississippi’s vales in fury howl.
By Huron’s flood the savage wrapped in furs
Gathers his tent of skins beneath the snow,
And ’mid the smoke, for days, securely waits
For the encrusting rain to plate the drift
With glittering ice, that cracks not at his tread,
Where he may chase the moose, whose hoofs break thro’
And leave upon the trail a track of blood.
The miner on Superior’s pictured cliffs,
Where sings the thunder its eternal hymn,
Waits in his cabin rude for hours of spring,
Giving up pleasure, and e’en health itself,
That he may climb to fortune’s fickle height
Through veins of copper, and up shafts of gold.
The pilgrim’s son, in freedom, builds his cot,
And hails a shadowy old world from the new,
On the Pacific’s main, where blooming hills
Hang o’er the flood, and catch the dying strain
Borne on the waves from India’s coral strand.
The farmer’s boy, long since amid the woods,
Has plucked the hazel and the chestnut brown,
And sharp-ribbed walnut, for his winter store,
Leaving the staining butternut untouched,
For the hoar-frost to peel its ragged shell.
The sheep go wandering o’er the barren plains
In search of welcome food, and where the scythe
Between the pointed stones has passed along,
Crop closer than the crooked blade of man
The sallow loiterers of the autumn field.
The red-breasts, gathered into flocks, no longer pipe
Their sweetest songs beside the cottage door:
And the vast family of sea-birds screech
Their notes of sadness o’er the sounding sea.
The rivers lift their voices, as the rain
From chilly clouds falls on the dreary scene,
And high above their banks in torrents swell,
Sweeping the cottage and the well-filled barn,
The dam, the bridge, and the old ivied mill,
With stacks of grain and implements of man,
In wild confusion onward to the sea.
Sad are the notes of nature—doubly sad,
Where leaping o’er her brown and dizzy height,
With robe of silver and a rainbow crown,
Niagara sings her thunder-hymn to earth’s
Remotest waters—where oft the poet’s eye
Beholds, amid the shades of autumn eve,
The Tuscarora in his phantom bark,
Singing his death-song on the cataract’s brow.
Or where, amid Virginia’s fertile vale,
The Rockbridge in its grandeur towers above
The little stream that runs so far beneath,
That human ear ne’er caught its hoarsest brawl.
There where the Deluge pierced the mountain chain
And sent its wild pent river to the sea,
The storm, with sternest music, calls its clouds,
And through the giant arch remorseless sweeps
Causing dread whirlpools of the misty air.
Autumn departs, and earth in sadness mourns,
And all around is desolate and chill.
Empires have had their autumns, and are lost
Beneath the dead and rustling leaves of time.
Egypt, majestic in her ruin, sleeps
Upon the Nile—the pyramids her history
And her tomb. Idumea, ’mid her cliffs,
Yawns in her gloom, an empty sepulchre.
Tadmor is hid amid the desert sand;
Balbec’s tremendous wall upon the waste,
Shelters the spotted lizard and the owl;
And Babylon, the mighty, is a heap
By the Euphrates. Tyre has been swallowed
By the tideless sea; Greece sits in darkness
On her classic hills, ’mid templed groves,
Her king a Saxon, and her children slaves.
The Muscovite has found a shorter way
To old Byzantium; and the lazy Turk
That loiters there, is but a Turk in name.
Dark Ethiopia knows her bounds no more;
Carthage is but a pasture wild for goats;
Persia now roams the waste in broken hordes;
Imperial Rome, once mistress of the world,
Is but a province, where a mitred priest
Sits in the Cæsar’s chair without his crown;
And the furr’d Russ directs the haughty race
Of Ghengis Khan and fiery Tamerlane.
Ages and kingdoms feel the sickle click,
And bend their heads before the reaper’s tread.
The Earth shall have her autumn, with the stars
That sang in beauty at the birth of Time;
And Death shall have his autumn, for he too
Must die. The Heavens shall have their autumn,
And be rolled back to their ancient nothingness.
And all shall fade, and fall around, and die,
But God, and the vast Hierarchy of souls.
—
Oh, death! when thou dost come with trembling limbs,
Down the brown hills, where waves the ripened grain,
And bear the aged exile home to God,
While autumn’s wailing wind sings Harvest Home.
When health’s bright roses slowly fade away,
As flowers of spring-time breathed on by the frost;
When dire consumption saps the roots of life,
And slow but sure its victims steal along
The shaded path that winds around the tomb;
Or when by burning fever racked and parched,
The prostrate form with joy awaits the call;
Or when forsaken by the loved and false,
The broken spirit sits beside the grave,
And weaves strange garlands from the withered flowers,
To crown the head-stone of departed hopes,
Thou art a welcome guest.
But when in youth and health, without a sign,
Thou comest in thy most appalling form,
Swift as the sunbeam streaming from on high,
Then thou dost rudely snap hope’s brightest buds,
And form dread sepulchres in every heart—
Chasms that never close with rolling years—
Wounds that forever festering, never heal,
Till deeper sorrows settle on the soul.
Autumn departs, and with it ends the song
Of the rude bard, who first essayed to sing
In high scholastic verse, its scenes of gold;
A pleasant pastime for an idle month,
When the hot sun pour’d down its sickly rays.
And pestilence at noonday walked abroad.
Autumn departs, and on its cheerless gale,
Sighing o’er barren moor and russet grove,
The feeble lay goes forth, with deep distrust,
And much of hope, entwined with more of fear.
If it shall fail—and stranger things have been,
And with the leaves around, whirl through the glen,
And up the forest’s melancholy path,
Lifeless and useless, as its withered band.
’Tis an old truth, by bard of sweetness told,
“Leaves have their time to fall, and stars to set.”
But if perchance some generous soul shall take
The half-fledged warbler to a pleasant home,
Where bright-eyed children gather in their joy—
Type of the host that throng the homes of Heaven—
Glean from its varied notes one sound to please,
One truth to charm and elevate the soul,
And bid young genius in her wild-wood sing,
The scenes and glories of her native land—
Then shall the bard in his retreat rejoice,
And sing again, when spring, with sunny brow,
Shall speak the resurrection of the flowers.