The rose-bud has opened its lips
And whispers to me of a maid,
Whom Spring had brought to her bloom
When her heart in my bosom was laid.
The lark is trilling with glee
Her bridal refrain in the shade, I know the song that she sings, Its music I learned of the maid.
The lily is drooping in white,
Its leaves are beginning to fade,
Oh well I hear what it tells-
The story of the maid.
Vernal winds, so blandly blowing,
Frozen waters free ye set,
But my tears ye start to flowing
Like the mountain rivulet.
Vernal Sun, thou mildly shinest, Till the earth once more is dry, Otherwise thou me inclinest,
Ever wet is now mine eye.
Vernal Love, from thee youth borrows
Sweetest strains of glee and hope,
But to me thou breathest sorrows
In whose memory I grope
Genial Spring, thy glance releases
Ice-bound joys of all the year,
But to me thy flood increases
By the melting of the tear.
Weeping through the wood I wander,
Something drives me on my way,
And my longing groweth fonder
As alone in tears I stray.
Streams roll down the face of Nature
As she looks upon my pain,
And the eye of every creature
Sends its little drop of rain.
From a bush I hear a ditty,
Little songster, leave my sorrow,
I would have thee only sing,
O'er my corpse, a dirge to-morrow
And a leaflet on it fling.
The Painter Autumn touches now the wood,
He spreads his colors on the leafy green,
A picture thereout grows of wondrous sheen
Wherein he paints his melancholy mood;
But when his work of beauty is once done,
Each leat which hath his gentle pencil felt,
Drops down to earth and into soil doth melt
When just its time of glory had begun.
The gloomy Painter studies to portray
On Nature's canvas bright the face of Death;
But all his strokes are followed by decay,
His picture vanishes before his breath;
And when the leaves are gone, as in a dream,
He follows too, the victim of his theme.
"Breaks thy heart, thou lonely man?''
Echoes to that strain of pity
Softly through the forest ran.
Leaves are here twirling, Lighting now there, Ceaselessly whirling Down through the air.
Widowers moaning
Are all the trees,
List their low groaning
Loading the breeze.
Forests are bitten
By a white asp,
Meadows are smitten,
Look how they gasp!
Fairest of flowers
Softly has fled;
How the stalk cowers, Bowing the head!
Autumn is passing,
Oh this unrest!
Burden harassing,
Crushing the breast.
Tell ine the reason
Why the heart's tossed? 'Tis not the season, Something is lost.
When I see the haze of Autumn, Something stirs within my breast, When I see the leaflets falling Feeling rises robbing rest,
Sighs steal out disdaining custom,
Tears come trickling without hest,
And I hear a voiceless calling,
A deep longing unexpressed.
Ah I feel it was the Autumn
When thy love first thrilled my breast, And autumnal leaves were falling When I saw thee laid to rest.
On all sides fragments of the rainbow gleam,
Scattered upon the hill and through the vale,
Autumn his many colored coat of mail
In sad presentiment to don doth seem;
With his dread enemy he now must fight,
From out his radiant armor peers a face
So overcast with deeply pensive grace
That every soul is sorrowed at the sight.
The combat rages mid the stalwart trees,
And sweeps along the mead until the street,
The haze like battle smoke lowers o'er the leas,
But dying leaves proclaim their lord's defeat,
All reddened in their blood the ground they
Or taking on betimes Death's sallow hue.
The grass is withered,
Crisp are the leaves,
The fruit is gathered,
Stacked are the sheaves.
The trees forsaken Weep low their fate, The frost hath taken Away their state.
There stands how lonely The monarch oak! With bare head only
Waits Winter's stroke.
The woods with riot
No longer ring, The birds are quiet, Too sad to sing.
Each living creature
Doth seem to mourn,
And over Nature
A veil is worn.
Dusk robes she borrows,
Oh what has fled!
The season sorrows
For its sere dead.
Why stands this picture
On Nature's scroll?
It is the vesture
Of my own soul.
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