Autumnal Nightfall

Round Autumn's mouldering urn Loud mourns the chill and cheerless gale, When nightfall shades the quiet vale And stars in beauty burn. 'Tis the year's eventide. The wind, like one that sighs in pain O?er joys that ne'er will bloom again Mourns on the far hillside. And yet my pensive eye Rests on the faint blue mountain long; And for the fairy-land of song, That lies beyond, I sigh. The moon unveils her brow; In the mid-sky her urn glows bright, And in her sad and mellowing light The valley sleeps below. Upon the hazel gray The lyre of Autumn hangs unstrung And o?er its tremulous chords are flung The fringes of decay. I stand deep musing here, Beneath the dark and motionless beech, Whilst wandering winds of nightfall reach My melancholy ear. The air breathes chill and free: A spirit in soft music calls From Autumn's gray and moss-grown halls, And round her withered tree. The hoar and mantled oak, With moss and twisted ivy brown, Bends in its lifeless beauty down Where weeds the fountain choke. That fountain's hollow voice Echoes the sound of precious things; Of early feeling's tuneful springs Choked with our blighted joys. Leaves, that the night-wind bears To earth's cold bosom with a sign, Are types of our mortality, And of our fading years. The tree that shades the plain, Wasting and hoar as time decays, Spring shall renew with cheerful days,-- But not my joys again.