The dim, mysterious, ruddy light
That ushers in an autumn night,
Hung o’er the reeking fields that lay
Before me, on my lonely way,
In melancholy stillness spread,
As if to shroud those dreamless dead,
Over whose long, unbroken sleep
No friends nor kindred come to weep,
Though through its tears the sun-set sky
Looks kindly down with glimmering eye,
And, as its tender tints grow dim,
The red-breast trills their parting hymn.
But now that loved and lonesome thing
Brought not its tuneful offering;
Though breaking on the drowsy car,
Distinct, yet distant, faint, but clear,
Like the far trumpet’s voice of flame
At times the cock’s shrill clarion came,
Poured blithely forth, as full and free
As if his misty eye could see,
In that diseased and cheerless light,
The waning majesty of night;
While, from some nearer knoll, the sound
Of lowing kine, breathed gently round,
Joined with the homeless wether’s bell,
Drowned not the lisping brooklet’s swell.
No “noise that hinders thought” was there,
But through the chill substantial air,
From the still, shadowy hamlet, broke
The clanging hammer’s sturdy stroke,
And click of hurrying hoofs that trode
With measured step the twilight road,
By ancient Elstow’s hallowed fane —
Now faintly heard, now loud again;
But still, by distance so subdued,
They startled not its solitude,
But served as points to mete and sound
The deep sepulchral calm around.
The sluggard wind is waking now,
Round that tall poplar’s topmost bough,
And now, in pulses faint and brief,
Toys with ‘the sere and yellow leaf,’
Till, bolder grown, it gathers power,
And whirls aslant a golden shower,
Trundling its merry charge about
Like mummers at some lordly rout,
A reckless, restless, romping clan,–
Itself the piper to the van.
Look! where, upon the western sky,
Lifting its solemn front on high,
Frowns the dark battlemented tow’r,
And gloomy forms of grandeur low’r —
There, as I shape my course, and tread
‘Above the venerable dead,’
What vestiges of days departed
Up from the teeming past have started!
Visions of worthies famed in story,
And fadeless thoughts of faded glory!
Objects in which my youth delighted,
Like autumn-gleanings, sear’d and blighted,
Or sun-shoots from an April sky!
— Love, hope, fruition, all gone by. —
— ‘Visions of worthies!’ — Aye, let Fame
Inscribe in water Bunyan’s name,
And merge in darkness, if she will,
“Erle Huntingdon, his ancient Will;”
The grateful “Pilgrim” still shall go
To seek his native ‘Helenstowe,’
And, though the place be none so fair —
Dream of “the land of “Beulah” there.–
‘Undying thoughts of dying things!’–
The bright, but passing, pomp of kings,
Earth’s rottenness, and crafty ruth,
Seen in the blaze of sober truth.–
— The hopeless hope, by human light,
To overmatch Essential Right,
And bind unbending Justice down
In barter for a fadeless crown.–
–The convent’s gloom — the masses said —
And requiems chaunted for the dead,
In solemn voices loud and clear,
By old St. Mary’s brethren there.
The stealthy rites of those who gave
Its latest abbess to the grave,
And on her tomb engraved the prayer
They ventured not to proffer there.–
‘Scenes of my youth!’ — I thought of you,
Your dreams, all sunshine, — all untrue —
–Your sorrows, fleet indeed, but keen,
Your search for glory, never seen!
— False, — for I knew not then, nor claimed
“The hope that maketh not ashamed;”
— Keen — for I gave myself no care
To buckle on the shield “All-prayer;”
And never seen, because I sought,
Neither when, where, nor how, I ought.
(D A)
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