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And Sleep unbrib'd his dews refreshing shed;
White-mantled Innocence, ethereal sprite,
Shall chase far off the goblins of the night;
And Independence o'er the day preside,
Propitious power! my patron and my pride!

14*

TOBIAS SMOLLETT, 1721-1771.

XX.

Autumn.

AUTUMN is a favorite season with American poets; they

have taken great delight in singing the high-toned magnificence of the season, as well as that delicacy and sweetness of aspect which so often adds an exquisite charm to the brilliancy of autumnal beauty under our native skies. The poets of Europe have scarcely sung the delights of Spring with more eloquent fervor. We can not wonder that such should be the case; from the first tinge of peculiar coloring to the last smile of the Indian Summer, the season is full of interest and beauty, of ever-varying aspects. It has been with real reluctance that we have been compelled to turn aside from many beautiful passages of American verse which we had originally hoped to have inserted in this division of the volume; but fortunately they lie already within every reader's reach, in other forms.

TO AUTUMN NEAR HER DEPARTURE.

Thou maid of gentle light! thy straw-wove vest,
And russet cincture; thy loose pale-tinged hair;
Thy melancholy voice and languid air,
As if shut up within that pensive breast,
Some ne'er-to-be-divulged grief was prest;

Thy looks resign'd, that smiles of patience wear,
While Winter's blasts thy scattered tresses tear;
Thee, Autumn, with divinest charms have blest
Let blooming Spring with gaudy hopes delight,

That dazzling Summer shall of her be born;
Let Summer blaze, and Winter's stormy train
Breathe awful music in the ear of night;

Thee will I court, sweet dying maid forlorn, And from thy glance will catch th' inspired strain. SIR EGERTON Brydges, 1762-1837

AUTUMN.

ODE.

I.

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To Silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;
Shaking his languid locks, all dewy bright,
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

II.

Where are the songs of Summer? With the sun,
Oping the dusky eyelids of the South,

Till shade and silence waken up as one,

And Morning sings with a warm, odorous mouth.
Where are the merry birds?-away, away,
On panting wings, through the inclement skies,
Lest owls should prey,

Undazzled at noon-day,

And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes.

Where are the blooms of Summer?

In the West,

Blushing their last to the last sunny hours,
When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest,
Like tearful Proserpine, snatch'd from her flow'rs.
To a most gloomy breast.

Where is the pride of Summer-the green prime-
The merry, merry leaves all twinkling ?-there
On the moss'd elm; there on the naked lime
Trembling-and one upon the old oak-tree!
Where is the Dryad's immortality?
Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,
Or wearing the long, gloomy Winter through
In the smooth holly's green eternity.

IV.

The squirrel gloats on his accomplish'd hoard;
The ants have cramm'd their garners with ripe grain,
And honey-bees have stored

The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells;
The swallows all have winged across the main;
But here the Autumn melancholy dwells,

And sighs her tearful spells

Among the sunless shadows of the plain :
Alone, alone,

Upon a mossy stone,

She sits and reckons up the dead and gone
With the last leaves for a lone-rosary,
While all the wither'd world looks drearily,
Like a dim picture of the drowned past
In the hush'd mind's mysterious far away,
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last
Into the distance, gray upon the gray.

0

V.

go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded
Under the languid downfall of her hair;
She wears a coronal of flowers faded
Upon her forehead, and a face of care;
There is enough of withered everywhere
To make her bower, and enough of gloom,
There is enough of sadness to invite,
If only for the rose that died, whose doom
Is Beauty's-she that with the living bloom

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