The squirrel gloats o'er his accomplish'd hoard, The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain, And honey bees have stored
The sweets of summer in their luscious cells; The swallows all have wing'd across the main; But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, And sighs her tearful spells
Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Alone, alone,
She sits and reckons up the dead and gone, With the last leaves for a love-rosary; Whilst 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 that distance, grey upon the grey.
O 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 wither'd 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 Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light; There is enough of sorrowing, and quite Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,— Enough of chilly droppings from her bowl; Enough of fear and shadowy despair, To frame her cloudy prison for the soul!
THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array; Follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling.
Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black, and grey;
Let your light sisters play- Ye, follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.
WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, Fold our hands round her knees, and cling? O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her, Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the south-west wind and the west wind sing.
For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain, and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
The full streams feed on flower of rushes, Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot, The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes From leaf to flower, and flower to fruit; And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire And the oat is heard above the lyre, And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes The chesnut husk at the chesnut root.
And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, Follows with dancing and fills with delight The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the trees divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid.
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, But the berried ivy catches and cleaves To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare,
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
FROM the forests and highlands We come, we come; From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The bees on the bells of thyme, The birds on the myrtle bushes, The cicale above in the lime, And the lizards below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, Listening to my sweet pipings.
Liquid Peneus was flowing, And all dark Tempe lay In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing The light of the dying day, Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns, And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did them attend and follow, Were silent with love,-as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings.
I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dædal earth,
And of heaven, and the Giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
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