“It was a day that sent into the heart

A summer feeling!”— and may Memory, now,

Its own inspiring influence so impart

Unto my fancy, as to teach me how

To give it fitting utterance. Aid me, thou

Most lovely season of the circling year!

Before my leaf of life, upon its bough,

In the chill blasts of age shall rustle sere,

To frame a votive song to hours so justly dear.

Autumn! soul-soothing season! thou who spreadest

Thy lavish feast for every living thing;

Around whose leaf-strew’d path, as on thou treadest,

The year its dying odours loves to fling,

Their last faint fragrance sweetly scattering;

O! let thy influence, meek, majestic, holy,

So consciously around my spirit cling,

That its delight may be remote from folly,

In sober thought combin’d with gentle melancholy.

If, in the morning of my life, to Spring

I paid my homage with a heart elate;

And with each fluttering insect on the wing,

Or small bird, singing to his happy mate,

And Flora's festival, then held in state;—

If joyous sympathy with such was mine;—

O! still allow me now to dedicate

To Thee a tenderer strain: that tone assign

Unto my murmuring lyre, which Nature gives to thine;—

A tone of thrilling softness, now, as caught

From light winds sweeping o’er a late-reap’d field;

And, now and then, be with those breezes brought

A murmur musical, of winds conceal’d

In coy recesses, by escape reveal’d:

And ever and anon, still deeper tone

Of winter's gathering dirge, at distance peal’d

By harps and hands unseen, and only known

To some enthusiast's ear when worshipping alone.