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.