Pamelia Sarah Vining Yule (1825–1897)

ALL over the earth like a mantle,

Golden, and green, and grey,

Crimson, and scarlet, and yellow,

The Autumn foliage lay.

The sun of the Indian Summer

Laughed at the bare old trees,

As they shook their leafless branches

In the soft autumnal breeze.

I walked where the leaves the softest,

The brightest, and goldenest lay;

And I thought of a forest hill-side

And an Indian Summer day,

An eager, little child-face,

O’er the fallen leaves that bent,

As she gathered her cup of beechnuts

With innocent content.

I thought of the small brown fingers,

Gleaning them one by one;

With the partridge drumming near her

In the forest bare and dun,

And the jet-black squirrel winking

His saucy jealous eye

At those tiny, pilfering fingers,

From his sly nook up on high.

Ah! barefooted little maiden,

With thy bonnetless, sunburnt brow!

Thou glean’st no more on the hill-side—

Where art thou gleaning now?

I knew by the lifted glances

Of the dark, imperious eye,

That the tall trees bending o’er thee

Would not shelter thee by and by.

The cottage by the brook-side,

With its mossy roof, is gone;

The cattle have left the uplands,

The young lambs left the lawn;

Gone are thy blue-eyed sister,

And thy brother’s laughing brow;—

And the beechnuts lie ungathered

On the lonely hill-side now.

What have the returning seasons

Brought to thy heart since then,

In thy long and weary wand’rings

In the paths of busy men?

Has the Angel of grief or of gladness

Set his seal upon thy brow?

Maiden! joyous or tearful,

Where art thou gleaning now?

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