Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.
AppendixI. Juvenile Poems. Autumnal Nightfall
R
Loud mourns the chill and cheerless gale,
When nightfall shades the quiet vale
And stars in beauty burn.
The wind, like one that sighs in pain
O’er joys that ne’er will bloom again
Mourns on the far hillside.
Rests on the faint blue mountain long;
And for the fairy-land of song,
That lies beyond, I sigh.
In the mid-sky her urn glows bright,
And in her sad and mellowing light
The valley sleeps below.
The lyre of Autumn hangs unstrung
And o’er its tremulous chords are flung
The fringes of decay.
Beneath the dark and motionless beech,
Whilst wandering winds of nightfall reach
My melancholy ear.
A spirit in soft music calls
From Autumn’s gray and moss-grown halls,
And round her withered tree.
With moss and twisted ivy brown,
Bends in its lifeless beauty down
Where weeds the fountain choke.
Echoes the sound of precious things;
Of early feeling’s tuneful springs
Choked with our blighted joys.
To earth’s cold bosom with a sigh,
Are types of our mortality,
And of our fading years.
Wasting and hoar as time decays,
Spring shall renew with cheerful days,—
But not my joys again.