| |
| 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 | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| |
| 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 | 45 |
| Set his seal upon thy brow? | |
| Maiden! joyous or tearful, | |
| Where art thou gleaning now? | |
| |
