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| “THE DEAD leaves strow the forest walk, | |
| And wither’d are the pale wild-flowers; | |
| The frost hangs blackening on the stalk, | |
| The dew-drops fall in frozen showers. | |
| Gone are the springs green sprouting bowers | 5 |
| Gone summer’s rich and mantling vines, | |
| And Autumn, with her yellow hours, | |
| On hill and plain no longer shines. | |
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| I learn’d a clear and wild-toned note, | |
| That rose and swell’d from yonder tree— | 10 |
| A gay bird, with too sweet a throat, | |
| There perch’d and raised her song for me. | |
| The winter comes, and where is she? | |
| Away——where summer wings will rove, | |
| Where buds are fresh, and every tree | 15 |
| Is vocal with the notes of love. | |
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| Too mild the breath of southern sky, | |
| Too fresh the flower that blushes there, | |
| The northern breeze that rustles by, | |
| Finds leaves too green, and buds too fair; | 20 |
| No forest-tree stands stript and bare, | |
| No stream beneath the ice is dead, | |
| No mountain-top with sleety hair | |
| Bends o’er the snows its reverend head. | |
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| Go there with all the birds,—and seek | 25 |
| A happier clime, with livelier flight, | |
| Kiss, with the sun, the evening’s cheek, | |
| And leave me lonely with the night. | |
| —I ’ll gaze upon the cold north light, | |
| And mark where all its glories shone— | 30 |
| See!—that it all is fair and bright, | |
| Feel—that it all is cold and gone.” | |
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