The day, so mild,

Is Heaven's own child,

With Earth and Ocean reconciled;

The airs I feel

Around me steal

Are murmuring to the murmuring keel.

Over the rail

My hand I trail
Within the shadow of the sail;
A joy intense,

The cooling sense

Glides down my drowsy indolence.

With dreamful eyes

My spirit lies

Where Summer sings and never dies;
O'erveiled with vines,

She glows and shines
Among her future oils and wines.

Yon deep bark goes

Where Traffic blows,

From lands of sun to lands of snows;

This happier one,

Its course to run,

From lands of snow to lands of sun.

Within his sober realm of leafless trees
The russet year inhaled the dreamy air;
Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease,
When all the fields are lying brown and bare.

The gray barns looking from their hazy hills
O'er the dim waters widening in the vales,
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills,
On the dull thunder of alternate flails.

All sights were mellowed and all sounds subdued,
The hills seemed farther and the streams sang low;
As in a dream the distant woodman hewed
His winter log with many a muffled blow.

The embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold,
Their banners bright with every martial hue,
Now stood, like some sad, beaten host of old,
Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue.

On slumb'rous wings the vulture held his flight;
The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint;

And, like a star slow drowning in the light,

The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint.

The sentinel-cock upon the hill-side crew-
Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before-
Silent till some replying warder blew

His alien horn, and then was heard no more.

Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest,
Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young,
And where the oriole hung her swaying nest,
By every light wind like a censer swung;

Where sang the noisy masons of the eaves,
The busy swallows, circling ever near,
Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes,

An early harvest and a plenteous year;

Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast
Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn,
To warn the reaper of the rosy east-

All now was songless, empty, and forlorn.

Alone from out the stubble piped the quail,

And croaked the crow through all the dreamy gloom; Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale,

Made echo to the distant cottage loom.

There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;

The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night;

The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers,

Sailed slowly by, passed noiseless out of sight.

Amid all this, in this most cheerless air,

And where the woodbine shed upon the porch Its crimson leaves, as if the Year stood there Firing the floor with its inverted torch;

Amid all this, the centre of the scene,

The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread,
Plied the swift wheel, and with her joyless mien,
Sat, like a Fate, and watched the flying thread.

She had known Sorrow-he had walked with her,
Oft supped and broke the bitter ashen crust