  By Mrs. EMILY J. BUGBEE. The clouds hung loose and gray, Across the autumn sky, And at my feet in golden piles, The dead leaves, drifting lie. No voice of summer song, I hear from copse or tree, The perfume of no summer flower, Comes floating up to me. Death’s silence over all, Where music was, and bloom, Enfolded all the sun-kissed hills, In drapery of gloom. I walk as in a dream, Beneath the brooding sky, While faded, as these autumn leaves, Life’s hopes around me lie. The keen and cruel frost Has touched my world with blight, And dark on all its splendors lie, The shadows of the night. The memory of its joy, Like billows of the sea, Come surging up the silver strand, Then backward moaning flee. Amid this sombre calm, Beneath these skies of gray, And drifting of the yellow leaves I walk alone to-day, And scarce can look beyond The shadows cold and drear, That fold, away from mortal sight, The summer of my year. In the eternal spring, Beyond time’s changing skies, Beyond the chilling frost of death, A resurrection lies. I can not tell how long, The snow shall wrap their tomb, But sometime, shall life’s blighted flowers Burst into splendid bloom. decorative line |
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