  When Autumn's melancholy robes the land With silence and sad fadings mystical Of other years move thro' the mellow fields, I turn unto this meadow of the dead Strewn with the leaves stormed from October trees, And wonder if my resting shall be dug Here by this cedar's moan or under the sway Of yonder cypress—lair of winds that rove As Valkyries from Valhalla's court In search of worthy slain. And sundry times with questioning I tease The entombed of their estate—seeking to know Whether 'tis sweeter in the grave to feel The oblivion of Nature's flow, or here Wander as gleam and shadow flit her face. Whether the harvesting of pain and joy Ends with the ivied slab, or whether death Pours the warm chrism of Immortality Into each human heart whose glow is spent. Of unavailing silence. For a voice Of sighing wind may answer, or it leaps, Though wordless, from a marble seraph's face. Or sometimes from unspeakable deeps of gold That ebb along the west revealings wing And tremor, like etherial swift tongues Unskilled of human speech, about my heart— Till, youth, age, death ... even earth's all, it seems, Are but wild moments wakened in that Soul, To whom infinities are as a span, Eternities as bird-flights o'er the sun, And worlds as sands blown from Sahara's wilds Into the sea.... Then twilight bells ring back My wandered spirit from the wilderness Of Mystery, whence none may find a path To the Unknown, and like one who upborne Has steered the unmeasured summer skies until Their calm seems God, I turn transfigured home. |
|
