  Bare and gaunt the forest standeth, Reaching out so wide and high, As if mutely supplicating Mercy of an angry sky. Oh! such hollow and weird voices Issue from its solemn aisles, As if lonely forest phantoms Mourn the loss of summer’s smiles. I have sought the dim old forest And its old familiar ways: Frozen streams, dark glens and bowers, Dear to me in childhood’s days. All is silent and forsaken, Leaf and flower lie cold and dead, Mute appealing to the memory, Telling of a day that’s fled. I have known when summer’s mantle, Fair and sweet as poet’s dream, Covered in a wild profusion These old haunts with rustling green. Then the forest aisles were merry With the glee the song-birds made, And their gentle echoes followed Every stream and fragrant glade. Then I sung with boyhood’s rapture, Leaped and shouted in the dell, Till the golden hush of sunset, With its silent shadows, fell Watched the moonrise on the sea, Where the wavelets danced and murmured Low voiced and mysteriously. Life was one long dream of gladness— All unknown the future lay; Ah! the years have brought deep sadness— Summer’s merged in winter’s gray. And I wander, bowed and weary, Grieving o’er the faded past, As the snowflakes flit around me, Borne upon the winter’s blast. |
|
