A change has come over nature
Since you and June were here;
The sun has turned to the southward
Adown the steps of the year.
The grass is ripe in the meadow,
And the mowers swing in rhyme;
The grain so green on the hillside
Is in its golden prime.
No more the breath of the clover
Is borne on every breeze,
No more the eye of the daisy
Is bright on meadow leas.
The bobolink and the swallow
Have left for other clime--
They mind the sun when he beckons
And go with summer's prime.
Buttercups that shone in the meadow
Like rifts of golden snow,
They, too, have melted and vanished
Beneath the summer's glow.
Still at evenfall in the upland
The vesper sparrow sings,
And the brooklet in the pasture
Still waves its glassy rings.
And the lake of fog to the southward
With surges white as snow--
Still at morn away in the distance
I see it ebb and flow.
But a change has come over nature,
The youth of the year has gone;
A grace from the wood has departed,
And a freshness from the dawn.
Another poem, "Loss and Gain," was printed in the New York "Independent"
about the same time.