The sombre autumn-sky no more sent down its mournful rain,
A dim and sickly veil had long o'er hill and hollow lain,
But death at last had trampled on the few remaining flowers,
All save the restless mandrake died with autumn's last sad hours.
The mandrake yet remained, and when the keen frost pierced his
breast,
Sent forth his voice in agony upon the soughing blast:
It told of happiness too ripe, of dewy rapture fled,
Of ecstacy, and green of heart, with vanished verdure dead.
The quiet snow came lightly through the thick and misty air,
And slantingly descended when the cold wind left his lair;
The cold wind! aye, the wind had chilled since buoyed on sunny mirth
Young Euroauster came to woo the virgin bloom of earth.
I saw no more the antlered stag--his rocky solitude
Was fitter palace for the king than lea or roofless wood;
The robin's song had died away as all things else must die--
Death's sleet had bound her ribbed wing and dimmed her gleeful eye.
I saw the maiden, but alas! the snow thro' ether gliding,
Was not more chill than she, erewhile so tender, so confiding;
I saw the youth--to him naught here might honey-balm impart,
He wandered from the haunts of men in brokenness of heart.
Oh, is there not a sympathy of all-controling power
The mother and her brood between--old earth, weak man, frail flower?
From some hearts soon the fetters fall, as spring frees lake and
river,
But many with the withered leaf, wear ruin's chain forever.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.