A mournful sermon greets my ear!
The pensive season of the year
Now preaches in a muffled tone,
From nature's fast-decaying throne.
Come to the woodland's cold retreat;
The leaves that rustle at thy feet,
With all that linger o'er thy head--
Commingling, yellow, green, and red--
And all that, trembling, leave their place
And softly greet their mother's face,
As sailing from their lofty top
They in your presence mournful drop,
Remind the thoughtful passer-by,
Thy falling autumn, too, is nigh.
Life has its gay and happy spring,
When birds of every feather sing;
Its warm and verdant summer, brief,
Which hastens to the yellow leaf,
Soon winter's icy hand will lie
Upon our cold and lifeless clay.
But oh! our soul--where will it be
Throughout the long eternity?
How can this question pass your mind
As falling leaves drift in the wind?
* * * * *
Ah! there's a sweet and sacred spell
That draws me to the shady dell;
Here could my soul with God remain
In meditation's holy frame.
Ho! all ye men that know not God,
Come seek him in the shady wood;
And, all ye saints of feeble love,
When will ye come and wisely prove
The blessedness that crowns the hour
That's spent with God in leafy bower?
If only heard your prayers ye say,
Then unto God ye never pray;
For did ye truly seek his face
And pray to win his saving grace
You'd pray when mortals are not near,
Right in your heavenly Father's ear.
In public, too; yea, everywhere,
But most of all with secret prayer;
Where only silent leaves applaud,
There would ye bow and worship God.
* * * * *
Then in the hush of solitude
Come listen to the voice of God;
Come oft, and he shall teach thine ear
His gentle words of love to hear.
There is no place on earth so sweet
As forest shades, where streamlets meet
And sing aloud their rocky ways,
With birds, and universal praise.
Do not the lover and his maid,
Delighted, walk the balmy shade,
And there unlock, with words so blest,
The pent-up love within their breast?
The crazy-quilt spread on the ground,
Of beauty-tinted leaves around,
Each bright sunbeam and fragrant flower,
And nature's music in the bower--
But, most of all, the cooing dove--
Lend inspiration to their love.
And does not nature's solitude
Inspire a soul to worship God?
Behold, he framed her majesty,
Cast up her hills, and carved the way
For babbling brooks that flow between
And tread the winding valley's green.
The many lovely trees that spread
Their sheltering wings above our head,
Rose up by his supreme behest,
With all their nuts and fruitage blest,
He taught the vine their trunks to climb,
Like cords of love their boughs entwine.
* * * * *
Hear thou, O man, our autumn chant
While sunbeams coldly o'er us slant,
And mournfully we fall so low
To don our winding sheet of snow,
There doomed in silence to decay.
So, too, thou, man, must pass away;
Thy springs of love shall lower run
Until thy life's last setting sun;
Then in thy grave-suit, coldly wound,
Like us return to mother ground.
But we are not without a seed,
From which anew there may proceed
Our kind to grow and multiply,
As round and round the seasons fly.
So, man, within thy mortal breast
There is a soul, immortal quest,
That shall reanimate thy clay,
And both, immortal, live for aye.
Thou shalt from winter's sleep arise,
And meet thy Savior in the skies.
With this blest hope so sure and bright
All seasons beam with golden light,
In winter's storm and summer's heat
The pure in heart have joys complete;
And when the close of life appears,
Their pleasures ripen with his years--
Unlike the sinner, dark and cold
Who graceless, godless, hopeless, old,
Sits lowly down in autumn's vale,
His life all fruitless to bewail.
Each falling leaf his conscience stings
And thoughts of future judgment brings;
Yea, warns him that the time is nigh
When he in black despair must die.
Unlike the life in folly spent,
And now with sinful years is bent
Low at the grave with dismal moan;
Nay, "for the righteous light is sown,"
Yea, light that brightens in the vale
Of falling leaves, where he can hail
The glories of another world;
Where mortal shafts are never hurled,
Nor cruel frosts can ever sting.
There life begins another spring
To flourish in eternal green,
In heaven's high celestial scene.