The Last Walk in Autumn

Along the river’s summer walk,

The withered tufts of asters nod;

And trembles on its arid stalk

The hoar plume of the golden-rod.

And on a ground of sombre fir,

And azure-studded juniper,

The silver birch its buds of purple shows,

And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose!

With mingled sound of horns and bells,

A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly,

Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells,

Like a great arrow through the sky,

Two dusky lines converged in one,

Chasing the southward-flying sun;

While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay

Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay.

I passed this way a year ago:

The wind blew south; the noon of day

Was warm as June’s; and save that snow

Flecked the low mountains far away,

And that the vernal-seeming breeze

Mocked faded grass and leafless trees,

I might have dreamed of summer as I lay,

Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play.

Since then, the winter blasts have piled

The white pagodas of the snow

On these rough slopes, and, strong and wild,

Yon river, in its overflow

Of spring-time rain and sun, set free,

Crashed with its ices to the sea;

And over these gray fields, then green and gold,

The summer corn has waved, the thunder’s organ rolled.

Rich gift of God! A year of time!

What pomp of rise and shut of day,

What hues wherewith our Northern clime

Makes autumn’s dropping woodlands gay,

What airs outblown from ferny dells,

And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells,

What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers,

Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours!

I know not how, in other lands,

The changing seasons come and go;

What spendors fall on Syrian sands,

What purple lights on Alpine snow!

Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits

On Venice at her watery gates;

A dream alone to me is Arno’s vale,

And the Alhambra’s halls are but a traveller’s tale.

Yet, on life’s current, he who drifts

Is one with him who rows or sails;

And he who wanders widest lifts

No more of beauty’s jealous veils

Than he who from his doorway sees

The miracle of flowers and trees,

Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air,

And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer!

The eye may well be glad that looks

Where Pharpar’s fountains rise and fall;

But he who sees his native brooks

Laugh in the sun, has seen them all.

The marble palaces of Ind

Rise round him in the snow and wind;

From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles,

And Rome’s cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles.

And thus it is my fancy blends

The near at hand and far and rare;

And while the same horizon bends

Above the silver-sprinkled hair

Which flashed the light of morning skies

On childhood’s wonder-lifted eyes,

Within its round of sea and sky and field,

Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands revealed.

And thus the sick man on his bed,

The toiler to his task-work bound,

Behold their prison-walls outspread,

Their clipped horizon widen round!

While freedom-giving fancy waits,

Like Peter’s angel at the gates,

The power is theirs to baffle care and pain,

To bring the lost world back, and make it theirs again!

What lack of goodly company,

When masters of the ancient lyre

Obey my call, and trace for me

Their words of mingled tears and fire!

I talk with Bacon, grave and wise,

I read the world with Pascal’s eyes;

And priest and sage, with solemn brows austere,

And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, draw near.

Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say,

“In vain the human heart we mock;

Bring living guests who love the day,

Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock!

The herbs we share with flesh and blood

Are better than ambrosial food

With laurelled shades.” I grant it, nothing loath,

But doubly blest is he who can partake of both.

He who might Plato’s banquet grace,

Have I not seen before me sit,

And watched his puritanic face,

With more than Eastern wisdom lit?

Shrewd mystic! who, upon the back

Of his Poor Richard’s Almanac

Writing the Sufi’s song, the Gentoo’s dream,

Links Mann’s age of thought to Fulton’s age of steam!

Here too, of answering love secure,

Have I not welcomed to my hearth

The gentle pilgrim troubadour,

Whose songs have girdled half the earth;

Whose pages, like the magic mat

Whereon the Eastern lover sat,

Have borne me over Rhine-land’s purple vines,

And Nubia’s tawny sands, and Phrygia’s mountain pines!

And he, who to the lettered wealth

Of ages adds the lore unpriced,

The wisdom and the moral health,

The ethics of the school of Christ;

The statesman to his holy trust,

As the Athenian archon, just,

Struck down, exiled like him for truth alone,

Has he not graced my home with beauty all his own?

What greetings smile, what farewells wave,

What loved ones enter and depart!

The good, the beautiful, the brave,

The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart!

How conscious seems the frozen sod

And beechen slope whereon they trod!

The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends

Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends.

Then ask not why to these bleak hills

I cling, as clings the tufted moss,

To bear the winter’s lingering chills,

The mocking spring’s perpetual loss.

I dream of lands where summer smiles,

And soft winds blow from spicy isles,

But scarce would Ceylon’s breath of flowers be sweet,

Could I not feel thy soil. New England, at my feet!

At times I long for gentler skies,

And bathe in dreams of softer air,

But homesick tears would fill the eyes

That saw the Cross without the Bear.

The pine must whisper to the palm,

The north-wind break the tropic calm;

And with the dreamy languor of the Line,

The North’s keen virtue blend, and strength to beauty join.

Better to stem with heart and hand

The roaring tide of life, than lie,

Unmindful, on its flowery strand,

Of God’s occasions drifting by!

Better with naked nerve to bear

The needles of this goading air,

Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego

The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know.

Home of my heart! to me more fair

Than gay Versailles or Windsor’s halls,

The painted, shingly town-house where

The freeman’s vote for Freedom falls!

The simple roof where prayer is made,

Than Gothic groin and colonnade;

The living temple of the heart of man,

Than Rome’s sky-mocking vault, or many-spired Milan!

More dear thy equal village schools,

Where rich and poor the Bible read,

Than classic halls where Priestcraft rules,

And Learning wears the chains of Creed;

Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in

The scattered sheaves of home and kin,

Than the mad license ushering Lenten pains,

Or holidays of slaves who laugh and dance in chains.

And sweet homes nestle in these dales,

And perch along these wooded swells;

And, blest beyond Arcadian vales,

They hear the sound of Sabbath bells!

Here dwells no perfect man sublime,

Nor woman winged before her time,

But with the faults and follies of the race,

Old home-bred virtues hold their not unhonored place.

Here manhood struggles for the sake

Of mother, sister, daughter, wife,

The graces and the loves which make

The music of the march of life;

And woman, in her daily round

Of duty, walks on holy ground.

No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here

Is the bad lesson learned at human rights to sneer.

Then let the icy north-wind blow

The trumpets of the coming storm,

To arrowy sleet and blinding snow

Yon slanting lines of rain transform.

Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold,

As gayly as I did of old;

And I, who watch them through the frosty pane,

Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o’er again.

And I will trust that He who heeds

The life that hides in mead and wold,

Who hangs yon alder’s crimson beads,

And stains these mosses green and gold,

Will still, as He hath done, incline

His gracious care to me and mine;

Grant what we ask aright, from wrong debar,

And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter every star!

I have not seen, I may not see,

My hopes for man take form in fact,

But God will give the victory

In due time; in that faith I act.

And he who sees the future sure,

The baffling present may endure,

And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand that leads

The heart’s desires beyond the halting step of deeds.

And thou, my song, I send thee forth,

Where harsher songs of mine have flown;

Go, find a place at home and hearth

Where’er thy singer’s name is known;

Revive for him the kindly thought

Of friends; and they who love him not,

Touched by some strain of thine, perchance may take

The hand he proffers all, and thank him for thy sake.