Autumn-Time.

Like music heard in mellow chime,     The charm of her transforming time         Upon my senses steals     As softly as from sunny walls,     In day's decline, their shadow falls         Across the sleeping fields.     A fair, illumined book     Is nature's page whereon I look         While "autumn turns the leaves;"     And many a thought of her designs     Between those rare, resplendent lines         My fancy interweaves.     I dream of aborigines,     Who must have copied from the trees         The fashions of the day:     Those gorgeous topknots for the head,     Of yellow tufts and feathers red,         With beads and sinews gay.     I wonder if the saints behold     Such pageantry of colors bold         Beyond the radiant sky;     And if the tints of Paradise     Are heightened by the strange device         Of making all things die.     Yea, even so; for Nature glows     Because of her expiring throes,         As if around her tomb     Unmeet it were, - the look severe     That designates a common bier         Enwreathed in deepest gloom.     And so I meditate if aught     Can be so fair where death is not;         If Heaven's loveliness     Is born of struggle and decay;     And, but for funeral array,         Would it be beautiless?     Oh solemn, sad, sweet mystery     That Earth's unrivaled brilliancy         Is but her splendid pall!     That Heaven were not what it is     But for that crown of tragedies,         The sacrifice for all.     So not a charm would Zion lose     Were it bereft of sparkling hues         In gilded lanes and leas;     It would be bright though not a flower     Unclosed in its celestial bower,         And void of jeweled trees.     Yet, lily-like, one bloom I see,     Its name is his who died for me;         Whose matchless beauty shows     Perfection on its bleeding stem,     The blossom-bud of Bethlehem,         The Resurrection Rose.