Sonnets (From Harper's Monthly, 1854) Poem by Park Benjamin

What though my years are falling like thy leaves,
Oh, Autumn! When the winds are plumed with night
They have thy colors, thy enameled light,
And all the fullness of thy ripened sheaves.
Of verdant joys aggressive Time bereaves,
And the glad transports of unclouded dawn;
But though the shadows deepen on Life's lawn,
Rays of serene and solemn beauty shed
A mellow lustre on my fading hours,
And with a calm and tempered joy I tread
Paths still bedecked with iridescent flowers
Like thine, oh, Autumn! ere the sober gray
Of Winter steals thy glorious tints away.


Upon an eminence I seem to stand,
And look around me. Backward I survey
A lovely prospect, stretching far away
Through mists that curtain all the nearer land.
There once I wandered gayly, hand in hand
With the companions of my happy spring;
It was Life's realm of Fairy, rainbow-spanned,
Where birds and brooks together loved to sing,
And every cloud made pictures as it sailed.
That music yet resounds, those pictures shine
Through the far distance Time has faintly veiled,
Though many a rock, stream, valley intervene
Between me and that fairy-haunted scene.