Ah! why will my heart beat faint and low
At the sound of the falling leaves?
And why do I turn to the long ago
With the thoughts of one who grieves?
Is it that the dreams that once were mine,
In the years when hope was rife,
Have fallen each from their high design,
And rot in a vanish'd life?—
Wither and rot in the silent dust,
As the dead in the churchyards do;
And all unseen, till some thought's quick gust
Whirls their skeletons up to view?
And still as my heart would own this truth,
The falling leaves would say
They were dreams of a hot and fickle youth,
And could not but pass away.
But thy manhood now must have healthier strife,
And hopes of higher beams,
And more of work in thy daily life,
And less of the early dreams.
For the future is not for he who years
For the vanish'd and useless past;
But for he who strives onward still, nor turns,
But battles to the last.
Go thou, then, into thy life, nor sigh
For the dreams that have sunk and fled;
But knit thyself to the hopes that die,
But to blossom overhead.
For we, too, go to the silent earth,
In the dirge of the Antumn rain;
But even our fall has a sound of mirth,
For we know we shall come again:
Come in the glow and the flush of youth,
When Spring weeps her virgin tears;
See that thou rise, too, in the primal truth,
When the last dread day appears.
Thus they whisper to me in the Autumn day;
And still when my spirit grieves
I can cheer the gloom and the pain away,
When I think on the falling leaves.