'Tis summer still, yet now and then a leaf
Falls from some stately tree. True type of life!
How emblamatic of the pangs that grief
Wrings from our blighted hopes, that one by one
dropp from us in our wrestle with the strife
And natural passions of our stately youth.
And thus we fall beneath life's summer sun.
Each step conducts us through an opening door
Into new halls of being, hand in hand
With grave Experience, until we command
The open, wide-spread autumn fields, and store
The full ripe grain of Wisdom and of Truth.
As on life's tott'ring precipice we stand,
Our sins like withered leaves are blown about the land.