THE stillness that doth wait on change is here,
Some pause of expectation owns the hour;
And faint and far I hear the sea complain
Where gray and answerless the headlands tower.

Slow fails the evening of the dying year,
Misty and dim the waiting forests lie,
Chill ocean winds the wasted woodland grieve,
And earthward loitering the leaves go by.

Behold how nature answers death! O'erhead
The memoried splendor of her summer eves
Lavished and lost, her wealth of sun and sky,
Scarlet and gold, are in her drifting leaves.

Vain pageantry! for this, alas, is death,
Nor may the seasons' ripe fulfilment cheat
My thronging memories of those who died
With life's young summer promise incomplete.

The dead leaves rustle 'neath my lingering tread.
Low murmuring ever to the spirit ear:
We were, and yet again shall be once more,
In the sure circuits of the rolling year.

Trust thou the craft of nature. Lo! for thee
A comrade wise she moves, serenely sweet,
With wilful prescience mocking sense of loss
For us who mourn love's unreturning feet.

Trust thou her wisdom, she will reconcile
The faltering spirit to eternal change
When, in her fading woodways, thou shalt touch
Dear hands long dead and know them not as strange.

For thee a golden parable she breathes?
Where in the mystery of this repose,
While death is dreaming life, the waning wood
With far-caught light of heaven divinely glows.

Thou, when the final loneliness draws near,
And earth to earth recalls her tired child,
In the sweet constancy of nature strong
Shalt dream again—how dying nature smiled.