"
Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature, not his Father but
his Mother stirs within him, and he becomes immortal with her
immortality. From time to time she claims kindredship with us,
and some globule from her veins steals up into our own.
I am the autumnal sun,
With autumn gales my race is run;
When will the hazel put forth its flowers,
Or the grape ripen under my bowers?
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon,
Turn my midnight into mid-noon?
I am all sere and yellow,
And to my core mellow.
The mast is dropping within my woods,
The winter is lurking within my moods,
And the rustling of the withered leaf
Is the constant music of my grief.
To an unskilful rhymer the Muse thus spoke in prose:
The moon no longer reflects the day, but rises to her absolute
rule, and the husbandman and hunter acknowledge her for their
mistress. Asters and golden-rods reign along the way, and the
life-everlasting withers not. The fields are reaped and shorn of
their pride, but an inward verdure still crowns them.
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