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Autumn Winds.

By Grace Aguilar.

The most casual observer of nature must, we think, have noticed the peculiar tones of melancholy wailing borne on the wings of the wind at the commencement or middle of autumn—not the wild terrific gusts of threatening winter, but a low sobbing wail, not loud enough to disturb or alarm, but just sufficient to impress its melancholy on the most thoughtless heart. Its wail having been one evening universally noticed, the following poem was the consequence:

Sad is thy voice, oh! moaning wind;
Whence comes thy wailing tone?
Mourn’st the wreck thy pinions find—
Leaves brown, and bare, and strewn?
That forest boughs are dark and drear,—
That loveliest shrubs are bow’d and sear,
And mother Earth a robe must wear
Of bliss o’erthrown?

Weep’st thou the buds, whose glistening bloom
Hath passed away from earth?
That Nature is but one wide tomb
O’er loveliness and mirth?
Mourn’st thou sweet Summer’s early flight—
That storm hath rush’d from mount and height,
To whelm the flowers whose sunny light
Smil’d o’er his birth?

Weepest thou the laughing sunshine gone,
The softly gleaming sky?—
Night’s glistening dews—the starry zone—
And the sweet scents floating by?
Oh! check thy moanings; but awhile
Is hid sweet Nature’s glowing smile
’Twill wake again, and Earth beguile
Of tear and sigh!

The moaning blast rush’d by, but as it pass’d
Methought a low sweet voice the answer cast—

“I mourn not for the glory
A brief while pass’d away;
That lovely things and beautiful
Are tainted with decay.

“I mourn not for the flowers
Whose lovely smiles are dead;
That summer’s sunlit hours,
All phantom-like, are fled.

But there are lovelier blossoms,
Now shrin’d in love and mirth,
In whose rich smiles and silver laugh
No dream of wo hath birth.

“I see—I see them passing;
I mark the shrouding pall—
The loving and the blessing—
Like leaves, I see them fall!

“I weep the broken-hearted—
The spirits left to moan
The bounding hope—the trusting Iove—
The springy joyance flown.

“I weep the young hopes blighted,
That may not bloom again;
The stars that love hath lighted,
Quench’d ‘neath pale sorrow’s rain.

“I mourn the heavy anguish
That winter’s cold touch brings;
The fireless hearth—the scanty board—
The pangs that hunger wrings.

“The famish’d babe and mother—
The strong man chafed to sin.
Oh! help’d ye one another,
Such woes had never been!”

And so the mournful wind went murmuring along,
And thrilling truths were breathing in its sad and solemn song!