LEAVES

Leaves! little leaves!-thy children, thy flatterers, thine enemies! Leaves in the wind, those who would devote thee to darkness, who scorn or miscall thee here, even as they also whose great fame shall outlast them. For all these, and the like of them, are born indeed in the spring season and soon a wind hath scattered them, and thereafter the wood peopleth itself again with another generation of leaves. And what is common to all of them is but the littleness of their lives: and yet wouldst thou love and hate, as if these things should continue forever. In a little while thine eyes also will be closed, and he on whom thou perchance hast leaned thyself be himself a burden upon another.

Think of infinite matter, and thy portion-how tiny a particle of it! of infinite time, and thine own brief point there; of destiny, and the jot thou art in it; and yield thyself readily to the wheel of Clotho, to spin thee into what web she will.

Walter Pater.

IVY LEAVES

The ivy leaves, (behind the shed),
Turned bright and blushed a rosy red.
Bit by the frost they sobered down,
And now can show but russet-brown.
Another frost and they will fall,
And there will be no leaves at all.

Thus down, through scarlet, gray, and dun,
The earth will fall into the sun.

Philip Henry Savage.

THE LEAVES

When with an airy covering

Around the summer's woodland wall,
Or wreathing all the doors of spring,
Or painting all the paths of fall,

The leaves go on their lonely ways,
With naught to ask, with all to give,
They make for me the empty days

Of winter lonelier to live.

Ethelwyn Wetherald.

GREEN LEAVES

Ah, how sublime—

The green leaves, the young leaves,

In the light of the sun!

Basho.

LEAVES

The autumnal winds, as if spellbound, had made
A natural couch of leaves in that recess,
Which seasons none disturbed, but, in the shade
Of flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress
With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness
Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars whene'er
The wandering wind her nurslings might caress;
Whose intertwining fingers ever there

Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.
Percy Bysshe Shelley.

DUST OF EDEN

Some dust of Eden eddies round us yet.

Some clay o' the Garden, clinging in the breast,
Down near the heart yet bides unmanifest.
Last eve in gardens strange to me I let
The path lead far; and, lo, my vision met

Old, forfeit hopes. I, as on homeward quest,
By recognizing trees was bidden rest,

And pitying leaves looked down and sighed, "Forget."
Arthur Upson.

PREDESTINATION

There is no peace for the blowing leaf,
The end of his journey he never knows:
He lifts from the ground with an upward heave
Or settles, as lulls the wind or blows.

And he ever pretends to his traveling friends
Mottled with crimson, dappled with fire,
That he knows the country to which he wends,
That he shapes his ways to his own desire.

Harry Kemp.

THE STORM IS OVER, THE LAND HUSHES TO REST

The storm is over, the land hushes to rest:

The tyrannous wind, its strength fordone,
Is fallen back in the west

To couch with the sinking sun.

The last clouds fare

With fainting speed, and their thin streamers fly

In melting drifts of the sky.

Already the birds in the air

Appear again; the rooks return to their haunt,

And one by one,

Proclaiming aloud their care,

Renew their peaceful chant.

Torn and shattered the trees their branches again reset,
They trim afresh the fair

Few green and golden leaves withheld from the storm,
And awhile will be handsome yet.
To-morrow's sun shall caress
Their remnant of loveliness:
In the quiet days for a time
Sad Autumn lingering warm
Shall humour their faded prime.

But ah! the leaves of summer that lie on the ground!

What havoc! The laughing timbrels of June,

That curtained the birds' cradles, and screened their song, That sheltered the cooing doves at noon,

Of airy fans the delicate throng,

Torn and scattered around:

Far out afield they lie,

In the watery furrows die,

In grassy pools of the flood they sink and drown,
Green-golden, orange, vermilion, golden and brown,
The high year's flaunting crown

Shattered and trampled down.

The day is done: the tired land looks for night:
She prays to the night to keep

In peace her nerves of delight:

While silver mist upstealeth silently,

And the broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky

Lifts o'er the firs her shining shield,

And in her tranquil light

Sleep falls on forest and field.

See! sleep hath fallen: the trees are asleep:

The night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep.

THE WOOD-NYMPH

(After a picture by Burne-Jones.)

Robert Bridges.

The green leaves, ah, the green leaves cover me:
Would I might lose this unloved human life
And share the happy being of the leaves!
For lo, they live and grow and drink the sun
And sip the nectar of the heavenly showers

And have no sorrow with it; but they grow
Happily, and Pan at even blesses them.
While I, alas me hapless, I am joined

Part to their life, and all in longing to them;

Part to the gods, the bright gods whom I see

Flash through the woods at even or morn and make
The beautiful familiar trees seem strange;

And part to mortals and their little life.
Green leaves that cover me, to you I mourn,
My sisters, my more happy sisters, ye.
Rustle, rustle in the summer air,

With happy cries of birds among your boughs:
Be happy, though I am not happy. Nay,

I am not all unhappy, evermore.

One while a bird sings on the topmost bough
And my heart sings, forgetting life and death
And sorrow: so forgetting I were blest,
And bliss the gods deny me. When they walk
The forest before sundawn-Artemis,
Girt for the chase and followed by her hounds,
Queen Herê or another, ere the dawn,
Or Aphrodite with the rosy dawn-

I may not speak my longings, but they pass,
Pass unregardful to their happy heaven.
They see me not-not me, akin to gods!

These tears are vain.-When mortals pass at eve,
Treading a delicate path between the trees,
Pale mortal men and women, with their loves-
It pains me that I see them, for I know
I am not as they are, and cannot share
The little love that fills their little life—
Vain, vain; and they too pass and see me not.
Ah me, dear leaves, forsaken of gods and men,
And sad because I cannot live their life,
Will you not love me whom none others love?
Will you not teach me how to live your life,
My sisters, my more happy sisters ?-live

In peace and quietness and still content,

And freshen and fade and freshen and have no care
And have no longing, full of peace to live,
Forgetting thus forever life and death
And gods and men and sorrow and delight.

Arthur Symons.