But only love, your debts to pay,
I'll bring the bill some other day.
So take your rhymes, and do your best,
And tell your wife she stands confest,
The paragon of these hard times,
Whose love consents to live on rhymes."
GAIN with dear autumnal gifts,
How Nature's loveliness arrays,
For our Memorial happiness,
Her sweetest hymns of praise!
As rainbows chased upon the sky,
As birds of Paradise on wings,
The setting sun through distant clouds
A crimson glory flings.
Yon mountain range of firs and pines
O'erhangs a vale of maple bowers, -
Cliffs of dark verdure over seas
Of variegated flowers.
The quiet evening air reveals
A hidden unexpected power, —
The earth adorned in bright array
Transfigured every hour.
The shadows sweeping through the woods, The woods revisited with light,
A soul-impermeated mass,
And luminously bright;
By turns revealed and indistinct,
Then blushing, flaming, surging up,
Like the withdrawal and return
Of gems in ruby cup.
On such a vision of delight,
Made up of Nature's earliest lines,
I gazed with wonder, and admired
How simple those designs.
Was needed nothing but the sun,
With interchange of deepening shade,
To show of what indifferent stuff
An Eden might be made.
And such the rosy power of Love,
With rich apparel of the air,
Upon the rudest life to throw
A light divinely fair.
But no mere transitory gleam,
As when the western twilight skies
Bid farewell to those glorious hues,
Until the morn arise.
Love's morn outlasts the heavens; its light,
Enshrined in the adoring soul,
Sheds an eternal radiance there,
And rules without control.
Bright effluence of eternal light,
Dominion of an endless day,
Soul of our souls, the life that knows
Nor varying, nor decay!
Creative Word of power divine,
The lightning of celestial fires!
Transfigures and inspires!
Such is our mansion in the skies,
The Christian's covenanted home,
Where Love's deep springs eternal rise,
Past, present, and to come.
WOW sweet the autumn sunset falls
Upon another year,
Where God's incessant mercy shines
In all our past carcer!
The leaves a golden light reflect
Upon the evening sky,
And all the trees with colors burn,
That were not born to die.
For God hath woven in the web
Of life love's mystic scene,
And, oh, how bright in each day's light
His mercies intervene !
Nay, all is mercy, all is love;
In darkest nights between,
At home, abroad, below, above,
Nothing but love is seen.
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