The liberal handful. Think, oh grateful think!
How good the God of Harvest is to you;
Who pours abundance o'er your flowing fields;
While these unhappy partners of your kind
Wide hover round you, like the fowls of heaven,
And ask their humble dole.
AIR Autumn spreads her fields of gold,
And waves her amber wand;
See earth its yellow charms unfold
Beneath her magic hand!
Unrivalled beauty decks our vales,
Bright fruitfulness our plains;
Gay health and cheerfulness prevails,
And smiling glory reigns.
To Thee, great liberal source of all,
We strike our earthly lyre;
Till fate our rising soul shall call,
And angels form the choir.
The splendour that enchants our eyes
Reminds us of thy name;
The blessings that from earth arise
Thy generous hand proclaim.
The plenty round our meadows seen
Is emblem of thy love;
And harmony, that binds the scene,
The peace that reigns above.
Beneath the sickle, smiling round
And in destruction fair,
The golden harvest strews the ground,
And shuts the laboured year.
Man drops into refreshing rest,
And smooths his wearied brow;
With rural peace the herds are blest,
And nature smiles below.
O let thy hand, parental king,
Be open to our prayers!
Unlock sweet plenty's liberal spring,
And shower untainted airs.
And send me through life's noiseless way.
With innocence my guide:
Let no temptations bid me stray,
And leave her angel side!
O let the bird of tuneful breath,
The beasts that frisks on earth,
The fish that sports the wave beneath,
Enjoy their short-lived mirth!
Let no rude instrument of fate
Arrest the fluttering wing;
No horns re-echo at my gate,
That smiles and slaughter bring;
No quavering line, with tortured snare
In agonizing fraud,
Explore the streams, that flow so fair,
To tempt the watery lord!
That mercy which to man is given,
So sweet with dewy eyes,
O let it seek its native heaven,
When gentle pity dies!
HERE was not, on that day, a speck to stain
The azure heaven: the blessed sun alone,
In unapproachable divinity,
Careered rejoicing in his fields of light.
How beautiful, beneath the bright blue sky,
The billows heave! one glowing green expanse,
Save where along the bending line of shore
Such hue is thrown, as when the peacock's neck
Assumes its proudest tint of amethyst,
Embathed in emerald glory. All the flocks
Of ocean are abroad: like floating foam,
The sea-gulls rise and fall upon the waves;
With long-protruded neck the cormorants
Wing their far flight aloft, and round and round
The plovers wheel, and give their note of joy.
It was a day that sent into the heart
A summer feeling: even the insect swarms,
From their dark nooks and coverts issued forth,
To sport through one day of existence more;
The solitary primrose on the bank
Seemed now as though it had no cause to mourn
Its bleak autumnal birth; the rocks and shores,
The forest and the everlasting hills,
Smiled in that joyful sunshine—they partook
The universal blessing.
S yet the blue-bells linger on the sod
That copes the sheepfold ring; and in the woods
A second blow of many flowers appears,
Flowers faintly tinged, and breating no perfume.
But fruits, not blossoms, form the woodland wreath
That circles Autumn's brow: The ruddy haws
Now clothe the half-leafed thorn; the bramble bends
Beneath its jetty load; the hazel hangs
With auburn branches, dipping in the stream
That sweeps along, and threatens to o'erflow
The leaf-strewn banks :-Oft statue-like I gaze,
In vacancy of thought, upon that stream,
And chase, with dreaming eyes, the eddying foam,
Or rowan's clustered branch, or harvest-sheaf,
Borne rapidly down the dizzying flood.
PUTUMN departs—but still his mantle's fold
Rests on the groves of noble Somerville,
Beneath a shroud of russet dropped with gold
Tweed and its tributaries mingle still,
Hoarser the wind, and deeper sounds the rill,
Yet lingering notes of sylvan music swell,
The deep-toned cushat, and the red-breast shrill;
And yet some tints of summer splendour tell
When the broad sun sinks down on Ettrick's western fell.
Autumn departs-from Gala's fields no more
Come rural sounds our kindred banks to cheer;
Blent with the stream, and gale that wafts it o'er,
No more the distant reapers mirth we hear.
The last blithe shout hath died upon our ear,
And harvest-home hath hushed the clanging wain,
On the waste hill no forms of life appear,
Save where, sad laggard of the autumnal train,
Some age-struck wanderer gleans few ears of scattered grain.
Deem'st thou these saddened scenes have pleasure still,
Lovest thou through Autumn's fading realms to stray,
To see the heath-flower withered on the hill,
To listen to the wood's expiring lay,
To note the red leaf shivering on the spray,
To mark the last bright tints the mountain stain,
On the waste fields to trace the gleaner's way,
And moralize on mortal joy and pain?
Oh! if such scenes thou lovest, scorn not the minstrel strain.
No! do not scorn although its hoarser note
Scarce with the cushat's homely song can vie,
Though faint its beauties as the tints remote
That gleam through mist in autumn's evening sky
And few as leaves that tremble, sear and dry,
When wild November hath his bugle wound;
Nor mock my toil-a lonely gleaner I,
Through fields time-wasted, on sad inquest bound,
Where happier bards of yore have richer harvest found.
S the light leaf, whose fall to ruin bears
Some trembling insect's little world of cares,
Descends in silence, while around waves on
The mighty forest, reckless what is gone!
Such is man's doom-and, ere an hour be flown
Reflect, thou trifler, such may be thine own!
HE bright sun threw his glory all around,
And then the balmy, mild autumnal breeze
Swept, with a musical and fitful sound,
Among the fading foliage of the trees;
And now and then, a playful gust would seize
Some falling leaf, and, like a living thing,
Which flits about wherever it may please,
It floated round in many an airy ring,
Till on the dewy gress it fell with transient wing.
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