Margaret Junkin Preston (Маргарет Джанкин Престон)

A November Nocturne

The autumn air sweeps faint and chill
Across the maple-crested hill;
And on my ear
Falls, tingling clear,
A strange, mysterious, woodland thrill.

From utmost twig, from scarlet crown
Untouched with yet a tinct of brown,
Reluctant, slow,
As loath to go,
The loosened leaves come wavering down;

And not a hectic trembler there,
In its decadence, doomed to share
The fate of all,—
But in its fall
Flings something sob-like on the air.

No drift or dream of passing bell,
Dying afar in twilight dell,
Hath any heard,
Whose chimes have stirred
More yearning pathos of farewell.

A silent shiver as of pain,
Goes quivering through each sapless vein;
And there are moans,
Whose undertones
Are sad as midnight autumn rain.

Ah, if without its dirge-like sigh,
No lightest, clinging leaf can die,—
Let him who saith
Decay and death
Should bring no heart-break, tell me why.

Each graveyard gives the answer: there
I read Resurgam everywhere,
So easy said
Above the dead—
So weak to anodyne despair.

1. Gone Forward
2. The Bivouac in the Snow
3. Calling the Angels in
4. The Reapers of Lindisfarne
5. Hymn to the National Flag

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