Poem by Albert Pike

Brown October

October, brown October, with his slow
And melancholy step, has left the hills
And comes upon the plains. The wild winds blow
Through the thick leaves, with cold and gusty thrills,
Turning their greenness to the sere red hues
Of sober Autumn. Through the murmuring dells,
Heralded by the frost, that wildly strews
The faded leaves along his way, strides on
The sober Month: and over the bright eye
Of the desponding sun,
The cold clouds fold their vesture dun,
Or on the bare gray hills like couching eagles lie.

The crimson heart of every summer flower
Has pined away; and round the withered stalks
The gray and faded leaves begin to shower
Into a rotting mass: uncertain flocks
Of winged seeds go floating through the air,
Steered by mad winds: struck by the noiseless shocks
Of the white frost, the long night busy there,
The nuts bestrew the ground. Fields mourn the loss
Of verdure; and the stubble, dry and gray,
That the chill wind-gusts toss,
While the dun clouds drift thick across,
Seems, with a useless life, to sadly waste away.

How well the time accordeth with the soul!
Autumn is in the heart: and these sere woods,
These winds that coldly through the valley roll,
These dull blue clouds, these withered solitudes,
Gray weeds and falling leaves, do all resemble
The lonely season on the soul that broods:
The winds of sorrow through its pale blights tremble,
Its falling hopes and passions in decay,
Like the dead leaves, give melancholy warning,
That life ebbs fast away
From the sad heart, once glad and gay
With the unsullied greenness of its life's young morning.

And now, oh Life! it makes its calm farewell!
No peace or joy it hopeth for on earth,
The crimson fountain once did gladly swell,
But now it hardly throbs. The jocund mirth
Of boyhood's day has gone, and in its stead
Sit Weariness, and Loneliness, and Dearth:
The golden visions from the soul have fled,
And each has left a sombre shadow there,
Amid which memory sees the once-loved faces,
And in the whispering air Hears soft, sweet voices say,
"Prepare, O weary one, to leave the old and well-known places."

1. After the Midnight Cometh Morn
2. Ode to the Mocking-Bird
3. The Fine Arkansas Gentleman
4. The Fall of Poland
5. Every Year

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