Works

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers.
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!...

On sunny slope and beechen swell
The shadowed light of evening fell:
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down
The glory, that the wood receives,...

When the dying flame of day
Through the chancel shot its ray,
Far the glimmering tapers shed
Faint light on the cowled head;
And the censer burning swung,
Where, before the altar, hung...

Yes, the Year is growing old,
And his eye is pale and bleared!
Death, with frosty hand and cold,
Plucks the old man by the beard,
Sorely, - sorely!

The leaves are falling, falling,...