Article #3 - Oration of the Leaf

                        Oration of the Leaf

Though I’m but a simple leaflet,

            On the very lowest bough,

Yet my days are swiftly ebbing,

            So I’ll tell about them now,

If you’ll call it not presuming,

            In one so small as I,

While there’s larger, and there’s brighter, ones

            Much nearer to the sky.

Whose station has been higher given

            Above me in the air,

Whilst I am humbler life has kept,

            Alike beneath His care.

T’was long ago, when first I felt

            The sunbeams waking power,

In re-creative notes proclaim,

            Come forth! this is thine hour.

For I will yield the warmth, and light

            And make thy heart a’glow,

And in true shapings turn the course,

            Of life’s sustaining flow.

And many wandering breezes since,

            In rougher mood or softened tone

Have whispered wisdom’s mighty truths

            In solitudes so lone.

Now life’s been simple incidents

            Without tempestuous serging [sic]

And you’ve been sharing in the scenes

            T’were useless my diverging

On topics we all know so well

            Of shadows, clould [sic] or storm

Of darkened days, or star-hid nights,

            Or rainbows gorgeous form.

My days are passing, I’ve assumed,

            The aspect of the dying

And soon among those earthly cast,

            My form may be found lying

But life was good; though memory brings

            The shade, the hidden beam

The patient wait, the glad content,

            Its sadness all redeemed.

Now it has been for mutual strength,

            These things I have defined,

For sorrows deep within the heart,

            We tell not to our kind.

Then came the wind, and from the bough

            The faded leaf it bore

And in the wood, and from the tree

            Its beauty gleamed no more.

Autumn 52 (?)                          Solitaire