Explore "Some Verses: Sonnets: IN AUTUMN" by Helen Hay Whitney on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The gold-red leaves have burned / To their last great glow, and died / And underfoot / By the strong oak's root / They are seized by the angry wind and spurned / And into a common grave have turned / For Summer -- warm and wide.
A year must a sapling wage / Its life with the sun and rain, / Then its tender youth / Without reck or ruth / Is frozen and beaten to harsh old age / By a stroke of Nature mother's rage / And the sturdy fight seems vain.
It wails to the oak o'erhead / As the coffin-cold wraps round / "The end of life / Is toil and strife / And the secret of being, I have found / Is a seed in the wind and a log on the ground.
I hope I will soon be dead."
"Peace little struggler -- sleep" -- / And the great oak croons a song, / "Death is but night / And a cradle white / For one dark space may the shadows creep, / Then Spring will rise from her dungeon keep / And life wake, wise and strong."