Virginia Lucas Poetry Scrapbook

"The Death of the Flowers," by William Cullen Bryant

The Death of the Flowers.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

William Cullen Bryant.
Born in Mafs. 1794.

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