Not the light of the long blue summer, Nor the flowery huntress, Spring, Nor the chilly and moaning Winter, Doth peace to my bosom bring,
Like the hazy and red October, When the woods stand bare and brown, And into the lap of the south land, The flowers are blowing down;
When all night long, in the moonlight, The boughs of the roof tree chafe, And the wind, like a wandering poet, Is singing a mournful waif;
And all day through the cloud-armies, The sunbeams coquettishly rove-- For then in my path first unfolded The sweet passion-flower of love.
With bosom as pale as the sea-shell, And soft as the flax unspun, And locks like the nut-brown shadows In the light of the sunken sun,
Came the maiden whose wonderful beauty Enchanted my soul from pain, And gladdened my heart, that can never, No, never be happy again.
Far away from life's pain and passion, And our Eden of love, she went, Like a pale star fading softly From the morning's golden tent.
But oft, when the bosom of Autumn Is warm with the summer beams, We meet in the pallid shadows That border the land of dreams,
For seeing my woe through the splendor That hovers about her above, She puts from her forehead the glory, And listens again to my love.
"What is courage?" said my uncle Roland, rousing himself from a reverie into which he had fallen after the Sixth Book in this history had been read to our family circle.
"What is courage?" he repeated more earnestly. "Is it insensibility to fear? _That_ may be the mere accident of constitution; and, if so, there is no more merit in being courageous than in being this table."
"I am very glad to hear you speak thus," observed Mr. Caxton, "for I should not like to consider myself a coward; yet I am very sensible to fear in all dangers, bodily and moral."
"La, Austin, how can you say so?" cried my mother, firing up; "was it not only last week that you faced the great bull that was rushing after Blanche and the children?"
Blanche at that recollection stole to my father's chair, and hanging over his shoulder, kissed his forehead.
_Mr. Caxton_, (sublimely unmoved by these flatteries.)--"I don't deny that I faced the bull, but I assert that I was horribly frightened."
_Roland._--"The sense of honor which conquers fear is the true courage of chivalry: you could not run away when others were looking on--no gentleman could."