AUTUMN MUSINGS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 12, 1872

AUTUMN MUSINGS.

FATHER, thy presence in this great decay Is felt and recognized. The dead-leaf scent, The hectic streak, the golden autumn ray, The wave hymn, with its summer joy half spent, The lingering bird, whose summer friends have flown, The mottled foliage of the rustling tree, The faded paths, with fallen leaves o'erstrewn, All lead the heart by some strange link to Thee.

I trace thy footsteps in the silent wood, And follow, wooed by many a mystic sign; Feeling intensely that thy ways are good, And that thy works are everywhere divine. Change is thy minister, severe, but wise; It works out life from death, and joy from grief; Displaces summer's green by autumn dyes, And, to revive the root, destroys the leaf.

Here lies a flower, its sweets forever lost, Its texture blemished, and its hue grown dim; How much from nature's hand that flower hath cost! What days of care to form each fragile limb! And yet thy minister, with reckless hand, Hath cast it idly on the sward away; Over its matchless form hath swept his wand, And sent through every vein a swift decay.

Yet from this waste the stores of life are fed, And other days shall mark another change, When what we now lament as crushed and dead Shall have a brighter life, a form more strange. And from these tokens, Father, I have learned True lessons of the fate prepared for me— That not for death my spirit's lamp hath burned— It shall be lit again and shine for thee.

—Ladies' Repository.