Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1875-10-14


''The summers departed, so gentle and brief,
And autumn has come, with its dry, yellow
leaf.
''Those leaves that might seem with the ru-
bies to vie,
They tell us that beauty blooms only to die"
Yes, summer has indeed departed;
beautiful, gentle, but too brief season.
Whittier has it gone? 1t seems but
yesterday that earth threw off her
mantle of snow; and 10! she is now al
most ready to again robe herself in the
chilly garment. Only a dream ago,
and the trees were more gorgeously at
tired than ever queen in her robes; to-
day they are stript of their magnificent
vestures, or shivering in faded, sere ha-
biliments. But an hour since, as it
were, and the fiowers-beautiful sister,
hood-were blooming more wondrous-
ly fair than ever before, it seems to me;
now they are faded, dead, perished, in
the moment of their most dazzling glo-
ry and pride.
1t seems as if there had been no sum-
mer this year. We have vague memo
ries of few tropical days, few bland
breezes, few Italians skies, an Eden of
flowers aud foliage; but they lasted on
ly moment, comparatively, We had
hardly begun to realize how glorious is
summer, and alas! they are not. To
some, autumn is more welcome than
any of the other seasons. They say,
Give me autumn! autumn all the year
for me.
But 1 can't join them; for me it is
the saddest ofall the seasOns-the death
of. Nature. 1t seems unutterably
mouruful to see the flowers and leaves
fading, dying, falling. Fain would /
have summer all the year-glorious,
eternal summer.
But perhaps it is well that there is an
autumn of the year-a death of ma
ture; for il there were none we might,
perhaps, never be led to reflect upon
our own mortality. The dying year,
methinks, can hardly fail to lead eve
ry frail creature of clay-who has
soul-to mediate upon his or her own
inevitable doom. In the death of the
flowers, We can not help seeing, shad-
owed forth, the garnering of the human
flowers by the pale reaper-Death; for
just as die the flowers, even so die we
the flowers of Gods human garden.
Aye! weeping mother, take now q
long, long look at that crushed flower
of thine, that lies there in its little
casket; for never again can earthly
mortal eyes behold it. Young man,
gaze at that peerless but blighted flow
er, tnat grew and blossomed for you
alone. Gaze! picture its loveliness
upon your memory, as it lies there
sleeping the death-sleep in those bridal
robes; for never again on earth can
your eyes rest thereon; not even your
undying love can lure her back!
But oh, blessed assurance of christi
anity; though the blighted flowers of
the human garden will never again
bloom on earth, yet they will bloom
again above, and there never more to
fade or die.
Faith tells US, with no shadow of a
doubt, that the flowers which God
transplants to his pasture can never
feel a chilling blast, a blighting frost,
prostrating midday sun; can never
die.
YOnder tree was never so gorgeous.
ly beautiful as now; red, purple, yell
low, green, brown. 'Twould give
savage raptures; but oh, it is the beau
y va lnO IudI OOdutJ
blooms but to die; therefore saddening
to me.
One little month agOne, and / could
have shown you human flower, fair,
young and SO glOriously, wondrously
beautiful that Raphael would have
wept before her for joy that could have
found no other utterance. Yet ever
in that hour of her more than mortal
loveliness, she was dying.
The dazzling hue of her cheek, that
unearthly brightness of the eye, that
transparent fairness of her brow, were
all consumption's own.
AS her flowers, all last summer she
tended, were dying, even 81 was she;
and when they faded wholly away,
and went back to their native earth,
then she, too, bowed her fair young
head and died also. And they laid her
away with her cherished flowers to rest
in the cold, dark earth.
80, sorrow they for her, who in
Her youthful beauty died; ...-...
The fair, meek blossoms they grew up,
And faded by her side
In the cold, moist earth, they laid her,
When the forest cast the leaf;
And they wept that one so lovely
Should have a life 50 brief.
They mourn for her, though they
know their loss is her eternal gain. So
young, 30 good, so lovely, so loved, 80
happy!
Death, couldst thou not choose else
where?
"No, not I, for such as she delight
to clasp to my awful bosom"
"Oh, must die now?" she moaned;
notos o, Father! cannot" and for a
time the weak flesh clung piteously to
life; for
When life, as op'ning bud, is sweet,
And golden hopes the fancy greet,
And youth prepares its joys to meet
Alas how hard it is to die
But the struggle was brief; soon put
ting earthly loves aside, she listened to
the angels, and meekly the spirit
breathed THY will!' and bending to the
rod, folded its weary wings upon the
hoSn,o nf ifs God