The summer grows weary
And with slow yielding yearns for rest,
As the heavy heat of August
Exhaled her final breaths.
Her warm embrace has slipped away;
A kiss of death, she sighs.
Look!
You can see it in the leaves,
Which droop
And dry
Like men with aging bodies spend,
Who slowly fade with a geriatric gold and brown,
And some with final bursts of red.
The swift but softly dropping
Waits upon the verge,
Around the corner turning
With autumn-parting birds,
When they who once came spring’ed green,
So young and blushing life,
Will sever from the sap
With brief and falling flight.
The leaves will fall like blissful,
Lazied lies of June,
And leave the chilling sky to bare
Against the naked trees.
“Where have they gone?” he cries,
The companions of my youth,”
Says the lonely leaf on high upon the stripping tree,
“The cold and callous Autumn winds have taken them from me.”
“The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.”
~ Psalm 103:15-18