So dull and dark are the November days. The lazy mist high up the evening curled, And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze; The place we occupy seems all the world.

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows, My friends forsake me like a memory lost; I am the self-consumer of my woes, They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost; And yet I am, and live with shadows tost.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude / And flew to the silence of sweet solitude.

In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be; Where all the noises, that on peace intrude, Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee, Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.

The present is the funeral of the past, And man the living sepulchre of life.

Old April wanes, and her last dewy morn Her death-bed steeps in tears; to hail the May New blooming blossoms neath the sun are born, And all poor April's charms are swept away.

For Nature is love, and finds haunts for true love, Where nothing can hear or intrude; It hides from the eagle and joins with the dove, In beautiful green solitude.