Experience enables me to depose to the comfort and blessing that literature can prove in seasons of sickness and sorrow.

I saw old autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence.

There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be,- In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea, Or in the wide desert where no life is found.

How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled!

How widely its agencies vary,- To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,- As even its minted coins express, Now stamp'd with the image of Good Queen Bess, And now of a Bloody Mary.

O men with sisters dear, O men with mothers and wives, It is not linen you 're wearing out, But human creatures' lives!

The year's in wane; There is nothing adorning; The night has no eve, And the day has no morning; Cold winter gives warning!