Poetry of Kansas

Autumn

When the autumn leaves are falling,
    And the roses droop and die,
When we sit around our hearthstones
    In the winters bye-and-bye,
 
When the hoar of age is on us,
    And our beauty is all gone,
We'll recount the idle moments
    Which so needlessly have flown.
 
Do we dread the solemn moments
    Of the final hours we spend,
When we for a short time linger
    To await the awful end?
 
Ah! let us rather welcome on
    The mature days of life;
And muse with wisdom all supreme
    That we gathered through the strife.
 
Let us wait our dissolution,
    When uncumbered by the clay;
We can mount unbound to heaven
    In the bright eternal day,-
 
There to drink eternal blessings
    From the fount of wisdom's stream;
There to know the highest glory,
    There to end our highest dream.
 
Few then be our idle moments,
    That remorse may never come;
Let us busy in the highway
    That will lead us surely home.

__James A. DeMoss

 

Kansas Zephyrs
James A. DeMoss
(Thayer, Kansas: ___. 1892)
Pages 93-94

 
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