Old Year Leaves

Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash

The leaves which in the autumn of the year

Fall auburn-tinted, leaving reft and bare

Their parent trees, in many a sheltered lair

Where Winter waits and watches, cold, austere,

Will lie in drifts; and when the snowdrops cheer

The woodland shadows, still the leaves are there,

Though through the glades the balmy southern air

And birds and boughs proclaim that Spring is here.

So lost hopes severed by the stress of life

Lie all unburied yet before our eyes,

Though none but we regard their mute decay;

And ever amid this stir and moil and strife

Fresh aims and growing purposes arise

Above the faded hopes of yesterday.

~ H.T. Mackenzie Bell

From Old Year Leaves: A Volume of Collected Verse (1883)