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Friend, many a day have I been dying; for my sister, with whom I have played and been merry in the autumntide about the edges of the stubble-fields; and we gathered the nuts and bramble-berries there, and started thence the missel-thrush, and wondered at his voice and thought him big; and the sparrow-hawk wheeled and turned over the hedges, and the weasel ran across the path, and the sound of the sheep-bells came to us from the downs as we sat happy on the grass; and she is dead and gone from the earth, for she pined from famine after the years of the great sickness; and my brother was slain in the French wars, and none thanked him for dying save he that stripped him of his gear; and my unwedded wife with whom I dwelt in love after I had taken the tonsure, and all men said she was good and fair, and true she was and lovely; she also is dead and gone from the earth; and why should I abide save for the deeds of the flesh which must be done?
Then his face grew happy, and he smiled, and he said: "I put it for thee one autumntide in the snake's hole in the bank above the river, amidst the roots of the old thorn-tree, that the snake might brood it, and make the gold grow greater; but when winter was over and we came to look for it, lo! there was neither ring nor snake, nor thorn-tree: for the flood had washed it all away."
Some scent I hold by the side of my mouth, and, turning to the moon, I sing my sentiments. With self-pitying lines pages I fill, so as utterance to give to all my cares and woes. From these few scanty words, who could fathom the secrets of my heart about the autumntide?
In the dying beauty of an autumntide, Love Divine, last and most potent of the goddesses, came walking through the woods and diffused the mystery of heaven over the forest paths, the trees, the streets of the town; and she melted into a sweet and noble human face a face I caught but for a moment clearly on one of our galloping rides, Quinet's and mine; yet it remained and still looks upon me in the holy of holies of my heart's inner chapel.
No danger, howsoever great, had power to daunt him, or to lessen his joy in the fresh freedom of the open sea with its wild hoarse winds and its surging perilous storms. It was in the autumntide that Olaf encountered the first serious storm.
On long autumnal nights, the autumn lanterns with bright radiance burn. As from my window autumn scenes I scan, autumn endless doth seem. This mood how can I bear, when wind and rain despondency enhance? How sudden break forth wind and rain, and help to make the autumntide! Fright snaps my autumn dreams, those dreams which under my lattice I dreamt.
Often and often, in the genial and beautiful hours of the autumntide of their long life, have I heard my dear father tease "Jen" about her maidenly intentions in the stealing of that bonnet; and often have heard her quick mother-wit in the happy retort, that had his motives for coming to that retreat been altogether and exclusively pious, he would probably have found his way to the other side of the wood, but that men who prowled about the Garden of Eden ran the risk of meeting some day with a daughter of Eve!
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