Glasgow Weekly Times

Autumnal Reflections.

How solemn, yet how delightful—how beautiful, yet how melancholy, it is in the Autumnal season of the fleeting year to sit down and muse over the scenes—the transient and past scenes—of life! A gay and happy throng of glorious visions, at one time charms the soul—at another, dreams, clad in the gloomy character of melancholy, flit over memory's waste! Man is totally incapable of realizing the various and busy scenes of his life. Like haze, they sweep away, and when gone, they are gone forever! Some remain bright on memory and dear to the weary heart. Man cannot note the scenes which transpire on each side of him, as he in life's frail bark sails along down the rapid stream of time. We are sailing to the silent port of eternity—

"A bright or dark eternity in view.
With all its fixed uncertainty of things."

We have no pilot to guide us, save ourselves. The waters of the stream of time are both calm and stormy; still we pass along, and soon reach the destiny of all that is mortal! The dead of sixty deserted centuries, passed down the same stream, and we are now going down it, as rapidly as its current will bear us on! Oh, dreadful reality! Cold, strange and gloomy the thought! Mighty is the strength of the thought, and unceasing is it as eternity itself. It is a thought that we ever try to dispel from our memory; but it clings with a tenacious grasp. It looms upon us anon, like a spirit, in a shroud of death! This is a beautiful world in which we live; but, they say, there is one far more beautiful beyond the rainbow and clouds; and the bright blazonry of fiery stars. Man loves this sphere upon which he dwells, and shudders at the idea of leaving it. Therefore the conflict with death is terrible. On earth the flowers bloom and wither; but, they tell us, that in yon blue sphere they bloom eternally—as of old they bloomed in the elysian gardens of Him who created them, and gave to them fresh beauty and glory. It is a place—

"Where the ghastly shroud and the shadowy pall,
Shall wither the soul no more,"

and where there is—

"A region of life divine."

Autumn is the time for reflection. Tho the Summer with all its resplendent glories has passed away, yet it will again wheel its bright round. It is true we may never enjoy it again on earth. Early frosts will soon cut down the remaining leaves of the forests with all the colors of the rainbow.—The birds have all sought a milder air beneath the southern canopy, except here and there a solitary martin lingers around the sunny caves of the houses.

"The robin and the wren have flown,
And from the woods the jay.
And from the woodtop caws the crow,
'Throughout the gloomy day."