Classic Poem

All silent! Not the faintest quivering flutter;
Among the branches stirs no murmuring breath.
A melancholy that no heart can utter
Softens the numbing chill of death.

The shriveled leaves hang loosely from the branches,
The half worm-eaten golden-green and red.
The sunset, faded, pale, no longer glances
Across the twilight of the dead.

The gray of evening grows, with day departed
The last faint life, yet Nature never grieves
Is death so beautiful, so quiet-hearted?
Then would that I were with the leaves.