H. T. MacKenzie Bell

"From Old Year Leaves: A Volume of Collected Verse (1883). Mr. Mackenzie Bell is also the author of an interesting biography of Charles Whitehead (q.v.) published in 1885 (Fisher Unwin) under the title A Forgotten Genius." (from Sonnets of This Century)

return to sonnet central return to the Victorian Era

Old Year Leaves

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.