Elegy


When golden Autumn, wreathed in riped’d corn,
From purple clusters prest the foamy wine,
Thy genius did his sallow brows adorn,
And made the beauties of the season thine.
Pale rugged Winter bending o’er his tread,
His grizzled hair bedropt with icy dew;
His eyes, a dusky light congeal’d and dead,
His robe, a tinge of bright ethereal blue;

His train a motley’d sanguine sable cloud,
He limps along the russet dreary moor;
Whilst rising whirlwinds, blasting keen and loud,
Roll the white surges to the sounding shore.
Thomas Chatterton
London, England 1769
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