Read We All Do Perish Like the Leaf of Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland, free online book, by Abigail Stanley Hanna, on ReadCentral.com.

One rosy cloud lay cradled
In the chambers of the sky;
Rock’d gently by the autumn winds,
As they came sighing by;

Touching, oh, so lightly,
Each leaf on ev’ry tree,
Yet wafting them in tinted show’rs,
O’er mountain, hill, and lee.

For autumn’s chilling finger
Has touch’d them, by decay;
And now the slightest zephyr’s wing
Bears their frail form away:

And strews them o’er the barren glebe,
In withered heaps to lie
The sport of many a wintry storm,
As it comes surging by.

So man, with earthly honor,
Stands proudly forth, to-day,
To-morrow Death’s untimely frost
His glory sweeps away.

And down in Death’s dark chambers,
With folded hands he lies;
The things of earth excluded
Forever from his eyes.