To her bier Comes the year Not with weeping and distress, as mortals do, But, to guide her way to it, All the trees have torches lit; Blazing red the maples shine the woodlands through...

Larcom personifies the turning year as a mourner attending a woman’s bier, but nature’s grief is expressed not through tears but through autumnal splendor. The “torches” of the trees—especially the “blazing red” maples—suggest a ceremonial, almost sacred procession in which seasonal change becomes a rite of passage. The passage reframes death (or the end of a cycle) as something accompanied by beauty and guidance rather than only human distress, implying a consoling continuity: nature marks endings with luminous signs and leads the departed onward. The contrast between “mortals” and the year also hints at a larger, impersonal order that dignifies loss without being undone by it.