… My life is in the falling leaf:

O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded Leaf’

My harvest dwindled to a husk;

Truly my life is void and brief

And tedious in the barren dusk;

My life is like a frozen thing,

No bud or greenness can I see:

Yet rise it shall – the sap of Spring;

O Jesus rise in me. 

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), 1857.