Chapter IV

The days approach again; the days,
Whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag;
When in the haze by puddled ways
Each gnarled thorn seems a crooked hag.

When rotting orchards reek with rain;
And woodlands crumble, leaf and log;
And in the drizzling yard again
The gourd is tagged with points of fog.

Oh, let me seat my soul among
Your melancholy moods! and touch
Your thoughts' sweet sorrow without tongue,
Whose silence says too much, too much!

OCTOBER

Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows
A tourney trumpet on the listed hill:
Past is the splendor of the royal rose
And duchess daffodil.

Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden's space,
Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold,
A ragged beggar with a lovely face,
Reigns the sad marigold.

And I have sought June's butterfly for days,
To find it--like a coreopsis bloom--
Amber and seal, rain-murdered 'neath the blaze
Of this sunflower's plume.

Here basks the bee; and there, sky-voyaging wings
Dare God's blue gulfs of heaven; the last song,
The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings
Upon yon pear-tree's prong.

No angry sunset brims with rosier red
The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed,
Pour in each blossom of this salvia-bed,
Where each leaf seems to bleed.

And where the wood-gnats dance, a tiny mist,
Above the efforts of the weedy stream,
The girl, October, tired of the tryst,
Dreams a diviner dream.

One foot just dipping the caressing wave,
One knee at languid angle; locks that drown
Hands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave,
Watching the leaves drift down.

BARE BOUGHS

O heart, that beat the bird's blithe blood,
The blithe bird's message that pursued,
Now song is dead as last year's bud,
What dost thou in the wood?

O soul, that kept the brook's glad flow,
The glad brook's word to sun and moon,
What dost thou here where song lies low
As all the dreams of June?

Where once was heard a voice of song,
The hautboys of the mad winds sing;
Where once a music flowed along,
The rain's wild bugles ring.

The weedy water frets and ails,
And moans in many a sunless fall;
And, o'er the melancholy, trails
The black crow's eldritch call.

Unhappy brook! O withered wood!
O days, whom death makes comrades of!
Where are the birds that thrilled the blood
When life struck hands with love?

A song, one soared against the blue;
A song, one bubbled in the leaves;
A song, one threw where orchards grew
All appled to the eaves.

But now the birds are flown or dead;
And sky and earth are bleak and gray;
The wild winds sob i' the boughs instead,
The wild leaves sigh i' the way.

A THRENODY

I.

The rainy smell of a ferny dell,
Whose shadow no sunray flaws,
When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds
Telling her beads
Of haws.

II.

The phantom mist, that is moonbeam-kissed,
On hills where the trees are thinned,
When Autumn leans at the oak-root's scarp,
Playing a harp
Of wind.

III.

The crickets' chirr 'neath brier and burr,
By leaf-strewn pools and streams,
When Autumn stands 'mid the dropping nuts,
With the book, she shuts,
Of dreams.