Chapter I: Morning

The hoar frost crisps beneath the feet;
And, sparkling in the morning’s strength,
The fence, along its straggling length,
Gleams as if wrought of virgin sleet.

On broom-sedge fields and sassafras
Neglectfully the dim wind lifts
The dead leaves; and around me drifts
The milkweed, shaken from the grass.

Reluctantly and one by one
The useless leaves drift slowly down;
And, seen through woodland vistas, brown
The nut-tree patters in the sun.

Where pools the brook beneath its fall
With scales of ice its edge is bound;
And on the pebbles scattered round
The ooze is frozen; each a ball,

It seems, of crystal fallen there.
And now the wind sweeps through the wood
With sighings, and the solitude
Seems shaken with a mighty care.

Decay and melancholy drape
The near-by hills in mysteries
Of mist, through which the rocks and trees
Loom, hazy, each a phantom shape.

To sullenness the surly crow
All his derisive being yields,
And o’er the barren stubble-fields
Flaps, cawless, wrapped in hungry woe.