Chapter XIII

Bland was that October day,
Calm and balmy as the spring,
When we went a forest way,
Under beeches, lichen-gray,
To a valleyed opening;
Where the purple aster flowered,
And, like torches, savage-held,
Red the fiery sumac towered;
And, where gum-trees sentineled
Vistas, robed in gold and garnet,
Ripe the thorny chestnut shelled
Its brown plumpness. Bee and hornet
Droned around us; low the cricket,
Tireless in the wood-rose thicket,
Tremoloed; and, to the wind
All its moon-spun silver casting,
Swung the milkweed's pod, that thinned,
Where a butterfly seemed pinned:
And its clean flame on the sod
By the fading goldenrod,
Burned the white life-everlasting.--
It was not so much the time,
Nor the place, nor way we went,
That made all our moods to rhyme,
Nor the season's sentiment,
As it was the innocent
Carefree childhood of our hearts,
Reading each expression of
Death and change as life and love:
That impression joy imparts
Unto others and retorts
On itself, which then made glad
All the sorrow of decay,
As the memory of that day
Makes this day of autumn sad.

XIV

The pungent-breathed petunias
Hang riven of the rain;
And where the tiger-lily was
Now droops a tawny stain;
While in the twilight's purple pause
Earth dreams of heaven again.

When love sits down to sigh,
Where one lies all alone
Beneath the sod's green sky--
What boots it then to try,
Or to atone?

With ragged petals round its pod
The rain-wrecked poppy dies;
And where the hectic rose did nod
A crumbled crimson lies;
While distant as the dreams of God
The stars slip in the skies.

When love lies down to sleep,
When one is dead and gone--
Within the darkness deep
What boots it then to weep?
All's said and done.

XV

Holding both your hands in mine,
Often have we sat together,
While, outside, the boisterous weather
Hung the wild wind on the pine
Like a black marauder, and
With a sudden warning hand
At the casement rapped. The night
Wrote no line or glimmer of light,
Starbeam-syllabled, within
Her dark book of death and sin,
Cloudy-chaptered tragicly.--
Looking in your eyes, ah me!
Though I knew, I did not heed
What the night wrote there for us,
Threatening and ominous:
For love helped my heart to read
Forward to unopened pages
Of a coming day, that held
More for us than all the ages
Past, that it epitomized
In one sentence; where was spelled
What our present realized
Only--all the love that was
Past and still to be for us.

XVI

'Though in the garden, gray with dew,
All life lies withering,
And there's no more to say or do,
No more to sigh or sing,
Come back with me the ways we knew
When buds were opening.

Perhaps we shall not search in vain
Within its wreck and gloom;
'Mid roses ruined of the rain
There still may live one bloom;
One flower, whose heart may still retain
The long-lost soul-perfume.

And then, perhaps, will come to us
The dreams we dreamed of yore;
And song, who spoke so beauteous,
Will speak to us once more;
And love, with eyes all amorous,
Will gaze as once before.

So 'though the yard is gray with dew,
And flowers are withering,
And there's no more to say or do,
No more to sigh or sing,
Come back with me the ways we knew
When buds were opening.