Out by the ricks the mantled engine stands Crestfall’n, deserted,--for now all hands Are told to the plough,--and ere it is dawn appear The teams following and crossing far and near, As hour by hour they broaden the brown bands Of the striped fields; and behind them firk and prance The heavy rooks, and daws gray-pated dance: Or awhile, surmounting a crest, against the sky Pictured a whole team stands, or now near by Above the lane they shout, lifting the share, By the trim hedgerow bloomed with purple air; Where, under the thorns, dead leaves in huddle lie Packed by the gales of Autumn, and in and out The small wrens glide With a happy note of cheer, And yellow amorets flutter above and about, Gay, familiar in fear.
And now, if the night shall be cold, across the sky Linnets and twites, in small flocks helter-skelter, All the afternoon to the gardens fly, From thistle-pastures hurrying to gain the shelter Of American rhododendron or cherry-laurel; And here and there, near chilly setting of sun, In an isolated tree a congregation Of starlings chatter and chide, Thickset as summer leaves, in garrulous quarrel. Suddenly they hush as one,-- The tree-top springs,-- And off, with a whirr of wings, They fly by the score To the holly-thicket, and there with myriads more Dispute for the roosts; and from the unseen nation A babel of tongues, like running water unceasing, Makes live the wood, the flocking cries increasing, Wrangling discordantly, incessantly, While falls the night on them self-occupied,-- The long, dark night, that lengthens slow, Deepening with winter to starve grass and tree, And soon to bury in snow The earth, that, sleeping ’neath her frozen stole, Shall dream a dream crept from the sunless pole Of how her end shall be.
The south wind rose at dusk of the winter day, The warm breath of the western sea Circling wrapped the isle with his cloak of cloud, And it now reached even to me, at dusk of the day, And moaned in the branches aloud: While here and there, in patches of dark space, A star shone forth from its heavenly place, As a spark that is borne in the smoky chase; And, looking up, there fell on my face-- Could it be drops of rain, Soft as the wind, that fell on my face? Gossamers light as threads of the summer dawn, Sucked by the sun from midmost calms of the main, From groves of coral islands secretly drawn, O’er half the round of earth to be driven, Now to fall on my face In silky skeins spun from the mists of heaven.