But when the night with silent start Had sown her starry seed, The harvest which sprang in my heart Was loneliness and need.
Tossing, swirling, swept by the wind, Beaten abaft by the rain, The swallows high in the sodden sky Circle oft and again.
They rise and sink and drift and swing, Twitterless in the chill; A-haste, for stark is the coming dark Over the wet of the hill.
Wildly, swiftly, at last they stream Into their chimney home. A livid gash in the west, a crash-- Then silence, sadness, gloam.
To drift with the drifting clouds, And blow with the blow of breezes, To ripple with waves and murmur with caves, To soar, as the sea-mew pleases!
To dip with the dipping sails, And burn with the burning heaven-- My life! my soul! for the infinite roll Of a day to wildness given!
Summer's last moon has waned-- Waned As amber fires Of an Aztec shrine. The invisible breath of coming death has stained The withering leaves with its nepenthean wine-- Autumn's near.
Winds in the woodland moan-- Moan As memories Of a chilling yore. Magnolia seeds like Indian beads are strewn From crimson pods along the earth's sere floor-- Autumn's near.
Solitude slowly steals, Steals Her silent way By the songless brook. At the gnarly yoke of a solemn oak she kneels, The musing joy of sadness in her look-- Autumn's near.
Yes, with her golden days-- Days When hope and toil Are at peace and rest-- Autumn is near, and the tired year 'mid praise Lies down with leaf and blossom on her breast-- Autumn's near.
A-bask in the mellow beauty of the ripening sun, Sad with the lingering sense of summer's purpose done, The cut and searing fields stretch from me one by one Along the creek.
The corn-stooks drop their shadows down the fallow hill; Wearing autumnal warmth the farm sleeps by the mill, Around each heavy eave low smoke hangs blue and still-- Life's flow is weak.
Along the weedy roads and lanes I walk--or pause-- Ponder a fallen nut or quirking crow whose caws Seem with prehuman hintings fraught or ancient awes Of forest-deeps.
Of forest deeps the pale-face hunter never trod, Nor Indian, with the silent stealth of Nature shod; Deeps tense with the timelessness and solitude of God Who never sleeps.
And many times has Autumn, on her harvest way, Gathered again into the earth leaf, fruit, and spray; Here many times dwelt rueful as she dwells to-day, The while she reaps.