In sumptuous chords, and strange, Through rich yet poignant harmonies: Subtle and strong browns, reds Magnificent with death and the pride of death,
Thin, clamant greens And delicate yellows that exhaust The exquisite chromatics of decay: From ruining gardens, from reluctant woods —
Dear, multitudinously reluctant woods!— And sering margents, forced To be lean and bare and perished grace by grace, And flower by flower discharmed,
Comes, to a purpose none, Not even the Scorner, which is the Fool, can blink, The dead-march of the year. Dead things and dying! Now the long-laboured soul
Listens, and pines. But never a note of hope Sounds: whether in those high, Transcending unisons of resignation That speed the sovran sun,
As he goes southing, weakening, minishing, Almighty in obedience; or in those Small, sorrowful colloquies Of bronze and russet and gold,
Colour with colour, dying things with dead, That break along this visual orchestra: As in that other one, the audible, Horn answers horn, hautboy and violin
Talk, and the‘ cello calls the clarionet And flute, and the poor heart is glad. There is no hope in these — only despair. Then, destiny in act, ensues
That most tremendous passage in the score: When hangman rains and winds have wrought Their worst, and, the brave lights gone down, The low strings, the brute brass, the sullen drums
Sob, grovel, and curse themselves Silent.... But on the spirit of Man And on the heart of the World there falls
A strange, half-desperate peace: A war-worn, militant, gray jubilance In the unkind, implacable tyranny Of Winter, the obscene,
Old, crapulous Regent, who in his loins — O, who but feels he carries in his loins The wild, sweet-blooded, wonderful harlot, Spring?
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