Now rests the season in forgetfulness, Careless in beauty of maturity; The ripened roses‘ round brown temples, she Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess.
Now Time grants night the more and day the less; The gray decides; and brown Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express Themselves and redden as the year goes down.
Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die, And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.— Deeper to tenderness,
Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along The lonesome west; sadder the song Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow.— Deeper and dreamier, ay!
Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky Above lone orchards where the cider-press Drips and the russets mellow. Nature grows liberal: from the beechen leaves
The beech-nuts’ burs their little pockets thrust, Bulged with the copper of the nuts that rust; Above the grass the spendthrift spider weaves A web of silver for which Dawn designs
Thrice twenty rows of pearls; beneath the oak, That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,— The polished acorns, from their saucers broke, Strew wildwood agates.— On sonorous pines
The far wind organs, but the forest near Is silent; and the blue-white smoke Of burning brush, beyond that field of hay, Hangs like a pillar in the atmosphere;
But now it shakes — it breaks; and all the vines And tree-tops tremble;— see! the wind is here! Billowing and boisterous; and the smiling day Rejoices with its clamor. Earth and sky
Resound with glory of its majesty, Impetuous splendor of its rushing by.— But on those heights the forest yet is still, Expectant of its coming. Far away
Each anxious tree upon each waiting hill Tingles anticipation, as in gray Surmise of rapture. Now the first gusts play, Like little laughs, about their rippling spines;
And now the wildwood, one exultant sway, Shouts — and the light at each tumultuous pause, The light that glooms and shines, Seems hands in wild applause.
How glows that garden! though the white mists keep The vagabonding flowers reminded of Decay that comes to slay in open love, When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep;
Unheeding still, their happy colors leap And laugh encircled of the scythe of death,— Like lovely children he prepares to reap,— Staying his blade a breath
To mark their beauty ere, with one last sweep, He lays them dead and turns away to weep.— Let me admire,— Ere yet the sickle of the coming cold
Has mown them down,— their beauties manifold:— How like to spurts of fire That scarlet salvia lifts its blooms, which heap Yon space of sunlight. And, as sparkles creep
Through charring parchment, up that window's screen The cypress dots with crimson all its green, The haunt of many bees. And, showering down cascaded lattices,
That nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood, In clusters hanging‘ mid the blue monk's-hood. There in the garden old The bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold
Their formal flowers; and the marigold Lifts its pinched shred of orange sunset caught And elfed in petals. The nasturtium, All pungent leaved and bitter of perfume,
Hangs up its goblin bonnet, fairy bought From Gnomeland. There, predominant, red, And arrogant the dahlia lifts its head, Beside the balsam's rosy horns of honey,
Within the murmuring, sunny Dry wildness of the weedy flower bed; Where crickets and the weed-bugs, noon and night, Sing dirges for the flowers that soon will die,
For flowers already dead.— I seem to hear the passing Summer sigh; A voice, that seems to weep, “Too soon, too soon the Beautiful passes by!” —
If I perchance might peep Beneath those leaves of podded hollyhocks, That the bland wind with odorous whispers rocks, I might behold her,— white
And weary,— Summer,‘ mid her flowers asleep, Her drowsy flowers asleep, The withered poppies knotted in her locks.
Cookies on Poetry Cove