Killing the light,
Blurring the stars,
Marring the breeze —
Nature's many-stringed harp —
It comes
Silently, sinisterly,
Over the land, over the sea,
Spreading its beggar-raiment of brown.
Without stop, without sound,
Over the valley
Like a great serpent of silence
Coiling around the heart of sound.
A damp insidiousness
Creeps into the night;
A drab numbness sets in
Dripping in lugubrious drops
From the haggard fingers
Of the autumn trees.
It strangles the last sound,
It devours the last light,
Trembles in fear
To see its own visage;
It moves on, on, and around,
Ceaselessly, untiringly,
Till the black night is drowned
In an abyss of brown.