| Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921. |
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| II. The Children of the Night |
| 18. The Pity of the Leaves |
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| VENGEFUL across the cold November moors, | |
| Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak | |
| Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, | |
| Reverberant through lonely corridors. | |
| The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce, | 5 |
| Words out of lips that were no more to speak— | |
| Words of the past that shook the old man’s cheek | |
| Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors. | |
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| And then there were the leaves that plagued him so! | |
| The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside | 10 |
| Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then | |
| They stopped, and stayed there—just to let him know | |
| How dead they were; but if the old man cried, | |
| They fluttered off like withered souls of men. | |
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