| |
| NOW hath the summer reached her golden close, | |
| And lost, amid her cornfields, bright of soul, | |
| Scarcely perceives from her divine repose | |
| How near, how swift, the inevitable goal: | |
| Still, still, she smiles, though from her careless feet | 5 |
| The bounty and the fruitful strength are gone, | |
| And through the soft long wondering days goes on | |
| The silent sere decadence sad and sweet. | |
| |
| The kingbird and the pensive thrush are fled, | |
| Children of light, too fearful of the gloom; | 10 |
| The sun falls low, the secret word is said, | |
| The mouldering woods grow silent as the tomb; | |
| Even the fields have lost their sovereign grace, | |
| The cone-flower and the marguerite; and no more, | |
| Across the river’s shadow-haunted floor, | 15 |
| The paths of skimming swallows interlace. | |
| |
| Already in the outland wilderness | |
| The forests echo with unwonted dins; | |
| In clamorous gangs the gathering woodmen press | |
| Northward, and the stern winter’s toil begins. | 20 |
| Around the long low shanties, whose rough lines | |
| Break the sealed dreams of many an unnamed lake, | |
| Already in the frost-clear morns awake | |
| The crash and thunder of the falling pines. | |
| |
| Where the tilled earth, with all its fields set free, | 25 |
| Naked and yellow from the harvest lies, | |
| By many a loft and busy granary, | |
| The hum and tumult of the threshers rise; | |
| There the tanned farmers labour without slack, | |
| Till twilight deepens round the spouting mill, | 30 |
| Feeding the loosened sheaves, or with fierce will, | |
| Pitching waist deep upon the dusty stack. | |
| |
| Still a brief while, ere the old year quite pass, | |
| Our wandering steps and wistful eyes shall greet | |
| The leaf, the water, the belovèd grass; | 35 |
| Still from these haunts and this accustomed seat | |
| I see the wood-wrapt city, swept with light, | |
| The blue long-shadowed distance, and, between, | |
| The dotted farm-lands with their parcelled green, | |
| The dark pine forest and the watchful height. | 40 |
| |
| I see the broad rough meadow stretched away | |
| Into the crystal sunshine, wastes of sod, | |
| Acres of withered vervain, purple-grey, | |
| Branches of aster, groves of golden-rod; | |
| And yonder, towards the sunlit summit, strewn | 45 |
| With shadowy boulders, crowned and swathed with weed, | |
| Stand ranks of silken thistles, blown to seed, | |
| Long silver fleeces shining like the noon. | |
| |
| In far-off russet cornfields, where the dry | |
| Grey-shocks stand peaked and withering, half concealed | 50 |
| In the rough earth, the orange pumpkins lie, | |
| Full-ribbed; and in the windless pasture-field | |
| The sleek red horses o’er the sun-warmed ground | |
| Stand pensively about in companies, | |
| While all around them from the motionless trees | 55 |
| The long clean shadows sleep without a sound. | |
| |
| Under cool elm-trees floats the distant stream, | |
| Moveless as air; and o’er the vast warm earth | |
| The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream, | |
| A liquid cool elixir—all its girth | 60 |
| Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency, | |
| Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills | |
| The utmost valleys and the thin last hills, | |
| Nor mars one whit their perfect clarity. | |
| |
| Thus without grief the golden days go by, | 65 |
| So soft we scarcely notice how they wend, | |
| And like a smile half happy, or a sigh, | |
| The summer passes to her quiet end; | |
| And soon, too soon, around the cumbered eaves | |
| Sly frosts shall take the creepers by surprise, | 70 |
| And through the wind-touched reddening woods shall rise | |
| October with the rain of ruined leaves. | |
| |
