The long brown fields-no longer drear and dull— Burn with the glow of these deep-hearted hours. Until the dry weeds seem more beautiful, More spiritlike than even summer's flowers. But yesterday the world was stricken bare, Awakes the soul of vanished light and bloom? Sharp with the clean, fine ecstasy of death, A mightier wind shall strike the shrinking earth, An exhalation of creative breath Wake the white wonder of the winter's birth. In her wide Pantheon-her temple placeWrapped in strange beauty and new comforting, We shall not miss the Summer's full-blown grace, Nor hunger for the swift, exquisite Spring. Ada Foster Murray [18 A SONG OF EARLY AUTUMN WHEN late in summer the streams run yellow, When the goldenrod is golden still, But the heart of the sunflower is darker and sadder; When the corn is in stacks on the slope of the hill, And slides o'er the path the scripèd adder; When butterflies flutter from clover to thicket, When the breeze comes shrill with the call of the cricket, When high in the field the fern-leaves wrinkle, And brown is the grass where the mowers have mown; When low in the meadow the cow-bells tinkle, And small brooks crinkle o'er stock and stone; To Autumn When heavy and hollow the robin's whistle And shadows are deep in the heat of noon; When the air is white with the down o' the thistle, And the sky is red with the harvest moon; O, then be chary, young Robert and Mary, If the fiddle would play it must stop its tuning; 1375 And they who would wed must be done with their mooning; So let the churn rattle, see well to the cattle, And pile the wood by the barn-yard gate! Richard Watson Gilder [1844-1909] TO AUTUMN SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness! With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; John Keats [1795-1821] ODE TO AUTUMN, I SAW Old Autumn in the misty morn Where are the songs of Summer?-With the sun, And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. Undazzled at noonday, And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. Where are the blooms of Summer?-In the West, Ode to Autumn 1377 Where is the pride of Summer, the green prime,—— The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard, The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Upon a mossy stone, She sits and reckons up the dead and gone, O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded Enough of fear and shadowy despair, To frame her cloudy prison for the soul! ODE TO THE WEST WIND I O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odors plain and hill; Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge |