Part 13

Of all the sounds despatched abroad, There's not a charge to me Like that old measure in the boughs, That phraseless melody

The wind does, working like a hand Whose fingers brush the sky, Then quiver down, with tufts of tune Permitted gods and me.

When winds go round and round in bands, And thrum upon the door, And birds take places overhead, To bear them orchestra,

I crave him grace, of summer boughs, If such an outcast be, He never heard that fleshless chant Rise solemn in the tree,

As if some caravan of sound On deserts, in the sky, Had broken rank, Then knit, and passed In seamless company.

XXV.

DEATH AND LIFE.

Apparently with no surprise To any happy flower, The frost beheads it at its play In accidental power. The blond assassin passes on, The sun proceeds unmoved To measure off another day For an approving God.

XXVI.

'T was later when the summer went Than when the cricket came, And yet we knew that gentle clock Meant nought but going home.

'T was sooner when the cricket went Than when the winter came, Yet that pathetic pendulum Keeps esoteric time.

XXVII.

INDIAN SUMMER.

These are the days when birds come back, A very few, a bird or two, To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on The old, old sophistries of June, -- A blue and gold mistake.

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee, Almost thy plausibility Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear, And softly through the altered air Hurries a timid leaf!

Oh, sacrament of summer days, Oh, last communion in the haze, Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake, Thy consecrated bread to break, Taste thine immortal wine!

XXVIII.

AUTUMN.

The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry's cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I'll put a trinket on.

XXIX.

BECLOUDED.

The sky is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day How some one treated him; Nature, like us, is sometimes caught Without her diadem.

XXX.