A DREAM OF AUTUMN.

Mellow hazes, lowly trailing

Over wood and meadow, veiling

Somber skies, with wildfowl sailing

Sailor-like to foreign lands;

And the north-wind overleaping

Summer's brink, and floodlike sweeping

Wrecks of roses where the weeping

Willows wring their helpless hands.

Flared, like Titan torches flinging

Flakes of flame and embers, springing

From the vale the trees stand swinging

In the moaning atmosphere;

While in dead'ning-lands the lowing

Of the cattle, sadder growing,

Fills the sense to overflowing

With the sorrow of the year.

Sorrowfully, yet the sweeter

Sings the brook in rippled meter

Under boughs that lithely teeter

Lorn birds, answering from the shores

Through the viny, shady-shiny

Interspaces, shot with tiny

Flying motes that fleck the winy

Wave-engraven sycamores.

Fields of ragged stubble, wrangled

With rank weeds, and shocks of tangled

Corn, with crests like rent plumes dangled

Over Harvest's battle-piain;

And the sudden whir and whistle

Of the quail that, like a missile,

Whizzes over thorn and thistle,

And, a missile, drops again.

Muffled voices, hid in thickets

Where the redbird stops to stick its

Ruddy beak betwixt the pickets

Of the truant's rustic trap;

And the sound of laughter ringing

Where, within the wild-vine swinging,

Climb Bacchante's schoolmates, flinging

Purple clusters in her lap.

Rich as wine, the sunset flashes

Round the tilted world, and dashes

Up the sloping west and splashes

Red foam over sky and sea —

Till my dream of Autumn, paling

In the splendor all-prevailing,

Like a sallow leaf goes sailing

Down the silence solemnly.