INCANTATION

When the leaves, by thousands thinned,

A thousand times have whirled in the wind,

And the moon, with hollow cheek,

Staring from her hollow height,

Consolation seems to seek

From the dim, reechoing night;

And the fog-streaks dead and white

Lie like ghosts of lost delight

O'er highest earth and lowest sky;

Then, Autumn, work thy witchery!

Strew the ground with poppy-seeds,

And let my bed be hung with weeds,

Growing gaunt and rank and tall,

Drooping o'er me like a pall.

Send thy stealthy, white-eyed mist

Across my brow to turn and twist

Fold on fold, and leave me blind

To all save visions in the mind.

Then, in the depth of rain-fed streams

I shall slumber, and in dreams

Slide through some long glen that burns

With a crust of blood-red ferns

And brown-withered wings of brake

Like a burning lava-lake;—

So, urged to fearful, faster flow

By the awful gasp, “Hahk! hahk!” of the crow,

Shall pass by many a haunted rood

Of the nutty, odorous wood;

Or, where the hemlocks lean and loom,

Shall fill my heart with bitter gloom;

Till, lured by light, reflected cloud,

I burst aloft my watery shroud,

And upward through the ether sail

Far above the shrill wind's wail;—

But, falling thence, my soul involve

With the dust dead flowers dissolve;

And, gliding out at last to sea,

Lulled to a long tranquillity,

The perfect poise of seasons keep

With the tides that rest at neap.

So must be fulfilled the rite

That giveth me the dead year's might;

And at dawn I shall arise

A spirit, though with human eyes,

A human form and human face;

And where'er I go or stay,

There the summer's perished grace

Shall be with me, night and day.