INDIAN SUMMER

The old grey year is near his term in sooth,

And now with backward eye and soft-laid palm

Awakens to a golden dream of youth,

A second childhood lovely and most calm,

And the smooth hour about his misty head

An awning of enchanted splendour weaves,

Of maples, amber, purple and rose-red,

And droop-limbed elms down-dropping golden leaves.

With still half-fallen lids he sits and dreams

Far in a hollow of the sunlit wood,

Lulled by the murmur of thin-threading streams,

Nor sees the polar armies overflood

The darkening barriers of the hills, nor hears

The north-wind ringing with a thousand spears.