LATE OCTOBER.

Ah, haughty hills, sardonic solitudes,

What wizard touch hath, crowning you with gold,

Cast Tyrian purple o'er broad-shouldered woods,

And to your pride anointed empire sold

For wan traditioned death, whose misty moods

Shake each huge throne of quarried shadows cold?

Now where the agate-foliaged forests sleep,

Bleak briars are ruby-berried, and the brush

Flames — when the winds armsful of motion heap

In wincing gusts upon it — amber blush;

The beech an inner beryle breaks from deep

Encrusting topaz of a sullen flush.

Dead gold, dead bronze, dull amethystine rose,

Rose cameo, in day's gray, somber spar

Of smoky quartz — intaglioed beauty — glows

Luxuriance of color. Trunks that are

Vast organs antheming the winds’ wild woes

A faded sun and pale night's paler star.

Bulged from its cup the dark-brown acorn falls,

And by its gnarly saucer in the streams

Swells plumped; and here the spikey spruce-gum balls

Rust maces of an ouphen host that dreams;

Beneath the chestnut the split burry hulls

Disgorge fat purses of sleek satin gleams.

Burst silver white, nods an exploded husk

Of snowy, woolly smoke the milk-weed's puff

Along the orchard's fence, where in the dusk

And ashen weeds,— as some grim Satyr's rough

Red, breezy cheeks burn thro’ his beard,— the brusque

Crab apples laugh, wind-tumbled from above.

Runs thro’ the wasted leaves the crickets’ click,

Which saddest coignes of Melancholy cheers;

One bird unto the sumach flits to pick

Red, sour seeds; and thro’ the woods one hears

The drop of gummy walnuts; the railed rick

Looms tawny in the field where low the steers.

Some slim bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked,

The birds to Echo's shores, where flossy foams

Boom low long cream-white cliffs.— Where once buzzed

Unmillioned bees within unmillioned blooms,

One hairy hummer cramps one bloom, frost mocked,— rocked

A miser whose rich hives squeeze oozing combs.

Twist some lithe maple and right suddenly

A leafy storm of stars about you breaks —

Some Hamadryad's tears: Unto her knee

Wading the Naiad clears her brook that streaks

Thro’ wadded waifs: Hark! Pan for Helike

Flutes melancholy by the minty creeks.