SUNSET IN Autumn.

Blood-coloured oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass;

Gaunt slopes, on which the bleak leaves glow of brier and sassafras,

And broom-sedge strips of smoky pink and pearl-gray clumps of grass,

In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain-pools gleam like glass.

From West to East, from wood to wood, along the forest-side,

The winds,— the sowers of the LORD,— with thunderous footsteps stride;

Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed,

Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide.

The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds rings a faint fairy bell;

And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed's windy shell

Glimmers; while wrapped in withered dreams, the wet autumnal smell

Of loam and leaf, like some sad ghost, steals over field and dell.

The oaks against a copper sky — o'er which, like some black lake

Of DIS, dark clouds, like surges fringed with sullen fire, break —

Loom sombre as Doom's citadel above the vales, that make

A pathway to a land of mist the moon's pale feet shall take.

Now, dyed with burning carbuncle, a Limbo-litten pane,

Within its wall of storm, the West opens to hill and plain,

On which the wild geese ink themselves, a far triangled train;

And then the shuttering clouds close down — and night is here again.