VI. TO AUTUMN.

How shall I greet thee, Autumn? with loud praise

And joyous song and wild, tumultuous laughter?

Or unrestrained tears?

Shall I behold only the scarlet haze

Of these thy days

That come to crown this best of all the years?

Or shall I hear, even now, those sad hours chime —

Those unborn hours that surely follow after

The shedding of thy last-relinquished leaf —

Till I, too, learn the strength and change of time

Who am made one with grief?

For now thou comest not as thou of old

Wast wont to come; and now mine old desire

Is sated not at all

With sunset-visions of thy splendid gold

Or fold on fold

Of the stained clouds thou hast for coronal.

Still all these ways and things are thine, and still

Before thine altar burneth the ancient fire;

The blackness of the pines is still the same,

And the same peace broodeth behind the hill

Where the old maples flame.

I, counting these, behold no change; and yet,

To-day, I deem, they know not me for lover,

Nor live because of me.

And yesterday, was it not thou I met,

Thy warm lips wet

And purpled with wild grapes crushed wantonly,

And yellow wind-swept wheat bound round thy hair,

Thy brawn breast half set free and half draped over

With long green leaves of corn? Was it not thou,

Thy feet unsandaled, and thy shoulders bare

As the gleaned fields are now?

Yea, Autumn, it was thou, and glad was I

To meet thee and caress thee for an hour

And fancy I was thine;

For then I had not learned all things must die

Under the sky,—

That everywhere ( a flaw in the design! )

Decay crept in, unquickening the mass,—

Creed, empire, man-at-arms, or stone, or flower.

In my unwisdom then, I had not read

The message writ across Earth's face, alas,

But scanned the sun instead.

For all men sow; and then it happeneth —

When harvest time is come, and thou are season —

Each goeth forth to reap.

“This cometh unto him” ( perchance one saith )

“Who laboreth:

This is my wage: I will lie down and sleep.” —

He maketh no oblation unto Earth.

Another, in his heart divine unreason,

Seeing his fields lie barren in the sun,

Crieth, “O fool! Behold the little worth

Of that thy toil hath won!”

And so one sleepeth, dreaming of no prayer;

And so one lieth sleepless, till thou comest

To bid his cursing cease;

Then, in his dreams, envieth the other's share.

Whilst, otherwhere,

Thou showest still thy perfect face of peace,

O Autumn, unto men of alien lands!

Along their paths a little while thou roamest.

A little while they deem thee queenliest,

And good the laying-on of thy warm hands,—

And then, they, too, would rest.

They, too, would only rest, forgetting thee!

But I, who am grown the wiser for thy loving,

Never may thee deny!

And when the last child hath forsaken me,

And quietly

Men go about the house wherein I lie,

I shall lie glad, feeling across my face

Thy damp and clinging hair, and thy hands moving

To find my wasted hands that wait for thine

Beneath white cloths; and, for one whisper's space,

Autumn, thy lips on mine!