9.
Beyond the knotty apple-trees
That fade about the old brick-barn,
Its tattered arms and tattered knees
A scare-crow tosses to the breeze
Among the shocks of corn.
All things grow gray in earth and sky;
The cold wind sounding drearily
Makes all the rusty branches fly;
The rustling leaves a-rotting lie;
The year is waning wearily.
At night I hear the far wild geese
Honk in frost-bitten heavens, under
Arcturus. Though I seem to cease
Outside myself and sleep in peace,
I drowse awake and wonder.
I know torn thistles by the creek
Hang hairy with the frost; the tented
Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak
And ghostly in the moonlight, weak
In hollows bitter-scented.
Dream back the ways we strolled at morn
Through woods of summer ever singing;
Moon-trysts beneath the crooked thorn,
The tasselled meads of cane and corn
Their restless shadows swinging....
I stand and oar our boat among
The dripping lilies of the river;
I reach her hat the grape-vine long
Struck in the stream; we sing a song,
That song ... I wake and shiver.
And then my feverish mind reverts
To our sad words and sadder parting
In days long gone; and, oh! it hurts
Within here, for the soul asserts
Mine the fool fault from starting.
And I must lie awake and think
Of her with such regrets as gladly
No unrebuking conscience shrink;
And hear the wild-fowls' clangor sink
Through plaintive starlight sadly.
When all are overflown and deep
The stoic night is left forsaken,
For company I well would weep,
Since all my spirit fears to sleep,
Sleep of such visions shaken.
Grave visions of dead deeds that flaw
Our waking hours, ever haunting;
Else were we, lacking love and law,
Rude scare-crow things of sticks and straw
Undaunted and undaunting.