Dame of the quench of love,
Give me to quaff!
There's all the world's made of
Under thy laugh.
Dame of the dare of gods,
Let the sky lower!
Time, give the world for odds,--
I choose this hour.
This is not sadness in the wood;
The yellowbird
Flits joying through the solitude,
By no thought stirred
Save of his little duskier mate
And rompings jolly.
If there's a Dryad in the wood,
She is not sad.
Too wise the spirits are to brood;
Divinely glad,
They dream with countenance sedate
Not melancholy.
The ghost of a wind came over the hill,
While day for a moment forgot to die,
And stirred the sheaves
Of the millet leaves,
As Nancibel went by.
Out of the lands of Long Ago,
Into the land of By and By,
Faded the gleam
Of a journeying dream,
As Nancibel went by.
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood--
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.