Oh, the wood
With winds a-wrestle!
With the nut
And acorn strown!
Oh, the wood
Where creepers trestle,
Tree unto tree o'ergrown!
With a climb
The ledging summit
Of the hill
Is reached in glee.
For an hour
We gaze off from it
Into the sky's blue sea.
But a bell
And sunset's crimson
Soon recall
The homeward path.
And we turn
As the glory dims on
The hay-fields' mounded math.
Thro' the soft
And silent twilight
We come,
To the stile at last,
As the clear
Undying eyelight
Of the stars tells day is past.
[RETURN]
Ah, it was here—September
And silence filled the air—
I came last year to remember,
And muse, hid away from care.
It was here I came—the thistle
Was trusting her seed to the wind;
The quail in the croft gave whistle
As now—and the fields lay thinned.
I know how the hay was steeping,
Brown mows under mellow haze;
How a frail cloud-flock was creeping
As now over lone sky-ways.
Just there where the cat-bird's calling
Her mock-hurt note by the shed,
The use-worn wain was stalling
In the weedy brook's dry bed.
And the cricket, lone little chimer
Of day-long dreams in the vines,
Chirred on like a doting rhymer
O'er-vain of his firstling lines.
He's near me now by the aster,
Beneath whose shadowy spray
A sultry bee seeps faster
As the sun slips down the day.