Solitude slowly steals,
Steals
Her silent way
By the songless brook.
At the gnarly yoke of a solemn oak she kneels,
The musing joy of sadness in her look—
Autumn's near.
Yes, with her golden days—
Days
When hope and toil
Are at peace and rest—
Autumn is near, and the tired year 'mid praise
Lies down with leaf and blossom on her breast—
Autumn's near.
[FULFILMENT]
A-bask in the mellow beauty of the ripening sun,
Sad with the lingering sense of summer's purpose done,
The cut and searing fields stretch from me one by one
Along the creek.
The corn-stooks drop their shadows down the fallow hill;
Wearing autumnal warmth the farm sleeps by the mill,
Around each heavy eave low smoke hangs blue and still—
Life's flow is weak.
Along the weedy roads and lanes I walk—or pause—
Ponder a fallen nut or quirking crow whose caws
Seem with prehuman hintings fraught or ancient awes
Of forest-deeps.
Of forest deeps the pale-face hunter never trod,
Nor Indian, with the silent stealth of Nature shod;
Deeps tense with the timelessness and solitude of God
Who never sleeps.
And many times has Autumn, on her harvest way,
Gathered again into the earth leaf, fruit, and spray;
Here many times dwelt rueful as she dwells to-day,
The while she reaps.