We are not lovers, you and I,
Upon this sunny lane,
But children who have never known
Love's joy or pain.
The trees we pass, the summer brook,
The bird that o'er us darts—
We do not know 'tis they that thrill
Our childish hearts.
The earth-things have no name for us,
The ploughing means no more
Than that they like to walk the fields
Who plough them o'er.
The road, the wood, the heaven, the hills
Are not a World to-day—
But just a place God's made for us
In which to play.
AUTUMN
I know her not by fallen leaves
Or resting heaps of hay;
Or by the sheathing mists of mauve
That soothe the fiery day.
I know her not by plumping nuts,
By redded hips and haws,
Or by the silence hanging sad
Under the wind's sere pause.
But by her sighs I know her well—
They are like Sorrow's breath;
And by this longing, strangely still,
For something after death.