When autumn steals the sunlight from the flowers,
And frost seals down their sweets. I heard them talk
Like one who just has walk’d a glacier path
With boist’rous friends; then, stumbling, slips away,
Far suck’d through freezing fathoms down to death,
Yet hears the cruel laughter crackling still.
XXVII.
This hardly tuned my mood for Elbert’s glee,
When then we left the sisters. “Ah, good friend,
So glad to see you! Such a desert, life!