SEPTEMBER
The bubbled blue of morning-glory spires,
Balloon-blown foam of moonflowers, and sweet snows
Of clematis, through which September goes,
Song-hearted, rich in realized desires,
Are flanked with hotter hues: with tawny fires
Of acrid marigolds,—that light long rows
Of lamps,—and salvias, red as day’s red close,—
That torches seem,—by which the Month attires
Barbaric beauty; like some Asian queen,
Towering imperial in her two-fold crown
Of harvest and of vintage; all her form
Gold and majestic purple: in her mien
The might of motherhood; her baby brown,
Abundance, high on one exultant arm.
THE END OF SUMMER
Pods are the poppies, and slim spires of pods
The hollyhocks; the balsam’s pearly bredes
Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds
Collapsing at a touch; the lote, that sods
The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods
And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds,
Around the sleepy water and its reeds,
Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods.
Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer’s dead!
The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre,
Through which, e’en now, runs subterranean fire:
While from the East, as from a garden-bed,
Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some
Great golden melon—saying, “Fall has come.”
THE PASSING GLORY
Slow sinks the sun,—a great carbuncle ball
Red in the cavern of a sombre cloud,—
And in her garden, where the dense weeds crowd,
Among her dying asters stands the Fall,
Like some lone woman in a ruined hall,
Dreaming of desolation and the shroud;
Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed,
Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl.
The gaunt wind rises, like an angry hand,
And sweeps the sprawling spider from its web,
Smites frantic music in the twilight’s ear;
And all around, like melancholy sand,
Rains dead leaves down—wild leaves, that mark the ebb,
In Earth’s dark hour-glass, of another year.