And under withered leaves the crickets’ clicks
Seem some dim dirge sighed into memory’s ears;
One bird sits in the sumach, flits and picks
Its sour seeds. Thro’ all the wood one hears
The dropping hickories. Round the hay’s railed ricks,
Among the fields, gather the lowing steers.
Some slim, bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked,
Like birds, the flowers, herding from their homes
To warmer woods and skies. Where once were rocked
Unnumbered bees within unnumbered blooms,
One feeble bee clings to one bloom, or, locked
Within it, dreams of summer’s oozing combs.
Winds shake the maples, and all suddenly
A storm of leafy stars around you freaks,—
Some Dryad’s tattered raiment. To her knee
Wading, the Naiad haunts her stream that streaks
Through woodland waifs. Hark! Pan for Helike
Flutes in the forest, while he seeks and seeks.
A NOVEMBER WALK
I
Morning
The hoar frost crisps beneath the feet;
And, sparkling in the morning’s strength,
The fence, along its straggling length,
Gleams as if wrought of virgin sleet.
On broom-sedge fields and sassafras
Neglectfully the dim wind lifts
The dead leaves; and around me drifts
The milkweed, shaken from the grass.
Reluctantly and one by one
The useless leaves drift slowly down;
And, seen through woodland vistas, brown
The nut-tree patters in the sun.
Where pools the brook beneath its fall
With scales of ice its edge is bound;
And on the pebbles scattered round
The ooze is frozen; each a ball,