At night, as comes the fox, shall come
The Spirit of the Frost, whose thumb
Shall squeeze the chestnut burs, and press
Each husk bare; whisper every flower
Such tales of death that in an hour
It dies of utter happiness.
Until the moon sets I shall walk,
And listen how the woodlands talk
Of bygone lovely nights and days:
My soul, made silent intimate
Of all their sorrow, soon and late
A portion of the autumn haze.
XIII
What revelations fill with song
The cycles? and to what belong
Life’s far convictions of the light?
Through which the spirit waxeth strong,
The darkling soul surmounts the night,
By builded rainbows, to some height
Near mountain stars of Truth and Right,
Beyond the vulture-wing of Wrong?—
To Nature! who adjusts the deeps
Of her soul’s needs to man’s; and keeps
Such grave response as grief shall hear
When on her heart it sinks and weeps;
For every gladness, clean and clear
Its glad reflection lying near—
The wild accord of hope and fear
Which in her inmost bosom sleeps.
XIV
The mallow, like an Elfland moon,
Along the stream gleams grottoed gold;
Its bell-shaped blossom seems to hold
All the lost beauty of last June.
September’s mist haunts, white and cold,
The windings of the forest stream,
As death might haunt a thought or dream.
And who with idle words hath stood,
With idle thoughts, and gazed into
The face of one he loved and knew,
Dying in all her womanhood?
No words, but silence, then will do,
No thoughts but help the heart to hear:
So seems it with the fading year.
XV
The snowy flutter of a hand
Seems beckoning in the morning mist,
And from the mist a jewelled wrist
Of dew now waves us a command:
And in the skies, behold! the Land
Of Far-away-beyond-the-dawn,
Where, crowned with roses wild and wan,
The Futures of the World speed on.