COLOR NOTES
The brown of fallen leaves,
The duller brown
Of withered moss
Stubble and bared sheaves,
And pale light filtering down
The fields across.
The gray of slender trees,
The softer gray
Of melting skies.
What sobering ecstasies
One drinks on such a day
With chastened eyes!
Charles Wharton Stork
THE GOLDEN BOWL
I stand upon the broad and rounded summit
Of a high hill
In the full golden flood of an October day
Nearing to twilight.
Below lie bouquets of woods, flat fields,
White strings of roads winding like fairy tales into the distance,
All steeped in sapphire mist like the blue bloom of grapes.
Nearby a scarlet creeper trails a fence,
Nearer a hawthorn tree
Drops its wee crimson apples into the lush green grass.
I stand with head thrown back,
Seeing and breathing deep,
My arms stretched out, in my two hands
I hold a golden bowl.
Luscious fruits fulfil the yellow lustre of its hollow sphere,
Fruits like great gems,
A pear of russet topaz, a ruby peach,
A cluster of grapes—
Amethysts from the dewy cave of night—
A sapphire plum, a garnet apple, emerald nectarine,
And on them lies a rose.
Oh, empty golden bowl I call my soul,
Filled now with the precious fruits of life and time,
Topped with the rosy spray of grace,
A rose,
As though dropped to me from the sky above,
A crowning thing,
Love,
I lift and hold you out,
An offering,
And close my eyes.
Mary McMillan
THE AUTUMN ROSE
A Ghostly visitant, pale Autumn Rose,
Haunting my garden that you once loved well:
Ah, how you queened it ere the sweet June's close,
And blushed anew to hear the zephyrs tell
Your loveliness was fairer than a dream!
But now your pride of beauty is all gone,
And like some poor sad penitent you seem,
Whose drooping head but hides a visage wan
And wasted by the coldness of the world.
Upon your faint sweet breath is borne a sigh,
Within your petals lies a tear impearled;
I hear you to my garden say good-bye.