I neither plow the field nor sow,
Nor hold the spade nor drive the cart,
Nor spread the heap, nor hill nor hoe,
To keep the barren land in heart.
After four more stanzas in similar vein, comes this bit of magic word-painting, so instinct with our New England Autumn, yet so entirely the work of a realist, with his eye on the object:
But, leaning from my window, chief
I mark the Autumn's mellow signs—
The frosty air, the yellow leaf,
The ladder leaning on the vines.
The maple from his brood of boughs
Puts northward out a reddening limb;
The mist draws faintly round the house;
And all the headland heights are dim.
The poem then continues to its close:
And yet it is the same as when
I looked across the chestnut woods,
And saw the barren landscape then
O'er the red bunch of lilac buds;
And all things seem the same. 'Tis one
To lie in sleep, or toil as they
Who rise beforetime with the sun,
And so keep footstep with their day;
For aimless oaf and wiser fool
Work to one end by differing deeds;—
The weeds rot in the standing pool;
The water stagnates in the weeds;
And all by waste or warfare falls,
Has gone to wreck, or crumbling goes,
Since Nero planned his golden walls,
Or the Cham Cublai built his house.
But naught I reck of change and fray;
Watching the clouds at morning driven,
The still declension of the day;
And, when the moon is just in heaven,