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V. A SONG IN AUGUST.

O gold is the West and gold the river-waters

Washing past the sides of my yellow birch canoe,

Gold are the great drops that fall from my paddle,

The far-off hills cry a golden word of you.

I can almost see you! Where its own shadow

Creeps down the hill's side, gradual and slow.

There you stand waiting; the goldenrod and thistle

Glad of you beside them—the fairest thing they know.

Down the worn foot-path, the tufted pines behind you,

Grey sheep between,—unfrightened as you pass;

Swift through the sun-glow, I to my loved one

Come, striving hard against the long trailing grass.

Soon shall I ground on the shining gravel-reaches:

Through the thick alders you will break your way:

Then your hand in mine, and our path is on the waters,—

For us the long shadows and the end of day.

Whither shall we go? See, over to the westward,

An hour of precious gold standeth still for you and me;

Still gleams the grain, all yellow on the uplands;

West is it, or East, O Love that you would be?

West now, or East? For, underneath the moonrise,

Also it is fair; and where the reeds are tall,

And the only little noise is the sound of quiet waters,

Heavy, like the rain, we shall hear the duck-oats fall.

And perhaps we shall see, rising slowly from the driftwood,

A lone crane go over to its inland nest:

Or a dark line of ducks will come in across the islands

And sail overhead to the marshes of the west.

Now a little wind rises up for our returning;

Silver grows the East as the West grows grey;

Shadows on the waters, shaded are the meadows,

The firs on the hillside—naught so dark as they.

Yet we have known the light!—Was ever such an August?

Your hand leave mine; and the new stars gleam

As we separately go to our dreams of opened heaven,—

The golden dawn shall tell you that you did not dream.

VI. TO AUTUMN.

How shall I greet thee, Autumn? with loud praise

And joyous song and wild, tumultuous laughter?

Or unrestrained tears?

Shall I behold only the scarlet haze

Of these thy days

That come to crown this best of all the years?

Or shall I hear, even now, those sad hours chime—

Those unborn hours that surely follow after

The shedding of thy last-relinquished leaf—

Till I, too, learn the strength and change of time

Who am made one with grief?

For now thou comest not as thou of old

Wast wont to come; and now mine old desire

Is sated not at all

With sunset-visions of thy splendid gold

Or fold on fold

Of the stained clouds thou hast for coronal.

Still all these ways and things are thine, and still

Before thine altar burneth the ancient fire;

The blackness of the pines is still the same,

And the same peace broodeth behind the hill

Where the old maples flame.

I, counting these, behold no change; and yet,

To-day, I deem, they know not me for lover,

Nor live because of me.

And yesterday, was it not thou I met,

Thy warm lips wet

And purpled with wild grapes crushed wantonly,

And yellow wind-swept wheat bound round thy hair,

Thy brawn breast half set free and half draped over

With long green leaves of corn? Was it not thou,

Thy feet unsandaled, and thy shoulders bare

As the gleaned fields are now?

Yea, Autumn, it was thou, and glad was I

To meet thee and caress thee for an hour

And fancy I was thine;

For then I had not learned all things must die

Under the sky,—

That everywhere (a flaw in the design!)

Decay crept in, unquickening the mass,—

Creed, empire, man-at-arms, or stone, or flower.

In my unwisdom then, I had not read

The message writ across Earth's face, alas,

But scanned the sun instead.

For all men sow; and then it happeneth—

When harvest time is come, and thou are season—

Each goeth forth to reap.

"This cometh unto him" (perchance one saith)