Autumn Etchings

I.     Morning     Her rain-kissed face is fresh as rain,     Is cool and fresh as a rain-wet leaf;     She glimmers at my window-pane,     And all my grief     Becomes a feeble rushlight, seen no more     When the gold of her gown sweeps in my door. II.     Forenoon     Great blurs of woodland waved with wind;     Gray paths, down which October came,     That now November's blasts have thinned     And flecked with fiercer flame,     Are her delight. She loves to lie     Regarding with a gray-blue eye     The far-off hills that hold the sky:     And I I lie and gaze with her     Beyond the autumn woods and ways     Into the hope of coming days,     The spring that nothing shall deter,     That puts my soul in unison     With what's to do and what is done. III.     Noon     Wild grapes that purple through     Leaves that are golden;     Brush-fires that pillar blue     Woods, that, enfolden     Deep in the haze of dreams,     In resignation     Give themselves up, it seems,     To divination:     Woods, that, ablaze with oak,     That the crow flew in,     Gaze through the brushwood smoke     On their own ruin,     And on the countenance of Death who stalks     Amid their miles,     While to himself he talks     And smiles:     Where, in their midst, Noon sits and holds     Communion with their grays and golds,     Transforming with her rays their golds and grays,     And in my heart the memories of dead days. IV.     Afternoon     Wrought-iron hues of blood and bronze,     Like some wild dawn's,     Make fierce each leafy spire     Of blackberry brier,     Where, through their thorny fire,     She goes, the Afternoon, from wood to wood,     From crest to oak-crowned crest     Of the high hill-lands, where the Morning stood     With rosy-ribboned breast.     Along the hills she takes the tangled path     Unto the quiet close of day,     Musing on what a lovely death she hath     The unearthly golden beryl far away     Banding the gradual west,     Seen through cathedral columns of the pines     And minster naves of woodlands arched with vines;     The golden couch, spread of the setting sun,     For her to lie, and me to gaze, upon. V.     Evening     The winds awake,     And, whispering, shake     The aster-flower whose doom is sealed;     The sumach-bloom     Bows down its plume;     And, blossom-Bayard of the field,     The chicory stout     To the winds' wild rout     Lifts up its ragged shield.     Low in the west the Evening shows     A ridge of rose;     And, stepping Earthward from the hills,     Where'er she goes     The cricket wakes, and all the silence spills     With reed-like music shaken from the weeds:     She takes my hand     And leads     Softly my soul into the Fairyland,     The wonder-world of gold and chrysolite,     She builds there at the haunted edge of night. VI.     Night     Autumn woods the winds tramp down     Sowing acorns left and right,     Where, in rainy raiment, Night     Tiptoes, rustling wild her gown     Dripping in the moon's pale light,     In the moonlight wan that hurries     Trailing now a robe of cloud     Now of glimmer, ghostly browed,     Through the leaves whose wildness skurries,     And whose tatters swirl and swarm     Round her in her stormy starkness;     She who takes my heart that leaps,     That exults, and onward sweeps,     Like a red leaf in the darkness     And the tumult of the storm.