Late October Woods

Clumped in the shadow of the beech,     In whose brown top the crows are loud,     Where, every side, great briers reach     And cling like hands, the beechdrops crowd     The mossy cirque with neutral tints     Of gray; and deep, with berries bowed,     The buckbush reddens 'mid the mints.     O'erhead the forest scarcely stirs:     The wind is laid: the sky is blue:     Bush-clover, with its links of burs,     And some last blooms, few, pink of hue,     Makes wild the way- and everywhere     Slim, white-ribbed cones of fungi strew     The grass that's like a wildman's hair.     The jewel-weeds, whose pods bombard     The hush with fairy batteries     Of seeds, grow dense here; pattering hard     Their sacs explode, persuade the eyes     To search the heaven for show 'rs. One seems     To walk where old Enchantment plies     Her shuttle of lost days and dreams.     And, lo! yon rock of fern and flower,     That heaves its height from bramble deeps,     All on a sudden seems the tower     Wherein the Sleeping Beauty sleeps:     And that red vine, the fire-drake,     The flaming dragon, seems, that keeps     The world from her no man may wake.