At Michaelmas.

About the time of Michael's feast     And all his angels,     There comes a word to man and beast     By dark evangels.     Then hearing what the wild things say     To one another,     Those creatures first born of our gray     Mysterious Mother,     The greatness of the world's unrest     Steals through our pulses;     Our own life takes a meaning guessed     From the torn dulse's.     The draft and set of deep sea-tides     Swirling and flowing,     Bears every filmy flake that rides,     Grandly unknowing.     The sunlight listens; thin and fine     The crickets whistle;     And floating midges fill the shine     Like a seeding thistle.     The hawkbit flies his golden flag     From rocky pasture,     Bidding his legions never lag     Through morning's vasture.     Soon we shall see the red vines ramp     Through forest borders,     And Indian summer breaking camp     To silent orders.     The glossy chestnuts swell and burst     Their prickly houses     Agog at news which reached them first     In sap's carouses.     The long noons turn the ribstons red,     The pippins yellow;     The wild duck from his reedy bed     Summons his fellow.     The robins keep the underbrush     Songless and wary,     As though they feared some frostier hush     Might bid them tarry;     Perhaps in the great North they heard     Of silence falling     Upon the world without a word,     White and appalling.     The ash-tree and the lady-fern,     In russet frondage,     Proclaim 'tis time for our return     To vagabondage.     All summer idle have we kept;     But on a morning,     Where the blue hazy mountains slept,     A scarlet warning     Disturbs our day-dream with a start;     A leaf turns over;     And every earthling is at heart     Once more a rover.     All winter we shall toil and plod,     Eating and drinking;     But now's the little time when God     Sets folk to thinking.     "Consider," says the quiet sun,     "How far I wander;     Yet when had I not time on one     More flower to squander?"     "Consider," says the restless tide,     "My endless labor;     Yet when was I content beside     My nearest neighbor?"     So wander-lust to wander-lure,     As seed to season,     Must rise and wend, possessed and sure     In sweet unreason.     For doorstone and repose are good,     And kind is duty;     But joy is in the solitude     With shy-heart beauty.     And Truth is one whose ways are meek     Beyond foretelling;     And far his journey who would seek     Her lowly dwelling.     She leads him by a thousand heights,     Lonelily faring,     With sunrise and with eagle flights     To mate his daring.     For her he fronts a vaster fog     Than Leif of yore did,     Voyaging for continents no log     Has yet recorded.     He travels by a polar star,     Now bright, now hidden,     For a free land, though rest be far     And roads forbidden,     Till on a day with sweet coarse bread     And wine she stays him,     Then in a cool and narrow bed     To slumber lays him.     So we are hers. And, fellows mine     Of fin and feather,     By shady wood and shadowy brine,     When comes the weather     For migrants to be moving on,     By lost indenture     You flock and gather and are gone:     The old adventure!     I too have my unwritten date,     My gypsy presage;     And on the brink of fall I wait     The darkling message.     The sign, from prying eyes concealed,     Is yet how flagrant!     Here's ragged-robin in the field,     A simple vagrant.