Autumn

I oft have met her slowly wandering Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild, Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring, As if on her the scarlet copse had smiled: Or I have seen her sitting, dark and tall,-- Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,-- Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves She wound great drowsy wreaths and let them fall; The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim Far out behind, brown as the rustling sheaves.

Or in the hill-lands I have often seen The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between, Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint. Or I have met her ’twixt two beechen hills, Within a dingled valley near a fall, Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower; Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills Went babbling through the wildwood’s arrased hall, Where burned the beech and maples glared their power.

Or I have met her by a ruined mill, Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine, On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled, chill, And watched her swinging in the wildgrapevine. While Beauty, sad among the vales and mountains, More sad than death, or all that death can teach, Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms, Where splashed the murmur of the forest’s fountains: With all her loveliness did she beseech, And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms.

Once only in a hollow, girt with trees, A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain, I glimpsed her cheeks, red-berried by the breeze, In her dark eyes the night’s sidereal stain. And once upon an orchard’s tangled path, Where all the goldenrod had turned to brown, Where russets rolled and leaves lay sweet of breath, I did behold her ’mid her aftermath Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown, Within her gaze the dreams of life and death.