Iii

I would not die when Springtime lifts The white world to her maiden mouth, And heaps its cradle with gay gifts, Breeze-blown from out the singing South: Too full of life and loves that cling, Too heedless of all mortal woe, The young, unsympathetic Spring, That death should never know.

I would not die when Summer shakes Her daisied locks below her hips, And, naked as a star that takes A cloud, into the silence slips. Too rich is Summer; poor in needs; Wrapped in her own warm loveliness Her pomp goes by, and never heeds If one be more or less.

But I would die when Autumn goes, The sad rain dripping from her hair, Through forests where the wild wind blows Death and the red wreck everywhere: Sweet as love’s last farewells and tears ’T would be to die, when heavens are gray, In the old autumn of my years, Like a dead leaf borne far away.