Xxvii

There is a rushing in the woods, The autumn-haunted solitudes, When night comes in with winds that sweep The wild rain from the hills; and reap The roaring harvest of the leaves With unseen scythes Death stalks behind, And Desolation, fierce and blind, Heaping the storm’s tumultuous sheaves. There is a sighing in the woods, The hills of autumn solitudes, When on the night, the winds have strewn With crowding clouds, the stormy moon Bursts like a herald shouting Cease! Through darkness o’er a battlefield Of Hell; the splendor of his shield Inscribed with silence and with peace.