Xxxi

Past midnight, gathering from the west, With rolling rain the storm came on, And tore and tossed until the dawn, Like some dark demon of unrest: The stairways creaked! the chimneys boomed; I heard the wild leaves blown about The windy windows; and the shout Of forests that the storm had doomed.

I listened, and remembered how On yesterday I went alone A sunlit path through fields o’ergrown With sumac brakes, turned crimson now; Where asters strung blue pearls and white Beside the goldenrod’s soft ruff; Where thistles, silvery puff on puff, Danced many a twinkling witch’s-light.

Her joy the Autumn uttered so To skies where gold and azure blent; Now storm is the embodiment Of all her utterance of woe: The two within me so abide, That of the two my mind partakes,-- As one, who walks asleep, awakes, Walks on and thinks, “To-night I died.”