A Dream Of Autumn.

    Mellow hazes, lowly trailing
    Over wood and meadow, veiling
    Somber skies, with wildfowl sailing
        Sailor-like to foreign lands;
    And the north-wind overleaping
    Summer's brink, and floodlike sweeping
    Wrecks of roses where the weeping
        Willows wring their helpless hands.

    Flared, like Titan torches flinging
        Flakes of flame and embers, springing
    From the vale the trees stand swinging
        In the moaning atmosphere;
    While in dead'ning-lands the lowing
    Of the cattle, sadder growing,
    Fills the sense to overflowing
        With the sorrow of the year.

    Sorrowfully, yet the sweeter
    Sings the brook in rippled meter
    Under boughs that lithely teeter
        Lorn birds, answering from the shores
    Through the viny, shady-shiny
    Interspaces, shot with tiny
    Flying motes that fleck the winy
        Wave-engraven sycamores.

    Fields of ragged stubble, wrangled
    With rank weeds, and shocks of tangled
    Corn, with crests like rent plumes dangled
        Over Harvest's battle-piain;
    And the sudden whir and whistle
    Of the quail that, like a missile,
    Whizzes over thorn and thistle,
        And, a missile, drops again.

    Muffled voices, hid in thickets
    Where the redbird stops to stick its
    Ruddy beak betwixt the pickets
        Of the truant's rustic trap;
    And the sound of laughter ringing
    Where, within the wild-vine swinging,
    Climb Bacchante's schoolmates, flinging
        Purple clusters in her lap.

    Rich as wine, the sunset flashes
    Round the tilted world, and dashes
    Up the sloping west and splashes
        Red foam over sky and sea -
    Till my dream of Autumn, paling
    In the splendor all-prevailing,
    Like a sallow leaf goes sailing
        Down the silence solemnly.