AUTUMN

The year grows still again, the surging wake
Of full-sailed summer folds its furrows up
As after passing of an argosy

Old silence settles back upon the sea,
And ocean grows as placid as a cup.

Spring, the young morn, and Summer, the strong

noon,

Have dreamed and done and died for Autumn's sake:
Autumn that finds not for a loss so dear

Solace in stack and garner hers too soon-
Autumn, the faithful widow of the year.

Autumn, a poet once so full of song,

Wise in all rhymes of blossom and of bud,
Hath lost the early magic of his tongue,

And hath no passion in his failing blood.
Hear ye no sound of sobbing in the air?
'Tis his. Low bending in a secret lane,
Late blooms of second childhood in his hair,

He tries old magic, like a dotard mage;
Tries spell and spell, to weep and try again :
Yet not a daisy bears, and everywhere

The hedgerow rattles like an empty cage.

He hath no pleasure in his silken skies,

Nor delicate ardours of the yellow land; Yea, dead, for all its gold, the woodland lies, And all the throats of music filled with sand. Neither to him across the stubble field

May stack nor garner any comfort bring,

Who loveth more this jasmine he hath made, The little tender rhyme he yet can sing, Than yesterday, with all its pompous yield, Or all its shaken laurels on his head.

ALL SUNG

What shall I sing when all is sung,
And every tale is told,

And in the world is nothing young
That was not long since old?

Why should I fret unwilling ears
With old things sung anew,
While voices from the old dead years
Still go on singing too?

A dead man singing of his maid
Makes all my rhymes in vain,

U

Yet his poor lips must fade and fade,

And mine shall kiss again.

Why should I strive through weary moons

To make my music true?

Only the dead men know the tunes

The live world dances to.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES.

Across the waste of dreary veldt

A little marsh-plant, yellow green
All day long and every day

All night as in my dreams I lay
All travail of high thought

A naked house, a naked moor

And now I speak, not with the bird's free voice

And shall I weep that Love's no more

And why say ye that I must leave

An idle poet, here and there

Assemble, all ye maidens, at the door.
Atlantid islands, phantom-fair

Behold the Court of Penance. Four gaunt walls
Beneath the sand-storm John the Pilgrim prays
Between two golden tufts of summer grass

Brave as a falcon and as merciless

But on another day the King said, Come

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking eastward to the sea

Day of my life! Where can she get

Dear Lord! if one should some day come to Thee
Does the road wind up-hill all the way

Emmy's exquisite youth and her virginal air

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Fair now is the spring-tide, now earth lies beholding
Far off the old snows ever new
Flower of the medlar.

God said, "Bring little children unto me”
Good pastry is vended

Had she come all the way for this

Hail! once again, that sweet strong note
He lived in that past Georgian day
He lives within the hollow wood

Here beside my Paris fire, I sit alone and ponder
Here I'd come when weariest

Here, in this leafy place

How strange a thing a lover seems

How sweet the harmonies of Afternoon

I do not bid thee spare me, O dreadful mother

I dream'd I was in Sicily

.

I drew it from its china tomb
If I forget.

If I have faltered more or less

If I should die this night, (as well might be

If love is not worth loving, then life is not worth living

If only in dreams may Man be fully blest

I found him openly wearing her token

If those who wield the Rod forget

I have loved flowers that fade

I heard the voice of my own true love

I know a little garden close

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland
In after days when grasses high

In ruling well what guerdon? Life runs low.