Page:Poems Dudley.djvu/35

Grasshopper, whirl with your gold-lined wings
 Over the acres bereft;
Patriarch thou of the gleaning fields,
 Welcome to all that is left;

Cricket, your dolorous monotone,
 Pitiless, ceaseless and chill,
Plays on the nerves as a soulless bow,
 Plays in a hand without skill;

Golden-rod tossing your gay, sweet plumes
 Off from the sunniest shore,
Happy your thought but your lavish joy,
 Burdens me, burdens me sore.

Gladness has shadows that fall somewhere,
 Somewhere the day-time matures;
Somebody's sunshine is somebody's shade;
 Slowly I drift into yours.

Tardily rung are your bloom-bells sweet,
 Hinting the sadness anear—
Hard i1s the waiting for grief to come,
 Harder than grief that is here:

Waiting for death that a birth may be;
 Waiting for darkness at morn;
Waiting for Autumn while Summer lives—
 Must it be, can it be borne?