Poems (Kimball)/In Autumn
For works with similar titles, see In Autumn.
IN AUTUMN.
THE cool, bright days, The calm, bright days, With their liberal-hearted noons! The clear, still nights, The restful nights, With their greasing harvest-moons; And the ghostly rustle of withered corn Plucked of its ivory ears and shorn Of the floating fringes that tossed and swayed When the ripening summer zephyr played Through the ranks that shone in the summer morn— The beautiful corn!
The golden days! the golden days! Warm with sunshine and dreamy with haze; Warm with the sunshine and cool with the breeze! Like troops of tropical butterflies Clouds of leaves from the gorgeous trees Flutter and fall, And cover the earth with splendid dyes Matching the marvels of sunset sides. Swell beyond swell the hills uplift— The hills serene; Slope beyond slope they ebb away Into the distance azure-gray; And over them all, Through veils of amethyst vaguely seen Magical lights incessantly shift, Moved by the wonder hands of Day— Over the hills serene!
No ripple breaks The lucid lakes Up from whose margins the gay banks climb— Into whose deeps the shadows descend Like sunken gardens in their prime, Whose softly-pictured terraces end In emerald grottos where Naiads dream While the unstirred rushes over them stream. From the woodbine draping the cottage thatch The wandering winds as they pass, Tenderly, one by one, detach Leaves of crimson that flame in the sun: One by one, Slowly downward they waver, and twirl, And alight on the trampled grass. Day by day the vine-leaves curl Revealing the heavily hanging grapes In tempting clusters of rarest shapes, That out of the heart of summer grew; Dusky-purple and amber-white, Warmed in the nooning and cooled in the night, Mingled of honey, and sunlight, and dew. The breeze through the orchard-alley sweeps, And russet-brown leaves in dusty heaps Eddy and whirl; And russet-brown apples, and rosy-cheeked, Fall from the ruddy half-rifled bough, Strewing the grassy patch With its footpath trail below, Where the bare-headed, sunburnt famer's girl Gathers the fairest and leaves the rest For the gold-brown bee in his honey quest, And the zealous ants that bushy swarm Over the bruises mellow and warm; While chicks full feathered and yellow-beaked Roam in the sunshine and leisurely scratch For the helpless worm withdrawing its coil Lazily into the loosened soil.
Streaming in at the wide barn door Warm lies the sun on the well-worn floor Scattered with wisps of straw and grain From the generous wain. Heaped high as the rafters the sweet-smelling hay O'erhangs the bursting loft, And a breath from the orchard croft Stirs the loosened spears, and they drop away Noiselessly-soft! The mellow days! the mellow days!The brown seed ripens and bursts the pod; The brown seed ripens, the stem decays,The black root rotting under the sod. The lattice o'er-straggled by faded vines Leans to its fall,And here and there by the garden wall And beside the late-neglected walks,Amid blackened weeds and mouldering stalks Where the fly in his mail of emerald shines, Flowers of garish beauty bloom Like torches that flare at the mouth of a tomb. Phantom of summer, silver fair, Peacefully restless through the air With the unseen currents that softly flow Drifts the thistle-down to and fro.
The yellow days! the yellow days! Fields of stubble and naked ways! The year's last gold On the uttermost bough Flutters mournfully now! The sumach that burned like the bush of old Is almost stripped of its fire; And trampled out by the rains that beat The sodden paths with their million feet The last bright hues expire!