What's O'Clock/Autumn and Death
AUTUMN AND DEATH
They are coy, these sisters, Autumn and Death, And they both have learnt what it is to wait. Not a leaf is jarred by their cautious breath, The little feather-weight Petals of climbing convolvulus Are scarcely even tremulous.
Who hears Autumn moving downThe garden-paths? Who marks her head Above the oat-sheaves? A leaf gone brown On the ash, and a maple-leaf turned red—Yet a rose that's freshly blown Seals your eyes to the change in these, For it's mostly green about the trees.
And Death with her silver-slippered feet, Do you hear her walk by your garden-chair? The cool of her hand makes a tempered heat, That's all, and the shadow of her hair Is curiously sweet.Does she speak? If so, you have not heard; The whisper of Death is without a word.
The sisters, Autumn and Death, with strange Long silences, they bide their time, Nor ever step beyond the range Allotted to a pantomime. But the soundless hours chime, One after one, and their faces grow To an altered likeness, slow—slow.
Grim is the face which Autumn turns To a sky all bare of obscuring leaves, And her hair is red as a torch where it burns In the dry hearts of the oaten sheaves. But Death has a face which yearns With a gaunt desire upon its prey, And Death's dark face hides yesterday.
Then Autumn holds her hands to touch Death's hands, and the two kiss, cheek by cheek, And one smiles to the other, and the smiles say much, And neither one has need to speak. Two gray old sisters, such Are Autumn and Death when their tasks are done, And their world is a world where a blackened sun Shines like ebony over the floes Of a shadeless ice, and no wind blows.