The Little Book of Modern Verse Part 33

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by.

And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir; We must rise and follow her, When from every hill of flame She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Somewhere. [John Vance Cheney]

The weasel thieves in silver suit, The rabbit runs in gray; And Pan takes up his frosty flute To pipe the cold away.

The flocks are folded, boughs are bare, The salmon take the sea; And O my fair, would I somewhere Might house my heart with thee!

"Frost To-Night". [Edith M. Thomas]

Apple-green west and an orange bar, And the crystal eye of a lone, one star . . .

And, "Child, take the shears and cut what you will, Frost to-night -- so clear and dead-still."

Then, I sally forth, half sad, half proud, And I come to the velvet, imperial crowd, The wine-red, the gold, the crimson, the pied, -- The dahlias that reign by the garden-side.

The dahlias I might not touch till to-night!

A gleam of the shears in the fading light, And I gathered them all, -- the splendid throng, And in one great sheaf I bore them along.

In my garden of Life with its all-late flowers I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours: "Frost to-night -- so clear and dead-still" . . .

Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill.

Under Arcturus. [Madison Cawein]

I

"I belt the morn with ribboned mist; With baldricked blue I gird the noon, And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed, White-buckled with the hunter's-moon.

"These follow me," the Season says: "Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways, With gypsy gold that weighs their backs."

II

A daybreak horn the Autumn blows, As with a sun-tanned hand he parts Wet boughs whereon the berry glows; And at his feet the red fox starts.

The leafy leash that holds his hounds Is loosed; and all the noonday hush Is startled; and the hillside sounds Behind the fox's bounding brush.

When red dusk makes the western sky A fire-lit window through the firs, He stoops to see the red fox die Among the chestnut's broken burrs.

Then fanfaree and fanfaree, His bugle sounds; the world below Grows hushed to hear; and two or three Soft stars dream through the afterglow.

III

Like some black host the shadows fall, And blackness camps among the trees; Each wildwood road, a Goblin Hall, Grows populous with mysteries.

Night comes with brows of ragged storm, And limbs of writhen cloud and mist; The rain-wind hangs upon his arm Like some wild girl who cries unkissed.

By his gaunt hands the leaves are shed In headlong troops and nightmare herds; And, like a witch who calls the dead, The hill-stream whirls with foaming words.

Then all is sudden silence and Dark fear -- like his who cannot see, Yet hears, lost in a haunted land, Death rattling on a gallow's-tree.

IV

The days approach again; the days Whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag, When in the haze by puddled ways The gnarled thorn seems a crooked hag.

When rotting orchards reek with rain; And woodlands crumble, leaf and log; And in the drizzling yard again The gourd is tagged with points of fog.

Now let me seat my soul among The woods' dim dreams, and come in touch With melancholy, sad of tongue And sweet, who says so much, so much.

The Recessional. [Charles G. D. Roberts]

Now along the solemn heights Fade the Autumn's altar-lights; Down the great earth's glimmering chancel Glide the days and nights.

Little kindred of the gra.s.s, Like a shadow in a gla.s.s Falls the dark and falls the stillness; We must rise and pa.s.s.

We must rise and follow, wending Where the nights and days have ending, -- Pa.s.s in order pale and slow Unto sleep extending.

Little brothers of the clod, Soul of fire and seed of sod, We must fare into the silence At the knees of G.o.d.

Little comrades of the sky, Wing to wing we wander by, Going, going, going, going, Softly as a sigh.

Hark, the moving shapes confer, Globe of dew and gossamer, Fading and ephemeral spirits In the dusk astir.