How shall I greet thee, Autumn? with loud praise
And joyous song and wild, tumultuous laughter?
Or unrestrainèd tears?
Shall I behold only the scarlet haze
Of these thy days
That come to crown this best of all the years?
Or shall I hear, even now, those sad hours chime—
Those unborn hours that surely follow after
The shedding of thy last-relinquished leaf—
Till I, too, learn the strength and change of time
Who am made one with grief?

For now thou comest not as thou of old
Wast wont to come; and now mine old desire
Is sated not at all
With sunset-visions of thy splendid gold
Or fold on fold
Of the stained clouds thou hast for coronal.
Still all these ways and things are thine, and still
Before thine altar burneth the ancient fire;
The blackness of the pines is still the same,
And the same peace broodeth behind the hill
Where the old maples flame.

I, counting these, behold no change; and yet,
To-day, I deem, they know not me for over,
Nor live because of me.
And yesterday, was it not thou I met,
Thy warm lips wet
And purpled with wild grapes crushed wantonly,
And yellow wind-swept wheat bound round thy hair,
With long green leaves of corn? Was it not thou,
Thy feet unsandaled, and thy shoulders bare
As the gleaned fields are now?

Yea, Autumn, it was thou, and glad was I
To meet thee and caress thee for an hour
And fancy I was thine;
For then I had not learned all things must die
Under the sky,—
That everywhere (a flaw in the design!)
Decay crept in, unquickening the mass,—
Creed, empire, man-at-arms, or stone, or flower.
In my unwisdom then, I hadnot read
The message writ across Earth’s face, alas,
But scanned the sun instead.

For all men sow; and then it happeneth—
When harvest time is come, and thou art season—
Each goeth forth to reap.
“This cometh unto him” (perchance one saith)
“Who laboreth:
This is my wage: I will lie down and sleep.”—
He maketh no oblation unto Earth.
Another, in his heart divine unreason,
Seeing his fields lie barren in the sun,
Crieth, “O fool! Behold the little worth
Of that thy toil hath won!”

And so one sleepth, dreaming of no prayer;
And so one lieth sleepless, till thou comest
To bid his cursing cease;
Then, in his dreams, envieth the other’s share.
Whilst, otherwhere,
Thou showest still thy perfect face of peace,
O Autumn, unto men of alien lands!
Along their paths a little while thou roamest,
A little while they deem thee queenliest,
And good the laying-on of thy warm hands—
And then, they, too, would rest.

They, too, would only rest, forgetting thee!
But I, who am grown the wiser for thy loving,
Never may thee deny!
And when the last child hath forsaken me,
And quietly
Men go about the house wherein I lie,
I shall be glad, feeling across my face
Thy damp and clinging hair, and thy hands moving
To find my wasted hands that wait for thine
Beneath white cloths; and, for one whisper’s space,
Autumn, thy lips on mine!