Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
......
Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river -
There's the life for a man like me,
There's the life for ever.
Let the blow fall soon or late,
......
It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went,
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent;
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push,
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush;
But we lately heard you singing of the 'plains where shade is not',
And you mentioned it was dusty -- 'all was dry and all was hot'.
True, the bush 'hath moods and changes' -- and the bushman hath 'em, too,
For he's not a poet's dummy -- he's a man, the same as you;
But his back is growing rounder -- slaving for the absentee --
......
War broke: and now the Winter of the world
With perishing great darkness closes in.
The foul tornado, centred at Berlin,
Is over all the width of Europe whirled,
Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled
Are all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.
The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.
For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,
......
Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own:
I wavered through the streets, among
Objects:
Nothing mattered or had a name:
The world was made of air, which waited.
I knew rooms full of ashes,
Tunnels where the moon lived,
Rough warehouses that growled 'get lost',
Questions that insisted in the sand.
......
In the late fall
After apple picking and around thanksgiving
When the leaves started
To fade from green to red
We’d hook up the PTO from the old Deere
To a massive circular saw
Like something out of a cult horror movie
Coated in flaking layers of leaded rust paint
And under a cloud of diesel exhaust
And the slow blue smoke
......
Desolate, windswept trees are shivery,
when red and purple leaves are falling.
Ungathered cherries hang in reverie!
Desolate, windswept trees are shivery,
engaged in multihued, cool creativity.
Goodbye violet birds skyrocket, calling!
Desolate, windswept trees are shivery,
when red and purple leaves are falling.
Opalescent leaves fall
outside summer's green door.
Outbound, a year sparkles
once age has come with grace.
Orange sun, red roses
of a starry evening.
Old age looks back, dreaming.
The air is crisp and cool
The leaves are red and gold
The trees are shedding their summer clothes
And preparing for the winter cold
......
plump red strawberries
the kind we knew last red dusk
when time inched by brusque
garnet stars flash on
scarlet leaves and cardinals
mars phenomenal
crimson dragonflies
when fruitful days are going
......