By An Autumn Stream

Now overhead,

Where the rivulet loiters and stops,

The bittersweet hangs from the

Of the alders and

Its bunches of beautiful berries,

Orange and red.

And the snowbirds flee,

Tossing up on the far brown field,

Now flashing and now concealed,

Like fringes of

That vanish and gleam on the

Field of the sea.

Flickering light,

Come the last of the leaves down borne,

And patches of pale white

In the wind complain,

Like the slow rustle of

Noticed by night.

Withered and thinned,

The sentinel mullein looms,

With the pale gray shadowy

Of the goldenrod;

And the milkweed opens its pod,

Tempting the wind.

Aloft on the hill,

A cloudrift opens and

Through a break in its gorget of pines,

And it dreams at my

In a sad, silvery sheet,

Utterly still.

All things that

Seem plunged into silence, distraught,

By some stern, some necessitous thought:

It wraps and

Marsh, meadow, and forest; and

Also on me.