With loitering step and quiet eye, Beneath the low November sky, I wandered in the woods, and found A clearing, where the broken ground Was scattered with black stumps and briers, And the old wreck of forest fires. It was a bleak and sandy spot, And, all about, the vacant plot, Was peopled and inhabited By scores of mulleins long since dead. A silent and forsaken brood In that mute opening of the wood, So shrivelled and so thin they were, So gray, so haggard, and austere, Not plants at all they seemed to me, But rather some spare company Of hermit folk, who long ago, Wandering in bodies to and fro, Had chanced upon this lonely way, And rested thus, till death one day Surprised them at their compline prayer, And left them standing lifeless there. There was no sound about the wood Save the wind's secret stir.
I stood Among the mullein-stalks as still As if myself had grown to be One of their sombre company, A body without wish or will And as I stood, quite suddenly, Down from a furrow in the sky The sun shone out a little space Across that silent sober place, Over the sand heaps and brown sod, The mulleins and dead goldenrod, And passed beyond the thickets gray, And lit the fallen leaves that lay, Level and deep within the wood, A rustling yellow multitude. And all around me the thin light, So sere, so melancholy bright, Fell like the half-reflected gleam Or shadow of some former dream; A moment's golden reverie Poured out on every plant and tree A semblance of weird joy, or less, A sort of spectral happiness; And I, too, standing idly there, With muffled hands in the chill air, Felt the warm glow about my feet, And shuddering betwixt cold and heat, Drew my thoughts closer, like a cloak, While something in my blood awoke, A nameless and unnatural cheer, A pleasure secret and austere.
Composition date is unknown - the above date represents the first publication date.
The lyrical form of this poem is couplets. 10.mulleins: woolly-leaved plants of the figwort family. 21.compline: seventh and last of the canonical hours, used bythe Christian church to schedule daily monastic devotions.
