Poems (Kimball)/In Autumn

by Harriet McEwen Kimball

IN AUTUMN.

    THE cool, bright days,
The calm, bright days,
   With their liberal-hearted noons!
     The clear, still nights,
     The restful nights,
   With their greasing harvest-moons;
 And the ghostly rustle of withered corn
 Plucked of its ivory ears and shorn
 Of the floating fringes that tossed and swayed
 When the ripening summer zephyr played
Through the ranks that shone in the summer morn—
     The beautiful corn!

  The golden days! the golden days!
  Warm with sunshine and dreamy with haze;
Warm with the sunshine and cool with the breeze!
   Like troops of tropical butterflies
  Clouds of leaves from the gorgeous trees
     Flutter and fall,
  And cover the earth with splendid dyes
  Matching the marvels of sunset sides.
 Swell beyond swell the hills uplift—
    The hills serene;
  Slope beyond slope they ebb away
  Into the distance azure-gray;
   And over them all,
   Through veils of amethyst vaguely seen
 Magical lights incessantly shift,
  Moved by the wonder hands of Day—
    Over the hills serene!

    No ripple breaks
    The lucid lakes
Up from whose margins the gay banks climb—
  Into whose deeps the shadows descend
Like sunken gardens in their prime,
  Whose softly-pictured terraces end
 In emerald grottos where Naiads dream
 While the unstirred rushes over them stream.
From the woodbine draping the cottage thatch
  The wandering winds as they pass,
  Tenderly, one by one, detach
  Leaves of crimson that flame in the sun:
      One by one,
  Slowly downward they waver, and twirl,
  And alight on the trampled grass.
  Day by day the vine-leaves curl
  Revealing the heavily hanging grapes
  In tempting clusters of rarest shapes,
   That out of the heart of summer grew;
  Dusky-purple and amber-white,
  Warmed in the nooning and cooled in the night,
   Mingled of honey, and sunlight, and dew.
  The breeze through the orchard-alley sweeps,
  And russet-brown leaves in dusty heaps
      Eddy and whirl;
  And russet-brown apples, and rosy-cheeked,
   Fall from the ruddy half-rifled bough,
     Strewing the grassy patch
    With its footpath trail below,
  Where the bare-headed, sunburnt famer's girl
   Gathers the fairest and leaves the rest
   For the gold-brown bee in his honey quest,
   And the zealous ants that bushy swarm
   Over the bruises mellow and warm;
 While chicks full feathered and yellow-beaked
   Roam in the sunshine and leisurely scratch
  For the helpless worm withdrawing its coil
  Lazily into the loosened soil.

  Streaming in at the wide barn door
  Warm lies the sun on the well-worn floor
   Scattered with wisps of straw and grain
  From the generous wain.
 Heaped high as the rafters the sweet-smelling hay
     O'erhangs the bursting loft,
    And a breath from the orchard croft
  Stirs the loosened spears, and they drop away
      Noiselessly-soft!
 The mellow days! the mellow days!
The brown seed ripens and bursts the pod;
 The brown seed ripens, the stem decays,
The black root rotting under the sod.
The lattice o'er-straggled by faded vines
   Leans to its fall,
And here and there by the garden wall
And beside the late-neglected walks,
Amid blackened weeds and mouldering stalks
Where the fly in his mail of emerald shines,
 Flowers of garish beauty bloom
 Like torches that flare at the mouth of a tomb.
Phantom of summer, silver fair,
Peacefully restless through the air
With the unseen currents that softly flow
Drifts the thistle-down to and fro.

 The yellow days! the yellow days!
 Fields of stubble and naked ways!
   The year's last gold
   On the uttermost bough
   Flutters mournfully now!
The sumach that burned like the bush of old
  Is almost stripped of its fire;
And trampled out by the rains that beat
The sodden paths with their million feet
  The last bright hues expire!