silver-misted, glides from the heart of September,
Mourned by disconsolate crickets, and iterant grasshoppers, crying
All the still nights long, from the ripened abundance of gardens;
Then, ere the boughs of the maples are mantled with earliest
autumn,
But the wind of autumn breathes from the orchards at nightfall,
Full of winy perfume and mystical yearning and languor;
And in the noonday woods you hear the foraging squirrels,
And the long, crashing fall of the half-eaten nut from the
tree-top;
When the robins are mute, and the yellow-birds, haunting the
thistles,
Cheep, and twitter, and flit through the dusty lanes and the
loppings,
When the pheasant booms from your stealthy foot in the cornfield,
And the wild-pigeons feed, few and shy, in the scoke-berry bushes;
When the weary land lies hushed, like a seer in a vision,
And your life seems but the dream of a dream which you cannot
remember,--
Broken, bewildering, vague, an echo that answers to nothing!
That time of year, you know. They stood by the gate in the meadow,
Fronting the sinking sun, and the level stream of its splendor
Crimsoned the meadow-slope and woodland with tenderest sunset,
Made her beautiful face like the luminous face of an angel,
Smote through the pained gloom of his heart like a hurt to the
sense, there.
Languidly clung about by the half-fallen shawl, and with folded
Hands, that held a few sad asters: "I sigh for this idyl
Lived at last to an end; and, looking on to my prose-life,"
With a smile, she said, and a subtle derision of manner,
"Better and better I seem, when I recollect all that has happened
Since I came here in June: the walks we have taken together
Through these darling meadows, and dear, old, desolate woodlands;
All our afternoon readings, and all our strolls through the moonlit
Village,--so sweetly asleep, one scarcely could credit the scandal,
Heartache, and trouble, and spite, that were hushed for the night,
in its silence.
Yes, I am better. I think I could even be civil to _him_ for his
kindness,
Letting me come here without him.... But open the gate, Cousin
Clement;
Seems to me it grows chill, and I think it is healthier in-doors.
--No, then I you need not speak, for I know well enough what is
coming:
Bitter taunts for the past, and discouraging views of the future?
Tragedy