h red mists bound about his brows,
Went the swart Autumn, wading to the knees
Through drifts of dead leaves shaken from the boughs
Of the old forest trees,
The gusts upon their baleful errands run
O'er the bright ruin, fading from our eyes,
And over all, like clouds about the sun,
A shadow lies.

For, fallen asleep upon a dreary world,
Slant to the light, one late October morn,
From some rough cavern blew a tempest cold,
And tearing off his garland of ripe corn,
Twisted with blue grapes, sweet with delicious wine,
And Ceres' drowsy flowers, so dully red,
Deep in his cavern leafy and divine,
Buried him with his dead.

Then, with big black beard glistening in the frost,
Under the icy arches of the north,
And o'er the still graves of the seasons lost,
Blustered the Winter forth--
Spring, with your crown of roses budding new,
Thought-nursing and most melancholy Fall,
Summer, with bloomy meadows wet with dew,
Blighting your beauties all.

Oh heart, your spring-time dream will idle prove,
Your summer but forerun the autumn's death,
The flowery arches in the home of love
Fall crumbling, at a breath;
And, sick at last with that great sorrow's shock,
As some poor prisoner, pressing to the bars
His forehead, calls on Mercy to unlock
The chambers of the stars--
You, turning off from life's first mocking glow
Leaning it may be, still on broken faith,
Will down the vale of Autumn gladly go
To the chill winter, Death.

Hark! from the empty bosom of the grove
I hear a sob, as one forlorn might pine--
The white-limbed beauty of a god is thine,
King of the seasons! and the night that hoods
Thy brow majestic, brightest stars enweave--
Thou surely canst not grieve;

But only far away
Makest stormy prophecies; well, lift them higher,
Till morning on the forehead of the day
Presses a seal of fire
Dearer to me the scene
Of nature shrinking from thy rough embrace,
Than Summer, with her rustling robe of green,
Cool blowing in my face.

The moon is up--how still the yellow beams
That slantwise lie upon the stirless air,
Sprinkled with frost, like pearl-entangled hair,
O'er beauty's cheeks that streams,
How the red light of Mars their pallor mocks.