's empty level,
Perhaps withholds reward.

PART IV

LATE AUTUMN

_They who die young are blest.--
Should we not envy such?
They are Earth's happiest,
God-loved and favored much!--
They who die young are blest._

1

_Sick and sad, propped among pillows, she sits at her window._

'Though the dog-tooth violet come
With April showers,
And the wild-bees' music hum
About the flowers,
We shall never wend as when
Love laughed leading us from men
Over violet vale and glen,
Where the bob-white piped for hours,
And we heard the rain-crow's drum.

Now November heavens are gray;
Autumn kills
Every joy--like leaves of May
In the rills.--
Still I sit and lean and listen
To a voice that has arisen
In my heart--with eyes that glisten
Looking at the happy hills
Fading dark-blue far away.

2

_She gazes out upon the dying garden._

There rank death clutches at the flowers
And drags them down and stamps in earth.
At morn the thin, malignant hours,
Shrill-mouthed among the windy bowers,
Clamor a bitter mirth.--
Or is it heart-break that, forlorn,
Would so conceal itself in scorn?

At noon the weak, white sunlight crawls,
Like feeble feet once beautiful,
From mildewed walks to mildewed walls,
Down which the oozing moisture falls
Upon the cold toadstool.--
Faint on the leaves it drips and creeps--
Or is it tears of one who weeps?

At night a misty blur of moon
Slips through the trees,--pale as a face
Of melancholy marble hewn;--
And, like the phantom of some tune,
Winds whisper in the place.--
Or is it love come back again,
Seeking its perished joy in vain?

3

_She muses upon the past._

When in her cloudy chiton,
Spring freed the frozen rills,
And walked in rainbowed light on
The forests, fields, and hills;
Beyond the world's horizon,
That no such glory lies on,
And no such hues bedizen,
Love led us far from ills.

When Summer came, a sickle
Stuck in her sheaf of gleams,
And let the honey trickle
From out the beehives' seams;
Within the violet-blotted
Sweet book to us alloted,--
Whose lines are starry dotted,--
Love read us still his dreams.

Then Autumn came,--a liar,
A fair-faced heretic;--
In gypsy garb of fire,
Throned on a harvest rick.--
Our lives, that fate had thwarted,
Stood pale and broken hearted,--
Thou