s cold
on the tattered weeds.

A month ago and the warm winds ran over the stalks
of gold,
With the grass-heads wet in the morning mists
and the daisies topped with bees;
And now the last of the year lies dead,
the world walks bent, and old,
And only the bitter lash of the wind sweeps
in from the iron seas.

Dead Days

The haws cling to the thorn,
Shrivelled and red;
The limbs long dead
Clutch at a leaf long torn--
It taps all day on the spikes
As the spume licks over the dikes.

The reeds creak in the dawn
By the dead pond;
Dry tongues respond
From grasses yellow and drawn;
And ever scourged by the wind,
The alders clatter and grind.

Vines furred with the frost
String from the wall:
Their bones recall
Summer leaves long lost,
Cricket and fly and bee
And their low melody.

No bird wails to the waste
Of scentless snow,
Where streaming low
The steel-blue shadows haste;
But through the hard night
The dead moon takes flight

The Winter Harvest

Between the blackened curbs lie stacked the
harvest of the skies,
Long lines of frozen, grimy cocks befouled
by city feet;
On either side the racing throngs, the crowding
cliffs, the cries,
And ceaseless winds that eddy down to whip
the iron street.

The wagons whine beneath their loads, the
raw-boned horses strain;
A hundred sullen shovels claw and heave the
sodden mass--
There lifts no dust of scented moats, no cheery
call of swain,
Nor birds that pipe from border brush across
the yellow grass.

No cow-bells honk from upland fields, no sunset
thrushes call
To swarthy, bare-limbed harvesters beyond
the stubble roads;
But flanges grind on frosted steel, the weary
snow-picks fall,
And twisted, toiling backs are bent to pile the
bitter loads.

No shouting from the intervales, no singing from
the hill,
No scent of trodden tansy weeds among the
golden grain----,
Only the silent, cringing forms beneath the
aching chill.
Only the hungry eyes of want in haggard
cheeks of pain.

Flowers of the Sky

The snow was four feet deep beyond my door.
(I never knew the cold so cru