Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/165



Crimson heath-bells making regal all the solitary places; Dominant light, that pierces down into the deep blue water spaces; Sun-uprisings, and sun-settings, and intensities of noon; Purple darkness of the midnight, and the glory of the moon;

Rapid, rosy-tinted lightnings, where the rocky clouds are riven, Like the lifting of a veil before the inner courts of heaven; Silver stars in azure evenings, slowly climbing up the steep; Cornfields ripening to the harvest, and the wide seas smooth with sleep.

Circled with those living splendours, Summer passed from out my sight; Like a dream that filled with beauty all the caverns of the night! And the vision and the presence into empty nothing ran— And the New Year was still older, and seemed now a youthful man.

Autumn! Forth from glowing orchards stepped he gaily in a gown Of warm russet freaked with gold, and with a vision sunny brown; On his head a rural chaplet, wreathed with heavily drooping grapes, And broad shadow-casting vine leaves like the Bacchanalian shapes.

Fruits and berries rolled before him from the year's exhausted horn; Jets of wine went spinning upwards, and he held a sheaf of corn: And he laughed for very joy, and he danced from too much pleasure, And he sang old songs of harvest, and he quaffed a mighty measure.

But above this wild delight an overmastering graveness rose, And the fields and trees seemed thoughtful in their absolute repose: And I saw the woods consuming in a many-coloured death— Streaks of yellow flame down-deepening through the green that lingereth.

Sanguine flashes, like a sunset, and austerely shadowing brown; And I heard, within the silence, the nuts sharply rattling down: And I saw the long dark hedges all alight with scarlet fire, Where the berries, pulpy-ripe, had spread their bird-feasts on the briar.

I beheld the southern vineyards, and the hop-grounds of our land, Sending gusts of fragrance outwards, nearly to the salt sea strand; Saw the windy moors rejoicing in their tapestry of fern, And the stately weeds and rushes, that to dusty dryness turn.