Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/100

 And night by night the fitful gale

Doth carry past the bittern's boom,

The dingo's yell, the plover's wail,

While lumbering shadows start, and loom,

And hiss through gloom.

No sign of grace—no hope of green,

Cool-blossomed seasons marks the spot;

But chained to iron doom, I ween,

'Tis left, like skeleton, to rot

Where ruth is not.

For on this hut hath murder writ,

With bloody fingers, hellish things;

And God will never visit it

With flower or leaf of sweet-faced Springs,

Or gentle wings.

Winter hath gone, like a wearisome guest,

And, behold, for repayment,

September comes in with the wind of the West

And the Spring in her raiment!

The ways of the frost have been filled of the flowers,

While the forest discovers

Wild wings, with the halo of hyaline hours,

And the music of lovers.

September, the maid with the swift, silver feet!

She glides, and she graces

The valleys of coolness, the slopes of the heat,

With her blossomy traces;

Sweet month, with a mouth that is made of a rose,

She lightens and lingers

In spots where the harp of the evening glows,

Attuned by her fingers.

The stream from its home in the hollow hill slips

In a darling old fashion;

And the day goeth down with a song on its lips,

Whose key-note is passion.