University of Virginia Library

[The dawn comes in clad all in hodden gray]

The dawn comes in clad all in hodden gray,
And, like a tattered cloak its wildness wears,

183

The ragged rain sweeps stormily this way:
The acorn, like a bullet, strikes the soil;
And blown from its wild pod the milkweed's plume,
Wan in the ghostly and the gusty gloom,
Flares like a lamp hand-hollowed of trembling toil.
November 12th, 1904.