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The Autumn Garden

by Edmund Gosse

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57

II

“Nature hath spent at last her shining store,
And I have lived my day,” the painter said,
Who felt the arrowy throe, the dizzied head,
And laid his palette down for evermore.
Well had he learned the melancholy lore
That trains the rose, without a murmur made,
To break the clusters of her royal red,
And strew her beauty on the windy shore.
Some warning, surely, must I read to-night,
In flower and tree, in flying light and cloud;
It is the voice of Death, not near, nor loud,
But whispering from some cypress out of sight,
That bids me hearken for the feathery flight,
And draw my robes across my shoulders bowed.