 | The Poet and Nature and The Morning Road |  |
AUTUMN WINDS.
What voices are these,Crying upon the hills?
The Winds of Autumn
Tossing and bowing the giant trees!
Winds of Death,
Jubilant, acclaiming,
Filled with imperious portent,
Declaring, demanding;
Bidding the world put off its raiment of gold and of scarlet,
Its mantle of pride and arrogance,
And don the garments, ashen and sober,
Of melancholy and repentance.
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In their music
Shawms and cymbals and sackbuts vie with one another,
Reeling and reverberating to the marching of sombre hosts,
Giant-footed, funereal,
To whose sorrow the forests yield themselves,
Rocking to and fro
Like mad fanatics that toss and whirl,
Filled with the frenzy of death,
The god they celebrate—
Their stormy raiment whirling about them,
They dance, lugubrious
In their tattered mantles of leaves,
Intoning their hearts' desolation.
| The Poet and Nature and The Morning Road | |