The Poet and Nature and The Morning Road

That old Magician, Fall, steps in and cries
Before the curtain of the sunset skies:
At which a gate unlatches,
And, red-cloaked to the chin,
The Day, in shreds, he matches,
Of leopard-colored skin,
Goes out, and Night comes in,
A moon-ray 'mid his patches.

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Now East, now West he summons up a form,
That buttons close with stars a coat of storm:
Dim caps of purple asters,
And vests of iron-weeds,
The fields puts on; and, masters,
Blowing faint cricket-reeds,
Pass where the old lane leads
Into the mushroom-pastures.

The grass greens, satined white with frost,
A diamond carpet where his footsteps crossed:
Dawn enters; ruby glitter
Makes beautiful each trunk;
And in the fungous litter
Of woods, behold him sunk,
With his own magic drunk,
His bird-like mouth a-twitter.

At noonday he assumes a new disguise,
And on the hills a tawny panther lies:
How changed the world he touches!
The woodlands there reveal
Red gold within their clutches,
That hands, like leaves, conceal;
Or jewels, that appeal
Through forest rents, like smutches.

Deep crimson was his garb as he went by,
And on the mystic hills I heard him sigh:
“Now all my arts are ended.
Good-bye, sweet World, good-bye!”
And toward the West he wended,
Letting a feather fly,
That to his cap of sky,
One brilliant star pinned splendid.

University of Virginia Library

THE MAGICIAN