Song-Surf

Autumn is near, and the tired year 'mid praise
Lies down with leaf and blossom on his breast —
Autumn's near.

FULFILMENT

A-bask in the mellow beauty of the ripening sun,
Sad with the lingering sense of summer's purpose done,
The shorn and searing fields stretch from me one by one
Along the creek.

The corn-stalks drop their shadows down the fallow hill;
Wearing autumnal warmth the farm sleeps by the mill,
Around each heavy eave low smoke hangs blue and still —
Life's flow is weak.

Along the weedy roads and lanes I walk – or pause —
Ponder a fallen nut or quirking crow whose caws
Seem with prehuman hintings fraught or ancient awes
Of forest deeps.

Of forest deeps the pale-face hunter never trod,
Nor Indian, with the silent stealth of Nature shod;
Deeps tense with the timelessness and solitude of God,
Who never sleeps.

And many times has Autumn, on her harvest way,
Gathered again into the earth leaf, fruit, and spray;
Here many times dwelt rueful as she dwells to-day,
The while she reaps.

LAST SIGHT OF LAND

The clouds in woe hang far and dim:
I look again, and lo,
Only a faint and shadow line
Of shore – I watch it go.

The gulls have left the ship and wheel
Back to the cliff's gray wraith.
Will it be so of all our thoughts
When we set sail on Death?

And what will the last sight be of life
As lone we fare and fast?
Grief and the face we love in mist —
Then night and awe too vast?

Or the dear light of Hope – like that,
Oh, see, from the lost shore
Kindling and calling "Onward, you
Shall reach the Evermore!"

SILENCE

Silence is song unheard,
Is beauty never born,
Is light forgotten – left unstirred
Upon Creation's morn.

THE END