Classic Poem

The beautiful days slip by,
The months of the musical names:
September, October!
Say then over, and listen, and know
How they glisten, and dazzle the eye
With their challenging color that flames,
With their tints that are splendid yet sober,
And their deep-hearted cry
That is mingled of winds and of waters, and flight
Of South-whirring birds who escape winter's blight. ...

Ah, the beautiful days!
Through a shimmer of haze,
Or in trance of a clarity stately,
Impassioned, sedately,
Keen a-cold or shot through with the sun,
They pass, and the autumn is done.

November, December:
And we sit by the fire where each ember
Must bid us to dream and remember. ...
They go, all the beautiful hours;
And the trees, and the flowers,
The growing, glad things have their session
And fade in an endless procession,
Yielding up of their guerdon of bloom
To tumble life-stilled to their tomb,
While dearth and dun searness replace them,
And earth's ancient arms close embrace them. ...

But their ruin is likewise their glory,
And that glory is ours!
For we feel they will come, young and deathless, —
Their fairness how breathless! —
When spring calls them up from their sleeping;
And after their hoary
Dim rest they shall rise and be keeping
Blithe trysts that to April belong.
So, our faith in their coming is strong.
And we are less fearful to die,
As the beautiful days slip by.
For our sleep, like their sleep, has a seeming
Of kindness, and into our dreaming
Creeps Hope. ...
All the beautiful things
Will come back, swift on wings,
Light afoot, and the wood and the plain
And mountain be lovely again,
Clothed on with most sumptuous vesture;
All the world make a gesture
Of joy. ...
And, oh, love of my heart,
Since we are a part
Of the wonder, the back-coming gladness,
We, too, shall be free of our sadness,
And welcome, hand-clasped, the returning
Sweet time, the reward of our yearning,
When the death-struck season of yore
Revisits us once more.