The dry dead leaves flit by with thin weird tunes,
  Like failing murmurs of some conquered creed,
Graven in mystic markings with strange runes,
  That none but stars and biting winds may read;
Here I will wait a little; I am weary,
  Not torn with pain of any lurid hue,
But only still and very gray and dreary,
  Sweet sombre lands, like you.

LAMENT OF THE WINDS

We in sorrow coldly witting,
In the bleak world sitting, sitting,
  By the forest, near the mould,
Heard the summer calling, calling,
Through the dead leaves falling, falling,
  That her life grew faint and old.

And we took her up, and bore her,
With the leaves that moaned before her,
  To the holy forest bowers,
Where the trees were dense and serried,
And her corpse we buried, buried,
  In the graveyard of the flowers.

Now the leaves, as death grows vaster,
Yellowing deeper, dropping faster,
  All the grave wherein she lies
With their bodies cover, cover,
With their hearts that love her, love her,
  For they live not when she dies: 

And we left her so, but stay not
Of our tears, and yet we may not,
  Though they coldly thickly fall,
Give the dead leaves any, any,
For they lie so many, many,
  That we cannot weep for all.

BALLADE OF SUMMER’S SLEEP

Sweet summer is gone; they have laid her away—­
  The last sad hours that were touched with her grace—­
In the hush where the ghosts of the dead flowers play;
  The sleep that is sweet of her slumbering space
Let not a sight or a sound erase
  Of the woe that hath fallen on all the lands: 
Gather, ye dreams, to her sunny face,
  Shadow her head with your golden hands.

The woods that are golden and red for a day
  Girdle the hills in a jewelled case,
Like a girl’s strange mirth, ere the quick death slay
  The beautiful life that he hath in chase. 
  Darker and darker the shadows pace
    Out of the north to the southern sands,
  Ushers bearing the winter’s mace: 
  Keep them away with your woven hands.

The yellow light lies on the wide wastes gray,
  More bitter and cold than the winds that race,
From the skirts of the autumn, tearing away,
  This way and that way, the woodland lace. 
  In the autumn’s cheek is a hectic trace;
    Behind her the ghost of the winter stands;
  Sweet summer will moan in her soft gray place: 
    Mantle her head with your glowing hands.

Envoi.

Till the slayer be slain and the spring displace
  The might of his arms with her rose-crowned bands,
Let her heart not gather a dream that is base: 
  Shadow her head with your golden hands.

WINTER