Water in hidden glens
    From the secret heart of the mountains,
  Where the red fox hath its dens
    And the gods their crystal fountains;
  Up runnel and leaping cataract,
  Boulder and ledge, I climbed and tracked,
  Till I came to the top of the world and the fen
  That drinks up the clouds and cisterns the rain,
    And down through the floors of the deep morass
  The procreant woodland essences drain—­
  The thunder’s home, where the eagles scream
    And the centaurs pass;
  But, where it was born, I lost my stream.

  ’Twas in vain I said:  “’Tis here it springs,
  Though no more it leaps and no more it sings;”
  And I thought of a poet whose songs I knew
  Of morning made and shining dew—­
  I remembered the mire of the marshes too.

  Autumn

  The sad nights are here and the sad mornings,
  The air is filled with portents and with warnings,
  Clouds that vastly loom and winds that cry,
  A mournful prescience
  Of bright things going hence;
  Red leaves are blown about the widowed sky,
  And late disconsolate blooms
  Dankly bestrew
  The garden walks, as in deserted rooms
  The parted guest, in haste to bid adieu,
  Trinklets and shreds forgotten left behind,
  Torn letters and a ribbon once so brave—­
  Wreckage none cares to save,
  And hearts grow sad to find;
  And phantom echoes, as of old foot-falls,
  Wander and weary out in the thin air,
  And the last cricket calls—­
  A tiny sorrow, shrilling “Where? ah! where?”

  The rose in winter

  When last I saw this opening rose
    That holds the summer in its hand,
  And with its beauty overflows
    And sweetens half a shire of land,
  It was a black and cindered thing,
    Drearily rocking in the cold,
  The relic of a vanished spring,
    A rose abominably old.

  Amid the stainless snows it grinned,
    A foul and withered shape, that cast
  Ribbed shadows, and the gleaming wind
    Went rattling through it as it passed;
  It filled the heart with a strange dread,
    Hag-like, it made a whimpering sound,
  And gibbered like the wandering dead
    In some unhallowed burial-ground.

  Whoso on that December day
    Had seen it so deject and lorn,
  So lone a symbol of decay,
    Had dreamed of it this summer morn? 
  Divined the power that should relume
    A flame so spent, and once more bring
  That blackened being back to bloom,—­
    Who could have dreamed so strange a thing?

  The frozen stream

  Stream that leapt and danced
  Down the rocky ledges,
  All the summer long,
  Past the flowered sedges,
  Under the green rafters,
  With their leafy laughters,
  Murmuring your song: 
  Strangely still and tranced,
  All your singing ended,