The green canal is mottled with falling leaves,
Yellow leaves, fluttering silently;
A whirling gust ripples the woods, and heaves
The stricken branches with a sigh,
Then all is still again. 
Unmoving, the green waterway receives
Ghosts of the dying forest to its breast;
Loneliness...quiet...not a wing has stirred
In the cold glades; no fish has leaped away
From the heavy waters; not a drop of rain
Distils from the pervading mist. 
Sluggishly out of the west
A grey canal-boat glides, half-seen, unheard;
The sweating horses on the towpath sway
Backward and forward in a rhythmic strain;
It passes by, a dream within a dream,
Down the dark corridor of leaning boughs,
Down the long waterways of endless fall. 
A shiver stirs the woods; a fitful gleam
Of sun gilds the sky’s overhanging brows;
Then shadowy silence, and the yellow stream
Of dead leaves dropping to the green canal.

Moret-sur-Loing, 1918

XI

They who have gone down the hill are far away;
From the still valleys I can hear them call;
Their distant laughter faintly floats
Through the unmoving air and back to me. 
I am alone with the declining day
And the declining forest where the notes
Of all the happy minstrelsy,
Birds and leaf-music and the rest,
Sink separately in the hush of fall. 
The sun and clouds conflicting in the west
Swirl into smoky light together and fade
Under the unbroken shadow;
Under the shadowed peace that is the night;
Under the night’s great quietude of shade. 
The sheep below me in the meadow
Seem drifting on the haze, serene and white,
Pale pastured dreams, unearthly herds that roam
Where the dead reign and phantoms make their home. 
They also pass, even as the clear ring
Of the sad Angelus through the vales echoing.

Montigny, 1918

XII

Where two roads meet amid the wood,
There stands a white sepulchral rood,
Beneath whose shadow, wayfarers
Would pause to offer up their prayers. 
There is no house for miles around,
No sound of beast, no human sound,
Only the trees like sombre dreams
From whose bare boughs the water drips;
And the pale memory of death. 
The haze hangs heavy without breath,
It hangs so heavy that it seems
To hold a silent finger to its lips.

In after years the spectral cross
Will be quite overgrown with moss,
And wayfarers will go their way
Nor stop to meditate and pray. 
The spring will nest in all the trees
Unblighted by the memories
Of autumn and the god of pain. 
The leaves will whisper in the sun,
Life will crown death with snowy flowers,
Long hence...but now the autumn lowers,
The sky breaks into gusts of rain,
Turn thee to sleep, the day is nearly done.