Forest of Fontainebleau, 1918

XIII

The boy is late tonight binding his sheaves,
The twilight of these autumn eyes
Falls early now and chill. 
The murky sun has set
An hour ago behind the overhanging hill. 
Great piles of fallen leaves
Smoulder in every street
And through the columned smoke a scarlet jet
Of flame darts out and disappears.

The boy leans motionless upon his staff,
With all the sorrows of his fifteen years
Gazing out of his eyes into the fall,
A memory ineffable and sweet
Half tinged with voiceless passion, half
Plaintive with sad imaginings that drift
Like echoes of far-off autumnal bells. 
He starts up with a laugh,
Binds up the last gaunt sheaf and turns away;
Out of the dusk an inarticulate call
Rings keen across the solemn Berkshire woods,
And then the answer.  Impotent farewells
That eager voices lift
Into the hush of the receding day;
Full soon the silence surges in again,
Peaceful, inevitable, deep as death.

The boy has lingered late in the grey fields,
Knowing the first strange happiness of pain,
And the low voices of October moods. 
Now comes the night, the meadow yields
Unto the sky a damp and pungent breath;
The quiet air of the New England town
Seems confident that everyone is home
Safe by his fire. 
The frosty stars look down
Near, near above the kind familiar trees
In whose dry branches roam
The gentle spirits of the darkling breeze. 
Deep in its caverned heart the forest sings
Of mysteries unknown and vanished lore;
Old wisdom; dead desire;
Dreams of the past, of immemorial springs.... 
The wind is rising cold from the river:  close the door.

Tours, 1918

XIV

O lovely shepherd Corydon, how far
Thou wanderest from thine Ionian hills;
Now the first star
Rains pallid tears where the lost lands are,
And the red sunset fills
The cleft horizon with a flaming wine.

The grave significance of falling leaves
Soon shall make desolate thy singing heart,
When the cold wind grieves,
And the cold dews rot the standing sheaves,—­
Return, O Thou that art
The hope of spring in these lost lands of mine.

Chalons-sur-Marne, 1917

XV

O little shepherd boy, what sobs are those
That shake your slender shoulders, what despair
Has run her fingers through your rumpled hair,
And laid you prone beneath a weight of woes? 
The trees upon the hill will soon be bare,
A yellow blight is on the garden close,
But you, you need not mourn the vanished rose,
For many springs will find you just as fair.

Weep not for summer, she is past all weeping,
Fear not the winter, she in turn will pass,
And with the spring love waits for you, perchance,
When, with the morn, faint wings stir from their sleeping,
And the first petals scatter on the grass,
Under the orchards and the vines of France.