SO SOON TIRED!

  Am I so soon grown tired?—­yet this old sky
  Can open still each morn so blue an eye,
  This great old river still through nights and days
  Run like a happy boy to holidays,
  This sun be still a bridegroom, though long wed,
  And still those stars go singing up the night,
  Glad as yon lark there splashing in the light: 
  Are these old things indeed unwearied,
Yet I, so soon grown tired, would creep away to bed!

AUTUMN

The year grows still again, the surging wake
  Of full-sailed summer folds its furrows up,
    As after passing of an argosy
    Old Silence settles back upon the sea,
  And ocean grows as placid as a cup. 
    Spring, the young morn, and Summer, the strong noon,
Have dreamed and done and died for Autumn’s sake: 
  Autumn that finds not for a loss so dear
    Solace in stack and garner hers too soon—­
  Autumn, the faithful widow of the year.

Autumn, a poet once so full of song,
  Wise in all rhymes of blossom and of bud,
Hath lost the early magic of his tongue,
  And hath no passion in his failing blood. 
Hear ye no sound of sobbing in the air? 
  ’Tis his.  Low bending in a secret lane,
Late blooms of second childhood in his hair,
    He tries old magic, like a dotard mage;
  Tries spell and spell, to weep and try again: 
Yet not a daisy hears, and everywhere
    The hedgerow rattles like an empty cage.

He hath no pleasure in his silken skies,
  Nor delicate ardours of the yellow land;
Yea, dead, for all its gold, the woodland lies,
  And all the throats of music filled with sand. 
Neither to him across the stubble field
  May stack nor garner any comfort bring,
    Who loveth more this jasmine he hath made,
  The little tender rhyme he yet can sing,
Than yesterday, with all its pompous yield,
    Or all its shaken laurels on his head.

A FROST FANCY

Summer gone,
Winter here;
Ways are white,
Skies are clear. 
And the sun
A ruddy boy
All day sliding,
While at night
The stars appear
Like skaters gliding
On a mere.

THE WORLD IS WIDE

The world is wide—­around yon court,
  Where dirty little children play,
Another world of street on street
  Grows wide and wider every day.

And round the town for endless miles
  A great strange land of green is spread—­
O wide the world, O weary-wide,
  But it is wider overhead.

For could you mount yon glittering stairs
  And on their topmost turret stand,—­
Still endless shining courts and squares,
  And lanes of lamps on every hand.

And, might you tread those starry streets
  To where those long perspectives bend,
O you would cast you down and die—­
  Street upon street, world without end.