Nasturtium and sweet-william and red stocks,
And clover crouching in the border grass,
And blood-like fuschia, eve’s primrose and white phlox
And honeysuckle—­waved all their smell and hue
        Morn and eve anew.

But that far lime tree yellowing by the oak,
Warning oak, elm and poplar and each fresh tree
Shaking in the south wind delightedly,
And clover in the closeness of the grass,
        Warns also me.

And now when all the trees are standing still
Beneath the purple and white of the west sky,
And time is standing still—­as stand it will—­
That early yellowing lime with palsied fingers
        Cannot be still.

DARK CHESTNUT

Thou shaking thy dark shadows down,
Like leaves before the first leaves fall,
Pourest upon the head of night
Her loveliest loveliness of all—­
      Dark leaves that tremble
When soft airs unto softer call.

O, darker, softer fall her thoughts
Upon the cold fields of my mind,
Weaving a quiet music there
Like leaf-shapes trembling in least wind: 
      Dark thoughts that linger
When the light’s gone and the night’s blind.

I see her there beneath your boughs. 
Dark chestnut, though you see her not;
Her white face and white hands are clear
As the moon in your stretched arms caught;
      But stranger, clearer,
The living shadows of her thought.

LONELY AIRS

Ah, bird singing late in the gloam
While the evening shadow thickens,
And the dizzy bat-wings roam,
And the faint starlight quickens;

And her bud eve’s primrose bares
Before night’s cold fingers come: 
Thine are such lonely airs,
Bird singing late in the gloam!

THE CREEPER

It covered all
The cold east wall,
Its green, thin gold, purple, brown,
And flame running up and down;
Lifting its quiet bosom to every wind that crept
Up the high wall and in its darkness slept. 
Then when the wind slept all the creeper turned
To undiminishing fire that burned and burned and burned.

But one black night
(For not in the light
May such treacheries be done)
Came with dishonoured weapon one
And cut the stem just where the branches thin
Their million-leaf’d wild wandering begin: 
Cut the firm stem quite through, and so it bled,
And all the million leaves shivered and hung there dead.

The wall how cold,
The house how old
Became when that warm bright fire died,
And the fond wind could no more hide. 
And it was strange that so much death could be
From one dark night-hour’s darker felony;
And how the leaves being dead could not cast down
Their colours in bright pools of red and gold and brown.

—­It did not die,
But flamed on high
Morn after morn, even when white snow
Covered all brightness, high and low;
And in the night when the snow glimmered wan
Still beautiful as a fire its brightness shone: 
Its million quiet leaves quivering in my mind,
When from no earthly meadows crept the remembered wind.