A RE-ASSURANCE

With what doubting eyes, oh sparrow,
  Thou regardest me,
Underneath yon spray of yarrow,
  Dipping cautiously.

Fear me not, oh little sparrow,
  Bathe and never fear,
For to me both pool and yarrow
  And thyself are dear.

THE POET’S POSSESSION

Think not, oh master of the well-tilled field,
This earth is only thine; for after thee,
When all is sown and gathered and put by,
Comes the grave poet with creative eye,
And from these silent acres and clean plots,
Bids with his wand the fancied after-yield,
A second tilth and second harvest, be,
The crop of images and curious thoughts.

AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE

No wind there is that either pipes or moans;
  The fields are cold and still; the sky
    Is covered with a blue-gray sheet
    Of motionless cloud; and at my feet
  The river, curling softly by,
Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones.

Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves
  The road runs rough and silent, lined
    With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray,
    And poplars pallid as the day,
  In masses spectral, undefined,
Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves.

And on beside the river’s sober edge
  A long fresh field lies black.  Beyond,
    Low thickets gray and reddish stand,
    Stroked white with birch; and near at hand,
  Over a little steel-smooth pond,
Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge.

Across a waste and solitary rise
  A ploughman urges his dull team,
    A stooped gray figure with prone brow
    That plunges bending to the plough
  With strong, uneven steps.  The stream
Rings and re-echoes with his furious cries.

Sometimes the lowing of a cow, long-drawn,
  Comes from far off; and crows in strings
    Pass on the upper silences. 
    A flock of small gray goldfinches,
  Flown down with silvery twitterings,
Rustle among the birch-cones and are gone.

This day the season seems like one that heeds,
  With fixed ear and lifted hand,
    All moods that yet are known on earth,
    All motions that have faintest birth,
  If haply she may understand
The utmost inward sense of all her deeds.

IN NOVEMBER

With loitering step and quiet eye,
Beneath the low November sky,
I wandered in the woods, and found
A clearing, where the broken ground
Was scattered with black stumps and briers,
And the old wreck of forest fires. 
It was a bleak and sandy spot,
And, all about, the vacant plot
Was peopled and inhabited
By scores of mulleins long since dead. 
A silent and forsaken brood