Ode to the spirit of earth in autumn

     Fair Mother Earth lay on her back last night,
     To gaze her fill on Autumn’s sunset skies,
     When at a waving of the fallen light
     Sprang realms of rosy fruitage o’er her eyes. 
     A lustrous heavenly orchard hung the West,
     Wherein the blood of Eden bloomed again: 
     Red were the myriad cherub-mouths that pressed,
     Among the clusters, rich with song, full fain,
     But dumb, because that overmastering spell
     Of rapture held them dumb:  then, here and there,
     A golden harp lost strings; a crimson shell
     Burnt grey; and sheaves of lustre fell to air. 
     The illimitable eagerness of hue
     Bronzed, and the beamy winged bloom that flew
     ’Mid those bunched fruits and thronging figures failed. 
     A green-edged lake of saffron touched the blue,
     With isles of fireless purple lying through: 
     And Fancy on that lake to seek lost treasures sailed.

     Not long the silence followed: 
     The voice that issues from thy breast,
     O glorious South-west,
     Along the gloom-horizon holloa’d;
     Warning the valleys with a mellow roar
     Through flapping wings; then sharp the woodland bore
     A shudder and a noise of hands: 
     A thousand horns from some far vale
     In ambush sounding on the gale. 
     Forth from the cloven sky came bands
     Of revel-gathering spirits; trooping down,
     Some rode the tree-tops; some on torn cloud-strips
     Burst screaming thro’ the lighted town: 
     And scudding seaward, some fell on big ships: 
     Or mounting the sea-horses blew
     Bright foam-flakes on the black review
     Of heaving hulls and burying beaks.

     Still on the farthest line, with outpuffed cheeks,
     ’Twixt dark and utter dark, the great wind drew
     From heaven that disenchanted harmony
     To join earth’s laughter in the midnight blind: 
     Booming a distant chorus to the shrieks
     Preluding him:  then he,
     His mantle streaming thunderingly behind,
     Across the yellow realm of stiffened Day,
     Shot thro’ the woodland alleys signals three;
     And with the pressure of a sea
     Plunged broad upon the vale that under lay.

     Night on the rolling foliage fell: 
     But I, who love old hymning night,
     And know the Dryad voices well,
     Discerned them as their leaves took flight,
     Like souls to wander after death: 
     Great armies in imperial dyes,
     And mad to tread the air and rise,
     The savage freedom of the skies
     To taste before they rot.  And here,
     Like frail white-bodied girls in fear,
     The birches swung from shrieks to sighs;
     The aspens, laughers at a breath,
     In showering spray-falls mixed their cries,