When the white frosts cross the threshold,
Summer softly shuts the door.

Like cold love and empty pain,
Fades the sun and drifts the rain.
Tips the world and slips the season,
Swinging wide the doors again.




Runners of the Rain

Gaunt and black the naked pines are scrawled across the sky;
The wild wet winds are clinging where the hard peaks lift and soar;
They watch our long gray hosts of rain forever marching by,
While up through all the canyons we send our sullen roar.

From every sodden meadow we've trodden out the sun;
We've ground the pale green stalks of grass
that lifted through the hills;
Across the yelping torrents a thousand feet have run,
Till waters scream in anger and the wide-mouthed valley fills.

Among the moaning spruces we threshed our heedless way;
And out upon the barrens where the lonely spaces hide,
We stamped the miles of mosses and blackened out the day,
And waked the awful silence where all the winds have died.

The stars flamed brave before us and the greater light hung still