As in these groves and gardens of September,
And yet already comes the chill
That bodes the world's last garden ill,
And in the shadow I have seen
A spectre,--even thine,
O Vandal, O November.

The wind leaps up with sudden screams
In gusts of chaff.
Two boys with blowing hair listen and laugh.
We hear the same wind, they and I,
Under the dark autumnal sky;
It blows strange music through their dreams.
Keenly it blows through mine,
Singing their epitaph.

Tours, 1918


X

The green canal is mottled with falling leaves,
Yellow leaves, fluttering silently;
A whirling gust ripples the woods, and heaves
The stricken branches with a sigh,
Then all is still again.
Unmoving, the green waterway receives
Ghosts of the dying forest to its breast;
Loneliness...quiet...not a wing has stirred
In the cold glades; no fish has leaped away