Autumn

Autumn: the year breathes dully towards its death, beside its dying sacrificial fire; the dim world's middle-age of vain desire is strangely troubled, waiting for the breath that speaks the winter's welcome malison to fix it in the unremembering sleep: the silent woods brood o'er an anxious deep, and in the faded sorrow of the sun, I see my dreams' dead colours, one by one, forth-conjur'd from their smouldering palaces, fade slowly with the sigh of the passing year. They wander not nor wring their hands nor weep, discrown'd belated dreams! but in the drear and lingering world we sit among the trees and bow our heads as they, with frozen mouth, looking, in ashen reverie, towards the clear sad splendour of the winter of the far south.