Hesperian Fall

The season brings but little gold, And only rusty gules and sanguines dull To these rude hills with darkling lava cored And with thick, sombre rocks embossed That yield small pasture to the mordant sun; And leaves of toneless brown and fawn Cluster the glaucous foliage of blue-oaks Amid the fallow grasses leonine; And the live-oaks' grave and winter-waiting green And the dim greys and dusky verdures of the pines Seem to turn darker with October's heat. In lowland and ravine By dwindled nil and narrowed river, willow And poplar and wild grape Will burn to purer yellows, To ruddier or more empurpled stains; And in the rows of fruit-plucked orchard trees Exotic pomp, deciduous splendor royal-hued Of other climes and orient autumns flame: But here the desiccate and sun-struck fells No similar gauds assume. Watching the tardy portents of slow change Prolonged unnotably through changeless days, I walk in solitude Where memories return That die not with a single season's leaves But still delay the blind nepenthean doom, And gather stranger hues Than these that clothe the tree Or fold the autumnal earth. Love walks with me, a spectre beautiful With fallen seasons and with suns that were, And on the ground our linkèd shadows run Together, and her heavy hair is blown, The invisible sending of a witch's web, On winds from off the sea Whose autumn shore we followed long ago; And ecstasy and teen Wild as the spray of combers reaching us On crags that held the perilous paths of love, Return to haunt these uplands calm and sere; And wafts of cypress-balsam, keen and sweet, From the sped years blow over me, And Lobos rises like a granite ghost To crown the sealess wold. Thus conscious and remembering, I move across a land That seems oblivion's self— A land whose primal languors drowse the will, Whose sleepy light and dim-horizoned air Proffer the earth's antique forgetfulness. But for awhile I spurn The peace that comes to all or rathe or late, And clasp the cherished pain As one with face amid thorned blossoms pressed Who finds them fragranter Than those that bear no thorn. Now, where the stones lie still And taciturn and secret and withdrawn In that dark entity we cannot share, And where the pines their level branches swing Lightly in gusts that rise and pass, But stir not ever from their rooted stance, I hear a voice that sings Some old-world measure magical and clear, Or catch the glimmer of a girl's white feet Moving in moonlit saraband. O voice none other hears, that sings for me! Now must I muse on passions that unfold Slow as the lichen grows, Or swiftly as the fungus of the night; And think on how The many have withered but the one abides. . . . The shadow of a cloud Falls on the gnarled and boulder-buttressed oak Beneath whose boughs I pause, Noting the mistletoe Already pearled with wintry berries white 'Mid leaves of mottled bronze and feuillemort. Haply the days draw nigh When dark-toothed wind and tempest will assail Such spare, sad splendor as these hills put on, And wildly strew Green leaves and sere together to that doom Which waits for all. Meanwhile the southward-drooping sun shines warm On grasses pale and foliages that fade And on the fadeless lichen of the stone; And still, O season of Circean dreams Preferred from long ago, I find a music far and sorcerous Like one who hears the dryad singing from her tree; And still, beneath this latter sun, Love is the freshness of your shadows, love The flame that in your distant azure sleeps.