The Waning Year

A Sense of something that is sad and strange; Of something that is felt as death is felt, As shadows, phantoms, in a haunted grange, Around me seems to melt. It rises, so it seems, from the decay Of the dim woods; from withered leaves and weeds, And dead flowers hanging by the woodland way Sad, hoary heads of seeds. And from the cricket's song, so feeble now 'T is like a sound heard in the heart, a call Dreamier than dreams; and from the shaken bough, From which the acorns fall. From scents and sounds it rises, sadly slow, This presence, that hath neither face nor form; That in the woods sits like demented woe, Whispering of wreck and storm. A presence wrought of melancholy grief, And dreams that die; that, in the streaming night, I shall behold, like some fantastic leaf, Beat at my window's light. That I shall hear, outside my storm-lashed door, Moan like the wind in some rain-tortured tree; Or 'round my roof and down my chimney roar All the wild night to me.