The Birch Tree

Touched with beauty, I stand still and gaze In the autumn twilight. Yellow leaves and brown The grass enriching, gleam, or waver down From lime and elm: far--glimmering through the haze The quiet lamps in order twinkle; dumb And fair the park lies; faint the city's hum. And I regret not June's impassioned prime, When her deep lilies banqueted the air, And this now ruined, then so fragrant lime Cooled with clear green the heavy noon's high glare; Nor flushed carnations, breathing hot July; Nor April's thrush in the blithest songs of the year, With brown bloom on the elms and dazzling sky; So strange a charm there lingers in this austere Resigning month, yielding to what must be. Yet most, O delicate birch, I envy thee, Child among trees! with silvery slender limbs And purple sprays of drooping hair. Night dims The grass; the great elms darken; no birds sing. At last I sigh for the warmth and the fragrance flown. But thou in the leafless twilight shinest alone, Awaiting in ignorant trust the certain spring.