They brought me with a secret glee
The news I knew before they spoke,
And though they hoped to see me riven,
They found me light as dry leaves driven
Before the storm that splits an oak.
For I had learned from many an autumn
The way a leaf can drift and go,
Lightly, lightly, almost gay
Taking the unreturning way
To mix with winter and the snow.
I shall live to be old, who feared I should die young,
I shall live to be old,
I shall cling to life as the leaves to the creaking oak
In the rustle of falling snow and the cold.
The other trees let loose their leaves on the air
In their russet and red,
I have lived long enough to wonder which is the best,
And to envy sometimes the way of the early dead.
Listen, the damp leaves on the walks are blowing
With a ghost of sound;
Is it a fog or is it a rain dripping
From the low trees to the ground?
If I had gone before, I could have remembered
Lilacs and green after-noons of May;
I chose to wait, I chose to hear from autumn
Whatever she has to say.
See the leaves upon the tree !
That is where they ought to be :
Whether they be foul or fair.
Papa did not put them there.
It covered all
The cold east wall,
Its green, thin gold, purple, brown,
And flame running up and down;
Lifting its quiet bosom to every wind that crept
Up the high wall and in its darkness slept.
Then when the wind slept all the creeper turned
To undiminishing fire that burned and burned and burned.
But one black night
(For not in the light
May such treacheries be done)
Came with dishonoured weapon one
And cut the stem just where the branches thin
Their million-leaf'd wild wandering begin:
Cut the firm stem quite through, and so it bled,
And all the million leaves shivered and hung there dead.
When the leaves fall off the trees
Everybody walks on them :
Once they had a time of ease
High above, and every breeze
Used to stay and talk to them.
Then they were so debonair
As they fluttered up and down ;
Dancing in the sunny air,
Dancing without knowing there
Was a gutter in the town.
Now they have no place at all !
All the home that they can find
Is a gutter by a wall.
And the wind that waits their fall
Is an apache of a wind.
Discomfort sweeps my quiet as a wind
Leaps at trees and leaves them cold and thinned.
Not that I fear again the mastery
Of winds, for holding my indifference dear
I do not feel illusions stripped from me.
And yet this is a fear —
A fear of old discarded fears, of days
That cried out at irrevocable ways.
I cower for my own old cowardice.
For hours that beat upon the wind's broad breast
With hands as impotent as leaves are; this
Robs my new hour of rest.
I thought my pride had covered long ago
All the old scars, like broken twigs in snow.
I thought to luxuriate in rich decay,
As some far-seeing tree upon a hill;
Vengeful across the cold November moors,
Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak
Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,
Reverberant through lonely corridors.
The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,
Words out of lips that were no more to speak --
Words of the past that shook the old man's cheek
Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors.
And then there were the leaves that plagued him so!
The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside
Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then
They stopped, and stayed there -- just to let him know
How dead they were; but if the old man cried,
They fluttered off like withered souls of men.
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal, --
There where the vines cling crimson on the wall, --
And in the twilight wait for what will come.
The wind will moan, the leaves will whisper some --
Whisper of her, and strike you as they fall;
But go, and if you trust her she will call.
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal --
Luke Havergal.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies
To rift the fiery night that's in your eyes;
But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies --
In eastern skies.
The moonlight and the leaves,
Bells, these.
With tongues of silence;
Chiming in silver, violet and green;
Ringing, rising, then falling on
The ground,
Set to weaving shadow-sounds
With the dark threads of sleep.
Like liquid gems pouring to a measure
Of perfume,
With shades of lavender tunes;
A dream-music of soundless sounds.
More than silence and sleep,
This bell melody
Of light, of air, and leaf,
Played by moon-bedimmed stars;
The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind
as it mutters
Something which sets the black poplars ashake with
hysterical laughter;
While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern
shutters.
Further down the valley the clustered tombstones
recede,
Winding about their dimness the mist's grey
cerements, after
The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly
started to bleed.
The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as
they pass
To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with
two dark-filled eyes
Go through the gates with closed eyes.
Stand erect and let your black face front the west.
Drop the axe and leave the timber where it lies;
A woodman on the hill must have his rest.
Go where leaves are lying brown and wet.
Forget her warm arms and her breast who mothered you,
And every face you ever loved forget.
Close your eyes; walk bravely through.