Most read ▸
Edward Shanks
August is gone and now this is September,
Softer the sun in a cloudier sky ;
Yellow the leaves grow and apples grow golden,
Blackberries ripen and hedges undress.
Watch and you'll see the departure of summer,
Here is the end, this the last month of all :
Pause and look back and remember its promise,
All that looked open and easy in May.
Nothing will stay them, the seasons go onward,
Lightly the bright months fly out of my hand,
Softly the leading note calls a new octave ;
Autumn is coming and what have I done ?
Even as summer my young days go over,
No day to pause on and nowhere to rest :
Slowly they go but implacably onwards,
Ah ! and my dreams, alas, still they are dreams.
I have no heart for any other joy,
The drenched September day turns to depart,
And I have said good-bye to what I love;
With my own will I vanquished my own heart.
On the long wind I hear the winter coming,
The window panes are cold and blind with rain;
With my own will I turned the summer from me
And summer will not come to me again.
The poplars in the fields of France
Are golden ladies come to dance;
But yet to see them there is none
But I and the September sun.
The girl who in their shadow sits
Can only see the sock she knits;
Her dog is watching all the day
That not a cow shall go astray.
The leisurely contented cows
Can only see the earth they browse;
Their piebald bodies through the grass
With busy, munching noses pass.
Alone the sun and I behold
Processions crowned with shining gold--
The poplars in the fields of France,
Like glorious ladies come to dance.
The husht September afternoon was sweet
With rich and peaceful light. I could not hear
On either side the sound of moving feet
Although the hidden road was very near.
The laden wood had powdered sun in it,
Slipped through the leaves, a quiet messenger
To tell me of the golden world outside
Where fields of stubble stretched through counties wide.
And yet I did not move. My head reposed
Upon a tuft of dry and scented grass
And, with half-seeing eyes, through eyelids closed,
I watched the languid chain of shadows pass,
Light as the slowly moving shade imposed
By summer clouds upon a sea of glass,
And strove to banish or to make more clear
The elusive and persistent dream of her.
Dragoons, I tell you the white hydrangeas
turn rust and go soon.
Already mid September a line of brown runs
over them.
One sunset after another tracks the faces, the
petals.
Waiting, they look over the fence for what
way they go.