RAIN AND SUNLIGHT IN OCTOBER.
Reading edition
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BY EMILY HERRMANN.
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The grape-leaf’s edge is crisping
Beside our window-pane;
Small chirping things are shrinking
From cold October rain.
I hear the pattering of its feet
All round about our home—
Among the loosely garnered shocks,
Along the runnel’s foam.
There sings no bird among our trees—
Whose robes are waxing thin—
And yellow leaves, on withered grass,
Dim graves are sinking in.
Chilling is touch of Autumn rain,
Darkly the gray cloud lowers,
Shutting the sunlight from our paths
Among the drooping flowers.
Yet gently, as to our weary brows
Come folding wings of sleep,
It moves along the furrowed fields
Where summer dust lies deep.
Bravely ’twill nurse the infant grain
That in its cradle lies,
And nerve it to struggle with the storm
Before old Winter’s eyes.
And now how quietly all about
October sunlight falls;
Tracking, with stars, the evening rain,
Sparkling on dead leaves’ palls.
Moving, in shocks of garnered maize,
Is many a fluttering wing;
And the wheat smiles to gentle light
As if ’twere a living thing.
In showers, their crimson garments fall
From off majestic forms,
Whose hearts, in the living sap kept warm,
Are fearless of wildest storms.
Round us the forest, in mellow haze,
Shuts a still glory in;
Under its shadow the cattle graze—
Soon to it we shall win!
Shaking their nuts from laden limbs,
Sharing the squirrel’s mite,
Gaily we’ll gather on tufted moss
In the yellow Autumn light.
By freshening green on the fading grass
Life in its depth has stirred,
We are not alone among changing leaves,
For, hark! there’s a singing bird!