"An Autumn Day"

An Autumn Day

The sunlight pales upon the ragged ferns

            And the dog-fennel’s creamy drifts of snow,

            And two white butterflies―child-spirits―go

Winging their ways. The maple forest burns

Along the mountainside―so red it turns

            The very air to crimson. Sweet and low

            The brooks go singing, loitering as they flow,

And all the hollow stumps are rustic urns

Heaped to their scalloped brims with yellow leaves.

            In every pasture lifts the golden-rod

            Its bending plumes; the fields are reft of sheaves

Where late the merry gleaners, singing, trod.

            One broken frond of mist the soft air cleaves―

            The year’s last incense pushing up to God.

"An Autumn Day" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).