"Indian Summer"

Indian Summer

Like palest gold the mellow sunlight creeps

            Across the porch and thro’ the open door,

            And spreads a checkered carpet on the floor.

The garden’s last red poppy, nodding, sleeps,

And one bee in its heart his senses steeps,

            With most delicious languor; one slim stalk

            Of hollyhock still bends beside the walk,

Starred with its lovely flowers. In soft heaps―

Like sweet, dead dreams―wind-shaken rose-leaves lie;

            The opal’s fire burns in the clouds that float

            Across the delicate azure of the sky.

The wind is one low, soft Æolian note;

            And yellower than the primrose East at morn,

            Stretch the wide, undulating fields of corn.

"Indian Summer" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).