The End of Summer / Madison Cawein [1902]

The End of Summer

Pods are the poppies, and slim spires of pods
    The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes
    Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds
Collapsing at a touch; the lote, that sods
The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods
    And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds,
    Around the sleepy water and its reeds.
Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods.
Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead!
    The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre,
    Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire:
While from the East, as from a garden bed,
    Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon – like some
    Great golden melon – saying, "Fall has come."

~~

Madison Cawein (1865-1914)

from A Voice on the Wind, and other poems, 1902

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Madison Cawein biography