The trees have never seemed so green / Robert Hillyer

from Days and Seasons

IX

The trees have never seemed so green
Since I remember,
As in these groves and gardens of September,
And yet already comes the chill
That bodes the world's last garden ill,
And in the shadow I have seen
A spectre,— even thine,
O Vandal, O November.
The wind leaps up with sudden screams
In gusts of chaff.
Two boys with blowing hair listen and laugh.
We hear the same wind, they and I,
Under the dark autumnal sky;
It blows strange music through their dreams.
Keenly it blows through mine,
Singing their epitaph.

~~

Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)

from The Five Books of Youth, 1920 

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

Robert Hillyer biography