Autumn Love / John Byrne Leicester Warren

Autumn Love

The autumn brought my love to me.
     The birds sing not in spring alone;
For fancy all the year is free
     To find a sweetness of its own:
And sallow woods and crystal morn
Were sweeter than the budded thorn.

When redwings peopled brake and down
     I kissed her mouth: in morning air
The rosy clover dried to brown
     Beneath thro' all its glowing square.
Around the bramble berries set
Their beaded globes intenser jet.

True love, I whispered, when I fold
     To mine thy little lips so sweet,
The headland trembles into gold,
     The sun goes up on firmer feet.
And drenched in glory one by one
The terrace clouds will melt and run.

Our lips are close as doves in nest;
     And life in strength flows everywhere
In larger pulses through the breast
     That breathe with thine a mutual air.
My nature almost shrinks to be
In this great moment's ecstasy.

Lo, yonder myriad-tinted wood
     With all its phases golden-brown,
Lies calm; as if it understood,
     That in the flutter of thy gown
Abides a wonder more to me
Than lustrous leagues of forest sea.

And far and deep we heard the sound
     And low of pasture-going kine.
Your trembling lips spake not: I found
     Their silence utterly divine.
Again, the fluttering accents crept
Between them, failed, then how you wept!

~~
John Byrne Leicester Warren (1835-1895)
from Studies in Verse, 1865

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Byrne Leicester Warren biography