October / Paul Hamilton Hayne

October

The passionate Summer's dead! the sky's aglow,
     With roseate flushes of matured desire,
The winds at eve are musical and low,
     As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre,
     Far up among the pillared clouds of fire,
Whose pomp of strange procession upward rolls,
With gorgeous blazonry of pictured scrolls,
     To celebrate the summer's past renown;
     Ah, me! how regally the Heavens look down,
O'ershadowing beautiful autumnal woods,
     And harvest fields with hoarded increase brown,
And deep-toned majesty of golden floods,
     That raise their solemn dirges to the sky,
     To swell the purple pomp that floateth by.

~~
Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886)
from Poems, 1855

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Paul Hamilton Hayne biography