Autumn Dream / Lilian Leveridge

Autumn Dream

I know where the oaks and maples
Are setting the hills ablaze,
And the elms and the amber beeches
Are gilding the woodland ways.
I know where the scarlet sumachs
Are holding their torches high,
And the soft, blue smoke of the asters
Floats up to the rim of sky.

I know where the ripe nuts cluster —
Brown twins in a burly husk —
On the ridge where the crested bluejay
Wings home in the frosty dusk;
Where the killdeer calls in the starlight
His plaintive and weird good-night,
And the silence is stirred by the wing-beats
Of geese on their southward flight.
I know where a forest pathway
Winds on to the rim of the world,
Where smoke-wreaths hang in the twilight,
Like banners of love unfurled,
O’er an old grey house in the valley.
O see, in the autumn gloam,
Like beacons lit for a welcome,
The beckoning lights of home.

~~
Lilian Leveridge (1879-1953)
from The Blossom Trail, 1932

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Lilian Leveridge biography