An October Hush / Bliss Carman

An October Hush

The small red maple leaves, keen-scented, mute,
    Here fleck the stream, to grape-dark purple hushed:
More rich and lovelier than bloom or fruit
    Since honey-hearted snowy May-buds blushed.

Between the quick impulsive summer's heat
    And deep clear-eyed unhasting after-days,
Fall these few hours of warm ripe light, more sweet
    Than since those apple-pink new morns of May's.

~~
Bliss Carman (1861-1929), 1883
from Through the Year with the Poets, 1886

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

Bliss Carman biography

ForestWander Nature Photography, Fall Foliage Creek Leaves Stream, October 2009. 

CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.