With Withering, With Elemental Fire: Laying Me Prone; Or Leaving A Towering And Tortured Trunk, A Blackened Shape, In The Shuddering And Rejecting Forest A Trysting Place For Murder, A Roost For Obscene Things, Buzzards, Carrion-Crows, And Owls." August 25Th. In The Sunny Places, Among The Open Fields, And Along The Dry Banks Of The Weedy Creeks, The Wild Senna, Orbed And Richly Yellow, Glows Like Spilled Gold Doubloons Scattered Or Lost By The Marauder Month, Each Piece Centred And Stained With Red, Spotted, As It Were, With Blood The Blood Of Wounded And Dying Summer. The Stalk Of The False Solomon'S Seal Is Tipped And Bent Over By Its Bunch Of Currant-Colored Berries, A Polished And Glassy Crimson. How Bright They Look Held Up Or Leaning From The Masses Of Dark Green Undergrowth Of The Forest Where There Is No Other Sign Of Color To Relieve The Green Except The Ruddy Horns Of The Touch-Me-Nots. The Woolly White Of The Boneset, Heavy With Dew; The Fuzzy Yellow Of The Goldenrod, Drowsy With Bees; And The Ragged, Butterfly-Haunted Purple Of The Ironweed, Encumber The Suntanned Arms Of Late August As She Makes Her Way Slowly Through Brier And Berry And Thorn, Burr And Blossom And Fungus, To The Summer'S Close, The Marigold Garden Where She Shall Deliver Her Burden With A Sigh To Fruit-Stained September And Lay Her Down To Sleep. Where Like An Angry Tyrant Roars The Sea, Pulling His Yeasty Beard, Upon His Throne Of Iron Crags; And Where, Like Storm-Lights Strewn, The Baleful Stars Redden Tempestuously, I See Him Stand, Blind Winter, All Alone, Wild Hair And Beard, Like Snow, About Him Blown. What Boots It To Keep Saying That"Life'S A Hollow Farce"? That"Men Are Fools "? That"Praying Helps Not, Nor Doth Remorse"? What Boots It To Keep Dwelling On Grief And Sin And Shame? The Old, Old Story Telling, "The End For All'S The Same"? Who Says That He, The Power That Made Us, As A Rule Made Fools With Farce For Dower, He Only Is The Fool. It Is Not Very Frequently That We Find The Indian-Pipe In This Locality. But To-Day I Came Upon It While Walking Along An Abandoned Woodroad And Admiring The Various Colored Fungi That Dotted The Wood And Exuded From The Boles And Stumps Of Trees, Such As The Cinnabar Fungus And The Sulphury Polypous, Like An Enormous Yellow Ruff. Among The Many Mushrooms I Recognized The Poisonous But Beautiful Fly Aminita, Gracefully Poised On Its Slender Stem, Its Top A Lemon-Yellow Patched Here And There With Delicate White Scales; The Edible Chantarelle, Of A Uniform Yolk-Yellow Color; The Green Russula And The Masked Tricholoma, Pearly Gray Or Brown, Both Of Them Snail-Eaten And Both Of Them Esculents. In Fact The Chill Mists And Dews Of Late Summer Seemed To Have Summoned Up From The Earth All The Grotesque Forms That Fancy Dreams Of, And Scattered Them Among The Drowsy Trees. Among Them, Solitary As A Spirit Among Imps And Gnomes, Delicate, Transparent, As It Were Of Virgin Alabaster, The Ghost-Flower Lifted Up Its Fragile Stem, Its Flower-Head Waxen White, Bent As If In Meditation Or Grief. It Seemed To Me The Melancholy Phantom Of Some Sad Wildflower Returned To Earth To Haunt The Spot It Had Once Bloomed In And To Muse Upon Its Past Loveliness And Happiness There. The Place Was Full Of A Pallid, A Shadowy Beauty; Mossy And Dark And Silent Save For The Veery'S Occasional Note, Remote And Elusive As A Note Blown On A Pipe By A Young Faun In The Green Intricacies Of The Forest, And The Quiet, Scarcely Audible Murmur Of A Stream, Trickling Thinly, As If Afraid Of Its Own Sound, Down Dark Rocks, Dimly Dripping, And Under A Bank Brambled And Spired Here And There With The Tall, Pink-Flowered Stalks Of The Horsemint Where The Sunlight Faintly Filtered Through The Thickly Matted Leaves. It Was A Place For Wildwood Ghosts And Dreams, Both Of Which I Found, Hidden From The Eyes Of Men, Sweet, Sorrowful Ghosts That Would Not Let Me Go. The Cardinal-Flower'S Scarlet Flashes And Flames Through The Weeds And Bushes, Arresting The Eye And Holding It As A Redbird Might, Suddenly Alighting Before One. Fierce As The Fragment Of Some War-Banner, Bathed In The Blood Of Battle, Caught On The Thorns And Briers As It Swept Wildly By In Onset Or Retreat, It Flutters And Flaunts, Defiant To The End. What Is More Divinely Fragrant, More Elusively Fresh And Cool And Morning-Suggestive In Aroma Than Is This September Primrose, Golden And Moist As A Streak Of Dawn, Found Blooming By This Wooded Brook Among The Jewelweeds And Blackberry Bushes? It Reminds Me, In Its Simple And Solitary Loveliness, With Its Clean, Cool Aroma, Of A Girl, A Country Maiden, Primrose-Fair, And Fresh And Sweet-Smelling As Her Own Old-Fashioned Garden Dewy With The Dewiness Of The Moon. Out Of The Arrow-Heads, That Thrust Their Broad Leaf-Blades, Like So Many Halberts Or Glaives, From The Pooled Creek-Water, The Blue Heron Rises With A Sharp, Short, Impatient Cry, Slowly And Softly Winging Away, Like Some Weird Bird Of Our Fairy-Story Days, Some Fairy Guardian Of A Magic And Haunted Water, An Enchanted Damsel Who Takes The Form Of A Water-Lily At Our Approach, While The Warden Elf Transforms Himself Into A Bird. Sept. 16Th. Happening To Glance Up As I Was Musing Along I Saw What Seemed To Me Scattered Clusters Of Large Ripe Blackberries, Glistening Jetlike; But In Place Of The Briers Of The Blackberry, I Saw That These Berries Were Held Up On Long, Branched, Smooth Stems That Shot Up From Broad-Leafed Lily Blades. They Were The Podless Seeds Of The Blackberry Lily, That Resemble So Closely, In Appearance Only, The Real Blackberry That One Unacquainted With The Flower Would, Until Plucked And Tasted, Mistake It For The Blackberry. Singly Or Thick-Clustered, Little, Pointed Rounds Of Ruby And Polished Agate, The Berries Of The Dogwood Redden, Pointing With Changeless Flame, As Flashes Of Fire Might A Great Smoke, The Dense Green Of Its Leaves. The Roadway Is Scattered With Their Crimson. Nearby The Wahoo'S Capsules, A Rosy Cinnabar, Have Opened, Disclosing Their Vermilion Seeds Seemingly The Imprisoned Carmine Of The Autumn Sunset. Not Quite So Conspicuous As The Wahoo, The Spice Bush Too Bleeds With Berries; Their Glistening Red Pungently Aromatic To Taste And Smell; It Does Not Permit The Dogwood To Outdo It In Brightness Of Color. Here And There In The Moist, Dark Places Of The Beech Wood The Indian-Pipe, Or Ghost-Flower, Lifts Its Frail, Retiring Stalk A Few Inches Above The Rotted Damp Leaves Of Last Year. The Stalks, At First Ghostly In Their Whiteness, After A Day Or So Turn A Delicate Pink Flaked And Scaled With Diaphanous White Which Is Their Leaves. Each Blossom, Which Resembles A Tightly Wrapped Rosebud, Terminates The Bended Stalk, Pale As A Nun'S Face Bowed In Meditation Or Prayer Above Her Rosary. Under The Old Beech The Clownish Clumps Of The Beechdrops Bristle, Straggly And Stiff, Resembling Wild Wisps Of Coarse Cow-Colored Hair, Tufts Torn Out And Scattered To Right And Left By The Wood-Witches At Their Satanic Orgies, Celebrating Their Sabbatic Rites When The Storm Was Abroad And The Horned Owl Hooted In The Hollow Tree And The Fox Barked Near The Blackened Rock Where They Found The Murdered Man. An Iridescent, An Indefinable Blue, Glitteringly Metallic, Was The Little Lizard I Saw To-Day, Slender And Swift, All Alert On The Limb Of A Fallen Tree In The Deep Woods. It Reminded Me Of A Jewel, A Living Gem, Wonderful In Workmanship, Such As, I Imagine, The Wood-Spirits Wear In Their Green Hair Or At Their Throats Of Mushroom Whiteness. Goldenrod, Lobelia, Ageratum, Primrose And Cardinal-Flower Lead Down The Bright Battalions Of Their Blossoms To The Brookside, Swarming Its Banks, Rank Upon Rank, Their Glorious Array Mirrored And Reflected In The Smooth-Flowing Waters. Their Plumed And Bannered Hosts Startle And Astonish The Fields With A Splendid, A Mighty Invasion The Fields That Have Not Felt A Plough For Years. Now A Chattering Jay Flashes Above Them, Garrulous, Jubilant, Intoxicated With The Sea Of Colors, Itself A Winged Blossom, A Great Lobelia, Blue, Freaked With White, Endowed With A Voice, And Hurrahing Its Happiness To The Sky And The Trees. The Life-Everlasting, Grayish White, Higher Than The Cardinal Flower And Lower Than The Boneset Bloom, Gives Colorless Tone To The Wild Fields Thick With The Rust-Colored Corymbs Of The Ironweeds, Whose Purple Is Almost Departed Now, So Populous And Imperial A Few Weeks Ago, Dominating The Fallows. Its Fragrance, Quiet And Unintrusive, Scents With Sadness And Rest The Idle Fields, Filling The Heart With Oldtime Memories Of Happy Places, Country Attics, Ramshackle Rafters, Old, Homely Lofts Of Boyhood Days On The Farm, Where The Wasp And Mud-Dauber Buzzed And Built, And Where Were Stored For Winter Use All The Sunlight And Warmth Of The Summer Fields In Simples Such As This, Fragrant Life-Everlasting, And Herbs And Dried Fruits Of The Garden; Apple-Scented Places Full Of Rustic Peace And Plenty Where Our Boyhood Passed Like A Dream. The Huge Yellow Spider, The Writing-Spider, In Hot, Weedy Places, Strident With The Stinging Music Of The Weed-Bugs; And The Corpulent Red Spider, With Its Big Abdomen; And The Angular Black Spider, Ungainly And Humped Of Back, Enameled, As It Were, With White, A Porcelain-Backed Horror, Spin Their Webs Across The Open Paths Of The Woods, Patiently Awaiting The Arrival Of Prey, Some Wood-Fly, Gnat, Moth, Wasp, Or Grasshopper, Hurrying Or Lumbering Blindly Along That Entangles Itself In Their Nets. How They Remind Me Of That Horrible Humanity That Lairs In Our Large Cities And Spreads Its Snares For The Destruction Of The Innocent, The Unsuspecting! Whose Ruined Or Dead Remnants Are Found Lying In The Street Or In Some Alley-Way, Unrecognizable, By Some Early Riser, As This Insect, This Burnished Beetle Is Found By Me Stretched, A Mere Shell, In A Corner Of This Web. It Is Remarkable To See How The Ox-Eyed Daisy Still Holds On. Here It Is Past The Middle Of September And I Find It Blooming, Fresh Of White And Young Of Gold Among The Mist-Flower, The Life-Everlasting, The False Dragon-Head, And The Goldenrod A Starry Stain In The Richly Embroidered Apron Of Fall, A Pearly Spot That Will Not Out. Until We Meet Again Heaven Keep Thee Gay! 'Neath Skies Of Sun Or Rain, Or Gold Or Gray, Heaven Keep Thee Gay. Even As The Sun-Dial Does, So Let Thy Days Record No Hour That Was Not Full Of Rays, Even As The Sun-Dial Does. Where Bloomed The Rose But Yesterday, Lamp Upon Lamp The Hips Burn Red; And One By One Leaves Float Away, Red Leaves Dropped In The Wood-Stream'S Bed. And Now The Spectres Of The Flowers Stream White Across The Stubble Plains; Ghosts, Shaken From Their Wind-Swept Bowers, Of Weeds That Tangle All The Lanes. The Partridge Pipes; The Blue-Jays Call; And Caws The Crow, That Ribald Bird: The Woods Turn Gold; The Acorns Fall; And All Day Long The Hunt Is Heard. A Wood Of Thorns Thorn Trees, Thorn Trees Everywhere; Low, Dense, Dwarfed, Tall, Scrawny Trees, Thrusting At You From Every Direction Their Murderous Looking, Formidable Limbs And Trunks Armed With Great Pronged Spikes And Spurs. The Wood To Me Seems As As Wild, Forbidding And Threatening As I Imagine Was The Impenetrable And Bristling Brake Of Thorns That Grew Up Around The Castle Of The Sleeping Beauty. Here And There The Sunlight Strikes Upon A Thorn That Is A Part Of This Year'S Growth, And It Stands Out Conspicuous Crimson, Transparent Ruby; Red As If Dyed Through And Through With The Blood Of Some Gentle, Slain Thing Some Hope, Perhaps, That Threading The Forest, Endeavoring To Penetrate Its Fastnesses To Some Far Dream Of Love, Lost, Shut In, Despairing Of Deliverance, Within Its Savage And Silent Deeps, Imprisoned And Enchanted In Some Horror Of Rock And Weed And Vine, In The Darkness And The Storm Had Pierced Its Wild Heart And Breathed Out Its Young Life Here. The Climbing Cricket Clings, Moving Its Vibrant Wings, To Some Green Brier Amid The Fields Turned Sere: And To Me, Dreaming Here, Its Plaintive Music Seems An Utterance Of Dreams And It Itself Lute Of The Dying Year. My Soul Is Sick Of Many Things, But Mainly Of The Word, The Word Of Hope Day Never Brings; That Like Some Beautiful Bird Above Me And Beyond Me Wings, Yet Nevermore Is Heard. Ah, Not In Vain I See Again The Roses Ruined Of The Rain: And In The Mist The Amethyst Of Morning-Glories Wet And Whist: The Moonflower Bent And Torn And Rent That Yestereve Was Redolent. Back To My Heart They Bring The Smart Of Thoughts From Which I Can Not Part. Analogies Of Memories That Fall Like Rain On Autumn Leas. Sad Memories All, Like Rain, That Fall On Joy, A Rose Wrecked By The Wall. I Came Across A Great, Pulpy, Green Mushroom, The Green Russula, To-Day Among Many Fall Fungi, Cupped And Parasoled, Red, Slate-Gray, White, And Brown, Under The Low Boughs Of A Beech In The Rain-Sodden Woods. To Its Fluted Underside, Near Its Stem, Two Small Gray Snails Were Clinging, Eating Away For Dear Life: And To Its Top And About Its Rim, Ragged With The Gnawing Of Numerous Insects, Wood-Ants And Beetles, A Slow Slug Lay Gorging Deliberately, Like Some Fat, Fairy Caliban. The Fungus Seemed To Me A Great, Green Vegetable Confection Upon Which These Small Fry Of The Forest Were Feasting. Or Was It A Great Table That The Gnomes Had Wrought Of Mingled Mist, Rain, Musk, And Milk O' The Moon, A Materialized Fancy Of Faery, And Laboriously Lifted Up From The Earth To The Monotonous Music Of The Grig? A Table Which The Elfins Had Spread With A Forest Feast, Whose Exhalations Had Saturated It Through And Through With Fine Flavors And Savors, Spilth Of Their Imp-Carousal, That Left It A Stained And Luscious Morsel For The Gnat And The Ant, The Snail, The Slug And The Beetle To Batten Upon. How Nature Protects Her Insects, Her Bugs, Her Beetles, And Her Butterflies! Painting Their Wings And Bodies With Hues Hardly Distinguishable From The Earth, The Rock, Or The Bark Which They Frequent Or Inhabit. This Butterfly, For Instance, Softly Opening And Closing Its Wings On The Gray Trunk Of This Old Oak. When Closed, The Protective Coloring Of The Underside Of Its Wings So Confuses The Eye That The Insect Is Not Detachable In Color From The Bark To Which It Clings, Being Dyed A Soft, Mottled Gray, Like That Of The Lichen That Overspreads And Spots The Trunk Of The Tree. When Open What A Revelation Of Dyes! It Is As If The Creature Had Doffed Its Lenten Habit For One Of Festival; Had Unfolded Its Sober Cloak, Astonishing Us With The Richness Of Its Lining, Its Under Apparel, Velvet And Vair, Revelations Of Ruddy Seal And Dim Ermine: Its Body And The Interior Part Of Its Wings Furfine And Downy, The Color Of Rich Old Port Wine, Edged Irregularly With A Dim, Soft Gray, A Lichen White, Sprinkled With Minute Specks Of Dull Gold And Marked At Regular Intervals With Orbs Or Ovals Of A Shadowy Blue. I Have Stood For Half An Hour Absorbed Upon Its Beauty; Watching It Slowly And Gracefully Opening And Closing Its Wings. What A Wonderful Piece Of Workmanship! And To Think That This Was Once A Worm! Obscene And Hideous, Crawling And Gorging Itself Upon Every Green Thing In Its Hairy Way! Now How It Puts To Scorn The Beauty Wrought Of The Labored Art Of Man! What A Jewel, Winged And Living, For The Spirit Of Autumn To Wear In Her Romany Hair Or At Her Gipsy Throat As She Takes Her Way Through The Crimsoning Woodlands To Tryst With The Quiet Spirit Of Indian Summer! Wandering Along A Country Road To-Day, The Middle Of October, An Unusual Thing To See At This Time Of The Year, Was An Apple Tree In Bloom. Dotted Here And There Over Its Almost Entirely Leafless Branches, Gnarled And Dead In Many Places, Freshened The Pink And White Tufts Of The Blossoms, Like Love Knots In The Sober Raiment Of An Old Woman Who Was Once A Belle. The Old Tree Must Have Been Dreaming Of The Spring And Unconsciously Put Forth Blossoms, Expressions Of Its Heart'S Deep Yearnings, Responsive And Anticipatory, At The Time When Everything Had Ceased, Or Was Ceasing, To Bloom, And The Spirit Of Death Instead Of The Spirit Of Birth Was Abroad In The World. A Thin Fall Rain, Whose Spite Again Whips Wild The Drizzled Window-Pane: Through Which I See The Blinded Bee Beat Down And Ended Utterly: The Marigold And Zinnia Old Bent, Wet, And Wretched In The Cold: And All The Bowers Forlorn Of Flowers As Are The Hopes Which Once Were Ours. Ephemeral Gold, Deciduous Emerald, And Crumbling Ruby All The Forests Old Fling To The Shining Wind, Deep-Rolled Like Some Loud Music Through Them: Majestic Music, Sad And Manifold, The Music Of That Ancient Skald, October Called, Who Sits Wild Chanting To Them. There Is A Sense Of Something Unutterably Sad, Irretrievably Lost, In The Wind That Sighs, And Never Ceases To Sigh, In The Fast-Fading Forests. I Seem Walking With Some Vast And Ancient Woe, Some Gigantic Melancholy, Invisible And Swiftly Moving, Whose Dark And Mighty Cloak Sweeps Stormily The Boughs, Shredding The Leaves And Hurling The Acorns Down. Oct. 23D. Two Ragged, Belated Ox-Eyed Daisies, And A Last Pink Plume Of The Dragonhead Hold Solitary Flower-Sway Over The Sere Autumn Fields, Full Of The Ghosts Of Dead Flowers; Glinting And Glimmering Gray With The Silken Seeds And Feathery Wisps Of The Salmon-Colored Broom-Sedge And Dead Goldenrod; The Wan, Frost-Nipped Stars And Tufted Heads Of The Wild Aster, And The Woolly White Tops Of The Life-Everlasting. Berries There Are In Abundance, Purple And Pink And Crimson; Orange And Ruby And Vermilion; Cat-Brier Berries, A Frosted Damson Blue; Dogwood And Spicewood Berries, Like Polished Carnelian; Sumach And Hercules-Club And Hellebore Berries, Brick-Dust Color And Mulberry Black; Buck-Bush Berries, Cranberry Or Apple Red; Bittersweet Berries, Gold And Scarlet Glowing; Running Euonymus, Or Strawberry-Bush, Rose And Crimson; And Wahoo Berries, Mingling The Cameo And Crimson Hues Of Stormy Autumn Sunsets And Dawns. All Around Me In The Wind-Tossed Woods Patter The Nuts; Heard Suddenly Each Nut Is As Startling As The Fall Of An Unexpected Footstep. Chestnut, Acorn, Hickory And Beech Nut, How They Rain! Shaken Each One From Its Infirm Hold By Every Breeze That Sweeps The Wood. Mast, With Which The Agile Squirrel Stores His Winter Granary, Snug In The Top Of Some Old And Hollow Tree. The Birds Seem To Be All Gone Away; At Least, If Present, They Are Silent; All Except Two The Crow And The Jay, Who Are Never Weary Of Cawing And Screaming, Making The Woods Noisy With Their Cries, The One Trying To Outdo The Other In Ridicule And Vituperation. In The Underbrush, Flitting Secretly, Silently, Searching Apparently For Its Mate, Dead With The Summer, I Beheld A Grosbeak, Warm-Looking In Its Plaid Suit Of Brown And Black And Red And Gray. Soundlessly It Vanished, Suddenly Disappearing, Visible A Moment, Then Gone In The Hush Of The Autumn Woods Was It A Bird Or Only The Ghost Of One? The Scarlet And The Gold And Bronze, The Lemon, Rose And Gray, The Splendors That October Dons, Seen From This Hilltop Far Away, Like Some Wild Bugle Blast, Far Blown, The Visible Sound Of Something Wild, Unknown, Crimsonly Calling, Shake My Blood That Thrills; Commanding Me To Follow Beyond The Farthest Hills; Exultantly To Follow, Through Flaming Holt And Hollow, Whereso Their Music Wills; The Trumpet-Pealing Fires Of Trees And Vines And Briers, Whose Leaves Like Notes Are Falling, The Clarion Color Calling My Heart Beyond The Hills. What Is More Startling Than The Unexpected Explosion Of A Covey Of Quail When One Is Walking And Musing In The Winter Fields? Thinking Of Nothing, Or, If Of Anything, Then Of The Difference Between The Appearance Of The Landscape Now, Bleak And Bare And Forbidding, And That Which It Was When These Same Birds Were Calling"Bob-White" To One Another In The Same Fields, Full Of Flowers And Sunlight And Redolent With Summer. The Thin Window-Pane-Like Ice Lacing And Scaling The Frozen Wood-Road Ruts And The Leaf-Cramped Streams And Pools Of The December Woods, Glimmeringly Or Glitteringly Seen, Glinting In The Chilly Winter Sunlight, Fills Me With The Fairy Fancies Of My Boyhood, Indefinable, Almost Forgotten Memories Of Ice-Maidens, Elves And Spirits, Who, My Childhood Fancied, Are Busy All The Winter Night, By The Light Of The Moon And The Stars, With The Frost-Furred Window-Panes Of The Farmhouse And The Shallow Forest Streams And Ponds; Their Noiseless Fingers Of Icy Crystal Swiftly Transforming Them Into Sheets Of Ferned And Flowered Diamond And Pearl. All Day Long The Frost Hoars The Hillside Here Where The Sun Never Strikes. Here, Too, The Shallow And Sluggish Water Marbles Bluely Under The Thin, Frail Ice Of The Frozen Streamlet Changing Constantly And Slowly Its Visible Form: Liquid Grotesques, Flowing Figurings Of Foam Forming And Fading Away Phantoms Of Blue Rain; Shadowy Shapes That Inhabit The Stream; Constantly Striving To Free Themselves, Seemingly, From Their Dungeon Of Crystal; Moving, Protean And Fantastic In Appearance, Hither And Thither, Stealthily Silent As If Fearful Of Awaking Him Who Never Sleeps, Their Hoary Gaoler, The Imprisoning, The Unpersuadable Frost. Ochre-Colored Broom-Sedge Yellowing Desolate Ways, Fields, The Black Thorns Hedge, Bleached With Sodden Strays, Strays Of Leaves And Flowers Of Dead, Forgotten Days. In The Forest By The Rain-Wild Creeks, Where The Wet Wind Fumbles In The Boughs, Rake The Leaves Away And, Lo! The Beaks Of A Myriad Germs, Beneath, That House: Fingertips Of Gold And Green And Gray, Tongues And Fingertips Of Countless Flowers, Pointing Us And Telling Us The Way, Path Up Which The Springtime Leads Her Hours: At Whose Step Awake The Thousand Pipes Of The Hylas, Ere Our Eye Perceives In Her Cheeks The Rose That Morning Stripes, In Her Hair The Gold Of All The Eves.