Classic Poem

I

Slow trembles from her envied crown
A red leaf down;
And the smile dies
Into the darkness of her eyes.

II

The hurt hours droop and hover,
Passing the hallowed place;
The pale moon leans above her,
Weeps down upon her face.

III

The swamp-tree sighs, and the thin sharp reed,
The wire-grass whines, and the stiff brown weed,
The lone hill-mullein stands dumb and tall,
The low clouds hover, the long rains fall.

IV

The brook, slow northward toward the snows,
Bubbling its little trouble, goes;
Lorn branches beckon, strained in space;
Death-pale the field's beseeching face.

V

A wind, whence no man knows,
Through the grating weeds it blows;
It comes, it sighs and goes.
Once it rocked the summer rose.