Classic Poem

FROM The R ED B OOK OF H ERGEST .

The Calends of Winter are come; the grain
Grows hard: the dead leaf drops in the rain:
Though the stranger bids thee, turn not again.

The Calends of Winter; about the hearth
Draw the gossips close, as storm holds the earth:
Now many a secret leaks in the mirth.

The Calends of Winter; the stags grow lean;
And yellow the birches whose tops were green;
Now the Winter pays for thy Summer's sin.

The Calends of Winter sigh in the wood,
Where the branches bend o'er the brook at flood;
Only God the Diviner the day finds good.

The Calends of Winter; forgot in the cold,
The tale the Calends of Summer told, —
What the cuckoos sang to the blackbirds bold.

The Calends of Winter; the night falls soon,
Black as the raven; the afternoon
Declines to evening without a tune.

The Calends of Winter are come. The heath
Is bare where it was burnt. The breath
Of the oxen smoke. The old wait death.