SOBER September, robed in gray and dun,
Smiled from the forest in half-pensive wise;
A misty sweetness shone in her mild eyes,
And on her cheek a shy flush went and came,
As flashing warm between
The autumnal leaves of slowly dying green,
The sovereign sun
Tenderly kissed her; then (in ruthful mood
For the vague fears of modest maidenhood)
Behold him gently, lovingly retire;
Beneath the foliaged screen,
Veiling his swift desire–
Even as a king, wed to some virgin queen,
Might doom his sight to blissful, brief eclipse,
After his tender lips
Had touched the maiden’s trembling soul to flame.
Through shine and shade,
Thoughtful I trod the tranquil forest glade,
Up-glancing oft
To watch the rainless cloudlets, white and soft,
Sail o’er the placid ocean of the sky.
The breeze was like a sleeping infant’s sigh,
Measured and low, or, in quick, palpitant thrills
An instant swept the sylvan depths apart
To pass and die
Far off, far off, within the shrouded heart
Of Immemorial hills,
Through shade and shine
I wandered, as one wanders in a dream,
Till, near the borders of a beauteous stream
O’erhung by flower and vine,
I pushed the dense, perplexing boughs aside,
To mark the temperate tide
Purpled by shadows of the Muscadine.
Reclining there at languid length I sank,
One idle hand outstretched beyond the bank,
With careless grasp
The sumptuous globes of these rare grapes to clasp.
Ah! how the ripened wild fruit of the South
Melted upon my mouth!
Its magic juices through each captured vein
Rose to the yielding brain,
Till, like the hero of an old romance,
Caught by the fays, my spirit lapsed away,
Lost to the sights and sounds of mortal day.
Lost to all earthly sights and sounds was I,
But blithesomely,
As stirred by some new being’s wondrous dawn,
I heard about me, swift though gently drawn,
The footsteps of light creatures on the grass.
Mine eyelids seemed to open, and I saw,
With joyance checked by awe,
A multitudinous company
Of such strange forms and faces, quaint, or bright
With true Elysian light,
As once in fairy fantasies of eld
High-hearted poets through the wilds beheld
Of shadowy dales and lone sea beaches pass,
At spring-tide morn or holy hush of night.
Then to an airy measure,
Low as the sea winds when the night at noon
Clasps the frail beauty of an April moon,
Through woven paces at soft-circling leisure,
They glided with elusive grace adown
The forest coverts–all live woodland things,
Black-eyed or brown,
Firm-footed or up-poised on changeful wings,
Glinting about them ‘mid the indolent motion
Of billowy verdures rippling slow
As the long, languid underflow
Of some star-tranced, voluptuous Southern ocean.
The circle widened, and as flower-wrought bands,
Stretched by incautious hands,
Break in the midst with noiseless wrench asunder,
So brake the dancers now to form in line
Down the deep glade–above the shifting lights,
Through massive tree-boles, on majestic heights;
The blossoming turf thereunder,
Whence, fair and fine,
Twinkling like stars that hasten to be drawn
Close to the breast of dawn,
Shone, with their blue veins pulsing fleet,
Innumerable feet,
White as the splendors of the milky way,
Yet rosy warm as opening tropic day,
With lithe, free limb’s of curvature divine,
And dazzling bosoms of unveil
(Paul Hamilton Hayne)
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