I wandered in the woodlands where the red glades begin,
And a wind in every tree-top was talking small and thin:
"The dead hand of Winter is knocking at the door,
And the white froth of flowers will float no more.
"The gray ranks of grasses are bared of their bees,
Their voices sound like falling spume between the leaden seas;
We hear beyond the alders where the long swamps lie
The creak of broken rushes and the last snipe's cry."
And I marked the poignant sorrow in each high tree tongue,
Conferring there above me where the blue moss hung;
Till anguish grew from far away and broke in sullen roar,
As when a smoking surf meets a rock-ribbed shore.