Along the waste, a great way off, the pines, <br />Like tall slim priests of storm, stand up and bar <br />The low long strip of dolorous red that lines <br />The under west, where wet winds moan afar. <br />The cornfields all are brown, and brown the meadows <br />With the blown leaves' wind-heaped traceries, <br />And the brown thistle stems that cast no shadows, <br />And bear no bloom for bees. <br /> <br />As slowly earthward leaf by red leaf slips, <br />The sad leaves rustle in chill misery, <br />A soft strange inner sound of pain-crazed lips, <br />That move and murmur incoherently; <br />As if all leaves, that yet have breath, were sighing, <br />With pale hushed throats, for death is at the door, <br />So many low soft masses for the dying <br />Sweet leaves that live no more. <br /> <br />Here I will sit upon this naked stone, <br />Draw my coat closer with my numbed hands, <br />And hear the ferns sigh, and the wet woods moan, <br />And send my heart out to the ashen lands; <br />And I will ask myself what golden madness, <br />What balmed breaths of dreamland spicery, <br />What visions of soft laughter and light sadness <br />Were sweet last month to me. <br /> <br />The dry dead leaves flit by with thin weird tunes, <br />Like failing murmurs of some conquered creed, <br />Graven in mystic markings with strange runes, <br />That none but stars and biting winds may read; <br />Here I will wait a little; I am weary, <br />Not torn with pain of any lurid hue, <br />But only still and very gray and dreary, <br />Sweet sombre lands, like you.<br /><br />Archibald Lampman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-october-3/