No wind there is that either pipes or moans; <br />The fields are cold and still; the sky <br />Is covered with a blue-gray sheet <br />Of motionless cloud; and at my feet <br />The river, curling softly by, <br />Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones. <br /> <br />Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves <br />The road runs rough and silent, lined <br />With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray, <br />And poplars pallid as the day, <br />In masses spectral, undefined, <br />Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves. <br /> <br />And on beside the river's sober edge <br />A long fresh field lies black. Beyond, <br />Low thickets gray and reddish stand, <br />Stroked white with birch; and near at hand, <br />Over a little steel-smooth pond, <br />Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge. <br /> <br />Across a waste and solitary rise <br />A ploughman urges his dull team, <br />A stooped gray figure with prone brow <br />That plunges bending to the plough <br />With strong, uneven steps. The stream <br />Rings and re-echoes with his furious cries. <br /> <br />Sometimes the lowing of a cow, long-drawn, <br />Comes from far off; and crows in strings <br />Pass on the upper silences. <br />A flock of small gray goldfinches, <br />Flown down with silvery twitterings, <br />Rustle among the birch-cones and are gone. <br /> <br />This day the season seems like one that heeds, <br />With fixed ear and lifted hand, <br />All moods that yet are known on earth, <br />All motions that have faintest birth, <br />If haply she may understand <br />The utmost inward sense of all her deeds.<br /><br />Archibald Lampman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-autumn-landscape/
