Explore "A Canadian Calendar: XII Lyrics" by Francis Sherman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How shall I greet thee, Autumn? with loud praise / And joyous song and wild, tumultuous laughter? / Or unrestrained tears? / Shall I behold only the scarlet haze / Of these thy days / That come to crown this best of all the years? / Or shall I hear, even now, those sad hours chime -- / Those unborn hours that surely follow after / The shedding of thy last-relinquished leaf -- / Till I, too, learn the strength and change of time / Who am made one with grief?
For now thou comest not as thou of old / Wast wont to come; and now mine old desire / Is sated not at all / With sunset-visions of thy splendid gold / Or fold on fold / Of the stained clouds thou hast for coronal. / Still all these ways and things are thine, and still / Before thine altar burneth the ancient fire; / The blackness of the pines is still the same, / And the same peace broodeth behind the hill / Where the old maples flame.