Later Life: a Double Sonnet of Sonnets

So late in Autumn half the world's asleep, / And half the wakeful world looks pinched and pale; / For dampness now, not freshness, rides the gale; / And cold and colorless comes ashore the deep / With tides that bluster or with tides that creep; / Now veiled uncouthness wears an uncouth veil / Of fog, not sultry haze; and blight and bale / Have done their worst, and leaves rot on the heap. / So late in Autumn one forgets the Spring, / Forgets the Summer with its opulence, / The callow birds that long have found a wing, / The swallows that more lately gat them hence: / Will anything like Spring, will anything / Like Summer, rouse one day the slumbering sense?