The dry, brown leaves have dropped forlorn,
And lie amid the golden grass.
The wind is fresh both eve and morn.
But where are summer days, alas!
The tardy flowers the autumn stayed
For latter treasures now unfold.
The dahlia dons its gay cockade,
Its flaming cap the marigold.
Rain stirs the pool with pelt and shock.
The swallows to the roof repair,
Confabulating as they flock
And feel the winter in the air.
By hundreds gather they to vow
Their little yearnings and intents.
Saith one: "'T is fair in Athens now,
Upon the sun-warm battlements!
"Thither I go to take my nap
Upon the Parthenon high and free.
My cornice nest is in the gap
A cannon-ball made there for me."
And one: "A ceiling meets my needs
Within a Smyrna coffee-house,
Where Hadjis tell their amber beads
Upon the threshold luminous.
"I go and come above the folk,
While their chibouques their clouds upfling.
I skim along through silver smoke,
And graze the turbans with my wing."
Another: "There's a triglyph gray
On one of Baalbec's temples high.
'T is there I go to brood all day
Above my little family."
Another calleth, "My address
Is settled: 'At the Knights of Rhodes.'
In a dark colonnade's recess
I'll make the snuggest of abodes."
"Old age hath made me slow for flight,"
Declares a fifth; "I'll rest at even
On Malta's terraces of white,
Where blue sea melts to blue of heaven."
A sixth: "In Cairo is my home,
Up in a minaret's retreat:
A twig or two, a bit of loam--
My winter lodgings are complete."
A last: "The Second Cataract
Shall mark my place--the nest of brown
A granite king doth hold intact
Within the circle of his crown."
And all together sing: "What miles
To-morrow shall have stretched beneath
Our fleeing swarm:--remembered isles,
Snow peaks, vast waters, lands of heath!"
With calls and cries and beat of wings,
Grown eager now and venturesome,
The swallows hold their twitterings,
To see the blight of winter come.
And I--I understand them all,
Because the poet is a bird,--
Oh! but a sorry bird, and thrall
To a great lack, pressed heavenward.
It's Oh for wings! to seek the star,
To count the seas when day is done,
To breast the air with swallows far,
To verdant spring, to golden sun!