The sun sank, and the wind uprist whose note
Piped on amid the stubble melodies
Of such appeal as ’scape the limber throat
Of robin singing under saffron skies;—
Then did he breathe like winding of a horn,
Whereat some sable flock of clouds affrighted
Huddled across their rosy pasturage
Behind the troubled leaves,—
Larger he loomed, a traveller benighted,
Hinting of menace and insurgent rage
Around the placid twilight of our eaves.
The sun was gone; beneath the steady stars
That watched the spectral anticks of the oak
The plumèd elm-tops met in savage wars,
The smitten pools in argent splinters broke;
While, as a labourer among the boughs
Cudgels a harvest from the branches crooked,
Within the orchard fence one plied a flail
That woke the sleeping house,
Till from the shivered lattice faces looked
Whitely, because the apples fell like hail.
The sun uprose, serenely gold and fair,
And Morning in a little ruffled pond
Scanned her sweet face and prinkt her yellow hair.
Around her mirror lapped the leaves, beyond
Jetsam of mast and acorn hid the strand,
Thick in the orchard was the wreckage piled
Of twig and fruit, the pitifullest noise
Of sobbing filled the land:—
The wind was sleeping sadly as a child
Littered about by all its broken toys.