“To bathe our brain from drowsy night
In the sharp air and golden light.
The dew, like frost, is on the pane,
The year begins, though fair, to wane:
There is a fragrance in its breath,
Which is not of the flowers, but death.”
And we pass out of the window that opens into the garden under the
tulip-tree standing so tall and still, with pale green and now
yellow-touched leaves, that harmonise well with the pale sky against
which you see them. The beech in the shrubbery has begun to “gather
brown”; the tall dark elms that shut it in remind you vividly of the
poet’s description of
“Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves.”