Page:Poems Blake.djvu/42

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34
OCTOBER.
And all the fading woods grow bright
With flashes from her altar fires;
Yet crowned and pale she walks apart,
Lips moving in a mute caress,
And folds above her throbbing heart
The mantle of her loneliness.

As sometime when the bloom has fled,
The light that marked our summer gone,
When spring's best hopes are ripe or dead,
And life's pale winter hurrying on,—
We stand at eventide aside,
Wearing the robes we hoped to win,
And fold our lives in piteous pride,
All fair without, all scarred within!