Poems (Trask)/September

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4479401Poems — SeptemberClara Augusta Jones Trask
SEPTEMBER.
A calm sky full of clouds of golden mist
Gilding the distant mountains brown and bare;
Sweet Summer's lips pale Autumn's cheek have kissed,
And left the impress of their warm love there.

Sunsets of vivid gold and purple haze,
Stars that look on you through a mellow calm,
Odors of fruit and flowers, and woodland maze,
And west winds laden with the breath of balm.

On fertile uplands, at the eventide,
The busy reaper piles the groaning wain;
And the old barn, whose broad doors stand so wide,
Filled to the ridge-pole is with hay and grain.

The corn is ripening in the gracious sun,
The bursting husks display its gleaming gold;
And on the lowland, rye-stacks, sere and dun,
Like trusty sentinels stand plumed and bold.

The forest gleams with red and amber fires;
The beech hangs out its primrose-colored flags;
The sumach artist's pencil never tires
Of painting scarlet all the mountain crags.

At twilight, when the winds are sinking down,
In chestnut woods you hear the sweet refrain
Made by the ripened nuts, as, plump and brown,
They fall like drops of scattered April rain.

The nights are full of grand displays of power;
The northern skies with spires of flame are set,
Auroral lights in grand disorder tower,
Shaming old Rome with dome and minaret!

O God! beneath the wonders of Thy hand
I sit in silence; lip and heart are dumb!
Earth, air, and ocean, all this wide-spread land,
Sprang to existence when Thou bad'st them Come!

Looking up to the dim voids of the sky,
Where sails the moon, an island in the sea,
My soul is lost! words and emotions die!
Thought only dwells on Thine Infinity!