SAPPHICS
Clothed in
splendour, beautifully sad and silent,
Comes the autumn over the woods and highlands,
Golden, rose-red, full of divine remembrance,
Full
of foreboding.
Soon the
maples, soon will the glowing birches,
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Stripped of all that summer and love had dowered them,
Dream, sad-limbed, beholding their pomp and treasure
Ruthlessly
scattered:
Yet they
quail not: Winter with wind and iron
Comes and finds them silent and uncomplaining,
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Finds them tameless, beautiful still and gracious,
Gravely
enduring.
Me too changes,
bitter and full of evil,
Dream by dream have plundered and left me naked,
Grey with sorrow. Even the days before me
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Fade
into twilight,
Mute and
barren. Yet will I keep my spirit
Clear and valiant, brother to these my noble
Elms and maples, utterly grave and fearless,
Grandly
ungrieving.
20
Brief the
span is, counting the years of mortals,
Strange and sad; it passes, and then the bright earth,
Careless mother, gleaming with gold and azure,
Lovely
with blossoms—
Shining white
anemones, mixed with roses,
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Daisies mild-eyed, grasses and honeyed clover—
You, and me, and all of us, met and equal,
Softly
shall cover.
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