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My November Guest

    MY Sorrow, when she's here with me,
    Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
    Are beautiful as days can be;
    She loves the bare, the withered tree;
    She walks the sodden pasture lane.
    Her pleasure will not let me stay.
    She talks and I am fain to list:
    She's glad the birds are gone away,
    She's glad her simple worsted gray
    Is silver now with clinging mist.
    The desolate, deserted trees,
    The faded earth, the heavy sky,
    The beauties she so truly sees,
    She thinks I have no eye for these,
    And vexes me for reason why.
    Not yesterday I learned to know
    The love of bare November days
    Before the coming of the snow,
    But it were vain to tell her so,
    And they are better for her praise.

Love and a Question

    A STRANGER came to the door at eve,
    And he spoke the bridegroom fair.
    He bore a green-white stick in his hand,
    And, for all burden, care.
    He asked with the eyes more than the lips
    For a shelter for the night,
    And he turned and looked at the road afar
    Without a window light.
    The bridegroom came forth into the porch
    With, 'Let us look at the sky,
    And question what of the night to be,
    Stranger, you and I.'
    The woodbine leaves littered the yard,
    The woodbine berries were blue,
    Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;
    'Stranger, I wish I knew.'
    Within, the bride in the dusk alone
    Bent over the open fire,
    Her face rose-red with the glowing coal
    And the thought of the heart's desire.
    The bridegroom looked at the weary road,
    Yet saw but her within,
    And wished her heart in a case of gold
    And pinned with a silver pin.
    The bridegroom thought it little to give
    A dole of bread, a purse,
    A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,
    Or for the rich a curse;
    But whether or not a man was asked
    To mar the love of two
    By harboring woe in the bridal house,
    The bridegroom wished he knew.

A Late Walk

    WHEN I go up through the mowing field,
    The headless aftermath,
    Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
    Half closes the garden path.
    And when I come to the garden ground,
    The whir of sober birds
    Up from the tangle of withered weeds
    Is sadder than any words.
    A tree beside the wall stands bare,
    But a leaf that lingered brown,
    Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
    Comes softly rattling down.
    I end not far from my going forth
    By picking the faded blue
    Of the last remaining aster flower
    To carry again to you.