Like palest gold the mellow sunlight creeps
Across the porch and thro’ the open door,
And spreads a checkered carpet on the floor.
The garden’s last red poppy, nodding, sleeps,
And one bee in its heart his senses steeps,
With most delicious languor; one slim stalk
Of hollyhock still bends beside the walk,
Starred with its lovely flowers. In soft heaps―
Like sweet, dead dreams―wind-shaken rose-leaves lie;
The opal’s fire burns in the clouds that float
Across the delicate azure of the sky.
The wind is one low, soft Æolian note;
And yellower than the primrose East at morn,
Stretch the wide, undulating fields of corn.
“Indian Summer” as it appears in Higginson’s When the Birds Go North Again (1898).