The sunlight pales upon the ragged ferns
And the dog-fennel’s creamy drifts of snow,
And two white butterflies―child-spirits―go
Winging their ways. The maple forest burns
Along the mountainside―so red it turns
The very air to crimson. Sweet and low
The brooks go singing, loitering as they flow,
And all the hollow stumps are rustic urns
Heaped to their scalloped brims with yellow leaves.
In every pasture lifts the golden-rod
Its bending plumes; the fields are reft of sheaves
Where late the merry gleaners, singing, trod.
One broken frond of mist the soft air cleaves―
The year’s last incense pushing up to God.
“An Autumn Day” as it appears in Higginson’s When the Birds Go North Again (1898).