SO LITTLE wind would ruin all this gold: One lightest breath out of the autumn sky, And not a single slender stem would hold. ... And we should learn how flaming things must die. Let me look long upon this, while I may, The delicate leaf, the thin and shining stem, In this, their hour of glory, their brief day Of golden airs that hover over them. And let the end come, if it must, by night, When I have gone, and shall not come again. ... Thinking how one tree, in that golden light, Flames on and on, a still flame, now, as then, Golden forever, now ... it might be so, This once ... this once ... for all I stayed to know. |