Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OCTOBER, by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OCTOBER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Now is the world a-muse, and earth and sky
Last Line: Down unillumined aisles the requiem wind.
Subject(s): Beauty; Earth; Mythology - Classical; Nature; October; Pan (mythology); Sky; World


NOW is the world a-muse, and earth and sky
Are in a pact of uttermost content;
Pan's mood is pensive, Beauty passes by
With steps loath-lingering and all besprent
With colors o'er her garments of Delight,
Along the stream and up the mountain height.

The shocks of corn stand ghostly gray a-row,
Weird Indian chiefs who brood on tribal wrongs
And ultimate requital; all aglow
Is every swamp with maples, and the songs
Of crickets blend in most harmonious wise
Into the azure landscape's dreams and dyes.

The yellowing birches and the elms do make
The road a slumbrous way through wonderland;
The sumach startles you to wide-awake,
So vivid is her crimson; nigh at hand
Or far afield the dog-wood burns, and fills
With witchery of garnet woods and hills.

Like fire the huckleberry vines across
The meadows run; soft sleep the gray old stones,
The fences in their eld of time and moss,
Save when all-blazoned by the clambering zones
Of woodbine, magical for shaded reds:
Hard by the asters lift their bloomy heads.

Beside bronzed oaks the fruity chestnuts drop
Their glossy burthens down, a sylvan scene;
Granges innumerable groan as crop
On crop is gathered in; the air is keen
With scent of smoke, the pied leaves fall to earth
In ruddy troops, for burial and rebirth.

O splendid beauty of the day: O eve
Made luminous by the punctual harvest moon,
The sun's close comrade! weave and interweave
Your changes, for the season shifts o'er-soon,
Evanishing while still we deem it here;
Such transient loveliness is twofold dear.

Now is the year's recessional; for though
Her robes are richer-wrought than in the spring
What time the proud procession paced slow
Up the vast church of Nature's fashioning,
Soon moans -- these pulsing pomps left far behind --
Down unillumined aisles the requiem wind.





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