Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS; AFTER KEATS, by JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS; AFTER KEATS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: October misty bright, the touch is thine
Last Line: And crackling grouse-cock whirs on pinions strong.
Subject(s): Autumn; Scotland; Seasons; Fall


I

OCTOBER misty bright, the touch is thine
That the full year to consummation brings,
When noonday suns and nightly frosts combine
To make a glory that outrivals spring's;
The mountain bases swathed in russet fern,
Their middle girths with deer-grass golden pale,
And the high summits touched with earliest snows
From summer dreamings lift to thoughts more stern;
Then doth the harvest-moon in beauty sail
O'er the far peaks and the mist steaming vale,
While silver-sheened our household river flows.

II

Who hath not seen thee clambering up the crag,
On sunny days in many-hued attire,
Making wild cherry trees thy scarlet flag,
And kindling rowan boughs to crimson fire?
Sometimes on dizzy rock-ledge thou art seen,
Even as an angel from high heaven new-lit,
Quivering aloft in aspen's pallid gold;
Or far up mountains queen-like thou dost sit,
Cushioned on mosses orange, purple, green,
Or down their bases homeward thou dost lean,
Loaded with withered ferns, a housewife old.

III

What though the summer mountain fruits are gone,
Though of black crowberries grouse have eat their fill?
A few belated cloudberries linger on
High on the moist hill-breast where mists distill:
And now the prickly juniper displays
On dry warm banks his pungent fruitage blue,
Deep in pine-forests wortleberries show
Their box-like leaves and fruit of bright red hue,
And old fail-dykes along the upland braes,
Fringed with blaeberry leaves in scarlet blaze,
Add to October sunsets richer glow.

IV

And for thy songs, home-carting late-won peats.
Crofters low-humming down hill-tracks return;
While here and there some lone ewe-mother bleats
Fitfully, for last summer's lamb forlorn;
O'er heather brown no wild bee's murmurs float,
The pewits gone, shy curlews haste to leave
The high moors where they screeched the summer long;
From slaughtering guns the mountains win reprieve;
But still far up on mossy haggs remote
The plover sits and pipes her plaintive note,
And crackling grouse-cock whirs on pinions strong.





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