Resurgam

THE year is waning fast, the biting wind
Is prating through the branches brown and
sere;
Complaining echos voice that fall is here,
And drowsy summer dreaming far behind.
There's death on every hand, and yet I find
A mournful pomp along these darkened ways,
So prodigal of bloom in summer days,
When vine and flower in glory intertwined.

Dear wife, along these charnel paths we pass,
Two silent mourners for the dying year;
Draw close thy cloak, the wind is chill; Alas,
How fast the winter comes; how reft of cheer
Will be those lagging days; and yet we know
Our flowers will only sleep, beneath the snow.

^__Albert Bigelow Paine.