Long grass swaying in the playing of the almost wearied breeze;
Flowers bowed beneath a crowd of the yellow-armoured bees;
Sumptuous forests filled with twilight, like a dreamy old romance;
Rivers falling, rivers calling, in their indolent advance;

Crimson heath-bells, making regal all the solitary places;
Dominant light, that pierces down into the deep blue water spaces;
Sun-uprisings, and sun-settings, and intensities of noon;
Purple darkness of the midnight, and the glory of the moon;

Rapid, rosy-tinted lightnings, where the rocky clouds are riven,
Like the lifting of a veil before the inner courts of Heaven;
Silver stars in azure evenings, slowly climbing up the steep;
Corn-fields ripening to the harvest, and the wide seas smooth with sleep.

Circled with these living splendours, Summer passed from out my sight,
Like a dream that filled with beauty all the caverns of the night;
And the vision and the presence into empty nothing ran;—
And the New Year was still older, and seemed now a youthful man.

III

Autumn! Forth from glowing orchards stepped he gaily, in a gown
Of warm russet, freaked with gold, and with a visage sunny-brown:
On his head a rural chaplet, wreathed with heavily-dropping grapes,
And broad, shadow-casting vine-leaves, like the Bacchanalian shapes.

Fruits and berries rolled before him, from the Year's exhaustless horn;
Jets of wine went spinning upwards, and he held a sheaf of corn;
And he laughed for very joy, and he danced from too much pleasure,
And he sang old songs of harvest, and he quaffed a mighty measure.

But above this wild delight an overmastering graveness rose,
And the fields and trees seemed thoughtful in their absolute repose;
And I saw the woods consuming in a many-coloured death—
Streaks of yellow flame, down-deepening through the green that lingereth,

Sanguine flushes, like a sunset, and austerely-shadowing brown;
And I heard within the silence the nuts sharply rattling down;
And I saw the long dark hedges all alight with scarlet fire,
Where the berries, pulpy-ripe, had spread their bird-feasts on the briar.

I beheld the southern vineyards, and the hop-grounds of our land,
Sending gusts of fragrance outwards, nearly to the salt sea strand;
Saw the windy moors rejoicing in their tapestry of fern,
And the stately weeds and rushes, that to dusty dryness turn.

Autumn walked in glee and triumph over mountain, wood, and plain,
And he looked upon their richness as a king on his domain:
All too soon he waned, and vanished over misty heaths arid meres;—
And the New Year stood beside me like a man of fifty years.

IV.

In a foggy cloud obscurely, entered Winter, ashy pale,
And his step was hard and heavy, and he wore an icy mail
Blasting all the path before him, leapt a black wind from the north,
And from stinging drifts of sleet he forged the arrows of his wrath.

Yet some beauty still was found; for, when the fogs had passed away,
The wide lands came glittering forward in a fresh and strange array:
Naked trees had got snow foliage, soft, and feathery, and bright,
And the earth looked dressed for Heaven in its spiritual white.

Black and cold as iron armour lay the frozen lakes and streams;
Bound about the fenny plashes, shone the long and pointed gleams
Of the tall reeds, ice-encrusted; the old hollies, jewel-spread,
Warmed the white, marmoreal dullness with an ardency of red.

Upon desolate morasses, stood the heron like a ghost
Beneath the gliding shadows of the wild fowls' noisy host;
And the bittern clamoured harshly from his nest among the sedge,
Where the indistinct, dull moss had blurred the ragged water's edge.

But the face of Winter softened, and his lips broke into smiles,
And his heart was Filled with radiance as from far enchanted isles;
For across the long horizon came a light upon the way—
The light of Christmas fires, and the dawning of new day

And Winter moved not onward, like the rest, but made a stand,
And took the Spirit of Christmas, as a brother,by the hand;
And together tow'rd the heavens, a great cry of joy thev sent;—
And the New Year was the Old Year, and his head was grey and bent.