An autumn day

Beauty goes sadly on a day like this;

She cannot find a rose in any lane;

The haw upon the thorn seems all amiss

For what was white, and very April-plain.

Here are the long-packed secrecies of yore;

And the pale glimmer of a dead man's clothes;

And withered things blown up and down at door;

And here the old disaster of the rose.

Yet she is still herself, though different,

With a hushed foot upon her errands set;

And with a spare hand, shakes the ancient mood

Of music out a hedge, or some lost scent

From the wrecked grass, or in the silver wet

Strews with her violets a crumbling wood.