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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Clematis

  • Where the woodland streamlets flow,
  • Gushing down a rocky bed,
  • Where the tasselled alders grow,
  • Lightly meeting overhead,
  • When the fullest August days
  • Give the richness that they know,
  • Then the wild clematis comes,
  • With her wealth of tangled blooms.
  • Reaching up and drooping low,
  • But when Autumn days are here,
  • And the woods of Autumn burn,
  • Then her leaves are black and sere,
  • Quick with early frosts to turn!
  • As the golden Summer dies,
  • So her silky green has fled,
  • And the smoky clusters rise
  • As from fires of sacrifice,—
  • Sacred incense to the dead!
  • Dora Read Goodale.