C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Madison Cawein (1865–1914)

THE RAINY smell of a ferny dell,

Whose shadow no sun-ray flaws,

When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds

Telling her beads

Of haws.

The phantom mist, that is moonbeam-kissed,

On hills where the trees are thinned,

When Autumn leans at the oak-root’s scarp,

Playing a harp

Of wind.

The crickets’ chirr ’neath brier and burr,

By leaf-strewn pools and streams,

When Autumn stands ’mid the dropping nuts,

With the book, she shuts,

Of dreams.

The gray “alas” of the days that pass,

And the hope that says “adieu,”

A parting sorrow, a shriveled flower,

And one ghost’s hour

With you.