In Autumn
From Lyric and Dramatic Poems.Macmillan Company, 1926.
Drear, dull autumnal rain,
Skies washed to gray;
Winds sighing like an unfleshed ancient pain:
Uncanny day!
A time for tears and musings on the past,
For vain regret;
A time to dream of joys that could not last
But mock us yet.
A time to dream of winter and to mourn;
To hear sad tunes;
To yearn unto the far and shadowed bourne
Of perished Junes.
Yet not for me this drear autumnal mood,
This winter fear;
I view from no dull mental solitude
That aging year.
For me—the memory of sun-shot days,
Nights kind and warm;
Moons purpling the weird star-enchanted haze;
The April storm.
The rain’s drone on the roof, the wind’s lament
Among the trees:
These make me hear through days of warm content
The hum of bees.
Because I see with eyes that saw your face
As none had seen;
And hear with ears that heard you—every place
Is summer-green.
And I shall hear the robin through the fall
And in the snow;
because you live and breathe and love in all,
Wherever I may go.
Reproduced from Lyric and Dramatic Poems by John G. Neihardt by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1926 Macmillan Company.
Copyright renewed 1954 by John G. Neihardt.