Still a brief while, ere the old year quite pass,

Our wandering steps and wistful eyes shall greet

The leaf, the water, the beloved grass;

Still from these haunts and this accustomed seat

I see the wood-wrapt city, swept with light,

The blue long-shadowed distance, and, between,

The dotted farm-lands with their parcelled green,

The dark pine forest and the watchful height.

I see the broad rough meadow stretched away

Into the crystal sunshine, wastes of sod,

Acres of withered vervain, purple-gray,

Branches of aster, groves of goldenrod;

And yonder, toward the sunlit summit, strewn

With shadowy boulders, crowned and swathed with weed,

Stand ranks of silken thistles, blown to seed,

Long silver fleeces shining like the noon.

In far-off russet corn-fields, where the dry

Gray shocks stand peaked and withering, half concealed

In the rough earth, the orange pumpkins lie,

Full-ribbed; and in the windless pasture-field

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