Mellow hazes, lowly trailing
        Over wood and meadow, veiling
        Somber skies, with wildfowl sailing
            Sailor-like to foreign lands;
        And the north-wind overleaping
        Summer’s brink, and floodlike sweeping
        Wrecks of roses where the weeping
            Willows wring their helpless hands.

        Flared, like Titan torches flinging
            Flakes of flame and embers, springing
        From the vale the trees stand swinging
            In the moaning atmosphere;
        While in dead’ning-lands the lowing
        Of the cattle, sadder growing,
        Fills the sense to overflowing
            With the sorrow of the year.

        Sorrowfully, yet the sweeter
        Sings the brook in rippled meter
        Under boughs that lithely teeter
            Lorn birds, answering from the shores
        Through the viny, shady-shiny
        Interspaces, shot with tiny
        Flying motes that fleck the winy
            Wave-engraven sycamores.

        Fields of ragged stubble, wrangled
        With rank weeds, and shocks of tangled
        Corn, with crests like rent plumes dangled
            Over Harvest’s battle-piain;
        And the sudden whir and whistle
        Of the quail that, like a missile,
        Whizzes over thorn and thistle,
            And, a missile, drops again.

        Muffled voices, hid in thickets
        Where the redbird stops to stick its
        Ruddy beak betwixt the pickets
            Of the truant’s rustic trap;
        And the sound of laughter ringing
        Where, within the wild-vine swinging,
        Climb Bacchante’s schoolmates, flinging
            Purple clusters in her lap.

        Rich as wine, the sunset flashes
        Round the tilted world, and dashes
        Up the sloping west and splashes
            Red foam over sky and sea – 
        Till my dream of Autumn, paling
        In the splendor all-prevailing,
        Like a sallow leaf goes sailing
            Down the silence solemnly.