THERE'S just a twinkle in your eye
That seems to say I MIGHT, if I
Were only bold enough to try

Birds all the summer day
Flutter and quarrel
Here in the arbour-like

When the golden day is done,
Through the closing portal,
Child and garden, Flower and sun,

Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert,
Where thou with grass, and rivers, and the breeze,
And the bright face of day, thy dalliance hadst;

NOW bare to the beholder's eye
Your late denuded bindings lie,
Subsiding slowly where they fell,

NOW when the number of my years
Is all fulfilled, and I
From sedentary life

O DULL cold northern sky,
O brawling sabbath bells,
O feebly twittering Autumn bird that tells