Voice on the wind and other poems / by Madison Cawein [electronic text]

THE END OF SUMMER

Pods are the poppies, and slim spires of pods The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds Collapsing at a touch; the lote, that sods The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds, Around the sleepy water and its reeds, Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods. Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead! The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre, Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire: While from the East, as from a garden bed, Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some Great golden melon—saying, "Fall has come."