If Fall shall rob fair summer of her boon, And steal the gloried rays of her gold sun, And dreamy essence of her calming moon, Whose beams across the Heaven’s bowers run,
And all her sweets, her candied charms and spells, And all the finest beauty of her store, Then days shall come, in which Cronus compels Fall to make grander all that summer bore:
To make the sunshine doubly gold and bud Much sweeter, golden blossoms, and then birth Much fairer fruits, rich with sweet, temp’rate blood And feed with triply fresher dew the earth,
And pave the roads with golden folds of wheat And piled gourd, and hang the trees with leaves, And spread with posy flame the glades where meet The murm’ring brooks, and where the sunshine weaves
Its silk of light across the morning skies, And all the flowered bowers with sweet breath. Aye, even if the summer clime soon dies The Fall shall wreathe a beauty of its death.