September haze

I think September haze upon the hillsIs made of dreams. Dreams of the summers dead,The powdered dust of leaves, of vanished bloom,The perfumed mist of many summer evesCome back to teach the earth rememberingFrom some blue heaven of forgotten things!

I like to see those distant outlines blurred,While the hot sun draws from the opening flowerAn inspiration blown from FairylandTo the brown, beaten roads of Everyday!

Time filches colour from the summer ways.Even the loquat-yellow of the noon,The warm, plum-blossom white of moony eves,The apricots of sunset and of dawn.It leaves a million grains of silver dustThat once were the cast petals of rose,The shell-pink spur of honeysuckle horns,The crinkled silks of orange poppy flowers.

So while fresh buddings jewel grass and tree,And every purple stock that bursts the swatheOf sage-green sepal must believe itselfThe first to gladden a September world,The flowers of a hundred buried springsWatch wistfully, grey ghosts of pleasances,Blurring the outlines of the drowsing hills,As tears may blot those bright September greensIn aged eyes that go rememberingA golden summer when the heart was young.