A Dark Day of Summer

Though Summer walks the world to-day
With corn-crowned hours for her guard,
Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray,
And wait in Autumn’s weedy yard.

And where the larkspur and the phlox
Spread carpets for her feet to pass,
She stands with sombre, dripping locks
Bound bleak with fog-washed zinnias.

Sad terra-cotta-colored flowers,
Whose disks the trickling wet has tinged
With dingy lustre, like the bowers,
Flame-flecked with leaves, the frost has singed.

She, with slow feet,--’mid gaunt gold blooms
Of marigolds her fingers twist,--
Passes, dim-swathed in Fall’s perfumes
And dreams of sullen rain and mist.