Ritual for Summer Dead

August turns autumnal now:
Scarlet the sudden maple-bough
At the turn of the wood-road gleams;
On the hearth the gray log sings
Sleepy songs of vanished things--
Babbling, bubbling John-a-Dreams.
August is autumn now.

Find the field where, dead and dry,
Under the broad still noontide sky,
Bleached in the flow of the bright-blue weather,
Stalks of the milkweed stand together.
Take the pale-brown pod in hand,
Packed with seeds of silvery feather;
Wander dreaming through the land.
Let each silken plumelet sift
Through the fingers, drift and drift,
Touched with the sun to rainbow light--
Float--and float--and out of sight!

So might incense drift away.
Golden Summer is dead to-day.
As a pious thurifer
Swing the censer meet for her.