The oak in later August,
Before his leaves are strewn,
And the sky is blue as June,
Trembles from trunk to branches
For frosts that will be soon
From the valleys of the moon!

For breezes blown in August
Veer north with cold and rain;
And the oak tree sighs and shivers
For lights that shift and wane:
As a strong man sees the specters
Of age, disease and pain,
The oak flings up to heaven
His branches in the rain.

September comes, September
Spreads out a sky that chills.
The owl hoots and the cricket
Beside the roadway shrills,
And on the stricken hills.
But the oak tree, the oak tree
Still flaunts his shining leaves.
No change has come but swallows
Who fled the summer eaves!

But when October breezes,
And cold November gales
Descend upon the oak tree,
What strength of him avails,
Grown naked to the tempest
For life that sleeps and fails?
O oak tree, oak tree,
The winter snow prevails!
It cannot be your branches,
It is the wind that wails!

Last night I saw the failing moon
Scatter its petals through the sky,
And all the heavenly gardens shook,
As though a wind went by,

And all the petals of the sea
Cast upward on the pulsing sand,
Were white as at the touch of death,
That nothing can withstand;

Throughout the whole world, sick with dread,
Swiftly an aching pallor ran;
The world was dead, dead — all was dead
Since first slow time began.

That loving face Earth used to wear
Midst tender green and blue of flowers,
Of mortal fairness, mortal sweet,
Was but a dream of ours;

A childish fantasy of play
That turns to life some happy spot,
Thereafter dead, as long before —
The brightness lingers not.

For here beneath my trembling feet,
Earth's face shows lifeless, overcast
With shadows of some dreaming world,
Prophetic, or long past;

Some other dream, some other world
Gave life and passion birth,
And ours it is to love and live
And perish with the earth.

Ah, long ago, who was it cast
A thought into the void of space
That made the earth and made the stars
And made each little place

Aflame with life, and then forgot,
As children in a race,
That now we wait, as some old house,
For a familiar face?