William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

Song in the Key of Autumn

WE are walking with the month

To a quiet place.

See, only here and there the gentians stand!

Tonight the homing loon

Will fly across the moon,

Over the tired land.

We were the idlers and the sowers,

The watchers in the sun,

The harvesters who laid away the grain.

Now there’s a sign in every vacant tree,

Now there’s a hint in every stubble field,

Something we must not forget

When the blossoms fly again.

Give me your hand!

There were too many promises in June.

Human-tinted buds of spring

Told only half the truth.

The withering leaf beneath our feet,

That wrinkled apple overhead,

Say more than vital boughs have said

When we went walking

In this growing place.

There is something in this hour

More honest than a flower

Or laughter from a sunny face.

The Century Magazine