The sky ran down in rain all night,
This morning all the earth is brown:
Trees give up their leaves to light,
Water has brought autumn down.
Whoever rakes and burns in mounds
The leaves so scored and stained by air
Would level forests to the ground,
Make deserts of his own despair.
Some who have stunted under shade
Must hate whatever grows to die:
Indifferent heaven makes them mad
And light strikes evil in their eye.
The naked oak, last night as dense
As water with a swell of leaf,
Stands like a gravestone on their sense:
It is the monument to grief,
Grief for the husk that seeks the earth
Though soul call to a farther range,
Turned to a child, cries out on birth,
Would live forever, worships change,
Levels under final ground
The growth in vain that storms at heaven,
And through the open seasons’ round
The leaves like fallen lives are driven.
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