How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark Autumn evenings come, And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life’s November too! I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!

In the morning of the world, When earth was nigher heaven than now.

Rejoice that man is hurled, From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled!

Once more on my adventure brave and new.

Smiling the boy fell dead.

Every one soon or late comes round by Rome.

Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.