Chrysanthemum

Albert Bigelow Paine (1861 - 1937)

Across a waste of moorland, bleak and bare,
     A lonely bird is flying, calling low___
     The last of all the feathered host to go,
     And loth to leave still lingers, calling, there.
     Within my silent garden-passes, where
     The flowers are withered that in summer blow,
     I walk with murmuring ghosts, that to and fro
Sway gently in the chill November air;

When, lo! I mark a little way apart
     The sovereign glory of this waning year
     That now, alone, unheralded hath come,
In gorgeous robes___alas, my fickle heart
     Forgets the dead, and laughs that she is here,
     The royal queen of fall, Chrysanthemum.

Published 1893