The Autumn Shore

by M.G. Warenycia

Bleak and blear, the pallid Autumn ray

Pours frail and heatless light

On scenes divorced from the violet night

Whose harvest, fresh-planted, lay

‘Neath the wind-bent pines which brood upon the bight,

Reposing, all still and cold and white;

A cheerless smile, waiting to defile the luckless jogger’s day.

The lake-wind calls up each leaden wave

From out the unglimpsed deeps;

Though shimmers yet the huddled aspen’s leaf,

Already, Winter, into the watcher’s marrow seeps,

And plunges the soul down a darkling cave

From whose sordid shadows flitting day brings no relief.