Poems (Forrest)/September haze

by Mabel Forrest

SEPTEMBER HAZE

I think September haze upon the hills
Is made of dreams. Dreams of the summers dead,
The powdered dust of leaves, of vanished bloom,
The perfumed mist of many summer eves
Come back to teach the earth remembering
From some blue heaven of forgotten things!

I like to see those distant outlines blurred,
While the hot sun draws from the opening flower
An inspiration blown from Fairyland
To the brown, beaten roads of Everyday!

Time filches colour from the summer ways.
Even the loquat-yellow of the noon,
The warm, plum-blossom white of moony eves,
The apricots of sunset and of dawn.
It leaves a million grains of silver dust
That once were the cast petals of rose,
The shell-pink spur of honeysuckle horns,
The crinkled silks of orange poppy flowers.

So while fresh buddings jewel grass and tree,
And every purple stock that bursts the swathe
Of sage-green sepal must believe itself
The first to gladden a September world,
The flowers of a hundred buried springs
Watch wistfully, grey ghosts of pleasances,
Blurring the outlines of the drowsing hills,
As tears may blot those bright September greens
In aged eyes that go remembering
A golden summer when the heart was young.