dots-menu
×

Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Cicely Fox-Smith (1882–1954)

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Songs of Greater Britain (1899). IV. Autumn

Cicely Fox-Smith (1882–1954)

STERN Time hath banished with a frown

The summer, now grown wan and old;

In grief the woodlands lay adown

Their crowns of gold.

No more the copses echo round

With stockdove’s moan and woodwren’s lay;

To gladden distant shores with sound

They wing their way.

The wild winds shudder thro’ the trees,

Where late the redstart’s carol rang;

The torn nests wanton with the breeze

Where sweet birds sang.

The sere, sad leaves, their glory done,

Fall from the bough to meet the wave:

The stream they shadowed from the sun

Gives them a grave.