The Seine flows out of the mist And into the mist again; The trees lean over the water, The small leaves fall like rain. The leaves fall patiently, Nothing remembers or grieves; The river takes to the sea The yellow drift of the leaves. Milky and cold is the air, The leaves float with the stream, The river comes out of a sleep And goes away in a dream. _Fontainebleau_ Interminable palaces front on the green parterres, And ghosts of ladies lovely and immoral Glide down the gilded stairs, The high cold corridors are clicking with the heel taps That long ago were theirs. But in the sunshine, in the vague autumn sunshine, The geometric gardens are desolately gay; The crimson and scarlet and rose-red dahlias Are painted like the ladies who used to pass this way With a ringletted monarch, a Henry or a Louis On a lost October day. The aisles of the garden lead into the forest, The aisles lead into autumn, a damp wind grieves, Ghostly kings are hunting, the boar breaks cover, But the sounds of horse and horn are hushed in falling leaves, Four centuries of autumns, four centuries of leaves. _Late October_ (Bois de Boulogne) Listen, the damp leaves on the walks are blowing With a ghost of sound; Is it a fog or is it a rain dripping From the low trees to the ground? If I had gone before, I could have remembered Lilacs and green after-noons of May; I chose to wait, I chose to hear from autumn Whatever she has to say. III SAND DRIFT “_Beautiful, Proud Sea_” Careless forever, beautiful proud sea, You laugh in happy thunder all alone, You fold upon yourself, you dance your dance Impartially on drift-weed, sand or stone. You make us believe that we can outlive death, You make us for an instant, for your sake, Burn, like stretched silver of a wave, Not breaking, but about to break. _Land’s End_ The shores of the world are ours, the solitary Beaches that bear no fruit, nor any flowers, Only the harsh sea-grass that the wind harries Hours on unbroken hours. No one will envy us these empty reaches At the world’s end, and none will care that we Leave our lost footprints where the sand forever Takes the unchanging passion of the sea. _Sand Drift_ I thought I should not walk these dunes again, Nor feel the sting of this wind-bitten sand, Where the coarse grasses always blow one way, Bent, as my thoughts are, by an unseen hand. I have returned; where the last wave rushed up The wet sand is a mirror for the sky A bright blue instant, and along its sheen The nimble sandpipers run twinkling by.