Also, who laid the rainbow's piers, Also, who leads the docile spheres By withes of supple blue? Whose fingers string the stalactite, Who counts the wampum of the night, To see that none is due? Who built this little Alban house And shut the windows down so close My spirit cannot see? Who 'll let me out some gala day, With implements to fly away, Passing pomposity? XLIII. THE JUGGLER OF DAY. Blazing in gold and quenching in purple, Leaping like leopards to the sky, Then at the feet of the old horizon Laying her spotted face, to die; Stooping as low as the otter's window, Touching the roof and tinting the barn, Kissing her bonnet to the meadow, -- And the juggler of day is gone! XLIV. MY CRICKET. Farther in summer than the birds, Pathetic from the grass, A minor nation celebrates Its unobtrusive mass. No ordinance is seen, So gradual the grace, A pensive custom it becomes, Enlarging loneliness. Antiquest felt at noon When August, burning low, Calls forth this spectral canticle, Repose to typify. Remit as yet no grace, No furrow on the glow, Yet a druidic difference Enhances nature now. XLV. As imperceptibly as grief The summer lapsed away, -- Too imperceptible, at last, To seem like perfidy. A quietness distilled, As twilight long begun, Or Nature, spending with herself Sequestered afternoon. The dusk drew earlier in, The morning foreign shone, -- A courteous, yet harrowing grace, As guest who would be gone. And thus, without a wing, Or service of a keel, Our summer made her light escape Into the beautiful. XLVI. It can't be summer, -- that got through; It 's early yet for spring; There 's that long town of white to cross Before the blackbirds sing. It can't be dying, -- it's too rouge, -- The dead shall go in white. So sunset shuts my question down With clasps of chrysolite. XLVII. SUMMER'S OBSEQUIES. The gentian weaves her fringes, The maple's loom is red. My departing blossoms Obviate parade. A brief, but patient illness, An hour to prepare; And one, below this morning, Is where the angels are. It was a short procession, -- The bobolink was there, An aged bee addressed us, And then we knelt in prayer. We trust that she was willing, -- We ask that we may be. Summer, sister, seraph, Let us go with thee! In the name of the bee And of the butterfly And of the breeze, amen! XLVIII. FRINGED GENTIAN. God made a little gentian; It tried to be a rose And failed, and all the summer laughed. But just before the snows There came a purple creature That ravished all the hill; And summer hid her forehead, And mockery was still. The frosts were her condition; The Tyrian would not come Until the North evoked it. "Creator! shall I bloom?" XLIX. NOVEMBER. Besides the autumn poets sing, A few prosaic days A little this side of the snow And that side of the haze. A few incisive mornings, A few ascetic eyes, -- Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod, And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.