Swift Summer into the Autumn flowed, And frost in the mist of the morning rode, Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright, Mocking the spoil of the secret night. _25 The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, Paved the turf and the moss below. The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, Like the head and the skin of a dying man. And Indian plants, of scent and hue _30 The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, Leaf by leaf, day after day, Were massed into the common clay. And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red, And white with the whiteness of what is dead, _35 Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed; Their whistling noise made the birds aghast. And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds, Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds, Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, _40 Which rotted into the earth with them. The water-blooms under the rivulet Fell from the stalks on which they were set; And the eddies drove them here and there, As the winds did those of the upper air. _45 Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks Were bent and tangled across the walks; And the leafless network of parasite bowers Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers. Between the time of the wind and the snow _50 All loathliest weeds began to grow, Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck, Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's back. And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, _55 Stretched out its long and hollow shank, And stifled the air till the dead wind stank. And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, _60 Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould Started like mist from the wet ground cold; Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead With a spirit of growth had been animated! _65 Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, And at its outlet flags huge as stakes Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes. And hour by hour, when the air was still, _70 The vapours arose which have strength to kill; At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt, At night they were darkness no star could melt. And unctuous meteors from spray to spray Crept and flitted in broad noonday _75 Unseen; every branch on which they alit By a venomous blight was burned and bit. The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid, Wept, and the tears within each lid Of its folded leaves, which together grew, _80 Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.