A Vagabond Song. [Bliss Carman] There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood -- Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time. The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills. There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir; We must rise and follow her, When from every hill of flame She calls and calls each vagabond by name. Somewhere. [John Vance Cheney] The weasel thieves in silver suit, The rabbit runs in gray; And Pan takes up his frosty flute To pipe the cold away. The flocks are folded, boughs are bare, The salmon take the sea; And O my fair, would I somewhere Might house my heart with thee! "Frost To-Night". [Edith M. Thomas] Apple-green west and an orange bar, And the crystal eye of a lone, one star . . . And, "Child, take the shears and cut what you will, Frost to-night -- so clear and dead-still." Then, I sally forth, half sad, half proud, And I come to the velvet, imperial crowd, The wine-red, the gold, the crimson, the pied, -- The dahlias that reign by the garden-side. The dahlias I might not touch till to-night! A gleam of the shears in the fading light, And I gathered them all, -- the splendid throng, And in one great sheaf I bore them along. . . . . . In my garden of Life with its all-late flowers I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours: "Frost to-night -- so clear and dead-still" . . . Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill. Under Arcturus. [Madison Cawein] I "I belt the morn with ribboned mist; With baldricked blue I gird the noon, And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed, White-buckled with the hunter's-moon. "These follow me," the Season says: "Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways, With gypsy gold that weighs their backs." II A daybreak horn the Autumn blows, As with a sun-tanned hand he parts Wet boughs whereon the berry glows; And at his feet the red fox starts. The leafy leash that holds his hounds Is loosed; and all the noonday hush Is startled; and the hillside sounds Behind the fox's bounding brush. When red dusk makes the western sky A fire-lit window through the firs, He stoops to see the red fox die Among the chestnut's broken burrs. Then fanfaree and fanfaree, His bugle sounds; the world below Grows hushed to hear; and two or three Soft stars dream through the afterglow. III Like some black host the shadows fall, And blackness camps among the trees; Each wildwood road, a Goblin Hall, Grows populous with mysteries. Night comes with brows of ragged storm, And limbs of writhen cloud and mist; The rain-wind hangs upon his arm Like some wild girl who cries unkissed.