First Frost

Roberta Teale Swartz

O solemn rains, and quietude of gloom-
Slate-colored air through which the maples bloom-
The cold sends on in you his points of steel ;
These painted fires will feed a fire more real.

Death long ago instructed me with grief,
But I have trusted summer leaf by leaf
That dying, pledges every year anew
Devotion to the ways in which it grew:

Those leaves like minds, that used to verdure tossed,
When in the night they have a taste of frost
Are afterwards in quiet purple stoled,
Or sepia with undersides of gold,
Their rich bouquets of garnet and of rose
Ripened in full foreknowledge of the snows.