I felt the chill of the meadow underfoot,
But the sun overhead;
And snatches of verse and song of scenes like this
I sung or said.
I skirted the margin alders for miles and miles
In a sweeping line.
The day was the day by every flower that blooms,
But I saw no sign.
Yet further I went to be before the scythe,
For the grass was high;
Till I saw the path where the slender fox had come
And gone panting by.
Then at last and following him I found—
In the very hour
When the color flushed to the petals it must have been—
The far-sought flower.
There stood the purple spires with no breath of air
Nor headlong bee
To disturb their perfect poise the livelong day
’Neath the alder tree.
I only knelt and putting the boughs aside
Looked, or at most
Counted them all to the buds in the copse’s depth
That were pale as a ghost.
Then I arose and silently wandered home,
And I for one
Said that the fall might come and whirl of leaves,
For summer was done.
Other works by Robert Frost...
