This livelong day I listen to the fall
    Of hickory nuts and acorns to the ground,
The croke of raincrows and the bluejay's call,
    The woodman's axe that hews with muffled sound.

And like a spendthrift in a threadbare coat
    That still retains a dash of crimson hue,
An old woodpecker chatters forth a note
    About the better Summer days he knew.

Across the road a ruined cabin stands,
    With ragweeds and with thistles at its door,
While withered cypress vines hang tattered strands
    About its falling roof and rotting floor.

In yonder forest nook no sound is heard
    Save when walnuts patter on the earth,
Or when by winds the hectic leaves are stirred
    To dance like witches in their maniacal mirth.

Down in the orchard hang the golden pears,
    Half honeycombed by yellow hammer beaks;
Near by, a dwarfed and twisted apple bears
    Its fruit, brown-red as Amazonian cheeks.

The lonesome landscape seems as if it yearned
    Like our own aching hearts, when first we knew
The one love of our life was not returned,
    Or first we found an oldtime friend untrue.

At last the night comes, and the broad white moon
    Is welcomed by the owl with frenzied glee;
The fat opossum, like a satyr, soon
    Blinks at its light from yon persimmon tree.

The raccoon starts to hear long dreaded sounds,
    Amid his scattered spoils of ripened corn—
The cry of negroes and the yelp of hounds,
    The wild, rude pealing of a hunter's horn.

At last a gray mist covers all the land
    Until we seem to wander in a cloud,
Far, far away upon some elfin strand
    Where Sorrow drapes us in a mildewed shroud.

No voice is heard in field or forest nigh
    To break the desolation of the spell,
Save one sad mocking-bird in boughs near by,
    Who sings like Tasso in his madman's cell;

While one magnolia blossom, ghostly white,
    Like high-born Leonora, lingering there,
Haughty and splendid in the lonesome night,
    Is pale with passion in her dumb despair.