Robin Hyde

Hanmer Woods
 
 
Autumn will walk there, with a breath of stardust,
With the burnt brown fronds of bracken in her hair;
Autumn will come with the frost on briar berries,
With clean blue mornings and smoke-hazed air.

Autumn will run like a boy among the birchwoods,
Bittersweet of berries that the birds love on her lips,
With the first frosts crackling in the wet-leaved wood-ways
And the last leaf crimson on the maple-tips.

Crying of birds will flutter through the forest
When dawn-rains splinter the silver of the pool,
When the bright sun drips from the brown-haired fir trees
And the larch boughs quiver in little winds and cool.

Autumn will come, and I among the redgums
Will feel again the stirring of slender things as these —
Bright flax glinting through the foreign larches
And a bellbird chiming in the maple trees.

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Last updated 24 September, 2003