Time Of Clearer Twitterings

I.     Time of crisp and tawny leaves,     And of tarnished harvest sheaves,     And of dusty grasses - weeds -     Thistles, with their tufted seeds     Voyaging the Autumn breeze     Like as fairy argosies:     Time of quicker flash of wings,     And of clearer twitterings     In the grove, or deeper shade     Of the tangled everglade, -     Where the spotted water-snake     Coils him in the sunniest brake;     And the bittern, as in fright,     Darts, in sudden, slanting flight,     Southward, while the startled crane     Films his eyes in dreams again.     II     Down along the dwindled creek     We go loitering. We speak     Only with old questionings     Of the dear remembered things     Of the days of long ago,     When the stream seemed thus and so     In our boyish eyes: - The bank     Greener then, through rank on rank     Of the mottled sycamores,     Touching tops across the shores:     Here, the hazel thicket stood -     There, the almost pathless wood     Where the shellbark hickory tree     Rained its wealth on you and me.     Autumn! as you loved us then,     Take us to your heart again!     III     Season halest of the year!     How the zestful atmosphere     Nettles blood and brain, and smites     Into life the old delights     We have tasted in our youth,     And our graver years, forsooth!     How again the boyish heart     Leaps to see the chipmunk start     From the brush and sleek the sun     Very beauty, as he runs!     How again a subtle hint     Of crushed pennyroyal or mint,     Sends us on our knees, as when     We were truant boys of ten -     Brown marauders of the wood,     Merrier than Robin Hood!     IV     Ah! will any minstrel say,     In his sweetest roundelay,     What is sweeter, after all,     Than black haws, in early Fall -     Fruit so sweet the frost first sat,     Dainty-toothed, and nibbled at!     And will any poet sing     Of a lusher, richer thing     Than a ripe May-apple, rolled     Like a pulpy lump of gold     Under thumb and finger-tips,     And poured molten through the lips?     Go, ye bards of classic themes,     Pipe your songs by classic streams!     I would twang the redbird's wings     In the thicket while he sings!