The gray-green stretch of sandy grass, Indefinitely desolate; A sea of lead, a sky of slate; Already autumn in the air, alas! One stark monotony of stone, The long hotel, acutely white, Against the after-sunset light Withers gray-green, and takes the grass's tone.

And I would have, now love is over, An end to all, an end: I cannot, having been your lover, Stoop to become your friend!

My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring.

Here in a little lonely room I am master of earth and sea, And the planets come to me.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.

'It was ideal apple-eating weather; the whitest sunlight descended from the purest sky, and an easterly wind rustled, without ripping loose, the last of the le…