An Autumn Day

Beauty goes sadly on a day like this;
She cannot find a rose in any lane;
The haw upon the thorn seems all amiss
For what was white, and very April-plain.
Here are the long-packed secrecies of yore;
And the pale glimmer of a dead man's clothes;
And withered things blown up and down at door;
And here the old disaster of the rose.
Yet she is still herself, though different,
With a hushed foot upon her errands set;
And with a spare hand, shakes the ancient mood
Of music out a hedge, or some lost scent
From the wrecked grass, or in the silver wet
Strews with her violets a crumbling wood.