The Frost
by Theodora Goss

The frost came on the harvest,
and fallow flowed the air;
the sheaves cleaved off in earnest
and all the skies grew bare.

The clouds fled off and blankness
arrayed the atmosphere,
and autumn in her fastness
had not one cloth to wear.

The leaves betrayed the branches
and grasses hueless hung
upon the valley’s haunches,
the lambent weeds among,

and over all that landscape
the season turned,
while swallows made escape
and the berries burned.

(The illustration is by Arthur Rackham. This poem was published in my collection Songs for Ophelia.)