- These are the days when birds come back,
 - A very few, a bird or two,
 - To take a backward look.
 - These are the days when skies put on
 - The old, old sophistries of June,--
 - A blue and gold mistake.
 - Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
 - Almost thy plausibility
 - Induces my belief,
 - Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
 - And softly through the altered air
 - Hurries a timid leaf!
 - Oh, sacrament of summer days,
 - Oh, last communion in the haze,
 - Permit a child to join,
 - Thy sacred emblems to partake,
 - Thy consecrated bread to break,
 - Taste thine immortal wine!
 
I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.
And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.
And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll
As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.
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