The Return Poem by Francis Joseph Sherman

A day ago, as she passed through,
(September, with foreshadowed hair)
The great doors of the year swung to
And little leaves fell here and there.

Behind white, drifted clouds was lost


The pageant of the level sun;
We knew the silence tokened frost
And that the old warm eves were done.

And so we mourned and slept. But he,
(The Master of the moving hours)


Called up the Southern wind: and we
Awoke,—to see, across the flowers,

The gates flung back a morning’s space,
And (while the fields went wild for mirth!)
Above the threshold Summer’s face—


Yearning for her old lover, Earth.