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Robert Laurence Binyon - The Birch Tree
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Touched with beauty, I stand still and gaze
 In the autumn twilight. Yellow leaves and brown
 The grass enriching, gleam, or waver down
 From lime and elm: far--glimmering through the haze
 The quiet lamps in order twinkle; dumb
 And fair the park lies; faint the city`s hum.

 And I regret not June`s impassioned prime,
 When her deep lilies banqueted the air,
 And this now ruined, then so fragrant lime
 Cooled with clear green the heavy noon`s high glare;
 Nor flushed carnations, breathing hot July;
 Nor April`s thrush in the blithest songs of the year,
 With brown bloom on the elms and dazzling sky;
 So strange a charm there lingers in this austere
 Resigning month, yielding to what must be.
 Yet most, O delicate birch, I envy thee,
 Child among trees! with silvery slender limbs
 And purple sprays of drooping hair. Night dims
 The grass; the great elms darken; no birds sing.
 At last I sigh for the warmth and the fragrance flown.
 But thou in the leafless twilight shinest alone,
 Awaiting in ignorant trust the certain spring.
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