I didn’t know I was grateful For such late-autumn Bent-up cornfields Yellow in the after-harvest Sun before the Cold plow turns it all over.

How silently they tumble down And come to rest upon the ground To lay a carpet, rich and rare, Beneath the trees without a care.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, Are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, The world offers itself to your imagination.

The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.

You belong among the wildflowers You belong in a boat out at sea You belong with your love on your arm You belong somewhere you feel free.

The wind and welkin and wave are ours Wherever our bourne is found, And we envy no landsman his dream and sleep When we’re off to the fishing ground.

No one can tell me, Nobody knows, Where the wind comes from,Where the wind goes. It’s flying from somewhere As fast as it can, I couldn’t keep up with it, Not if I ran.

Tivoli Girl, Don’t you hear the music play? If you’ll be my pal in the summertime Down beside the ocean blue, When the snow flies Tivoli Girl, I’ll be dreaming of you.

The wheel is ready to turn again. When you have gone it will light up, The shadow of the spokes to drown Your departure where the summer knells.

It is a real chill out, The genuine thing. I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart.)

The stillness of the cup and the water in it, The silence of the moon And the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

In the dog days of summer as muslin curls on its own heat And crickets cry in the black walnut tree The wind lifts up my life And sets it some distance from where it was.

If sky and ocean had the means To pool their very bluest genes, Their brightest babies, one assumes, Would look like bachelor-button blooms.

But happiness floats. It doesn’t need you to hold it down. It doesn’t need anything. Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing, and disappears when it wants to.

And now the crickets plug in their appliances in unison, and then the fireflies flash dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation.

Sea’s stony greenblue shatters to white In a running swell under noonsky of cloudlight Where on a foamed-over cropping of rock A band of oystercatchers faces all one way.

The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.

All these sounds and sights of water Are a symphony to me — A voice that still reminds me I’m adrift without the sea.