I felt the chill of the meadow underfoot,
But the sun overhead;
And snatches of verse and song of scenes like this
I sung or said.

I skirted the margin alders for miles and miles
In a sweeping line.
The day was the day by every flower that blooms,
But I saw no sign.

Yet further I went to be before the scythe,
For the grass was high;
Till I saw the path where the slender fox had come
And gone panting by.

Then at last and following him I found--
In the very hour
When the color flushed to the petals it must have been--
The far-sought flower.

There stood the purple spires with no breath of air
Nor headlong bee
To disturbe their perfect poise the livelong day
'Neath the alder tree.

I only knelt and putting the boughs aside
Looked, or at most
Counted them all to the buds in the copse's depth
That were pale as a ghost.

Then I arose and silently wandered home,
And I for one
Said that the fall might come and whirl of leaves,
For summer was done.

This poem is from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem and published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, Limited (1866).

For more information about Robert Frost, see: www.poets.org/rfros