Haze, char, and the weather of All Souls':
A giant absence mopes upon the trees:
Leaves cast in casual potpourris
Whisper their scents from pits and cellar-holes.
Or brewed in gulleys, steeped in wells, they spend
In chilly steam their last aromas, yield
From shallow hells a revenance of field
And orchard air. And now the envious mind
Which could not hold the summer in my head
While bounded by that blazing circumstance
Parades thses barrens in a golden trance,
Remembering the wealthy season dead,
And by an autumn inspiration makes
A summer all its own. Green boughs arise
Through all the boundless backward of the eyes,
And the soul bathes in warm conceptual lakes.
Less proud than this, my body leans an ear
Past cold and colder weather after wings’
Soft commotion, the sudden race of springs,
The goddess’ tread heard on the dayward stair,
Longs for the brush of the freighted air, for smells
Of grass and cordial lilac, for the sight
Of green leaves building into the light
And azure water hoisting out of wells.
potpourris: pot = potiche (a vase with round body tapering at the neck and having a removable cover) pourris = to rot or putrid
revenant: one who returns after a lengthy absence, one who returns after death; French revenir = to return (my dictionary didn’t revenance, but I’m assuming that it is “a state of returning”).
cordial: warm and sincere; strongly felt; a liquor. Medieval Latin: cord = heart
azure: light purplish blue. A mixing of the Arabic word (al)-lazaward or lapis lazuli, a place name in Turkestan, Lajward where Marco Polo collected the lapis lazuli stones.