'Last leaf'

“All day the fitful rain

Had wrought new traceries,

New quirks, new love-knots, down the pane.

And what do I see beyond

That fluctuating gray

But a world that seems to be God-abandoned –

Last leaf, rain soaked, from my high

Birch falling, the spruce wrapped in thought,

And the mountain dissolving rain-gray to gray sky.’’

— From “Vermont Ballad: Change of Season,’’ by Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989), who had a house in Stratton, Vt.