She slumbers through the starlit night—

Her scarlet cloak of frosted light

And favored by a moon awake

She shivers in her dreams of flight.

For fly she must in autumn’s wake;

The barren boughs she must forsake.

Another sunrise may she see

Before the slender stem will break.

Now one by one her sisters flee

And soon so few, but still there’s she.

Her time is nigh; she has grown old—

Then in the breeze she’s sailing free.

Curved to catch the air and hold,

She lingers in the time foretold,

And falls to carpets, red and gold—

And falls to carpets, red and gold.