“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.
