A Little Window | Page 2

a delicate sapling.?They sway and bend in the wind,?And bow to the trees encircling.?I hear the laughter of their leaves.
In autumn she dances?With beech leaves in her hair,
But in winter I have found her still,?Crouching under a blanket of snow.
_Remembering_
(_Locheven_)
There is a spot in the woods?That is "forever England" to me.?A clump of beech trees?Steeped in silence,?Whose shade and solitude?Shuts me in with my dreams.?The sunshine slants through?Their limpid leaves?And turns them to translucent jade,?Just as it does in an English spring.?Violets are there, and I pluck them,?Remembering the bluebells?In the beech wood?At Sevenoaks.
_Aloofness_
Down among the docks and elevators and railroad tracks?On the way out of the city,?I pass a tiny cottage so rickety?That its neighbors crowd close?To hold it up. But there it is,?Its one window shining clean, and glowing?With a plant in a tin can and pure white curtains.?Hanging over the fence and filling the whole place?With its beauty and almost hiding the cottage?Is a peach tree in full bloom.?In the doorway I glimpse a girl?In a purple dress.?But what matters the smoke and the noise and the fog?To the peach tree?
_Listening_
(_Eden, N. Y._)
Atop Aries hill am I,?The lone flyer, throbbing?Against the sunset?Is higher.?He sees more than I,?But he cannot hear?What I hear.
I hear the wood-thrush?And the veery,?Answer each other.?I hear the voices?Of happy children?And the baying of hounds?Float up from the valley;?The chirp of the cricket?At my feet, and, then,?The silence of nightfall.
He sees more than I,?But he cannot hear?What I hear.
_September's End_
In the ash tree?There is a soft rustling,?Lingering, like?A silken whisper,?Quite different?Than sound the other trees;?As if the bronzy leaves?Had much to say?Before they part,?And were loath?To bid farewell.
_Content_
(_Westfield, N. Y._)
When I linger in my garden?And see black swallowtails hovering?Over white phlox and orange zinnias,?And morning glories, in a heavenly blue mass?Surge upward on their trellis;?When I watch the scintillating humming-bird?Sip from the trumpet blossoms across my doorway,?I feel no urge of travel to behold?More of earth's beauty.?Here in my little garden I have it all--?And here I am content.
_Rhythm_
Firelight, and strains of a symphony?Wafting in.?Outside, bare trees?Against leaden skies?Weave their own music?That throbs with the rhythm?Of the orchestra.?The wind moans, and?Strong, black branches?Sway slowly,?Mark the beat,?Then stop.?The wind hums,?Delicate, lacelike tops?Quiver and ripple?With the quick response?Of the violins.?With the shriek of the wind?They writhe and toss,?Measuring the crescendo?Of the brasses.
_Contrast_
In an old world palace,?Room after room?Is filled with treasures--?Old masters, jewels, glass.?Yet all I remember?Is the stark whiteness of a gardenia?Blowing against a wall,?And the fairy music of a fountain?In the patio.
_Surety_
I needed the dawn, but?My eyes beheld only clouds?And a valley filled with mists?And a mountain shutting out the east.?I needed the dawn, so?I could but wait.?Surely,?Slowly?Through the clouds?The light came,?Like a presence?Dispelling mist and cloud:?Even the mountain?Could not hide it.?My eyes beheld all clear,?And in the roseate glow,?Like a diamond,?Hung the morning star.
_Guests_
There was emptiness?When the birds left in the fall.?But to fill it came late butterflies,?Dawdling flocks of brilliant things?In clouds of scintillating beauty,?Covering every bush and flower.?As silently as they came did they disappear?And in their place came the music?Of the katydid and the cricket.?Day and night the cheerful songs?Of these tiny insects were our company.
An early blizzard?Buried every green blade and bent to earth?Great trees and slender saplings?Under a thick weight of snow.?To our door came the thrushes?That we thought were gone,--?Shy thrushes, that had turned their backs?Upon us in summer and slipped?Into the depth of the woods,--?And whitethroats and tree sparrows,?Unafraid, waiting for food.?Even now the stillness is alive?With the memory of these friendly folk.
_Storm_
When the storm rushes upon the deep woods,?It lets down curtains of mist?And sheets of rain, that drip?Crystal beads among the trees.?Way above, the branches lash and moan?And weave. Below, it is still,?Still as the undersea.?Soft fern and feathery bracken?Loom through the mist?Like branching coral,?And drifting leaves float down?Like snowy fishes,?Lazily moving.
_A Reminder_
Down beneath the office windows?In a chestnut clump,?A robin sings all day long,?"Joyously, joyously!"
Above the whir of traffic,?The bands and the sirens,?Floats his song all day,?"Joyously, joyously!"
The lilting song brings to me,?The peace of field and merry brook,?And I myself, sing all day, too,?"Joyously, joyously!"
_Buffalo Harbor_
Some say that it is ugly and hurry on through,?But I love these impressive symbols?Of man's ingenuity.?Here are the great grain elevators, looming?In tones and shades of grey, veiled?In the clouds of black smoke from the?Tugs at their feet;?Puffing engines shifting strings of cars,?And huge ships nosed in against each other?Or riding at anchor, and canal boats?In straight lines at the docks.?Farther on, across a slip, there are?Mountains of ore in reds and brown,?And pile upon pile of gravel and slag,?And sand in soft saffron hues,?Heaped up for the steel mills to devour;?Those gigantic mills whose tall stacks?Belch varicolored gases, against?The deep blue of the inner harbor,?Where the waves pound in?Over the sea wall.?All this cupped by