Among the Millet and Other Poems | Page 6

voices grew?More high and solemn; slowly with hushed flight
Ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn,?Nor ever stirred, watching with fathomless eyes,?And with your countless clear antiphonies?Filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn,?Last-risen, found you with its first pale gleam,?Still with soft throats unaltered in your dream.
V.
And slowly as we heard you, day by day,?The stillness of enchanted reveries?Bound brain and spirit and half-closèd eyes,?In some divine sweet wonder-dream astray;?To us no sorrow or upreared dismay?Nor any discord came, but evermore?The voices of mankind, the outer roar,?Grew strange and murmurous, faint and far away.
Morning and noon and midnight exquisitely,?Wrapt with your voices, this alone we knew,?Cities might change and fall, and men might die,?Secure were we, content to dream with you,?That change and pain are shadows faint and fleet,?And dreams are real, and life is only sweet.
AN IMPRESSION.
I heard the city time-bells call?Far off in hollow towers,?And one by one with measured fall?Count out the old dead hours;
I felt the march, the silent press?Of time, and held my breath;?I saw the haggard dreadfulness?Of dim old age and death.
SPRING ON THE RIVER.
O sun, shine hot on the river;?For the ice is turning an ashen hue,?And the still bright water is looking through,?And the myriad streams are greeting you?With a ballad of life to the giver,?From forest and field and sunny town,?Meeting and running and tripping down,?With laughter and song to the river.
Oh! the din on the boats by the river;?The barges are ringing while day avails,?With sound of hewing and hammering nails,?Planing and painting and swinging pails,?All day in their shrill endeavour;?For the waters brim over their wintry cup,?And the grinding ice is breaking up,?And we must away down the river.
Oh! the hum and the toil of the river;?The ridge of the rapid sprays and skips:?Loud and low by the water's lips,?Tearing the wet pines into strips,?The saw mill is moaning ever.?The little grey sparrow skips and calls?On the rocks in the rain of the water falls,?And the logs are adrift in the river.
Oh! restlessly whirls the river;?The rivulets run and the cataract drones:?The spiders are flitting over the stones:?Summer winds float and the cedar moans;?And the eddies gleam and quiver.?O sun, shine hot, shine long and abide?In the glory and power of thy summer tide?On the swift longing face of the river.
WHY DO YE CALL THE POET LONELY.
Why do ye call the poet lonely,?Because he dreams in lonely places??He is not desolate, but only?Sees, where ye cannot, hidden faces.
HEAT.
From plains that reel to southward, dim,?The road runs by me white and bare;?Up the steep hill it seems to swim?Beyond, and melt into the glare.?Upward half way, or it may be?Nearer the summit, slowly steals?A hay-cart, moving dustily?With idly clacking wheels.
By his cart's side the wagoner?Is slouching slowly at his ease,?Half-hidden in the windless blur?Of white dust puffing to his knees.?This wagon on the height above,?From sky to sky on either hand,?Is the sole thing that seems to move?In all the heat-held land.
Beyond me in the fields the sun?Soaks in the grass and hath his will;?I count the marguerites one by one;?Even the buttercups are still.?On the brook yonder not a breath?Disturbs the spider or the midge.?The water-bugs draw close beneath?The cool gloom of the bridge.
Where the far elm-tree shadows flood?Dark patches in the burning grass,?The cows, each with her peaceful cud,?Lie waiting for the heat to pass.?From somewhere on the slope near by?Into the pale depth of the noon?A wandering thrush slides leisurely?His thin revolving tune.
In intervals of dreams I hear?The cricket from the droughty ground;?The grass-hoppers spin into mine ear?A small innumerable sound.?I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze:?The burning sky-line blinds my sight:?The woods far off are blue with haze;?The hills are drenched in light.
And yet to me not this or that?Is always sharp or always sweet;?In the sloped shadow of my hat?I lean at rest, and drain the heat;?Nay more, I think some blessèd power?Hath brought me wandering idly here:?In the full furnace of this hour?My thoughts grow keen and clear.
AMONG THE TIMOTHY.
Long hours ago, while yet the morn was blithe,?Nor sharp athirst had drunk the beaded dew,?A reaper came, and swung his cradled scythe?Around this stump, and, shearing slowly, drew?Far round among the clover, ripe for hay,?A circle clean and grey;?And here among the scented swathes that gleam,?Mixed with dead daisies, it is sweet to lie?And watch the grass and the few-clouded sky,?Nor think but only dream.
For when the noon was turning, and the heat?Fell down most heavily on field and wood,?I too came hither, borne on restless feet,?Seeking some comfort for an aching mood.?Ah, I was weary of the drifting hours,?The echoing city towers,?The blind grey streets, the jingle of the throng,?Weary of hope that like a shape of stone?Sat near at hand without a smile or moan,?And weary most of song.
And those high