Among the Millet and Other Poems | Page 8

the thin green
spears of the wheat are appearing, And the high-ho shouts from the
smoky clearing;
Over the widths where the cloud shadows creep;

Over the fields and the fallows we come;
Over the swamps with their pensive noises,
Where the burnished cup
of the marigold gleams;
Skirting the reeds, where the quick winds
shiver
On the swelling breast of the dimpled river,
And the blue of
the king-fisher hangs and poises,
Watching a spot by the edge of the
streams;
By the miles of the fences warped and dyed
With the white-hot noons
and their withering fires, Where the rough bees trample the creamy
bosoms
Of the hanging tufts of the elder blossoms,
And the spiders
weave, and the grey snakes hide,
In the crannied gloom of the stones
and the briers;
Over the meadow lands sprouting with thistle,
Where the humming
wings of the blackbirds pass,
Where the hollows are banked with the
violets flowering, And the long-limbed pendulous elms are towering,

Where the robins are loud with their voluble whistle, And the ground
sparrow scurries away through the grass,
Where the restless bobolink loiters and woos
Down in the hollows
and over the swells,
Dropping in and out of the shadows,
Sprinkling
his music about the meadows,
Whistles and little checks and coos,

And the tinkle of glassy bells;
Into the dim woods full of the tombs
Of the dead trees soft in their
sepulchres,
Where the pensive throats of the shy birds hidden,
Pipe
to us strangely entering unbidden,
And tenderly still in the tremulous

glooms
The trilliums scatter their white-winged stars;
Up to the hills where our tired hearts rest,
Loosen, and halt, and
regather their dreams;
Up to the hills, where the winds restore us,

Clearing our eyes to the beauty before us,
Earth with the glory of life
on her breast,
Earth with the gleam of her cities and streams.
Here we shall commune with her and no other;
Care and the battle of
life shall cease;
Men her degenerate children behind us,
Only the
might of her beauty shall bind us,
Full of rest, as we gaze on the face
of our mother,
Earth in the health and the strength of her peace.
MORNING ON THE LIÈVRES.
Far above us where a jay
Screams his matins to the day,
Capped
with gold and amethyst,
Like a vapour from the forge
Of a giant
somewhere hid,
Out of hearing of the clang
Of his hammer, skirts
of mist
Slowly up the woody gorge
Lift and hang.
Softly as a cloud we go,
Sky above and sky below,
Down the river,
and the dip
Of the paddles scarcely breaks,
With the little silvery
drip
Of the water as it shakes
From the blades, the crystal deep
Of
the silence of the morn,
Of the forest yet asleep,
And the river
reaches borne
In a mirror, purple grey,
Sheer away
To the misty
line of light,
Where the forest and the stream
In the shadow meet
and plight,
Like a dream.
From amid a stretch of reeds,
Where the lazy river sucks
All the
water as it bleeds
From a little curling creek,
And the muskrats peer
and sneak

In around the sunken wrecks
Of a tree that swept the
skies
Long ago,
On a sudden seven ducks
With a splashy rustle
rise,
Stretching out their seven necks,
One before, and two behind,

And the others all arow,
And as steady as the wind
With a
swivelling whistle go,
Through the purple shadow led,
Till we only

hear their whir
In behind a rocky spur,
Just ahead.
IN OCTOBER.
Along the waste, a great way off, the pines,
Like tall slim priests of
storm, stand up and bar
The low long strip of dolorous red that lines

The under west, where wet winds moan afar.
The cornfields all are
brown, and brown the meadows
With the blown leaves' wind-heapèd
traceries,
And the brown thistle stems that cast no shadows,
And
bear no bloom for bees.
As slowly earthward leaf by red leaf slips,
The sad trees rustle in chill
misery,
A soft strange inner sound of pain-crazed lips,
That move
and murmur incoherently;
As if all leaves, that yet have breath, were
sighing,
With pale hushed throats, for death is at the door,
So many
low soft masses for the dying
Sweet leaves that live no more.
Here I will sit upon this naked stone,
Draw my coat closer with my
numbèd hands,
And hear the ferns sigh, and the wet woods moan,

And send my heart out to the ashen lands;
And I will ask myself what
golden madness,
What balmèd breaths of dreamland spicery,
What
visions of soft laughter and light sadness
Were sweet last month to
me.
The dry dead leaves flit by with thin wierd tunes,
Like failing
murmurs of some conquered creed,
Graven in mystic markings with
strange runes,
That none but stars and biting winds may read;
Here
I will wait a little; I am weary,
Not torn with pain of any lurid hue,

But only still and very gray and dreary,
Sweet sombre lands, like you.
LAMENT OF THE WINDS.
We in sorrow coldly witting,
In the bleak world sitting, sitting,
By
the forest, near the mould,
Heard the summer calling, calling,

Through the dead leaves falling, falling,
That her life grew faint and

old.
And we took her up, and bore her,
With the leaves that moaned
before