Lyrics of Earth

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Title: Lyrics of Earth
Author: Archibald Lampman
Release Date: July 11, 2007 [EBook #12664]
[This file was first
posted on June 19, 2004]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LYRICS OF
EARTH ***
Produced by Andrew Sly.
Thank you to Canadian Poetry [http://www.canadianpoetry.ca] for
providing the source text.
Revised by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdp.net
LYRICS OF EARTH
BY
ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN
[Illustration]

BOSTON
COPELAND AND DAY
MDCCCXCV
Copyright by Copeland and Day, 1895.
CONTENTS
The Sweetness of Life 5
God-speed to the Snow 7
April in the Hills 8
Forest Moods 9
The Return of the Year 10
Favorites of Pan 11
The Meadow 14
In May 17
Life and Nature 19
With the Night 20
June 21
Distance 24
The Bird and the Hour 25
After Rain 25
Cloud-break 27

The Moon-path 28
Comfort of the Fields 29
At the Ferry 32
September 35
A Re-assurance 38
The Poet's Possession 39
An Autumn Landscape 39
In November 40
By an Autumn Stream 42
Snowbirds 44
Snow 45
Sunset 46
Winter-store 48
The Sun Cup 56
TO MY MOTHER
Mother, to whose valiant will,
Battling long ago,
What the heaping
years fulfil,
Light and song, I owe;
Send my little book a-field,

Fronting praise or blame
With the shining flag and shield
Of your
name.
THE SWEETNESS OF LIFE
It fell on a day I was happy,
And the winds, the concave sky,
The
flowers and the beasts in the meadow
Seemed happy even as I;
And

I stretched my hands to the meadow,
To the bird, the beast, the tree:

"Why are ye all so happy?"
I cried, and they answered me.
What sayest thou, Oh meadow,
That stretches so wide, so far,
That
none can say how many
Thy misty marguerites are?
And what say
ye, red roses,
That o'er the sun-blanched wall
From your high
black-shadowed trellis
Like flame or blood-drops fall?
"We are
born, we are reared, and we linger
A various space and die;
We
dream, and are bright and happy,
But we cannot answer why."
What sayest thou, Oh shadow,
That from the dreaming hill
All
down the broadening valley
Liest so sharp and still?
And thou, Oh
murmuring brooklet,
Whereby in the noonday gleam
The
loosestrife burns like ruby,
And the branchèd asters dream?
"We
are born, we are reared, and we linger
A various space and die;
We
dream and are very happy,
But we cannot answer why."
And then of myself I questioned,
That like a ghost the while
Stood
from me and calmly answered,
With slow and curious smile:
"Thou
art born as the flowers, and wilt linger
Thine own short space and die;

Thou dream'st and art strangely happy,
But thou canst not answer
why."
GOD-SPEED TO THE SNOW
March is slain; the keen winds fly;
Nothing more is thine to do;

April kisses thee good-bye;
Thou must haste and follow too;
Silent
friend that guarded well
Withered things to make us glad,
Shyest
friend that could not tell
Half the kindly thought he had.

Haste thee,
speed thee, O kind snow;
Down the dripping valleys go,
From the
fields and gleaming meadows,
Where the slaying hours behold thee,

From the forests whose slim shadows,
Brown and leafless cannot
fold thee,
Through the cedar lands aflame
With gold light that
cleaves and quivers,
Songs that winter may not tame,
Drone of

pines and laugh of rivers.
May thy passing joyous be
To thy father,
the great sea,
For the sun is getting stronger;
Earth hath need of thee
no longer;
Go, kind snow, God-speed to thee!
APRIL IN THE HILLS
To-day the world is wide and fair
With sunny fields of lucid air,

And waters dancing everywhere;
The snow is almost gone;
The
noon is builded high with light,
And over heaven's liquid height,
In
steady fleets serene and white,
The happy clouds go on.
The channels run, the bare earth steams,
And every hollow rings and
gleams
With jetting falls and dashing streams;
The rivers burst and
fill;
The fields are full of little lakes,
And when the romping wind
awakes
The water ruffles blue and shakes,
And the pines roar on the
hill.
The crows go by, a noisy throng;
About the meadows all day long

The shore-lark drops his brittle song;
And up the leafless tree
The
nut-hatch runs, and nods, and clings;
The bluebird dips with flashing
wings,
The robin flutes, the sparrow sings,
And the swallows float
and flee.
I break the spirit's cloudy bands,
A wanderer in enchanted lands,
I
feel the sun upon my hands;
And far from care and strife
The broad
earth bids me forth. I rise
With lifted brow and upward eyes.
I bathe
my spirit in blue skies,
And taste the springs of life.
I feel the tumult of new birth;
I waken with the wakening earth;
I
match the bluebird in her mirth;
And wild with wind and sun,
A