Lyrics of Earth | Page 7

light, too
fearful of the gloom;
The sun falls low, the secret word is said,
The
mouldering woods grow silent as the tomb;
Even the fields have lost
their sovereign grace,
The cone-flower and the marguerite; and no
more,
Across the river's shadow-haunted floor,
The paths of
skimming swallows interlace.
Already in the outland wilderness
The forests echo with unwonted
dins;
In clamorous gangs the gathering woodmen press
Northward,
and the stern winter's toil begins.
Around the long low shanties,
whose rough lines
Break the sealed dreams of many an unnamed lake,

Already in the frost-clear morns awake
The crash and thunder of
the falling pines.
Where the tilled earth, with all its fields set free,
Naked and yellow
from the harvest lies,
By many a loft and busy granary,
The hum
and tumult of the thrashers rise;
There the tanned farmers labor
without slack,
Till twilight deepens round the spouting mill,

Feeding the loosened sheaves, or with fierce will,
Pitching waist-deep
upon the dusty stack.
Still a brief while, ere the old year quite pass,
Our wandering steps
and wistful eyes shall greet
The leaf, the water, the beloved grass;

Still from these haunts and this accustomed seat
I see the wood-wrapt
city, swept with light,
The blue long-shadowed distance, and,
between,
The dotted farm-lands with their parcelled green,
The dark
pine forest and the watchful height.
I see the broad rough meadow stretched away
Into the crystal
sunshine, wastes of sod,
Acres of withered vervain, purple-gray,

Branches of aster, groves of goldenrod;
And yonder, toward the sunlit
summit, strewn
With shadowy boulders, crowned and swathed with
weed, Stand ranks of silken thistles, blown to seed,
Long silver
fleeces shining like the noon.

In far-off russet corn-fields, where the dry
Gray shocks stand peaked
and withering, half concealed In the rough earth, the orange pumpkins
lie,
Full-ribbed; and in the windless pasture-field
The sleek red
horses o'er the sun-warmed ground
Stand pensively about in
companies,
While all around them from the motionless trees
The
long clean shadows sleep without a sound.
Under cool elm-trees floats the distant stream,
Moveless as air; and
o'er the vast warm earth
The fathomless daylight seems to stand and
dream,
A liquid cool elixir--all its girth
Bound with faint haze, a
frail transparency,
Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills
The
utmost valleys and the thin last hills,
Nor mars one whit their perfect
clarity.
Thus without grief the golden days go by,
So soft we scarcely notice
how they wend,
And like a smile half happy, or a sigh,
The summer
passes to her quiet end;
And soon, too soon, around the cumbered
eaves
Sly frosts shall take the creepers by surprise,
And through the
wind-touched reddening woods shall rise October with the rain of
ruined leaves.
A RE-ASSURANCE
With what doubting eyes, oh sparrow,
Thou regardest me,
Underneath yon spray of yarrow,
Dipping cautiously.
Fear me not, oh little sparrow,
Bathe and never fear,
For to me both pool and yarrow
And thyself are dear.
THE POET'S POSSESSION

Think not, oh master of the well-tilled field,
This earth is only thine;
for after thee,
When all is sown and gathered and put by,
Comes the
grave poet with creative eye,
And from these silent acres and clean
plots,
Bids with his wand the fancied after-yield,
A second tilth and
second harvest, be,
The crop of images and curious thoughts.
AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE
No wind there is that either pipes or moans;
The fields are cold and
still; the sky
Is covered with a blue-gray sheet
Of motionless cloud;
and at my feet
The river, curling softly by,
Whispers and dimples
round its quiet gray stones.
Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves
The road runs rough
and silent, lined
With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray,
And poplars
pallid as the day,
In masses spectral, undefined,
Pale greenish stems
half hid in dry gray leaves.
And on beside the river's sober edge
A long fresh field lies black.
Beyond,
Low thickets gray and reddish stand,
Stroked white with
birch; and near at hand,
Over a little steel-smooth pond,
Hang
multitudes of thin and withering sedge.
Across a waste and solitary rise
A ploughman urges his dull team,

A stooped gray figure with prone brow
That plunges bending to the
plough
With strong, uneven steps. The stream
Rings and re-echoes
with his furious cries.
Sometimes the lowing of a cow, long-drawn,
Comes from far off; and
crows in strings
Pass on the upper silences.
A flock of small gray
goldfinches,
Flown down with silvery twitterings,
Rustle among the
birch-cones and are gone.
This day the season seems like one that heeds,
With fixèd ear and
lifted hand,
All moods that yet are known on earth,
All motions that

have faintest birth,
If haply she may understand
The utmost inward
sense of all her deeds.
IN NOVEMBER
With loitering step and quiet eye,
Beneath the low November sky,
I
wandered in the woods, and found
A clearing, where the broken
ground
Was scattered with black stumps and briers,
And the old
wreck of forest fires.
It was a bleak and sandy spot,
And, all about,
the vacant plot
Was peopled and inhabited
By scores of mulleins
long since dead.
A silent and forsaken brood
In that mute opening
of the wood,
So shrivelled and so thin they were,
So gray, so
haggard, and austere,
Not plants at all they seemed to me,
But