Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 2 | Page 6

sin the cost,
And show by
one gleaned ear the mighty harvest lost.
1854.
FLOWERS IN WINTER
PAINTED UPON A PORTE LIVRE.
How strange to greet, this frosty morn,
In graceful counterfeit of
flowers,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of
showers!
How well the conscious wood retains
The pictures of its flower-sown
home,
The lights and shades, the purple stains,
And golden hues of
bloom!
It was a happy thought to bring
To the dark season's frost and rime

This painted memory of spring,
This dream of summer-time.
Our hearts are lighter for its sake,
Our fancy's age renews its youth,

And dim-remembered fictions take
The guise of--present truth.
A wizard of the Merrimac,--
So old ancestral legends say,
Could
call green leaf and blossom back
To frosted stem and spray.
The dry logs of the cottage wall,
Beneath his touch, put out their
leaves
The clay-bound swallow, at his call,
Played round the icy
eaves.
The settler saw his oaken flail
Take bud, and bloom before his eyes;


From frozen pools he saw the pale,
Sweet summer lilies rise.
To their old homes, by man profaned,
Came the sad dryads, exiled
long,
And through their leafy tongues complained
Of household use
and wrong.
The beechen platter sprouted wild,
The pipkin wore its old-time green

The cradle o'er the sleeping child
Became a leafy screen.
Haply our gentle friend hath met,
While wandering in her sylvan
quest,
Haunting his native woodlands yet,
That Druid of the West;
And, while the dew on leaf and flower
Glistened in moonlight clear
and still,
Learned the dusk wizard's spell of power,
And caught his
trick of skill.
But welcome, be it new or old,
The gift which makes the day more
bright,
And paints, upon the ground of cold
And darkness, warmth
and light.
Without is neither gold nor green;
Within, for birds, the birch-logs
sing;
Yet, summer-like, we sit between
The autumn and the spring.
The one, with bridal blush of rose,
And sweetest breath of woodland
balm,
And one whose matron lips unclose
In smiles of saintly calm.
Fill soft and deep, O winter snow!
The sweet azalea's oaken dells,

And hide the bank where roses blow,
And swing the azure bells!
O'erlay the amber violet's leaves,
The purple aster's brookside home,

Guard all the flowers her pencil gives
A life beyond their bloom.
And she, when spring comes round again,
By greening slope and
singing flood
Shall wander, seeking, not in vain,
Her darlings of the
wood.
1855.

THE MAYFLOWERS
The trailing arbutus, or mayflower, grows abundantly in the vicinity of
Plymouth, and was the first flower that greeted the Pilgrims after their
fearful winter. The name mayflower was familiar in England, as the
application of it to the historic vessel shows, but it was applied by the
English, and still is, to the hawthorn. Its use in New England in
connection with _Epigma repens _dates from a very early day, some
claiming that the first Pilgrims so used it, in affectionate memory of the
vessel and its English flower association.
Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars,
And nursed by winter gales,

With petals of the sleeted spars,
And leaves of frozen sails!
What had she in those dreary hours,
Within her ice-rimmed bay,
In
common with the wild-wood flowers,
The first sweet smiles of May?
Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim said,
Who saw the blossoms peer

Above the brown leaves, dry and dead,
"Behold our Mayflower
here!"
"God wills it: here our rest shall be,
Our years of wandering o'er;

For us the Mayflower of the sea
Shall spread her sails no more."
O sacred flowers of faith and hope,
As sweetly now as then
Ye
bloom on many a birchen slope,
In many a pine-dark glen.
Behind the sea-wall's rugged length,
Unchanged, your leaves unfold,

Like love behind the manly strength
Of the brave hearts of old.
So live the fathers in their sons,
Their sturdy faith be ours,
And ours
the love that overruns
Its rocky strength with flowers!
The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day
Its shadow round us draws;
The
Mayflower of his stormy bay,
Our Freedom's struggling cause.

But warmer suns erelong shall bring
To life the frozen sod;
And
through dead leaves of hope shall spring
Afresh the flowers of God!

1856.
THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN.
I.
O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands
Plead with the
leaden heavens in vain,
I see, beyond the valley lands,
The sea's
long level dim with rain.
Around me all things, stark and dumb,

Seem praying for the snows to come,
And, for the summer bloom and
greenness gone,
With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn atone.
II.
Along the river's summer walk,
The withered tufts of asters nod;

And trembles on its arid stalk
The boar plume of the golden-rod.

And on a ground of sombre fir,
And azure-studded juniper,
The
silver birch its buds of purple shows,
And scarlet berries tell where
bloomed the sweet wild-rose!
III.
With mingled sound of horns and bells,
A far-heard clang, the
wild geese fly,
Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells,
Like a
great arrow through the sky,
Two dusky lines converged in one,

Chasing the southward-flying sun;
While the brave snow-bird and the
hardy jay
Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay.
IV.
I passed this way a year ago
The wind blew south; the noon of