Folk Song

        When merry milkmaids to their cattle call
            At evenfall
            And voices range
        Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,

        Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,
            Like migrant doves,
            Wake and give wing
        To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing.

        The new still holds the old moon in her arms;
            The ancient charms
            Of dew and dusk
        Still lure her nomad odors from the musk,

        And, at each day's millennial eclipse,
            On new men's lips,
            Some old song starts,
        Made of the music of millennial hearts,

        Whereto one listens as from long ago
            And learns to know
            That one day's tears
        And love and life are as a thousand years',

        And that some simple shepherd, singing of
            His pain and love,
            May haply find
        His heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind.

John Charles McNeill

John Charles McNeill was a prominent American poet known for his works that vividly depicted the landscapes and spirit of North Carolina. Born on July 26, 1874, in Wagram, North Carolina, he won acclaim with his book 'Songs Merry and Sad,' which won the Patterson Cup in 1905. His poetry primarily reflects rural life and Southern traditions. Sadly, McNeill's promising career was cut short when he died on October 17, 1907, at the young age of 33.

John Charles McNeill

Now!

John Charles McNeill, Simple Poetry

An Invalid

John Charles McNeill, Simple Poetry

October

John Charles McNeill, Simple Poetry

The Rattlesnake

John Charles McNeill, Simple Poetry

English

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Home Songs

        The little loves and sorrows are my song:
            The leafy lanes and birthsteads of my sires,
            Where memory broods by winter's evening fires
        O'er oft-told joys, and ghosts of ancient wrong;
        The little cares and carols that belong
            To home-hearts, and old rustic lutes and lyres,
            And spreading acres, where calm-eyed desires
        Wake with the dawn, unfevered, fair, and strong.

        If words of mine might lull the bairn to sleep,
            And tell the meaning in a mother's eyes;
        Might counsel love, and teach their eyes to weep
            Who, o'er their dead, question unanswering skies,
        More worth than legions in the dust of strife,
        Time, looking back at last, should count my ...

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An Old Wife's Song.

And what will ye hear, my daughters dear? -
    Oh, what will ye hear this night?
Shall I sing you a song of the yuletide cheer,
    Or of lovers and ladies bright?

"Thou shalt sing," they say (for we dwell far away
    From the land where fain would we be),
"Thou shalt sing us again some old-world strain
    That is sung in our own countrie.

"Thou shalt mind us so of the times long ago,
    When we walked on the upland lea,
While the old harbor light waxed faint in the white,
    Long rays shooting out from the sea;

"While lambs were yet asleep, and the dew lay deep
    On the grass, and their fleeces clean and fair.
Never grass was seen so thick nor so green
    As the grass that grew up there!

"In the town was no smoke, for none ther...

Jean Ingelow

Reminiscence

        We sang old love-songs on the way
            In sad and merry snatches,
        Your fingers o'er the strings astray
            Strumming the random catches.

        And ever, as the skiff plied on
            Among the trailing willows,
        Trekking the darker deeps to shun
            The gleaming sandy shallows,

        It seemed that we had, ages gone,
            In some far summer weather,
        When this same faery moonlight shone,
            Sung these same songs together.

        And every grassy cape we passed,
            And every reedy island,
        Even the bank'd cloud in the west
            That loomed a sombre highland;

        And you, with dewmist on your hair,
            Crowned with a wreat...

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Oblivion

        Green moss will creep
        Along the shady graves where we shall sleep.

        Each year will bring
        Another brood of birds to nest and sing.

        At dawn will go
        New ploughmen to the fields we used to know.

        Night will call home
        The hunter from the hills we loved to roam.

        She will not ask,
        The milkmaid, singing softly at her task,

        Nor will she care
        To know if I were brave or you were fair.

        No one will think
        What chalice life had offered us to drink,

        When from our clay
        The sun comes back to kiss the snow away.

John Charles McNeill

Harvest

        Cows in the stall and sheep in the fold;
        Clouds in the west, deep crimson and gold;
            A heron's far flight to a roost somewhere;
            The twitter of killdees keen in the air;
        The noise of a wagon that jolts through the gloam
            On the last load home.

        There are lights in the windows; a blue spire of smoke
        Climbs from the grange grove of elm and oak.
            The smell of the Earth, where the night pours to her
            Its dewy libation, is sweeter than myrrh,
        And an incense to Toil is the smell of the loam
            On the last load home.

John Charles McNeill

Away Down Home

        'T will not be long before they hear
            The bullbat on the hill,
        And in the valley through the dusk
            The pastoral whippoorwill.
        A few more friendly suns will call
            The bluets through the loam
        And star the lanes with buttercups
                Away down home.

        "Knee-deep!" from reedy places
            Will sing the river frogs.
        The terrapins will sun themselves
            On all the jutting logs.
        The angler's cautious oar will leave
            A trail of drifting foam
        Along the shady currents
                Away down home.

        The mocking-bird will feel again
            The glory of his wings,
        And wanton through the balmy air

John Charles McNeill