Bland as the morning breath of June
The southwest breezes play;
And, through its haze, the winter noon
Seems warm as summer’s day.
The snow-plumed Angel of the North
Has dropped his icy spear;
Again the mossy earth looks forth,
Again the streams gush clear.

The fox his hillside cell forsakes,
The muskrat leaves his nook,
The bluebird in the meadow brakes
Is singing with the brook.
“Bear up, O Mother Nature!” cry
Bird, breeze, and streamlet free;
“Our winter voices prophesy
Of summer days to thee!”

So, in those winters of the soul,
By bitter blasts and drear
O’erswept from Memory’s frozen pole,
Will sunny days appear.
Reviving Hope and Faith, they show
The soul its living powers,
And how beneath the winter’s snow
L...

    I hail thee, Nessmuk, for the lofty tone
            Yet simple grace that marks thy poetry!
            True forester thou art, and still to be,
    Even in happier fields than thou hast known.
    Thus, in glad visions, glimpses am I shown
            Of groves delectable - "preserves" for thee -
            Ranged but by friends of thine - I name thee three: -

    First, Chaucer, with his bald old pate new-grown
        With changeless laurel; next, in Lincoln-green,
            Gold-belted, bowed and bugled, Robin Hood;
        And next, Ike Walton, patient and serene:
    These three, O Nessmuk, gathered hunter-wise,
    Are camped on hither slopes of Paradise
            To hail thee first and greet thee, as they should.

    Sweet naiveté of feature,
        Simple, wild, enchanting elf,
    Not to thee, but thanks to nature,
        Thou art acting but thyself.

    Wert thou awkward, stiff, affected,
        Spurning nature, torturing art;
    Loves and graces all rejected,
        Then indeed thou'dst act a part.

R. B.

I.

All’s over, then: does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?
Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!

II.

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that, to-day;
One day more bursts them open fully
You know the red turns grey.

III.

To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?
Mere friends are we, well, friends the merest
Keep much that I resign:

IV.

For each glance of the eye so bright and black,
Though I keep with heart’s endeavour,
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul for ever!

V.

Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold ...

Children of earth are we,
Lovers of land and sea,
Of hill, of brook, of tree,
    Of all things fair;
Of all things dark or bright,
Born of the day and night,
Red rose and lily white
    And dusky hair.

Yet not alone from earth
Do we derive our birth.
What were our singing worth
    Were this the whole?
Somewhere from heaven afar
Hath dropped a fiery star,
Which makes us what we are,
    Which is our soul.

The flute, whence Summer's dreamy fingertips
Drew music, ripening the pinched kernels in
The burly chestnut and the chinquapin,
Red-rounding-out the oval haws and hips,
Now Winter crushes to his stormy lips,
And surly songs whistle around his chin;
Now the wild days and wilder nights begin
When, at the eaves, the crooked icicle drips.
Thy songs, O Summer, are not lost so soon!
Still dwells a memory in thy hollow flute,
Which unto Winter's masculine airs doth give
Thy own creative qualities of tune,
Through which we see each bough bend white with fruit,
Each bush with bloom, in snow commemorative.

Clouds spout upon her
    Their waters amain
    In ruthless disdain, -
Her who but lately
    Had shivered with pain
As at touch of dishonour
If there had lit on her
So coldly, so straightly
    Such arrows of rain.

She who to shelter
    Her delicate head
Would quicken and quicken
    Each tentative tread
If drops chanced to pelt her
    That summertime spills
    In dust-paven rills
When thunder-clouds thicken
    And birds close their bills.

Would that I lay there
    And she were housed here!
Or better, together
Were folded away there
Exposed to one weather
We both, who would stray there
When sunny the day there,
    Or evening was clear
    At the prime of the year.

Soon will be gro...

Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow
Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear,
The hunter of the west must go
In depth of woods to seek the deer.

His rifle on his shoulder placed,
His stores of death arranged with skill,
His moccasins and snow-shoes laced,
Why lingers he beside the hill?

Far, in the dim and doubtful light,
Where woody slopes a valley leave,
He sees what none but lover might,
The dwelling of his Genevieve.

And oft he turns his truant eye,
And pauses oft, and lingers near;
But when he marks the reddening sky,
He bounds away to hunt the deer.

    Clarinda, mistress of my soul,
        The measur'd time is run!
    The wretch beneath the dreary pole
        So marks his latest sun.

    To what dark cave of frozen night
        Shall poor Sylvander hie;
    Depriv'd of thee, his life and light,
        The sun of all his joy.

    We part, but, by these precious drops
        That fill thy lovely eyes!
    No other light shall guide my steps
        Till thy bright beams arise.

    She, the fair sun of all her sex,
        Has blest my glorious day;
    And shall a glimmering planet fix
        My worship to its ray?

'Tis the hour when white-horsed Day
Chases Night her mares away;
When the Gates of Dawn (they say)
Phobus opes:
And I gather that the Queen
May be uniformly seen,
Should the weather be serene,
On the slopes.

When the ploughman, as he goes
Leathern-gaitered o'er the snows,
From his hat and from his nose
Knocks the ice;
And the panes are frosted o'er,
And the lawn is crisp and hoar,
As has been observed before
Once or twice.

When arrayed in breastplate red
Sings the robin, for his bread,
On the elmtree that hath shed
Every leaf;
While, within, the frost benumbs
The still sleepy schoolboy's thumbs,
And in consequence his sums
Come to grief.

But when breakfast-time hath come,
And he's crunching crust a...

The winter wind is raving fierce and shrill,
    And chides with angry moan the frosty skies;
    The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes
That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still.
We reck not of the wild night's gloom and chill,
    Housed from its rage, dear friend; and fancy flies,
    Lured by the hand of beckoning memories,
Back to those summer evenings on the hill
Where we together watched the sun go down
    Beyond the gold-washed uplands, while his fires
    Touched into glittering life the vanes and spires
Piercing the purpling mists that veiled the town.
    The wintry night thy voice and eyes beguile,
    Till wake the sleeping summers in thy smile.

As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
    And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
    And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
    Distinctly yet

Myself and a girlish form benighted
    In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
    To ease the sturdy pony's load
    When he sighed and slowed.

What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
    Matters not much, nor to what it led, -
Something that life will not be balked of
    Without rude reason till hope is dead,
    And feeling fled.

It filled but a minute. But was there ever
    A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill's story? To one mind never,
    Though it has been climbed, fo...

RICHARD HENRY DANA

In the old churchyard of his native town,
    And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall,
    We laid him in the sleep that comes to all,
    And left him to his rest and his renown.
The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down
    White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall;--
    The dead around him seemed to wake, and call
    His name, as worthy of so white a crown.
And now the moon is shining on the scene,
    And the broad sheet of snow is written o'er
    With shadows cruciform of leafless trees,
As once the winding-sheet of Saladin
    With chapters of the Koran; but, ah! more
    Mysterious and triumphant signs are these.

For Elizabeth Bishop

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village,
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill,
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall,
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl,
there is no money in his wor...

SCENE. - A wide stretch of fallow ground recently sown with wheat, and frozen to iron hardness. Three large birds walking about thereon, and wistfully eyeing the surface. Wind keen from north-east: sky a dull grey.

(TRIOLET)

Rook. - Throughout the field I find no grain;
The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!
Starling. - Aye: patient pecking now is vain
Throughout the field, I find . . .
Rook. - No grain!
Pigeon. - Nor will be, comrade, till it rain,
Or genial thawings loose the lorn land
Throughout the field.
Rook. - I find no grain:
The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!

Hard by the road, where on that little mound
    The high grass rustles to the passing breeze,
    The child of Misery rests her head in peace.
Pause there in sadness. That unhallowed ground
Inshrines what once was Isabel. Sleep on
    Sleep on, poor Outcast! lovely was thy cheek,
    And thy mild eye was eloquent to speak
The soul of Pity. Pale and woe-begone
Soon did thy fair cheek fade, and thine eye weep
    The tear of anguish for the babe unborn,
    The helpless heir of Poverty and Scorn.
She drank the draught that chill'd her soul to sleep.
I pause and wipe the big drop from mine eye,
Whilst the proud Levite scowls and passes by.

A tree's leaves may be ever so good,
So may its bar, so may its wood;
But unless you put the right thing to its root
It never will show much flower or fruit.

But I may be one who does not care
Ever to have tree bloom or bear.
Leaves for smooth and bark for rough,
Leaves and bark may be tree enough.

Some giant trees have bloom so small
They might as well have none at all.
Late in life I have come on fern.
Now lichens are due to have their turn.

I bade men tell me which in brief,
Which is fairer, flower or leaf.
They did not have the wit to say,
Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bar, leaves and bark,
To lean against and hear in the dark.
Petals I may have once pursued.
Leaves are all my darker mood.

The thoughts of all the maples who shall name,
When the sad landscape turns to cold and grey?
Yet some for very ruth and sheer dismay,
Hearing the northwind pipe the winter's name,
Have fired the hills with beaconing clouds of flame;
And some with softer woe that day by day,
So sweet and brief, should go the westward way,
Have yearned upon the sunset with such shame,

That all their cheeks have turned to tremulous rose;
Others for wrath have turned a rusty red,
And some that knew not either grief or dread,
Ere the old year should find its iron close,
Have gathered down the sun's last smiles acold,
Deep, deep, into their luminous hearts of gold.