And the crystal eye of a lone, one star ...
And, "Child, take the shears and cut what you will.
Frost to-night--so clear and dead-still."
Then, I sally forth, half sad, half proud,
And I come to the velvet, imperial crowd,
The wine-red, the gold, the crimson, the pied,--
The dahlias that reign by the garden-side.
The dahlias I might not touch till to-night!
A gleam of the shears in the fading light,
And I gathered them all,--the splendid throng,
And in one great sheaf I bore them along.
In my garden of Life with its all-late flowers
I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours:
"Frost to-night--so clear and dead-still ..."
Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill.
EDITH M. THOMAS
NOVEMBER NIGHT
Listen ...
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY
THE SNOW-GARDENS
Like an empty stage
The gardens are empty and cold;
The marble terraces rise
Like vases that hold no flowers;
The lake is frozen, the fountain still;
The marble walls and the seats
Are useless and beautiful.
Ah, here
Where the wind and the dusk and the snow are
All is silent and white and sad!
Why do I think of you?
Why does your name remorselessly
Strike through my heart?
Why does my soul awaken and shudder?
Why do I seem to hear
Cries as lovely as music?
Surely you never came
Into these pale snow-gardens;
Surely you never stood
Here in the twilight with me;
Yet here I have lingered and dreamed
Of a face as subtle as music,
Of golden hair, and of eyes
Like a child's ...
I have felt on my brow
Your finger-tips, plaintive as music ...
O Wonder of all wonders, O Love--
Wrought of sweet sounds and of dreaming!--
Why do you not emerge
From the lilac pale petals of dusk,
And come to me here in the gardens
Where the wind and the snow are?
Beauty and Peace are here--
And unceasing music--
And a loneliness chill and wistful,
Like the feeling of death.
Like a crystal lily a star
Leans from its leaves of silver
And gleams in the sky;
And golden and faint in the shadows
You wait indistinctly,--
Like a phantom lamp that appears
In the mirror of distance that hovers
By the window at twilight--
You have come--and we stand together,
With questioning eyes--
Dreaming and cold and ghostly
In an empty garden that seems
Like an empty stage.
ZOE AKINS
A SONG FOR WINTER
Speak not of snow and cold and rime
Now they prevail.
Would you have joy in winter-time,
Think of the pale
New green that comes, of blossoming lilacs think,
Larkspur, and borders of the fringed pink.
And sing, if winter grants you heart to sing,
Of summer and of spring.
Would you secure some happiness
In frosty hours,
Trust to the eye external less
Than to the powers
Of inward sight that even now may show
Opaline seas, blue hilltops, and the glow
Of daybreak on the glades where thrushes sing
In summer and in spring.
Gaze not on fettered lake and brook
And sullen skies,
But in your happy memory look
Where beauty lies
As once it was, as it shall be again
When sunshine floods the fields of blowing grain,
And sing, as must who would in winter sing,
Of summer and of spring.
MRS. SCHUYLER VAN RENSSELAER
WINGS AND SONG
"I MEANT TO DO MY WORK TO-DAY"
_I meant to do my work to-day--
But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me._
_And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand--
So what could I do but laugh and go?_
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
THE HUMMINGBIRD
Through tree-top and clover a-whirr and away!
Hi! little rover, stop and stay.
Merry, absurd, excited wag--
Lilliput-bird in Brobdingnag!
Wild and free as the wild thrush, and warier--
Was ever a bee merrier, airier?
Wings folded so, a second or two--
Was ever a crow more solemn than you?
A-whirr again over the garden, away!
Who calls, little rover, Bird or fay?
Agleam and aglow, incarnate bliss!
What do you know that we humans miss?
In the lily's chalice, what rune, what spell,
In the rose's palace, what do they tell
(When the door you bob in, airily)
That they hush from the robin, hide from the bee?--
Fearing the crew of chatter and song,
And tell to you of the chantless tongue?
Chantless! Ah, yes. Is that the sting
Masked in gay dress and whirring wing?
Faith! But a wing of such airy stuff!
What need to sing? Here's music enough.
A-whirr, and over tree-top, and through!
Hi! little rover, fair travel to you.
Sweet, absurd, excited wag--
Lilliput-bird in Brobdingnag!
HERMANN HAGEDORN
SPRING SONG
Softly at dawn a whisper stole
Down from the Green House on the Hill,
Enchanting many a ghostly bole
And wood song with the ancient thrill.
Gossiping on the countryside,
Spring and the wandering breezes say
God has thrown heaven open wide
And let the thrushes out to-day.
WILLIAM GRIFFITH
NIGHTINGALES
At sunset my brown nightingales
Hidden and hushed all day,
Ring vespers, while the color pales
And fades to twilight gray:
The little mellow bells they ring,
The little flutes they play,
Are soft as though for practising
The things they want to say.
It's when the dark has floated down
To hide and guard and fold,
I know their throats that look so brown,
Are really made of gold.
No music I have ever heard
Can call as sweet as they!
I wonder if it _is_ a bird
That sings within the hidden tree,
Or some shy angel calling me
To follow far away?
GRACE HAZARD CONKLING
THE GOLDFINCH
Down from the sky on a sudden he drops
Into the mullein and juniper tops,
Flushed from his bath in the midsummer shine
Flooding the meadowland, drunk with the wine
Spilled from the urns of the blue, like a bold
Sky-buccaneer in his sable and gold.
Lightly he sways on the pendulous stem,
Vividly restless, a fluttering gem,
Then with a flash of bewildering wings
Dazzles away up and down, and he sings
Clear as a bell at each dip as he flies
Bounding along on the wave of the skies.
Sunlight and laughter, a winged desire,
Motion and melody married to fire,
Lighter than thistle-tuft borne on the wind,
Frailer than violets, how shall we find
Words that will match him, discover a name
Meet for this marvel, this lyrical flame?
How shall we fashion a rhythm to wing with him,
Find us a wonderful music to sing with him
Fine as his rapture is, free as the rollicking
Song that the harlequin drops in his frolicking
Dance through the summer sky, singing so merrily
High in the burning blue, winging so airily?
ODELL SHEPARD
KINFOLK
O, we are Kinfolk, she and I,--
The little mother-bird all brown,
Who broods above her nest on high,
And with her soft, bright eyes looks down
To read the secret of my heart,--
We two from all the world apart!
She dreams there in her swaying nest;
I dream here 'neath my sheltering vine.
The same love stirs her feathered breast
That makes my heart-throb seem divine.
We both dream 'neath the same kind sky,--
The small brown mother-bird, and I.
KATE WHITING PATCH
A MOCKING-BIRD
An arrow, feathery, alive,
He darts and sings,--
Then with a sudden skimming dive
Of striped wings
He finds a pine and, debonair,
Makes with his mate
All birds that ever rested there
Articulate.
The whisper of a multitude
Of happy wings
Is round him, a returning brood,
Each time he sings.
Though heaven be not for them or him
Yet he is wise,
And daily tiptoes on the rim
Of paradise.
WITTER BYNNER
THE CARDINAL-BIRD
Where snow-drifts are deepest he frolics along,
A flicker of crimson, a chirrup of song,
My Cardinal-Bird of the frost-powdered wing,
Composing new lyrics to whistle in Spring.
A plump little prelate, the park is his church;
The pulpit he loves is a cliff-sheltered birch;
And there, in his rubicund livery dressed,
Arranging his feathers and ruffling his crest,
He preaches, with most unconventional glee,
A sermon addressed to the squirrels and me,
Commending the wisdom of those that display
The brightest of colors when heavens are gray.
ARTHUR GUITERMAN
YELLOW WARBLERS
The first faint dawn was flushing up the skies,
When, dreamland still bewildering mine eyes,
I looked out to the oak that, winter-long,--
A winter wild with war and woe and wrong,--
Beyond my casement had been void of song.
And lo! with golden buds the twigs were set,
Live buds that warbled like a rivulet
Beneath a veil of willows. Then I knew
Those tiny voices, clear as drops of dew,
Those flying daffodils that fleck the blue,
Those sparkling visitants from myrtle isles--
Wee pilgrims of the sun, that measured miles
Innumerable over land and sea
With wings of shining inches. Flakes of glee,
They filled that dark old oak with jubilee,
Foretelling in delicious roundelays
Their dainty courtships on the dipping sprays,
How they should fashion nests, mate helping mate,
Of milkweed flax and fern-down delicate,
To keep sky-tinted eggs inviolate.
Listening to those blithe notes, I slipped once more
From lyric dawn through dreamland's open door,
And there was God, Eternal Life that sings
Eternal joy, brooding all mortal things,
A nest of stars, beneath untroubled wings.
KATHARINE LEE BATES
WITCHERY
Out of the purple drifts,
From the shadow sea of night,
On tides of musk a moth uplifts
Its weary wings of white.
Is it a dream or ghost
Of a dream that comes to me,
Here in the twilight on the coast,
Blue cinctured by the sea?
Fashioned of foam and froth--
And the dream is ended soon,
And, lo, whence came the moon-white moth
Comes now the moth-white moon!
FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN
THE SPRING BEAUTIES
The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;
A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch.
"Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them,
But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.
"Vanity, oh, vanity!
Young maids, beware of vanity!"
Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,
Half parson-like, half soldierly.
The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes,
Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes;
And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass,
They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass.
All because the buff-coat Bee
Lectured them so solemnly:--
"Vanity, oh, vanity!
Young maids, beware of vanity!"
HELEN GRAY CONE
THE MOCKING-BIRD
He didn't know much music
When first he come along;
An' all the birds went wonderin'
Why he didn't sing a song.
They primped their feathers in the sun,
An' sung their sweetest notes;
An' music jest come on the run
From all their purty throats!
But still that bird was silent
In summer time an' fall;
He jest set still and listened,
An' he wouldn't sing at all!
But one night when them songsters
Was tired out an' still,
An' the wind sighed down the valley
An' went creepin' up the hill;
When the stars was all a-tremble
In the dreamin' fields o' blue,
An' the daisy in the darkness--
Felt the fallin' o' the dew,--
There come a sound o' melody
No mortal ever heard,
An' all the birds seemed singin'
From the throat o' one sweet bird!
Then the other birds went Mayin'
In a land too fur to call;
For there warn't no use in stayin'
When one bird could sing for all!
FRANK L. STANTON
THE MESSENGER
Bee! tell me whence do you come?
Ten fields away, twenty perhaps,
Have heard your hum.
If you are from the north, you may
Have passed my mother's roof of straw
Upon your way.
If you came from the south you should
Have seen another cottage just
Inside the wood.
And should you go back that way, please
Carry a message to the house
Among the trees.
Say--I will wait her at the rock
Beside the stream, this very night
At eight o'clock.
And ask your queen when you get home
To send my queen the present of
A honey-comb.
JAMES STEPHENS
FIREFLIES
Fireflies, Fireflies, little glinting creatures,
Making night lovely with a rain of gold,
Born of the moonbeams, children all unearthly,
Ah how you vanish from a look too bold!
Fireflies, Fireflies, lovely as our dreams are,
Sewn with such fancies from the years gone by,
Wayward, elusive, as the playful zephyrs,
Hiding mid grasses, gleaming in the sky.
Fireflies, Fireflies, like unto the silent
Brown nuns who gather for the dead to pray,
As theirs your mission; holy, too, your tapers,
Souls of dead flowers lighting on their way.
ANTOINETTE DE COURSEY PATTERSON
JULY MIDNIGHT
Fireflies flicker in the tops of trees,
Flicker in the lower branches,
Skim along the ground.
Over the moon-white lilies
Is a flashing and ceasing of small, lemon-green stars.
As you lean against me,
Moon-white,
The air all about you
Is slit, and pricked, and pointed with sparkles of lemon-green flame
Starting out of a background of great vague trees.
AMY LOWELL
THE CRICKET IN THE PATH
She passed through the shadowy garden, so tall and so white,
Her eyes on the stars and her face like an angel's upturned,
And it seemed to my thought that the dusk round her head with the
light
Of an aureole burned.
But where she had trodden unseeing, I found on the path
A cricket, so frail that her light foot had maimed it, yet strong
To valiantly pipe, tiny hero, a faint aftermath
Of its yesterday song.
And I whispered, "Alas, Little Brother, why must it befall
That the passing of angels but cripples and leaves us to die?
Poor imp of the greensward, God trumpets me clear in thy call;
Thou art braver than I.
"The Bright Ones of Heaven have trodden me down as they passed;
I crawl in their footsteps a trampled and impotent thing.
I know not the reason, nor question henceforth. To the last,
While I live, I will sing."
AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR
REST AT NOON
Now with a re-created mind
Back to the world my way I find;
Fed by the hills one little hour,
By meadow-slope and beechen-bower,
Cedar serene, benignant larch,
Hoar mountains and the azure arch
Where dazzling vapors make vast sport
In God's profound and spacious court.
The universe played with me. Earth
Harped to high heaven her sweetest mirth;
The clouds built castles for my pleasure,
And airy legions without measure
Flung, spindrift-wise, across the sky
To thrill my heart once and to die.
I have held converse with large things;
For cherubim with cooling wings
Brushed me, and gay stars, hid from view,
Called through the arras of the blue
And clapped their hands: "These veils uproll!
And see the comrades of your soul!"
The very flowers that ringed my bed
Their little "God-be-with-you" said,
And every insect, bird and bee
Brought cool cups from eternity.
HERMANN HAGEDORN
ORDER
It is half-past eight on the blossomy bush:
The petals are spread for a sunning;
The little gold fly is scrubbing his face;
The spider is nervously running
To fasten a thread; the night-going moth
Is folding his velvet perfection;
And presently over the clover will come
The bee on a tour of inspection.
PAUL SCOTT MOWRER
THE NIGHT-MOTH
My night-moth, my white moth, out of the fragrant dark
Blowing in and growing like a dim star-spark,
So swift in the shifting of your elfin wings,
So slight in your lighting, as a flower that clings,
As a boat to ride the dew, with sheer up-bearing sails,
Pulsing and breathing, rocked with delicate gales,--
You gleam as a dream, by my window's light,
My white moth, my bright moth, my wandering wraith of night.
From the velvet screening of a great gray cloud
The moon floats swiftly, white and open-browed,
Flooding cloud and water with her shining trail,
Till the night shrinks, sighing, behind the radiant veil;
The night, with her shy soul, to the deep wood slips--
Her shy soul, her high soul, shrine of all the stars;
And you fly, like the sigh from her tender lips,
Athwart the wavering shadows, beating the silver bars;
You fleet in the meeting of the dark and bright,
My light moth, my white moth, spark from the soul of night.
MARION COUTHOUY SMITH
THE BUTTERFLY
O winged brother on the harebell, stay--
Was God's hand very pitiful, the hand
That wrought thy beauty at a dream's demand?
_Yes, knowing I love so well the flowery way,
He did not fling me to the world astray--
He did not drop me to the weary sand,
But bore me gently to a leafy land:
Tinting my wings, He gave me to the day._
Oh, chide no more my doubting, my despair!
I will go back now to the world of men.
Farewell, I leave thee to the world of air,
Yet thou hast girded up my heart again;
For He that framed the impenetrable plan,
And keeps His word with thee, will keep with man.
EDWIN MARKHAM
THE SECRET
O, little bird, you sing
As if all months were June;
Pray tell me ere you go
The secret of your tune?
"I have no hidden word
To tell, nor mystic art;
I only know I sing
The song within my heart!"
ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH
THE GARDENS OF YESTERDAY
THE GARDEN
_Old gardens have a language of their own,
And mine sweet speech to linger in the heart.
A goodly place it is and primly spaced,
With straight box-bordered paths and squares of bloom.
Bay-trees by rows of antique urns tell tales
Of one who loved the gardens Dante loved.
Magnolias edge the placid lily-pool
And flank the sagging seat, whence vista leads
To blaze of rhododendrons banked in green.
Azaleas by the scarlet quince flame up
Against the lustrous grape-vines trellised high
To pigeon-cote and old brick wall where hide
First snowdrops and the bravest violets.
A place of solitudes whose silences
Enfold the heart as an unquiet bird._
GERTRUDE HUNTINGTON MCGIFFERT
OLD HOMES
Old homes among the hills! I love their gardens;
Their old rock fences, that our day inherits;
Their doors, round which the great trees stand like wardens;
Their paths, down which the shadows march like spirits;
Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens.
I see them gray among their ancient acres,
Severe of front, their gables lichen-sprinkled,--
Like gentle-hearted, solitary Quakers,
Grave and religious, with kind faces wrinkled,--
Serene among their memory-hallowed acres.
Their gardens, banked with roses and with lilies--
Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers--
Where Springtime mints her gold in daffodillies,
And Autumn coins her marigolds in showers,
And all the hours are toilless as the lilies.
I love their orchards where the gay woodpecker
Flits, flashing o'er you, like a winged jewel;
Their woods, whose floors of moss the squirrels checker
With half-hulled nuts; and where, in cool renewal,
The wild brooks laugh, and raps the red woodpecker.
Old homes! Old hearts! Upon my soul forever
Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter;
Like love they touch me, through the years that sever,
With simple faith; like friendship, draw me after
The dreamy patience that is theirs forever.
MADISON CAWEIN
A PURITAN LADY'S GARDEN
This fairy pleasance in the brake--
This maze run wild of flower and vine--
Our fathers planted for the sake
Of eyes that longed for English gardens
Amid the virgin wastes of pine.
Here, by the broken, moldering wall,
Where still the tiger-lilies ride,
Once grew the crown imperial,
The tall blue larkspur, white Queen Margaret,
Prince's-feather, and mourning bride.
Beyond their pale, a humbler throng,
Grew Bouncing Bet and columbine;
The mountain fringe ran all along
The thick-set hedge of cinnamon roses,
And overhung the eglantine.
And Sunday flowers were here as well--
Adam-and-Eve within their hood,
The stately Canterbury bell,
And, oft in churches breathing fragrance,
The sweet and pungent southernwood.
When ships for England cleared the bay,
If long beside these reefs of foam
She stood, and watched them sail away,
It was her garden first enticed her
To turn, and call this country "home."
SARAH N. CLEGHORN
THE OLD-FASHIONED GARDEN
Among the meadows of the countryside,
From city noise and tumult far away,
Where clover-blossoms spread their fragrance wide
And birds are warbling all the sunny day,
There is a spot which lovingly I prize,
For there a fair and sweet old-fashioned country garden lies.
The gray old mansion down beside the lane
Stands knee-deep in the fields that lie around
And scent the air with hay and ripening grain.
Behind the manse box-hedges mark the bound
And close the garden in, or nearly close,
For on beyond the hollyhocks an olden orchard grows.
So bright and lovely is the dear old place,
It seems as though the country's very heart
Were centered here, and that its antique grace
Must ever hold it from the world apart.
Immured it lies among the meadows deep,
Its flowery stillness beautiful and calm as softest sleep.
The morning-glories ripple o'er the hedge
And fleck its greenness with their tinted foam;
Sweet wilding things, up to the garden's edge
They love to wander from their meadow home,
To take what little pleasure here they may
Ere all their silken trumpets close before the warm midday.
The larkspur lifts on high its azure spires,
And up the arbor's lattices are rolled
The quaint nasturtium's many-colored fires;
The tall carnation's breast of faded gold
Is striped with many a faintly-flushing streak,
Pale as the tender tints that blush upon a baby's cheek.
The old sweet-rocket sheds its fine perfumes,
With golden stars the coreopsis flames,
And here are scores of sweet old-fashioned blooms,
Dear for the very fragrance of their names,--
Poppies and gilly flowers and four-o'clocks,
Cowslips and candytuft and heliotrope and hollyhocks,
Harebells and peonies and dragon-head,
Petunias, scarlet sage and bergamot,
Verbenas, ragged-robins, soft gold-thread,
The bright primrose and pale forget-me-not,
Wall-flowers and crocuses and columbines,
Narcissus, asters, hyacinths, and honeysuckle vines.
* * * * *
A sweet seclusion this of sun and shade,
A calm asylum from the busy world,
Where greed and restless care do ne'er invade,
Nor news of 'change and mart each morning hurled
Round half the globe; no noise of party feud
Disturbs this peaceful spot nor mars its perfect quietude.
But summer after summer comes and goes
And leaves the garden ever fresh and fair;
May brings the tulip, golden June the rose,
And August winds shake down the mellow pear.
Man blooms and blossoms, fades and disappears,--
But scarce a tribute pays the garden to the passing years.
* * * * *
Sweet is the odor of the warm, soft rain
In violet-days when spring opes her green heart;
And sweet the apple trees along the lane
Whose lovely blossoms all too soon depart;
And sweet the brimming dew that overfills
The golden chalices of all the trembling daffodils.
But sweeter far, in this old garden-close
To loiter 'mid the lovely old-time flowers,
To breathe the scent of lavender and rose,
And with old poets pass the peaceful hours.
Old gardens and old poets,--happy he
Whose quiet summer days are spent in such sweet company!
JOHN RUSSELL HAYES
A COLONIAL GARDEN
Down this pathway, through the shade,
Lightly tripped the dainty maid,
In her eyes the smile of June,
On her lips some old sweet tune.
Through yon ragged rows of box,
By that awkward clump of phlox,
To her favorite pansy bed
Like a ray of light, she sped.
Satin slippers trim and neat
Gleamed upon her slender feet;
Round her ankles, deftly tied,
Ribbons crossed from side to side,
Here her pinks, old fashioned, fair,
Breathed their fragrance on the air;
There her fluttering azure gown
Shook the poppy's petals down.
Here a rose, with fond caress,
Stooped to touch a truant tress
From her fillet struggling free,
Scorning its captivity.
There a bed of rue was set
With an edge of mignonette,
And the spicy bergamot
Meshed the frail forget-me-not.
Honeysuckles, hollyhocks,
Bachelor's buttons, four-o'clocks,
Marigolds and blue-eyed grass
Curtsied when the maid did pass.
Now the braggart weeds have spread
Through the paths she loved to tread,
And the creeping moss has grown
O'er yon shattered dial-stone.
Still beside the ruined walks
Some old flowers, on sturdy stalks,
Dream of her whose happy eyes
Roam the fields of paradise.
JAMES B. KENYON
IN MY MOTHER'S GARDEN
There were many flowers in my mother's garden,
Sword-leaved gladiolas, taller far than I,
Sticky-leaved petunias, pink and purple flaring,
Velvet-painted pansies smiling at the sky;
Scentless portulacas crowded down the borders,
White and scarlet-petalled, rose and satin-gold,
Clustered sweet alyssum, lacy-white and scented,
Sprays of gray-green lavender to keep 'til you were old.
In my mother's garden were green-leaved hiding-places,
Nooks between the lilacs--oh, a pleasant place to play!
Still my heart can hide there, still my eyes can dream it,
Though the long years lie between and I am far away;