The House of the Trees & Other Poems 4

The House of the Trees & Other Poems 4

When Days Are Long

 

 

When twilight late delayeth,

And morning wakes in song,

And fields are full of daisies,

I know the days are long;

When Toil is stretched at nooning,

Where leafy pleasures throng,

When nights o’errun in music,

I know the days are long.

 

When suns afoot are marching,

And rains are quick and strong,

And streams speak in a whisper,

I know the days are long.

When hills are clad in velvet,

And winds can do no wrong,

And woods are deep and dusky,

I know the days are long.

 

 

 

 

Out of Doors

 

 

In the urgent solitudes

Lies the spur to larger moods;

In the friendship of the trees

Dwell all sweet serenities.

 

 

 

 

Make Room

 

 

Room for the children out of doors,

For heads of gold or gloom;

For raspberry lips and rose-leaf cheeks and palms,

Make room--make room!

 

Room for the springtime out of doors,

For buds in green or bloom;

For every brown bare-handed country weed

Make room--make room!

 

Room for earth’s sweetest out of doors,

And for its worst a tomb;

For housed-up griefs and fears, and scorns, and sighs,

No room--no room!

 

 

 

 

The Humming Bird

 

 

Against my window-pane

He plunges at a mass

Of buds--and strikes in vain

The intervening glass.

 

O sprite of wings and fire

Outstretching eagerly,

My soul with like desire

To probe thy mystery,

 

Comes close as breast to bloom,

As bud to hot heart-beat,

And gains no inner room,

And drains no hidden sweet.

 

 

 

 

September

 

 

But yesterday all faint for breath,

The Summer laid her down to die;

And now her frail ghost wandereth

In every breeze that loiters by.

Her wilted prisoners look up,

As wondering who hath broke their chain,

Too deep they drank of summer’s cup,

They have no strength to rise again.

 

How swift the trees, their mistress gone,

Enrobe themselves for revelry!

Ungovernable winds upon

The wold are dancing merrily.

With crimson fruits and bursting nuts,

And whirling leaves and flushing streams,

The spirit of September cuts

Adrift from August’s languid dreams.

 

A little while the revellers

Shall flame and flaunt and have their day,

And then will come the messengers

Who travel on a cloudy way.

And after them a form of light,

A sense of iron in the air,

Upon the pulse a touch of might

And winter’s legions everywhere.

 

 

 

 

The March Orchard

 

 

Unleaved, undrooping, still, they stand,

This stanch and patient pilgrim band;

October robbed them of their fruit,

November stripped them to the root,

The winter smote their helplessness

With furious ire and stormy stress,

And now they seem almost to stand

In sight of Summer’s Promised Land.

 

Yet seen through frosty window-panes,

When bared and bound in wintry chains,

Their lightsome spirits seemed to play

With February as with May.

The snow that turned the skies afrown

Enwrapt them in the softest down,

And rains that dulled the landscape o’er

But left them livelier than before.

 

But now this June-like day of March

With patient strength their branches arch,

Not as unmindful of the breeze

That makes midsummer melodies, But knowing Spring a fickle maid,

And that rough days must dawn and fade

Before, all blossoming bright, they stand

In sight of Summer’s Promised Land.

 

 

 

 

The Blind Man

 

 

The blind man at his window bars

Stands in the morning dewy dim;

The lily-footed dawn, the stars

That wait for it, are naught to him.

 

And naught to his unseeing eyes

The brownness of a sunny plain,

Where worn and drowsy August lies,

And wakens but to sleep again.

 

And naught to him a greening slope,

That yearns up to the heights above,

And naught the leaves of May, that ope

As softly as the eyes of love.

 

And naught to him the branching aisles,

Athrong with woodland worshippers,

And naught the fields where summer smiles

Among her sunburned laborers.

 

The way a trailing streamlet goes,

The barefoot grasses on its brim,

The dew a flower cup o’erflows

With silent joy, are hid from him.

To him no breath of nature calls;

Upon his desk his work is laid;

He looks up at the dingy walls,

And listens to the voice of Trade.

 

 

 

 

To the October Wind

 

 

Old playmate, showering the way

With thick leaf storms in red and gold,

I’m only six years old to-day,

You’ve made me feel but six years old.

In yellow gown and scarlet hood