A Song of Waking.
The maple buds are red, are red,
The robin’s call is sweet;
The blue sky floats above thy head,
The violets kiss thy feet.
The sun paints emeralds on the spray
And sapphires on the lake;
A million wings unfold to-day,
A million flowers awake.
Their starry cups the cowslips lift
To catch the golden light,
And like a spirit fresh from shrift
The cherry tree is white.
The innocent looks up with eyes
That know no deeper shade
Than falls from wings of butterflies
Too fair to make afraid.
With long, green raiment blown and wet
The willows, hand in hand,
Lean low to teach the rivulet
What trees may understand
Of murmurous tune and idle dance,
With broken rhymes whose flow
A poet’s ear shall catch, perchance,
A score of miles below.
Across the sky to fairy realm
There sails a cloud-born ship;
A wind sprite standeth at the helm,
With laughter on his lip;
The melting masts are tipped with gold,
The ’broidered pennons stream;
The vessel beareth in her hold
The lading of a dream.
It is the hour to rend thy chains,
The blossom time of souls;
Yield all the rest to cares and pains,
To-day delight controls.
Gird on thy glory and thy pride,
For growth is of the sun;
Expand thy wings whate’er betide,
The Summer is begun.
“Early Spring.”
I.
Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plowed hills
With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.
II.
Opens a door in Heaven
From skies of glass;
A Jacob’s-ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o’er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.
III.
Before them fleets the shower,
And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
Flung through the woods.
IV.
O follow, leaping blood,
The season’s lure!
O heart, look down and up,
Serene, secure,
Warm as the crocus-cup,
Like snow-drops, pure!
V.
For now the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And thaws the cold and fills
The flower with dew;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The poets too.
Youth’s Companion.
May.
May comes laughing, crowned with daffodils,
Her dress embroidered with blue violets,
So gracious and so sweet she scarcely lets
A thought return of all the winter’s ills.
The orchards with enchanting wealth she fills;
In the green marshes golden cowslip sets,
And all the waking woodland spaces frets
With shy anemones. But ah, she wills
At times to frown in sudden wayward mood;
The violets shiver clinging to the ground,
She’s cold and blustering where once she wooed,
And oftentimes in petulant tears is found;
But like sweet women, who sometimes are cross,
Her smiles come back the sweeter for their loss.
Good Cheer.
June.
She sits all day plaiting a wild-rose wreath,
This daughter of the Sun, come from afar.
Sweeter is she than her bright sisters are
Who follow her across the flowery heath.
A daisy is her sign, and underneath
The meadow’s foamy flow the clovers wear
Their uniforms of white and red, and bear
Their cups of sweet to scent their mistress’ breath.
What dawns are thine, O dear, delicious June,
When at the drawing of thy curtain’s fold
The birds awake and sing a marvelous tune
To the young Day that comes in rose and gold!
What twilights when the gray dusk hides thy face
That thou mayst come with more enchanting grace!
Travelers’ Record.
Golden-rod.
Midsummer music in the grass—
The cricket and the grasshopper;
White daisies and red clover pass;
The caterpillar trails her fur
After the languid butterfly;
But green and spring-like is the sod
Where autumn’s earliest lamps I spy—
The tapers of the golden-rod.
This flower is fuller of the sun
Than any our pale North can show;
It has the heart of August won,
And scatters wide the warmth and glow
Kindled at summer’s mid-noon blaze,
Where gentians of September bloom
Along October’s leaf-strewn ways,
And through November’s paths of gloom.
As lavish of its golden light
As sunshine’s self, this blossom is;
Its starry chandeliers burn bright
All day; and have you noted this—
A perfect sun in every flower,—
Ten thousand thousand fairy suns,
Raying from new disks hour by hour,
As up the stalk the life-flash runs?
Because its myriad glimmering plumes
Like a great army’s stir and wave,
Because its gold in billows blooms,
The poor man’s barren walks to lave;
Because its sun-shaped blossoms show
How souls receive the light of God,
And unto earth give back that glow—
I thank Him for the golden-rod.
Indian Summer.
From gold to gray
Our mild sweet day
Of Indian summer fades too soon;
But tenderly
Above the sea
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter’s moon.
In its pale fire
The village spire,
Shows like the zodiac’s spectral lance,
The painted walls
Whereon it falls,
Transfigured stand in marble trance.
September, 1815.
While not a leaf seems faded, while the fields,
With ripening harvests prodigally fair,
In brightest sunshine bask, this nipping air,
Sent from some distant clime where Winter wields
His icy cimeter, a foretaste yields
Of bitter change, and bids the flowers beware,
And whispers to the silent birds, “Prepare
Against the threatening foe your trustiest shields.”
For me, who, under kindlier laws, belong
To Nature’s tuneful choir, this rustling dry,
Through the green leaves, and yon crystalline sky,
Announce a season potent to renew,
’Mid frost and snow, the instinctive joys of song,
And nobler cares than listless summer knew.
October.
Ay, thou art welcome, Heaven’s delicious breath,
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny South, oh! still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, ’mid bowers and brooks,
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh,
And, when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.
Faded Leaves.
The hills are bright with maples yet;
But down the level land
The beech-leaves rustle in the wind
As dry and brown as sand.
The clouds in bars of rusty red
Along the hilltops glow,
And in the still sharp air the frost
Is like a dream of snow.
The berries of the brier rose
Have lost their rounded pride,
The bitter-sweet chrysanthemums
Are drooping heavy-eyed.
The cricket grows more friendly now,
The dormouse sly and wise,
Hiding away in disgrace
Of nature from men’s eyes.
The pigeons in black and wavering lines
Are swinging toward the sun;
And all the wide and withered fields
Proclaim the summer done.
His store of nuts and acorns now
The squirrel hastes to gain,
And sets his house in order for
The winter’s dreary reign.
’Tis time to light the evening fire,
To read good books, to sing
The low and lovely songs that breathe
Of the eternal spring.
November.
The mellow year is hasting to its close;
The little birds have almost sung their last;
Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast,
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows;
The patient beauty of the scentless rose
Oft with the morn’s hoar crystal quaintly glassed
Hangs a pale mourner for the summer past
And makes a little summer where it grows,
In the chill sunbeam of the faint, brief day.
The dusky waters shudder as they shine;
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks confine,
And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with somber ivy-twine.
Winter.
A wrinkled, crabbed man they picture thee,
Old Winter, with a rugged beard as gray
As the long moss upon the apple-tree;
Blue-lipt, an ice-drop at thy sharp blue nose,
Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way
Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows.
They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth,
Old Winter, seated in thy great armed chair,
Watching the children at their Christmas mirth,
Or circled by them as thy lips declare
Some merry jest, or tale of murder dire,
Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night,
Pausing at times to rouse the moldering fire,
Or taste the old October brown and bright.
December.
Blow, northern winds!
To brace my fibers, knit my cords,
To gird my soul, to fire my words,
To do my work—for ’tis the Lord’s—
To fashion minds.
Come, tonic blasts!
Arouse my courage, stir my thought,
Give nerve and strength that as I ought
I give my strength to what is wrought
While duty lasts.
Glow, arctic light!
And let my heart with burnished steel
That bright magnetic flame reveal
Which kindles purpose, faith, and zeal
For truth and right.
Shine, winter skies!
That when each brave day’s work is done
I wait in peace from sun to sun,
To meet unshamed, through victory won,
Your starry eyes.
Under these names, January, February, March, April, how much is hid that the eye cannot see! Uncover the months and interpret them. In a low and sweet way our Almanac began to speak as if he were a harp, and as if the spirit of the year like a gentle wind was breathing through it.—Henry Ward Beecher.
January.
Who can love you, January?
You are gruff and ugly—very.
How you roar!
And a sorry tale you utter,
In a maniacal mutter,
At my door.
Then you sob and sigh and pine,
In a mindless, minor whine,
And again
A wild, grewsome ditty slips
From your frozen, rigid lips,
Fierce as pain.
Like some creature strung to hate,
Wrestling with its cruel fate,
Conquering
Only as you flee apace,
Glaring back with grim, wry face,
Mimicking.
Hush your savage minstrelsy
To a mellower symphony,
Soft and deep.
Know you no mellifluous rune?
No low, lulling cradle croon,
Wooing sleep?
No soft breath from slumbrous isles,
Where eternal summer smiles
Halcyon?
Beat your tattoo for your raids,
And decamp for Hadean shades.
Pray begone!
Frost Work.
No fairies left? You need not tell me so,
For in the night upon my window pane
Grew wondrous things that made me surely know
The fairies are at their old tricks again.
O wonder working spirit! if I could
But learn of you the secret of the snow—
How frost is given by the breath of God,
And where the hidden water courses flow;
And where begotten is the dew that strings
Her lovely pearls upon the meanest weed,
And what sweet animating influence brings
The blossom splendid from the trivial seed;
Could I but ride the south wind and the north,
And fathom all the mysteries they hold,
See how the lightning, leaping wildly forth,
And how the turbulent thunder is controlled,
I would no more be fretted by the greed
And selfishness of men; their puny spite,
Nor any worldly loss or cross indeed,
My lifted soul could evermore affright.
And wherefore now? The laughing fairy seems
To mock at me the spangled window through;
And I laugh also, waking from my dreams
To take up daily loss and cross anew.
But with a sense of things divinely planned,
That makes me sure I need not fear disdain,
From One who holds the thunder in his hand,
Yet stoops to trace the frost work on the pane.