Travel Song
‘COME, before the summer passes
Let us seek the mountain land:’
So they called me, happy playmates,
And we left the dawn-lit strand:
Riding on till later sunbeams slanted
On dark hills and downward-plunging streams,
And the solemn forest softly chanted
Old, old dreams.
From the pass, we saw in glory
Wave on purple wave unrolled
To the cloud-encircled summit
Floating high, alone and cold:
Like that altar-stone, by men of Athens
Dedicated to the unknown God;
Waiting for some fire to touch his holy
White abode.
Then the mellow sunset dying
Passed in rosy fire away,
And the stars and planets journeyed
On their ancient unknown way.
Riders of the illimitable heaven!
Moving on so far beyond our ken,
Do ye scorn the toiling, heavy-hearted
Sons of men?
Ere we slept we heard the torrents
Rushing from that mighty hill
Join in deep melodious singing,
While the forest-land was still.
Music of forgotten wildernesses!
Would that I could hear that song again!
Song of primal Earth’s enchanted sweetness,
Joy and pain.
poem by Anne Glenny Wilson
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Related quotes
Land-Locked
Black lie the hills; swiftly doth daylight flee;
And, catching gleams of sunset's dying smile,
Through the dusk land for many a changing mile
The river runneth softly to the sea.
O happy river, could I follow thee!
O yearning heart, that never can be still!
O wistful eyes, that watch the steadfast hill,
Longing for level line of solemn sea!
Have patience; here are flowers and songs of birds,
Beauty and fragrance, wealth of sound and sight,
All summer's glory thine from morn till night,
And life too full of joy for uttered words.
Neither am I ungrateful; but I dream
Deliciously how twilight falls to-night
Over the glimmering water, how the light
Dies blissfully away, until I seem
To feel the wind, sea-scented, on my cheek,
To catch the sound of dusky flapping sail
And dip of oars, and voices on the gale
Afar off, calling low, -- my name they speak!
O Earth! Thy summer song of joy may soar
Ringing to heaven in triumph. I but crave
The sad, caressing murmur of the wave
That breaks in tender music on the shore.
poem by Celia Thaxter
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The Wild Flower's Song
As I wandered the forest,
The green leaves among,
I heard a Wild Flower
Singing a song.
'I slept in the earth
In the silent night,
I murmured my fears
And I felt delight.
'In the morning I went
As rosy as morn,
To seek for new joy;
But oh! met with scorn.'
poem by William Blake
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The wild flowers song
As I wanderd the forest
The green leaves among
I heard a wild flower
Singing a Song
I slept in the earth
In the silent night
I murmurd my fears
And I felt delight
In the morning I went
As rosy as morn
To seek for new Joy
But I met with scorn
poem by William Blake from Songs and Ballads (1793)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Worship of Nature
The harp at Nature's advent strung
Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.
And prayer is made, and praise is given,
By all things near and far;
The ocean looketh up to heaven,
And mirrors every star.
Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
As kneels the human knee,
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
The priesthood of the sea!
They pour their glittering treasures forth,
Their gifts of pearl they bring,
And all the listening hills of earth
Take up the song they sing.
The green earth sends its incense up
From many a mountain shrine;
From folded leaf and dewy cup
She pours her sacred wine.
The mists above the morning rills
Rise white as wings of prayer;
The altar-curtains of the hills
Are sunset's purple air.
The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
Or low with sobs of pain, --
The thunder-organ of the cloud,
The dropping tears of rain.
With drooping head and branches crossed
The twilight forest grieves,
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost
From all its sunlit leaves.
The blue sky is the temple's arch,
Its transept earth and air,
The music of its starry march
The chorus of a prayer.
So Nature keeps the reverent frame
With which her years began,
And all her signs and voices shame
The prayerless heart of man.
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Cycles Of Light
For just a little longer
reside I in a familiar
foreign land of human
resource grabbing aspirations,
as I write
out last
dreamscapes,
praising
pristine forest
beauty in call
of conservation,
as land rape
earth rape
swift plunder
reap
human
potentialities
destinies.
The Totara spirit
stands in native forest,
forgotten
in termite cities,
unadored unfelt
unknown unthought
of unseen unappreciated
from birth
earth
forest floor,
spirit guardian
last
to kiss sunset
yellow golden
dusk
eclipse rays,
first
to welcome
embrace
creeping
golden
fingers
of dawn light,
where will
your flesh skin
bark reside
tomorrow,
for if mighty
Totara falls
who will sentential
greet honour
glory life
cycles of light?
poem by Terence George Craddock
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To the Spirit of Music
I
The cool grass blowing in a breeze
Of April valleys sooms and sways;
On slopes that dip to quiet seas
Through far, faint drifts of yellowing haze.
I lie like one who, in a dream
Of sounds and splendid coloured things,
Seems lifted into life supreme
And has a sense of waxing wings.
For through a great arch-light which floods
And breaks and spreads and swims along
High royal-robed autumnal woods,
I hear a glorious sunset song.
But, ah, Euterpe! I that pause
And listen to the strain divine
Can never learn its words, because
I am no son of thine.
How sweet is wandering where the west
Is full of thee, what time the morn
Looks from his halls of rosy rest
Across green miles of gleaming corn!
How sweet are dreams in shady nooks,
When bees are out, and day is mute,
While down the dell there floats the brook’s
Fine echo of thy marvellous lute!
And oh, how sweet is that sad tune
Of thine, within the evening breeze,
Which roams beneath the mirrored moon
On silver-sleeping summer seas!
How blest are they whom thou hast crowned,
Thy priests — the lords who understand
The deep divinity of sound,
And live their lives in Wonderland!
These stand within thy courts and see
The light exceeding round thy throne,
But I — an alien unto thee —
I faint afar off, and alone.
II
In hills where the keen Thessalonian
Made clamour with horse and with horn,
In oracular woods the Dodonian —
The mystical maiden was born.
And the high, the Olympian seven,
Ringed round with ineffable flame,
Baptized her in halos of heaven,
And gave her her beautiful name.
And Delphicus, loving her, brought her
Immutable dower of dreams,
And clothed her with glory, and taught her
The words of the winds and the streams.
She dwelt with the echoes that dwell
In far immemorial hills;
She wove of their speeches a spell —
She borrowed the songs of the rills;
And anthems of forest and fire,
And passionate psalms of the rain
Had life in the life of the lyre,
And breath in its infinite strain.
In a fair, in a floral abode,
Of purple and yellow and red,
The voice of her floated and flowed,
The light of her lingered and spread,
And ever there slipt through the bars
Of the leaves of her luminous bowers,
Syllables splendid as stars,
And faultless as moon-litten flowers.
III
Lady of a land of wonder,
Daughter of the hill supernal,
Far from frost and far from thunder
Under sons and moons eternal!
Long ago the strong Immortals
Took her hence on wheels of fire,
Caught her up and shut their portals —
Floral maid with fervent lyre.
But stray fallen notes of brightness
Yet within our world are ringing,
Floating on the winds of lightness
Glorious fragments of her singing.
Bud of light, she shines above us;
But a few of starry pinions —
Passioned souls who are her lovers —
Dwell in her divine dominions.
Few they are, but in the centric
Fanes of Beauty hold their station;
Kings of music, lords authentic,
Of the worlds of Inspiration.
These are they to whom are given
Eyes to see the singing stream-land,
Far from earth and near to heaven,
Known to gods and men as Dreamland.
Mournful humanity, stricken and worn,
Toiling for peace in undignified days,
Set in a sphere with the shadows forlorn,
Seeing sublimity dimmed by a haze —
Mournful humanity wearing the sign
Of trouble with time and unequable things,
Long alienated from spaces divine,
Sometimes remembers that once it had wings.
Chiefly it is when the song and the light
Sweeten the heart of the summering west,
Music and glory that lend to the night
Glimpses of marvellous havens of rest.
Chiefly it is when the beautiful day
Dies with a sound on its lips like a psalm —
Anthem of loveliness drifting away
Over a sea of unspeakable calm.
Then Euterpe’s harmonies
In the ballad rich and rare,
Freighted with old memories,
Float upon the evening air —
Float, like shine in films of rain,
Full of past pathetic themes,
Tales of perished joy and pain,
Frail and faint as dreams in dreams.
Then to far-off homes we rove,
Homes of youth and hope and faith,
Beautiful with lights of love —
Sanctified by shrines of death.
Ah! and in that quiet hour
Soul by soul is borne away
Over tracts of leaf and flower,
Lit with a supernal day;
Over Music-world serene,
Spheres unknown to woes and wars,
Homes of wildernesses green,
Silver seas and golden shores;
Then, like spirits glorified,
Sweet to hear and bright to see,
Lords in Eden they abide
Robed with strange new majesty.
poem by Henry Kendall
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The Church of Unbent Knees
AS I went by the church to-day
I heard the organ cry;
And goodly folk were on their knees,
But I went striding by.
My minister hath a roof more vast:
My aisles are oak-trees high;
My altar-cloth is on the hills,
My organ is the sky.
I see my rood upon the clouds,
The winds, my chanted choir;
My crystal windows, heaven-glazed,
Are stained with sunset fire.
The stars, the thunder, and the rain,
White sands and purple seas-
These are His pulpit and His pew,
My God of Unbent Knees!
poem by Christopher Morley
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Purple Forest
I walk into a purple forest
The place is magical and free
The grass is violet, the sky is white
Purple defines every tree
I walk into a purple forest
There are purple buzzing bees
And a swamp of violet waters
creep up to my knees
I walk into a purple forest
A streak of purple runs across the sky
I hear a gentle whisper say
It was a fairy passing by
I walk into a purple forest
On violet sod I lie my head
But later, of course
I awake in my bed
poem by Summer Song
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At Dawn
O Hesper-Phosphor, far away
Shining, the first, the last white star,
Hear’st thou the strange, the ghostly cry,
That moan of an ancient agony
From purple forest to golden sky
Shivering over the breathless bay?
It is not the wind that wakes with the day;
For see, the gulls that wheel and call,
Beyond the tumbling white-topped bar,
Catching the sun-dawn on their wings,
Like snow-flakes or like rose-leaves fall,
Flutter and fall in airy rings;
And drift, like lilies ruffling into blossom
Upon a golden lake’s unwrinkled bosom.
Are not the forest’s deep-lashed fringes wet
With tears? Is not the voice of all regret
Breaking out of the dark earth’s heart?
She too, she too, has loved and lost; and we—
We that remember our lost Arcady,
Have we not known, we too,
The primal greenwood’s arch of blue,
The radiant clouds at sunrise curled
Around the brows of the golden world;
The marble temples, washed with dew,
To which with rosy limbs aflame
The violet-eyed Thalassian came,
Came pitiless, only to display
How soon the youthful splendour dies away;
Came, only to depart
Laughing across the gray-grown bitter sea?
For each man’s life is earth’s epitome,
And though the years bring more than aught they take,
Yet might his heart and hers well break
Remembering how one prayer must still be vain,
How one fair hope is dead,
One passion quenched, one glory fled,
With those first loves that never come again.
How many, how many generations,
Have heard that sigh in the dawn,
When the dark earth yearns to the unforgotten nations
And the old loves withdrawn,
Old loves, old lovers, wonderful and unnumbered
As waves on the wine-dark sea,
’Neath the tall white towers of Troy and the temples that slumbered;
In Thessaly?
From the beautiful palaces, from the miraculous portals,
The swift white feet are flown!
They were taintless of dust, the proud, the peerless Immortals
As they sped to their loftier throne!
Perchance they are there, earth dreams, on the shores of Hesper,
Her rosy-bosomed Hours,
Listening the wild fresh forest’s enchanted whisper,
Crowned with its new strange flowers;
Listening the great new ocean’s triumphant thunder
On the stainless unknown shore,
While that perilous queen of the world’s delight and wonder
Comes white from the foam once more.
When the mists divide with the dawn o’er those glittering waters,
Do they gaze over unoared seas—
Naiad and nymph and the woodland’s rose-crowned daughters
And the Oceanides?
Do they sing together, perchance, in that diamond splendour,
That world of dawn and dew,
With eyelids twitching to tears and with eyes grown tender,
The sweet old songs they knew,
The songs of Greece? Ah, with harp-strings mute do they falter
As the earth like a small star pales?
When the heroes launch their ship by the smoking altar
Does a memory lure their sails?
Far, far away, do their hearts resume the story
That never on earth was told,
When all those urgent oars on the waste of glory
Cast up its gold?
Are not the forest fringes wet
With tears? Is not the voice of all regret
Breaking out of the dark earth’s heart?
She too, she too, has loved and lost; and though
She turned last night in disdain
Away from the sunset-embers,
From her soul she can never depart;
She can never depart from her pain.
Vainly she strives to forget;
Beautiful in her woe,
She awakes in the dawn and remembers.
poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Flag
See the glorious stars and stripes,
Floating over there;
See how gracefully they wave
In the summer air.
We love to see that starry flag,
Wave in peace with ease,
And its colors, red, white and blue,
Unfurled to the breeze.
God grant that flag may ever wave
O'er our native land,
Where sons of freemen are united
In a happy band,
To celebrate the glorious Fourth,
The day we should adore;
Hail each anniversary day,
Now and evermore.
Our fathers fought beneath that flag
In the days of yore,
To gain their freedom from British laws,
Which they could not endure.
The cry was then for liberty,
On land and on sea;
They gained the glorious victory --
Our country now is free.
The land of Columbia's sons,
To-day is filled with joy;
Every heart should beat as one,
In the blessings we enjoy.
We should love our native land,
Where our fathers died,
We should keep the country free --
The early pilgrim's pride.
See the glorious stars and stripes,
Waving over there,
See the starry emblem, friends,
Floating in the air.
Proud it waves o'er our land,
Where it has waved for years,
May every freeman greet that flag
With three rousing cheers.
poem by Julia A Moore
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Sacred to the Memory of “Unknown”
Oh, the wild black swans fly westward still,
While the sun goes down in glory—
And away o’er lonely plain and hill
Still runs the same old story:
The sheoaks sigh it all day long—
It is safe in the Big Scrub’s keeping—
’Tis the butcher-birds’ and the bell-birds’ song
In the gum where ‘Unknown’ lies sleeping—
(It is heard in the chat of the soldier-birds
O’er the grave where ‘Unknown’ lies sleeping).
Ah! the Bushmen knew not his name or land,
Or the shame that had sent him here—
But the Bushmen knew by the dead man’s hand
That his past life lay not near.
The law of the land might have watched for him,
Or a sweetheart, wife, or mother;
But they bared their heads, and their eyes were dim,
For he might have been a brother!
(Ah! the death he died brought him near to them,
For he might have been a brother.)
Oh, the wild black swans to the westward fade,
And the sunset burns to ashes,
And three times bright on an eastern range
The light of a big star flashes,
Like a signal sent to a distant strand
Where a dead man’s love sits weeping.
And the night comes grand to the Great Lone Land
O’er the grave where ‘Unknown’ lies sleeping,
And the big white stars in their clusters blaze
O’er the Bush where ‘Unknown’ lies sleeping.
poem by Henry Lawson
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The Rock Of Cader Idris
I LAY on that rock where the storms have their dwelling,
The birthplace of phantoms, the home of the cloud;
Around it for ever deep music is swelling,
The voice of the mountain-wind, solemn and loud.
'Twas a midnight of shadows all fitfully streaming,
Of wild waves and breezes, that mingled their moan;
Of dim shrouded stars, as from gulfs faintly gleaming;
And I met the dread gloom of its grandeur alone.
I lay there in silence–a spirit came o'er me;
Man's tongue hath no language to speak what I saw:
Things glorious, unearthly, passed floating before me,
And my heart almost fainted with rapture and awe.
I viewed the dread beings around us that hover,
Though veil'd by the mists of mortality's breath;
And I called upon darkness the vision to cover,
For a strife was within me of madness and death.
I saw them–the powers of the wind and the ocean,
The rush of whose pinion bears onward the storms;
Like the sweep of the white-rolling wave was their motion,
I felt their dim presence,–but knew not their forms !
I saw them–the mighty of ages departed–
The dead were around me that night on the hill:
From their eyes, as they passed, a cold radiance they darted,–
There was light on my soul, but my heart's blood was chill.
I saw what man looks on, and dies–but my spirit
Was strong, and triumphantly lived through that hour;
And, as from the grave, I awoke to inherit
A flame all immortal, a voice, and a power !
Day burst on that rock with the purple cloud crested,
And high Cader Idris rejoiced in the sun;–
But O ! what new glory all nature invested,
When the sense which gives soul to her beauty was won !
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Stonehaven Sunset
This song appears on three albums, and was first released on the flower that shattered the stone album, and has also been released on the stonehaven sunrise and the john denver collection - caly
Lbums.
Stonehaven sunset the waters on fire
My true love of singing, we kiss and conspire
Sing a song for the ocean a song for the sky
A song for tomorrow love sweet by and by
For the child who is coming and for dreams that come true
Sing a song for each other for me and for you
Sing a song for all lovers all the stars in the skies
Sing of stonehaven water home, stonehaven sunrise
Stonehaven sunset the deserts on fire
Christ on the cross again burns with desire
They are shooting at random though they aim at us all
Its the children who rise up and children who fall
All the angels are weeping the sweetest of tears
Fall like rivers of mercy to wash all our fears
Sing a song for old glory and a future that dies
Sing of stonehaven desert home, stonehaven sunrise
Stonehaven sunset the citys on fire
The soldiers just smile and say this guns for hire
Give in to the beast boy give in to the thrill
Its just human nature to hunt and to kill
We all die together and yet somehow alone
Just together we have memories and many are gone
Singing songs for old soldiers a chorus of sighs
Sing of stonehaven city home, stonehaven sunrise
Stonehaven sunset the mountains on fire
My spirit is lifted, rising higher and higher
All the prophets are laughing they say we told you so
Its one thing to play guessing games, another to know
For the needs of many are the sins of a few
And the day is forthcoming when accounting is due
Sing a song for sweet justice with a fire in her eyes
Sing of stonehaven mountain home, stonehaven sunrise
Stonehaven sunset the waters on fire
My true love of singing, we kiss and conspire
Sing a song for the ocean a song for the sky
A song for tomorrow love sweet by and by
For the child who is coming and for dreams that come true
Sing a song for each other for me and for you
Sing a song for all lovers all the stars in the skies
Sing of stonehaven water home, stonehaven sunrise
Words and music by john denver
song performed by by John Denver
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Moving Through The Dew
I
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
Ere I waken in the city—Life, thy dawn makes all things new!
And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men,
Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you,
By the little path I know, with the sea far below,
And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow
As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung
And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung
From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy,
And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss that ne’er could cloy,
From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom,
With a song to God the Giver, o’er that waste of wild perfume;
Blowing from height to height, in a glory of great light,
While the cottage-clustered valleys held the lilac last of night,
So, when dawn is in the skies, in a dream, a dream, I rise,
And I follow my lost boyhood to the heights of Paradise.
Life, thy dawn makes all things new! Hills of Youth, I come to you,
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.
II
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
Floats a brother’s face to meet me! Is it you? Is it you?
For the night I leave behind keeps these dazzled eyes still blind!
But oh, the little hill-flowers, their scent is wise and kind;
And I shall not lose the way from the darkness to the day,
While dust can cling as their scent clings to memory for aye;
And the least link in the chain can recall the whole again,
And heaven at last resume its far-flung harvests, grain by grain.
To the hill-flowers clings my dust, and tho’ eyeless Death may thrust
All else into the darkness, in their heaven I put my trust;
And a dawn shall bid me climb to the little spread of thyme
Where first I heard the ripple of the fountain-heads of rhyme.
And a fir-wood that I know, from dawn to sunset-glow,
Shall whisper to a lonely sea, that swings far, far below.
Death, thy dawn makes all things new. Hills of Youth, I come to you,
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.
poem by Alfred Noyes
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Night
The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken
Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders
Out of the slack, the slow west
Sombering its torch; a ship's light
Shows faintly, far out,
Over the weight of the prone ocean
On the low cloud.
Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining.
Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings
And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipful of her
You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells always,
And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also
Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite,
A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter,
Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes. Quietness
Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she is
immortal.
Far off from here the slender
Flocks of the mountain forest
Move among stems like towers
Of the old redwoods to the stream,
No twig crackling; dip shy
Wild muzzles into the mountain water
Among the dark ferns.
O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower, the
fretfulness
Of cities, the cressets of the planets, the pride of the stars.
This August night in a rift of cloud Antares reddens,
The great one, the ancient torch, a lord among lost children,
The earth's orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness, one fire
Globed, out of grasp of the mind enormous; but to you O Night
What? Not a spark? What flicker of a spark in the faint far
glimmer
Of a lost fire dying in the desert, dim coals of a sand-pit the
Bedouins
Wandered from at dawn . . . Ah singing prayer to what gulfs
tempted
Suddenly are you more lost? To us the near-hand mountain
Be a measure of height, the tide-worn cliff at the sea-gate a
measure of continuance.
The tide, moving the night's
Vastness with lonely voices,
Turns, the deep dark-shining
Pacific leans on the land,
Feeling his cold strength
To the outmost margins: you Night will resume
The stars in your time.
O passionately at peace when will that tide draw shoreward?
Truly the spouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus,
Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think silence.
The striding winter giant Orion shines, and dreams darkness.
And life, the flicker of men and moths and the wolf on the hill,
Though furious for continuance, passionately feeding, passionately
Remaking itself upon its mates, remembers deep inward
The calm mother, the quietness of the womb and the egg,
The primal and the latter silences: dear Night it is memory
Prophesies, prophecy that remembers, the charm of the dark.
And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor.
Have men's minds changed,
Or the rock hidden in the deep of the waters of the soul
Broken the surface? A few centuries
Gone by, was none dared not to people
The darkness beyond the stars with harps and habitations.
But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and lonelier,
And death is no evil.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Where I Belong
The autumn’s presence has come on strong
The old bull frog’s tweedling his drone
And the bird's chirrups seem to belong
All in a melodious song
In this melodious song
The squirrels fidget behind the pine combs
The owl’s hooting joins right along
A woodpecker is pecking a hymn unknown
All in a melodious song
In this melodious song
And on the ground, I am prone
For I can’t find where I belong
I’m never happy, never strong
For this tune sounds horrible with groans
All in a melodious song
In this melodious song
But what if my purpose, my purpose is known?
To just sometimes listen to this cheerful song
And let it inspire me, all of these tones
All in a melodious song
In this melodious song!
poem by Whitney Albright
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Melodious song
The autumn’s presence has come on strong
The old bull frog’s tweedling his drone
And the bird chirrups and seems to belong
All in a melodious song
In this melodious song
The squirrels fidget behind the pine combs
The owl’s hooting joins right along
A woodpecker is pecking a hymn unknown
All in a melodious song
In this melodious song
And on the ground, I am prone
For I can’t find where I belong
I’m never happy, never strong
For this tune sounds horrible with groans
All in a melodious song
In this melodious song
But what if my purpose, my purpose is known?
To just sometimes listen to this cheerful song
And let it inspire me, all of these tones
All in a melodious song
In this melodious song!
poem by Whitney Albright
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Forest Follies
The Green Man
and the gargoyle
sat idly by.
As the forest
caught fire
and the flames
they grew high.
Till mountains of smoke
had covered the sky.
Then down flew the fairies
in fury they came.
And battle they did
with that furious flame.
Sending in torrents
of free falling rain.
Then away
to the mountain
the fairies did fly.
As the souls
of the forest
did softly sigh.
poem by Lynne FincherSpringarden
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Orara
THE STRONG sob of the chafing stream
That seaward fights its way
Down crags of glitter, dells of gleam,
Is in the hills to-day.
But far and faint, a grey-winged form
Hangs where the wild lights wane—
The phantom of a bygone storm,
A ghost of wind and rain.
The soft white feet of afternoon
Are on the shining meads,
The breeze is as a pleasant tune
Amongst the happy reeds.
The fierce, disastrous, flying fire,
That made the great caves ring,
And scarred the slope, and broke the spire,
Is a forgotten thing.
The air is full of mellow sounds,
The wet hill-heads are bright,
And down the fall of fragrant grounds
The deep ways flame with light.
A rose-red space of stream I see,
Past banks of tender fern;
A radiant brook, unknown to me
Beyond its upper turn:
The singing silver life I hear,
Whose home is in the green,
Far-folded woods of fountains clear,
Where I have never been.
Ah, brook above the upper bend,
I often long to stand
Where you in soft, cool shades descend
From the untrodden land!
Ah, folded woods, that hide the grace
Of moss and torrents strong,
I often wish to know the face
Of that which sings your song!
But I may linger, long, and look
Till night is over all:
My eyes will never see the brook,
Or sweet, strange waterfall.
The world is round me with its heat,
And toil, and cares that tire;
I cannot with my feeble feet
Climb after my desire.
But, on the lap of lands unseen,
Within a secret zone,
There shine diviner gold and green
Than man has ever known.
And where the silver waters sing
Down hushed and holy dells,
The flower of a celestial Spring,
A tenfold splendour, dwells.
Yea, in my dream of fall and brook
By far sweet forests furled,
I see that light for which I look
In vain through all the world—
The glory of a larger sky
On slopes of hills sublime,
That speak with God and morning, high
Above the ways of Time!
Ah! haply, in this sphere of change
Where shadows spoil the beam,
It would not do to climb that range
And test my radiant Dream.
The slightest glimpse of yonder place,
Untrodden and alone,
Might wholly kill that nameless grace
The charm of the unknown.
And therefore, though I look and long,
Perhaps the lot is bright
Which keeps the river of the song
A beauty out of sight
poem by Henry Kendall
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The Green Roads
The green roads that end in the forest
Are strewn with white goose feathers this June,
Life marks left behind by someone gone to the forest
To show his track. But he has never come back.
Down each green road a cottage looks at the forest.
Round one the nettle towers; two are bathed in flowers.
An old man along the green road to the forest
Strays from one, from another a child alone.
In the thicket bordering the forest,
All day long a thrush twiddles his song.
It is old, but the trees are young in the forest,
All but one like a castle keep, in the middle deep.
That oak saw the ages pass in the forest:
They were a host, but their memories are lost,
For the tree is dead: all things forget the forest
Excepting perhaps me, when now I see
The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge of the forest,
And hear all day long the thrush repeat his song.
poem by Edward Thomas
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