On Lake Temiscamingue
A single dreary elm, that stands between
The sombre forest and the wan-lit lake,
Halves with its slim gray stem and pendent green
The shadowed point. Beyond it without break
Bold brows of pine-topped granite bend away,
Far to the southward, fading off in grand
Soft folds of looming purple. Cool and gray,
The point runs out, a blade of thinnest sand.
Two rivers meet beyond it: wild and clear,
Their deepening thunder breaks upon the ear-
The one descending from its forest home
By many an eddied pool and murmuring fall-
The other cloven through the mountain wall,
A race of tumbled rocks, a road of foam.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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Related quotes
Romance
MY Love dwelt in a Northern land.
A gray tower in a forest green
Was hers, and far on either hand
The long wash of the waves was seen,
And leagues on leagues of yellow sand,
The woven forest boughs between!
And through the silver Northern night
The sunset slowly died away,
And herds of strange deer, lily-white,
Stole forth among the branches gray;
About the coming of the light,
They fled like ghosts before the day!
I know not if the forest green
Still girdles round that castle gray;
I know not if the boughs between
The white deer vanish ere the day;
Above my Love the grass is green,
My heart is colder than the clay!
poem by Andrew Lang
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Kara
Chequered with sunshine and shade—the umbrage of white clouds in motion—
Rearing their summits to Heaven, broken like waves on their strands,
Northward and southward and seaward the mountains arise from the ocean—
Poised on a height above all, Kara, the beautiful, stands.
Kara, whose mountain the ranges lie under in turbulent surges—
Billows of purple and blue that stretch from her base to the sea—
Kara that knoweth the breath of the storm-wind, the sound of his dirges
Sweeping her gorges and clefts, or sighing to river and tree.
High as an eagle’s nest, crowning a summit storm-beaten and hoary,
Framed in a setting of green which sombre tints deepen and tone,
Gleam all the station’s white roofs, refracting the Summer-god’s glory:
Ribbons of silvery light surmounting gray masses of stone.
Beauty is round it, and peace; and silence and sunlight enfold it,
Clothing with mystical charm summit and forest and scar,
Fair as a dream of delight it seemeth to eyes that behold it,
Roofed by the azure of heaven, with sheen of blue waters afar.
Dreamily drifteth the day in solitudes far from life’s clamour;
Soundeth no murmur of tongues, echo of hurrying feet;
Soundeth no blast of the furnace, nor anvil that rings with the hammer,
Thunder of horses and wheels, traffic, and roar of the street.
Only a silence supreme, where Nature seems buried in slumbers,
Save for the bell-bird’s clear note, or murmuring cadence of bees,
Or sough of the wind as it chanteth its paean in musical numbers
Soft to the pine-crests aloft—monarchs of leaf-laden seas.
poem by George Essex Evans
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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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Between The Rapids
The point is turned; the twilight shadow fills
The wheeling stream, the soft receding shore,
And on our ears from deep among the hills
Breaks now the rapid's sudden quickening roar.
Ah yet the same, or have they changed their face,
The fair green fields, and can it still be seen,
The white log cottage near the mountain's base,
So bright and quiet, so home-like and serene?
Ah, well I question, for as five years go,
How many blessings fall, and how much woe.
Aye there they are, nor have they changed their cheer,
The fields, the hut, the leafy mountain brows;
Across the lonely dusk again I hear
The loitering bells, the lowing of the cows,
The bleat of many sheep, the stilly rush
Of the low whispering river, and through all,
Soft human tongues that break the deepening hush
With faint-heard song or desultory call:
Oh comrades hold; the longest reach is past;
The stream runs swift, and we are flying fast.
The shore, the fields, the cottage just the same,
But how with them whose memory makes them sweet?
Oh if I called them, hailing name by name,
Would the same lifts the same old shouts repeat?
Have the rough years, so big with death and ill,
Gone lightly by and left them smiling yet?
Wild black-eyed Jeanne whose tongue was never still,
Old wrinkled Picaud, Pierre and pale Lisette,
The homely hearts that never cared to range,
While life's wide fields were filled with rush and change.
And where is Jacques, and where is Verginie?
I cannot tell; the fields are all a blur.
The lowing cows whose shapes I scarcely see,
Oh do they wait and do they call for her?
And is she changed, or is her heart still clear
As wind or morning, light as river foam?
Or have life's changes borne her far from here,
And far from rest, and far from help and home?
Ah comrades, soft, and let us rest awhile,
For arms grow tired with paddling many a mile.
The woods grow wild, and from the rising shore
The cool wind creeps, the faint wood odours steal;
Like ghosts down the rivers blackening floor
The misty fumes begin to creep and reel.
Once more I leave you, wandering toward the night,
Sweet home, sweet heart, that would have held me in;
Whither I go I know not, and the light
Is faint before, and rest is hard to win.
Ah sweet ye were and near to heaven's gate;
But youth is blind and wisdom comes too late.
Blacker and loftier grow the woods, and hark!
The freshening roar! The chute is near us now,
And dim the canyon grows, and inky dark
The water whispering from the birchen prow.
One long last look, and many a sad adieu,
While eyes can see and heart can feel you yet,
I leave sweet home and sweeter hearts to you,
A prayer for Picaud, one for pale Lisette,
A kiss for Pierre, my little Jacques, and thee,
A sigh for Jeanne, a sob for Verginie.
Oh, does she still remember? Is the dream
Now dead, or has she found another mate?
So near, so dear; and ah, so swift the stream;
Even now perhaps it were not yet too late.
But oh, what matter; for before the night
Has reached its middle, we have far to go:
Bend to your paddles, comrades; see, the light
Ebbs off apace; we must not linger so.
Aye thus it is! Heaven gleams and then is gone
Once, twice, it smiles, and still we wander on.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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The Waterfall
THE SONG of the water
Doomed ever to roam,
A beautiful exile,
Afar from its home.
The cliffs on the mountain,
The grand and the gray,
They took the bright creature
And hurled it away!
I heard the wild downfall,
And knew it must spill
A passionate heart out
All over the hill.
Oh! was it a daughter
Of sorrow and sin,
That they threw it so madly
Down into the lynn?
. . . . .
And listen, my Sister,
For this is the song
The Waterfall taught me
The ridges among:—
“Oh where are the shadows
So cool and so sweet
And the rocks,” saith the water,
“With the moss on their feet?
“Oh, where are my playmates
The wind and the flowers—
The golden and purple—
Of honey-sweet bowers,
“Mine eyes have been blinded
Because of the sun;
And moaning and moaning
I listlessly run.
“These hills are so flinty!—
Ah! tell me, dark Earth,
What valley leads back to
The place of my birth?—
“What valley leads up to
The haunts where a child
Of the caverns I sported,
The free and the wild?
“There lift me,”—it crieth,
“I faint from the heat;
With a sob for the shadows
So cool and so sweet.”
Ye rocks, that look over
With never a tear,
I yearn for one half of
The wasted love here!
My sister so wistful,
You know I believe,
Like a child for the mountains
This water doth grieve.
Ah! you with the blue eyes
And golden-brown hair,
Come closer and closer
And truly declare:—
Supposing a darling
Once happened to sin,
In a passionate space,
Would you carry her in—
If your fathers and mothers,
The grand and the gray,
Had taken the weak one
And hurled her away?
poem by Henry Kendall
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The Call of the Bush
Three roads there are that climb and wind
Amongst the hills, and leave behind
The patterned orchards, sloping down
To meet a little country town.
And of these roads I'll take the one
That tops the ridges, where the sun
Is tempered by the mountain-breeze
And dancing shadows of the trees.
The road is rough - but to my feet
Softer than is the city street;
And then the trees! - how beautiful
She-oak and gum - how fresh and cool!
No walls there are to hamper me;
Only in blue infinity
The distant mountain-ramparts rise
Beneath the broad arch of the skies.
And in that high place I shall hear
The wild birds' singing, soft and clear;
And horse-bells tinkling as of old
In amongst the wattles' gold
Far-off is the ocean tide;
But there across the country-side
Roll waves of bush that rise and fall
To break against the mountain-wall.
And every little farm is seen
An island in a sea of green;
And every little farm at night
Flings through the dark its beacon-light -
There in the silence of the hills,
I shall find peace that soothes and stills
The throbbing of the weary brain, -
For I am going home again.
poem by Dora Wilcox
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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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We go no more to the Forest
WE go no more to the forest,
The rimus are all cut down.
They are built into roof and sill and wall,
Into floors that thrill to the last foot-fall
In the dancing of the town.
We go no more to the forest,
The kauris are all cut down.
They are built into ships so stout and strong,
Bearing their cargoes safe along,
Sailing from town to town.
We go no more to the forest,
The ratas are all cut down.
There are cornfields, golden and green and wide,
For the tangled depths where a world might hide,
And our lawns lie smooth in town.
We go no more to the forest:
Young, wild things are all cut down.
We are buying and selling and making love,
As the grown folk do, with a roof above,
And our hearts are at home in town.
poem by Mary Colborne-Veel
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Hurricane Watch
Green. Green the leaves,
and waves gray on the forehead of the beach.
As easy as breeze tensing lengths of hair
waves lift, then snap back like springs.
Trees bend and kneel, fling out brown arms
to catch their running children.
Green. Green the leaves, and wind
pours on the forehead of the beach.
See how sand wrinkles in the lee,
and anchors part like lovers
from invisible chains. Ships break
then run their length to freedom.
Green. Green the weeds,
and sea foams on the forehead of the beach.
Women’s names swim to greet the waves.
And sea sings, “Eve. Eve. Eve.” Mermaid
who set her cap for them, she beckons each
figurehead to her pale and smiling reach.
Green. Green the waves,
and spray glistening on the forehead of the beach.
Her arms catch and embrace hulls like shoulders.
Bold as dolphins they leap to her lips before she
slaps away the face of any sailor so foolish.
Gray. Gray the waves, and flotsam
in pieces grinding on the wet stones of the beach.
poem by Val Morehouse
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In the Dark Pine-Wood
In the dark pine-wood
I would we lay,
In deep cool shadow
At noon of day.
How sweet to lie there,
Sweet to kiss,
Where the great pine-forest
Enaisled is!
Thy kiss descending
Sweeter were
With a soft tumult
Of thy hair.
O unto the pine-wood
At noon of day
Come with me now,
Sweet love, away.
poem by James Joyce
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A-Roving
WHEN the sap runs up the tree.
And the vine runs o’er the wall,
When the blossom draws the bee,
From the forest comes a call,
Wild, and clear, and sweet, and strange,
Many-tongued and murmuring
Like the river in the range—
’Tis the joyous voice of Spring!
On the boles of grey, old trees,
See the flying sunbeams play
Mystic, soundless melodies—
A fantastic march and gay;
But the young leaves hear them—hark
How they rustle, every one!—
And the sap beneath the bark
Hearing, leaps to meet the sun.
Oh, the world is wondrous fair
When the tide of life’s at flood!
There is magic in the air,
There is music in the blood;
And a glamour draws us on
To the distance, rainbow-spanned,
And the road we tread upon
Is the road to Fairyland.
Lo! the elders hear the sweet
Voice, and know the wondrous song;
And their ancient pulses beat
To a tune forgotten long;
And they talk in whispers low,
With a smile and with a sigh,
Of the years of long ago,
And the roving days gone by.
poem by Victor James Daley
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A Captivated Audience...
The sombre glacier breaks
Eons of its icy silence
As a water fall,
From the deep crevice
In the mountain, it descends
Like a torrent…
The language it speaks
Can not be matched
By any human speech…
The valley resounds,
I gape, astounded over
The magic it weaves…
From east the Sun’s rays
Have come down to play,
The game of hide and seek…
As they filters down
Through the dense Deodars,
Water gushes like a child…
All creatures exult
The forest just
Seems lost in contemplation….
Sitting still, on a wooden bench
under a canopy
on a vantage point,
I wondered,
why are tears
flowing down my cheeks....?
poem by Mamta Agarwal
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Green, Green Grass Of Home
(words & music by claude putman, jr.)
The old home town looks the same,
As I step down from the train,
And there to meet me is my mama and papa
Down the road I look and there runs mary
Hair of gold and lips like cherries
Its good to touch the green, green grass of home
Yes, theyll all be there to meet me,
All creatures smiling sweetly
Its good to touch the green, green grass of home
The old house is still standing,
Though the paint is cracked and dry
And theres an old oak tree that I used to play on
Down the lane Ill walk with my sweet mary
Hair of gold and lips like cherries
Its good to touch the green, green grass of home
Then I awake and look around me
Cold gray walls surround me
And I realize that I was only dreamin
Theres a guard and theres a sad old padre
Arm and arm well walk at daybreak
Again Ill touch the green, green grass of home
Yes, theyll all be there to meet me
In the shadow of that old oak tree
As they lay me beneath the green, green grass of home
song performed by by Elvis Presley
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The magic forest
At the Bois de Boulogne lies magic
Magic that cannot be evitable
Magic that lures people into the evergreen forest
In the forest, soft earth is like a comfy bed
Meadows of grass are green sheets for the bed
If you happen to lie down on the bed
The sunlight hugs your body gently like a mother
Your eyes are heavy weights, unable to keep your eyes open
You fall into the sweetest dream as time goes by…
Night walked into the forest as day walked out of the forest
The pale moon is like a glass eye of a witch staring at you
The dark magic falls into the forest
Lusty monsters fill the magic forest
And the magic forest falls asleep…
The Wet Monkey ll
wearing not a stitch and peered over the palm trees
at the gray sky lit pink by the coming-up sun,
as the birds chattered indifferently. The green walls
of Casa Verde stood on the edge of a rain forest
dark at that hour but livened here and there,
sometime by a orange-yellow flash,
a jungle bird whose name escapes me now
capering the treetops.
The pool dreamed-an aquamarine in a tile bezel
azure water slapping its sides
turbulence with no clear source.
Something told me there was no time to waste;
Wrapping myself in the sheet, I raced downstairs
into the yard, over the wet grass
and through the picket gate to the pool's edge
where the cause of the noise became clear.
An intrepid monkey-foolish and young-hoping to cop a drink
had tumbled into the spill
Now monkeys can't swim-don't ask why, it's true:
that's why you've never seen one doing the crawl.
Arboreal, maybe they don't care to learn.
In any case, this one, true to type, couldn't.
As kids we were taught to be monkey-wary
they're not friendly and carry disease.
But here was a monkey....
poem by Morgan Michaels
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My Own Shall Come to Me
I come, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o'er the mountains, with light and song.
Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.
I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut-flowers
By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,
And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes
Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;
But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or the tomb!
I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,
And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
And the moss looks bright, where my step has been.
I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,
And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,
From the night-bird's lay through the starry time,
In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.
From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain;
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.
poem by John Burroughs
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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For: Edith Södergran
Inscribed … In red granite
As clearer thought, as…
Anything—Scandinavian,
Or any other rests upon a grey lawn.
Anon, it circles a silent grave!
Where once stood a blue forest
A single pine tree; still remains…
And, etched within, it's timeless rings.
Her poems 'Love & solitude' refrains…
Narrow is my circle and the ring of my thoughts
Go round my finger.
This is the scorned, nightingales, bark to sing…
But, laughing-back from her bluest heights
A pine lark road in heaven is ringed.
Inscribed … In red granite
'Here - four of her last four lines'.
See here lies eternity's shore,
Here the stream rushes by,
And death plays in the bushes
The same simple melody.
poem by Mark Heathcote
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What I Love Most Before The Rain
it is that point
where the rain is about to fall
like a woman
blushing
when the clouds turn gray
and heavy
when it is about to burst
and yet it still
waits for the first
dropp to fall
it is that point when people
are not running yet
for shelter
at that point i am at ease
sitting on a bench
waiting for the
pandemonium of steps
and hands covering heads
and women losing
their grace and men showing
their rage
and people scattering
like ants
that you spray with
insecticide
it is that point when people
begin to
protect themselves
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Voice Of Spring
I come, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o'er the mountains, with light and song.
Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.
I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut-flowers
By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,
And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes
Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;
But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or the tomb!
I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,
And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
And the moss looks bright, where my step has been.
I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,
And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,
From the night-bird's lay through the starry time,
In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.
From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain;
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Clock-O'-Clay
In the cowslip pips I lie,
Hidden from the buzzing fly,
While green grass beneath me lies,
Pearled with dew like fishes' eyes,
Here I lie, a clock-o'-clay,
Waiting for the time o' day.
While the forest quakes surprise,
And the wild wind sobs and sighs,
My home rocks as like to fall,
On its pillar green and tall;
When the pattering rain drives by
Clock-o'-clay keeps warm and dry.
Day by day and night by night,
All the week I hide from sight;
In the cowslip pips I lie,
In the rain still warm and dry;
Day and night and night and day,
Red, black-spotted clock-o'-clay.
My home shakes in wind and showers,
Pale green pillar topped with flowers,
Bending at the wild wind's breath,
Till I touch the grass beneath;
Here I live, lone clock-o'-clay,
Watching for the time of day.
poem by John Clare
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