Thèlus Wood
I came by night to Thèlus wood,
And though in dark and desperate places
Stubborned with wire and brown with blood
Undaunted April crept and sewed
Her violets in dead men's faces,
And in a soft and snowy shroud
Drew the scarred fields with gentle stitch;
Though in the valley where the ditch
Was hoarse with nettles, blind with mud,
She stroked the golden-headed bud,
And loosed the fern, she dared not here
To touch nor tend this murdered thing;
The wind went wide of it, the year
Upon this breast stopped short of Spring:
Beauty turned back from Thèlus Wood.
From broken brows the dim eyes stared,
Blistered and maimed the wide stumps grinned
From the black mouth of Thèlus bared
In laughter at some monstrous jest.
No creature moved there, weed nor wind.
Huge arms, half-torn from savage breast,
Hung wide, and tangled limbs and faces
Lay, as if giants blind and stark
With violent, with perverse embraces
Groped for each other in the dark.
A moaning rose — not of the wind,
— There was no wind, but hollowly
From its dim bed of mud each tree
Gave forth a sound, till trees and mud
Seemed but a single, sighing mouth,
A wound that spoke with lips uncouth,
And cried to me from Thèlus Wood.
I heard one tree say: 'This was I
Who drew great clouds across the sky
To weep against me.' This one said:
'I made a gloom where love might lie
All day and dream it night, a bed
Secret and soft, the birds' song had
A twilight sound the whole day there.'
One said: 'Last night I shook my hair
Before the mirror of the moon.'
'I saw a corpse to-day,' said one
'That was but buried yester-year.'
And one, the smallest, sweetest thing —
A fair child-tree made never stir,
Dead before God had tended her
In the green nurseries of Spring.
She lay, the loveliest, loneliest,
Among the old and ruined trees,
And at each small and broken wrist
The white flowers grew like bandages.
Then from the ruined churchyard where
Old vaults and graves lay turned and tossed
And earth from earth was shaken bare,
Came murmurings of a tongueless host
That to each ghastly brother said:
'Who raised us from our sleep? Is this
The resurrection of the dead?
Upon our bodies no flesh grows,
No bright blood through our temples springs,
No glory spreads, no trumpet blows,
The air is not white and blind with wings.
And yet dragged up before us lie
The woods of Thèlus at our feet,
And strange hills sentinel the sky,
And where the road went yawns a pit.
The world is finished: let us sleep.
God has forgotten: we shall keep
Here a sweet, safe Eternity.
There is no other end than this,
And this is death, and that is peace.'
But even as they ceased the stones
Were loosed, the earth shook where I stood,
And from far off the crouching guns
Swung slowly round on Thèlus Wood.
poem by Muriel Stuart
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The Mother's Soul
When the moon was horned the mother died,
And the child pulled at her hand and knee,
And he rubbed her cheek and loudly cried:
'O mother, arise, give bread to me!'
But the pine tree bent its head,
And the wind at the door-post said:
'O child, thy mother is dead !'
The sun set his loom to weave the day;
The frost bit sharp like a silent cur;
The child by her pillow paused in his play:
'Mother, build up the sweet fire of fir !'
But the fir tree shook its cones,
And loud cried the pitiful stones:
'Wolf Death has thy mother's bones!'
They bore the mother out on her bier;
Their tears made warm her breast and shroud;
The smiling child at her head stood near;
And the long, white tapers shook and bowed,
And said with their tongues of gold,
To the ice lumps of the grave mold:
'How heavy are ye and cold!'
They buried the mother; to the feast
They flocked with the beaks of unclean crows.
The wind came up from the red-eyed east
And bore in its arms the chill, soft snows.
They said to each other: 'Sere
Are the hearts the mother held dear;
Forgotten, her babe plays here!'
The child with the tender snowflakes played,
And the wind on its fingers twined his hair;
And still by the tall, brown grave he stayed,
Alone in the churchyard lean and bare.
The sods on the high grave cried
To the mother's white breast inside:
'Lie still; in thy deep rest bide!'
Her breast lay still like a long-chilled stone,
Her soul was out on the bleak, grey day;
She saw her child by the grave alone,
With the sods and snow and wind at play.
Said the sharp lips of the rush,
'Red as thy roses,O bush,
With anger the dead can blush !'
A butterfly to the child's breast flew,*
Fluttered its wings on his sweet, round cheek,
Danced by his fingers, small, cold and blue.
The sun strode down past the mountain peak.
The butterfly whispered low
To the child: 'Babe, follow me; know,
Cold is the earth here below.'
The butterfly flew; followed the child,
Lured by the snowy torch of its wings;
The wind sighed after them soft and wild
Till the stars wedded night with golden rings
Till the frost upreared its head,
And the ground to it groaned and said:
'The feet of the child are lead!'
The child's head drooped to the brown, sere mold,
On the crackling cones his white breast lay;
The butterfly touched the locks of gold,
The soul of the child sprang from its clay.
The moon to the pine tree stole,
And silver-lipped, said to its bole:
'How strong is the mother's soul !'
The wings of the butterfly grew out
To the mother's arms, long, soft and white;
She folded them warm her babe about,
She kissed his lips into berries bright,
She warmed his soul on her breast;
And the east called out to the west:
'Now the mother's soul will rest!'
Under the roof where the burial feast
Was heavy with meat and red with wine,
Each crossed himself as out of the east
A strange wind swept over oak and pine.
The trees to the home-roof said:
' 'Tis but the airy rush and tread
Of angels greeting thy dead.'
poem by Isabella Valancy Crawford
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The Mother
I
IT was April, blossoming spring,
They buried me, when the birds did sing;
Earth, in clammy wedging earth,
They banked my bed with a black, damp girth.
Under the damp and under the mould,
I kenned my breasts were clammy and cold.
Out from the red beams, slanting and bright,
I kenned my cheeks were sunken and white.
I was a dream, and the world was a dream,
And yet I kenned all things that seem.
I was a dream, and the world was a dream,
But you cannot bury a red sunbeam.
For though in the under-grave's doom-night
I lay all silent and stark and white,
Yet over my head I seemed to know
The murmurous moods of wind and snow,
The snows that wasted, the winds that blew,
The rays that slanted, the clouds that drew
The water-ghosts up from lakes below,
And the little flower-souls in earth that grow.
Under earth, in the grave's stark night,
I felt the stars and the moon's pale light.
I felt the winds of ocean and land
That whispered the blossoms soft and bland.
Though they had buried me dark and low,
My soul with the season's seemed to grow.
II
From throes of pain they buried me low,
For death had finished a mother's woe.
But under the sod, in the grave's dread doom,
I dreamed of my baby in glimmer and gloom.
I dreamed of my babe, and I kenned that his rest
Was broken in wailings on my dead breast.
I dreamed that a rose-leaf hand did cling;
Oh, you cannot bury a mother in spring!
When the winds are soft and the blossoms are red
She could not sleep in her cold earth-bed.
I dreamed of my babe for a day and a night,
And then I rose in my grave-clothes white.
I rose like a flower from my damp earth-bed
To the world of sorrowing overhead.
Men would have called me a thing of harm,
But dreams of my babe made me rosy and warm.
I felt my breasts swell under my shroud;
No star shone white, no winds were loud;
But I stole me past the graveyard wall,
For the voice of my baby seemed to call;
And I kenned me a voice, though my lips were dumb:
Hush, baby, hush! for mother is come.
I passed the streets to my husband's home;
The chamber stairs in a dream I clomb;
I heard the sound of each sleeper's breath,
Light waves that break on the shores of death.
I listened a space at my chamber door,
Then stole like a moon-ray over its floor.
My babe was asleep on a stranger's arm,
'O baby, my baby, the grave is so warm,
'Though dark and so deep, for mother is there!
O come with me from the pain and care!
'O come with me from the anguish of earth,
Where the bed is banked with a blossoming girth,
'Where the pillow is soft and the rest is long,
And mother will croon you a slumber-song–
'A slumber-song that will charm your eyes
To a sleep that never in earth-song lies!
'The loves of earth your being can spare,
But never the grave, for mother is there.'
I nestled him soft to my throbbing breast,
And stole me back to my long, long rest.
And here I lie with him under the stars,
Dead to earth, its peace and its wars;
Dead to its hates, its hopes, and its harms,
So long as he cradles up soft in my arms.
And heaven may open its shimmering doors,
And saints make music on pearly floors,
And hell may yawn to its infinite sea,
But they never can take my baby from me.
For so much a part of my soul he hath grown
That God doth know of it high on His throne.
And here I lie with him under the flowers
That sun-winds rock through the billowy hours,
With the night-airs that steal from the murmuring sea,
Bringing sweet peace to my baby and me.
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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My Playmate
The pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.
The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.
For, more to me than birds or flowers,
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom.
She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father's kine?
She left us in the bloom of May
The constant years told o'er
Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.
I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years;
Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring
And reap the autumn ears.
She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.
There haply with her jewelled hands
She smooths her silken gown,-
No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.
The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
The brown nuts on the hill,
And still the May-day flowers make sweet
The woods of Follymill.
The lilies blossom in the pond,
The bird builds in the tree,
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
The slow song of the sea.
I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems,-
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.
I see her face, I hear her voice;
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father's kine?
What cares she that the orioles build
For other eyes than ours,-
That other hands with nuts are filled,
And other laps with flowers?
O playmate in the golden time!
Our mossy seat is green,
Its fringing violets blossom yet,
The old trees o'er it lean.
The winds so sweet with birch and fern
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.
And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea,-
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Vies Manquees
A YEAR ago we walked the wood--
A year ago to-day;
A blackbird fluttered round her brood
Deep in the white-flowered may.
We trod the happy woodland ways,
Where sunset streamed between
The hazel stems in long dusk rays,
And turned to gold the green.
A thrush sang where the ferns uncurled,
And clouds of wind-flowers grew:
I missed the meaning of the world
From lack of love for you.
You missed the beauty of the year,
And failed its self to see,
Through too much doubt and too much fear,
And too much love of me.
This year we hear the birds' glad strain,
Again the sunset glows,
We walk the wild wet woods again,
Again the wind-flower blows.
In cloudy white the falling may
Drifts down the scented wind,
And so the secret drifts away
Which we shall never find.
Our drifted spirits are not free
Spring's secret springs to touch,
For now you do not care for me,
And I love you too much.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Four Children
A Ballad of Good Intentions
Four children played by an old oak tree,
Big John and James and little Benjie,
And, threading a chain of daisies fine,
On the leaf-brown sward knelt Geraldine.
Quoth John, 'I'll ride on the gipsies' road,
For narrow space and a small abode
Would break this vagrant heart in me,
And the world is wide and good to see.'
'I'll stay,' said James, 'for my father's sake
From his ageing hand his toil to take,
So he have at last his heart's desire
To sit at ease by the glowing fire.'
'I shall not work,' said little Benjie,
'Nor roam the world that is fair to see;
But here I'll stay in the green beech wood,
By my mother's side and I'll just be good.'
Linking her chain sweet Geraldine said,
'Big John or James I will surely wed;
I soon must choose which shall best please me,
I care not at all for little Benjie.'
The oak grows brown and the oak grows green
The owl and thrush on her branch have been;
For fifty winters a snood of snow
She wears all white till the spring winds blow.
For fifty autumns a robe of red
She wears till the wet west wind has fled,
But ne'er from dawn till the dusk of day
Hath she heard the sound of a child at play.
Big John grows old and all full of care,
He works till night in his oaken chair;
His feet have led him not long nor late,
No more than a league from his father's gate.
Where yew trees wave and their dark leaves shed
Young James lies cold in his four-foot bed,
O soft did his father lay him down,
And over him drew the earth so brown
In a far-off land on a lonely height
Geraldine weeps full many a night,
And prays all day 'neath a gallows tree
Where hangs the corpse of little Benjie.
poem by Dora Sigerson Shorter
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The Tryst
I raised the veil, I loosed the bands,
I took the dead thing from its place.
Like a warm stream in frozen lands
My lips went wandering on her face,
My hands burnt in her hands.
She could not stay me, being dead;
Her body here was mine to hold.
What if her lips had lost their red?
To me they always tasted cold
With the cold words she said.
Did my breath run along her hair,
And free the pulse, and fire the brain,
My wild blood wake her wild blood there?
Here eyelids lifted wide again
In a blue, sudden stare.
Beneath my fierce, profane caress
The whole white length of body moved;
The drowsy bosom seemed to press
As if against a breast beloved,
Then fail for weariness.
No, not that anguish! Christ forbid
That I should raise such dead! I rose,
Stifled the mouth with lilies, hid
Those eyes, And drew the long hair close,
And shut the coffin lid.
My cold brow on the cold wood laid,
Quiet and close to-night we lie.
No cruel words her lips have said.
I shall not take nor she deny.
The dead is with the dead.
poem by Muriel Stuart
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The Vampire
She rose among us where we lay.
She wept, we put our work away.
She chilled our laughter, stilled our play;
And spread a silence there.
And darkness shot across the sky,
And once, and twice, we heard her cry;
And saw her lift white hands on high
And toss her troubled hair.
What shape was this who came to us,
With basilisk eyes so ominous,
With mouth so sweet, so poisonous,
And tortured hands so pale?
We saw her wavering to and fro,
Through dark and wind we saw her go;
Yet what her name was did not know;
And felt our spirits fail.
We tried to turn away; but still
Above we heard her sorrow thrill;
And those that slept, they dreamed of ill
And dreadful things:
Of skies grown red with rending flames
And shuddering hills that cracked their frames;
Of twilights foul with wings;
And skeletons dancing to a tune;
And cries of children stifled soon;
And over all a blood-red moon
A dull and nightmare size.
They woke, and sought to go their ways,
Yet everywhere they met her gaze,
Her fixed and burning eyes.
Who are you now, —we cried to her—
Spirit so strange, so sinister?
We felt dead winds above us stir;
And in the darkness heard
A voice fall, singing, cloying sweet,
Heavily dropping, though that heat,
Heavy as honeyed pulses beat,
Slow word by anguished word.
And through the night strange music went
With voice and cry so darkly blent
We could not fathom what they meant;
Save only that they seemed
To thin the blood along our veins,
Foretelling vile, delirious pains,
And clouds divulging blood-red rains
Upon a hill undreamed.
And this we heard: 'Who dies for me,
He shall possess me secretly,
My terrible beauty he shall see,
And slake my body's flame.
But who denies me cursed shall be,
And slain, and buried loathsomely,
And slimed upon with shame.'
And darkness fell. And like a sea
Of stumbling deaths we followed, we
Who dared not stay behind.
There all night long beneath a cloud
We rose and fell, we struck and bowed,
We were the ploughman and the ploughed,
Our eyes were red and blind.
And some, they said, had touched her side,
Before she fled us there;
And some had taken her to bride;
And some lain down for her and died;
Who had not touched her hair,
Ran to and fro and cursed and cried
And sought her everywhere.
'Her eyes have feasted on the dead,
And small and shapely is her head,
And dark and small her mouth,' they said,
'And beautiful to kiss;
Her mouth is sinister and red
As blood in moonlight is.'
Then poets forgot their jeweled words
And cut the sky with glittering swords;
And innocent souls turned carrion birds
To perch upon the dead.
Sweet daisy fields were drenched with death,
The air became a charnel breath,
Pale stones were splashed with red.
Green leaves were dappled bright with blood
And fruit trees murdered in the bud;
And when at length the dawn
Came green as twilight from the east,
And all that heaving horror ceased,
Silent was every bird and beast,
And that dark voice was gone.
No word was there, no song, no bell,
No furious tongue that dream to tell;
Only the dead, who rose and fell
Above the wounded men;
And whisperings and wails of pain
Blown slowly from the wounded grain,
Blown slowly from the smoking plain;
And silence fallen again.
Until at dusk, from God knows where,
Beneath dark birds that filled the air,
Like one who did not hear or care,
Under a blood-red cloud,
An aged ploughman came alone
And drove his share through flesh and bone,
And turned them under to mould and stone;
All night long he ploughed.
poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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Through The Wood
THROUGH the wood, the green wood, the wet wood, the light wood,
Love and I went maying a thousand lives ago;
Shafts of golden sunlight had made a golden bright wood
In my heart reflected, because I loved you so.
Through the wood, the chill wood, the brown wood, the bare wood,
I alone went lonely no later than last year,
What had thinned the branches, and wrecked my dear and fair wood,
Killed the pale wild roses and left the rose-thorns sere?
Through the wood, the dead wood, the sad wood, the lone wood,
Winds of winter shiver through lichens old and grey,
You ride past forgetting the wood that was our own wood
All our own--and withered as ever a flower of May.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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How one Winter Came in the Lake Region
1 For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,
2 Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;
3 The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,
4 And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,
5 In those grey, withered days.
6 Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,
7 At night the moon would nestle in a cloud;
8 The fisherman, a ghost, did cast his net;
9 The lake its shores forgot to chafe and fret,
10 And hushed its caverns loud.
11 Far in the smoky woods the birds were mute,
12 Save that from blackened tree a jay would scream,
13 Or far in swamps the lizard's lonesome lute
14 Would pipe in thirst, or by some gnarlèd root
15 The tree-toad trilled his dream.
16 From day to day still hushed the season's mood,
17 The streams stayed in their runnels shrunk and dry;
18 Suns rose aghast by wave and shore and wood,
19 And all the world, with ominous silence, stood
20 In weird expectancy:
21 When one strange night the sun like blood went down,
22 Flooding the heavens in a ruddy hue;
23 Red grew the lake, the sere fields parched and brown,
24 Red grew the marshes where the creeks stole down,
25 But never a wind-breath blew.
26 That night I felt the winter in my veins,
27 A joyous tremor of the icy glow;
28 And woke to hear the north's wild vibrant strains,
29 While far and wide, by withered woods and plains,
30 Fast fell the driving snow.
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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To Jane: The Recollection
I.
Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up,--to thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled,--
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
II.
We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean’s foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.
III.
We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced;
And, soothed by every azure breath,
That under Heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own,
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.
IV.
How calm it was!—the silence there
By such a chain was bound
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced,--
A spirit interfused around
A thrilling, silent life,--
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife;
And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there
Was one fair form that filled with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
V.
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,--
Each seemed as ’twere a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,
And purer than the day--
In which the lovely forests grew,
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen,
Were imaged by the water’s love
Of that fair forest green.
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.
Like one beloved the scene had lent
To the dark water’s breast,
Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth expressed;
Until an envious wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought,
Which from the mind’s too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
Though thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mind,
Than calm in waters, seen.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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August
THERE WERE four apples on the bough,
Half gold half red, that one might know
The blood was ripe inside the core;
The colour of the leaves was more
Like stems of yellow corn that grow
Through all the gold June meadow’s floor.
The warm smell of the fruit was good
To feed on, and the split green wood,
With all its bearded lips and stains
Of mosses in the cloven veins,
Most pleasant, if one lay or stood
In sunshine or in happy rains.
There were four apples on the tree,
Red stained through gold, that all might see
The sun went warm from core to rind;
The green leaves made the summer blind
In that soft place they kept for me
With golden apples shut behind.
The leaves caught gold across the sun,
And where the bluest air begun,
Thirsted for song to help the heat;
As I to feel my lady’s feet
Draw close before the day were done;
Both lips grew dry with dreams of it.
In the mute August afternoon
They trembled to some undertune
Of music in the silver air;
Great pleasure was it to be there
Till green turned duskier and the moon
Coloured the corn-sheaves like gold hair.
That August time it was delight
To watch the red moons wane to white
’Twixt grey seamed stems of apple-trees;
A sense of heavy harmonies
Grew on the growth of patient night,
More sweet than shapen music is.
But some three hours before the moon
The air, still eager from the noon,
Flagged after heat, not wholly dead;
Against the stem I leant my head;
The colour soothed me like a tune,
Green leaves all round the gold and red.
I lay there till the warm smell grew
More sharp, when flecks of yellow dew
Between the round ripe leaves had blurred
The rind with stain and wet; I heard
A wind that blew and breathed and blew,
Too weak to alter its one word.
The wet leaves next the gentle fruit
Felt smoother, and the brown tree-root
Felt the mould warmer: I too felt
(As water feels the slow gold melt
Right through it when the day burns mute)
The peace of time wherein love dwelt.
There were four apples on the tree,
Gold stained on red that all might see
The sweet blood filled them to the core:
The colour of her hair is more
Like stems of fair faint gold, that be
Mown from the harvest’s middle floor.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Forgotten Dead, I Salute You
Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
Night has gone out beneath the hill
Many sweet times; before our eyes
Dawn makes and unmakes about us still
The magic that we call the rose.
The gentle history of the rain
Has been unfolded, traced and lost
By the sharp finger-tips of frost;
Birds in the hawthorn build again;
The hare makes soft her secret house;
The wind at tourney comes and goes,
Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;
The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:
He knew the beauty of all those
Last year, and who remembers him?
Love sometimes walks the waters still,
Laughter throws back her radiant head;
Utterly beauty is not gone,
And wonder is not wholly dead.
The starry, mortal world rolls on;
Between sweet sounds and silences,
With new, strange wines her beakers brim:
He lost his heritage with these
Last year, and who remembers him?
None remember him: he lies
In earth of some strange-sounding place,
Nameless beneath the nameless skies,
The wind his only chant, the rain
The only tears upon his face;
Far and forgotten utterly
By living man. Yet such as he
Have made it possible and sure
For other lives to have, to be;
For men to sleep content, secure.
Lip touches lip and eyes meet eyes
Because his heart beats not again:
His rotting, fruitless body lies
That sons may grow from other men.
He gave, as Christ, the life he hadÑ
The only life desired or known;
The great, sad sacrifice was made
For strangers; this forgotten dead
Went out into the night alone.
There was his body broken for you,
There was his blood divinely shed
That in the earth lie lost and dim.
Eat, drink, and often as you do,
For whom he died, remember him.
poem by Muriel Stuart
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Pine Forest Of The Cascine Near Pisa
Dearest, best and brightest,
Come away,
To the woods and to the fields!
Dearer than this fairest day
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake
In its cradle in the brake.
The eldest of the Hours of Spring,
Into the Winter wandering,
Looks upon the leafless wood,
And the banks all bare and rude;
Found, it seems, this halcyon Morn
In February’s bosom born,
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
Kissed the cold forehead of the Earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free;
And waked to music all the fountains,
And breathed upon the rigid mountains,
And made the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, Dear.
Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains
Image all the roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Sapless, gray, and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the sun--
To the sandhills of the sea,
Where the earliest violets be.
Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
And do thy wonted work and trace
The epitaph of glory fled;
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the woods, and on the deep
The smile of Heaven lay.
It seemed as if the day were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which shed to earth above the sun
A light of Paradise.
We paused amid the pines that stood,
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
With stems like serpents interlaced.
How calm it was--the silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
It seemed that from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain's waste
To the bright flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced;--
A spirit interfused around,
A thinking, silent life;
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife;--
And still, it seemed, the centre of
The magic circle there,
Was one whose being filled with love
The breathless atmosphere.
Were not the crocuses that grew
Under that ilex-tree
As beautiful in scent and hue
As ever fed the bee?
We stood beneath the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,
And each seemed like a sky
Gulfed in a world below;
A purple firmament of light
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,
And clearer than the day—
In which the massy forests grew
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any waving there.
Like one beloved the scene had lent
To the dark water's breast
Its every leaf and lineament
With that clear truth expressed;
There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green crowd
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Under a speckled cloud.
Sweet views, which in our world above
Can never well be seen,
Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green.
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian air,
An atmosphere without a breath,
A silence sleeping there.
Until a wandering wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought,
Which from my mind's too faithful eye
Blots thy bright image out.
For thou art good and dear and kind,
The forest ever green,
But less of peace in S---'s mind,
Than calm in waters, seen.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Dead To The Living
Work while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
IN the childhood of April, while purple woods
With the young year's blood in them smiled,
I passed through the lanes and the wakened fields,
And stood by the grave of the child.
And the pain awoke that is never dead
Though it sometimes sleeps, and again
It set its teeth in this heart of mine,
And fastened its claws in my brain:
For it seemed so hard that the little hands
And the little well-loved head
Should be out of reach of my living lips,
And be side by side with the dead--
Not side by side with us who had loved,
But with these who had never seen
The grace of the smile, the gold of the hair,
And the eyes of my baby-queen.
Yet with trees about where the brown birds build,
And with long green grass above,
She lies in the cold sweet breast of earth
Beyond the reach of our love;
Whatever befalls in the coarse loud world,
We know she will never wake.
When I thought of the sorrow she might have known,
I was almost glad for her sake. . . .
Tears might have tired those kiss-closed eyes,
Grief hardened the mouth I kissed;
I was almost glad that my dear was dead
Because of the pain she had missed.
Oh, if I could but have died a child
With a white child-soul like hers,
As pure as the wind-flowers down in the copse,
Where the soul of the spring's self stirs;
Or if I had only done with it all,
And might lie by her side unmoved!
I envied the very clods of earth
Their place near the child I loved!
And my soul rose up in revolt at life,
As I stood dry-eyed by her grave,
When sudden the grass of the churchyard sod
Rolled back like a green smooth wave;
The brown earth looked like the brown sea rocks,
The tombstones were white like spray,
And white like surf were the curling folds
Of the shrouds where the dead men lay;
For each in his place with his quiet face
I saw the dead lie low,
Who had worked and suffered and found life sad,
So many sad years ago.
Unchanged by time I saw them lie
As when first they were laid to rest,
The tired eyes closed, the sad lips still,
And the work-worn hands on the breast.
There were some who had found the green world so grey,
They had left it before their time,
And some were little ones like my dear,
And some had died in their prime;
And some were old, they had had their fill
Of bitter unfruitful hours,
And knew that none of them, none, had known
A flower of a hope like ours!
Through their shut eyelids the dead looked up,
And without a voice they said:
'We lived without hope, without hope we died,
And hopeless we lie here dead;
And death is better than life that draws
Pain in, as it draws in breath,
If life never dreams of a coming day
When life shall not envy death.
Through the dark of our hours and our times we lived,
Uncheered by a single ray
Of such hope as lightens the lives of you
Who are finding life hard to-day;
With our little lanterns of human love
We lighted our dark warm night--
But you in the chill of the dawn are set
With your face to the eastern light.
Freedom is waiting with hands held out
Till you tear the veil from her face--
And when once men have seen the light of her eyes,
And felt her divine embrace,
The light of the world will be risen indeed,
And will shine in the eyes of men,
And those who come after will find life fair,
And their lives worth living then!
Will you strive to the light in your loud rough world,
That these things may come to pass,
Or lie in the shadow beside the child,
And strive to the sun through the grass?'
'My world while I may,' I cried; 'but you
Whose lives were as dark as your grave?'
'We too are a part of the coming light,'
They called through the smooth green wave.
Their white shrouds gleamed as the flood of green
Rolled over and hid them from me--
Hid all but the little hands and the hair,
And the face that I always see.
poem by Edith Nesbit
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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After a Tempest
The day had been a day of wind and storm;--
The wind was laid, the storm was overpast,--
And stooping from the zenith, bright and warm
Shone the great sun on the wide earth at last.
I stood upon the upland slope and cast
My eye upon a broad and beauteous scene,
Where the vast plain lay girt by mountains vast,
And hills o'er hills lifted their heads of green,
With pleasant vales scooped out and villages between.
The rain-drops glistened on the trees around,
Whose shadows on the tall grass were not stirred,
Save when a shower of diamonds, to the ground,
Was shaken by the flight of startled bird;
For birds were warbling round, and bees were heard
About the flowers; the cheerful rivulet sung
And gossiped, as he hastened ocean-ward;
To the gray oak the squirrel, chiding clung,
And chirping from the ground the grasshopper upsprung.
And from beneath the leaves that kept them dry
Flew many a glittering insect here and there,
And darted up and down the butterfly,
That seemed a living blossom of the air.
The flocks came scattering from the thicket, where
The violent rain had pent them; in the way
Strolled groups of damsels frolicksome and fair;
The farmer swung the scythe or turned the hay,
And 'twixt the heavy swaths his children were at play.
It was a scene of peace--and, like a spell,
Did that serene and golden sunlight fall
Upon the motionless wood that clothed the fell,
And precipice upspringing like a wall,
And glassy river and white waterfall,
And happy living things that trod the bright
And beauteous scene; while far beyond them all,
On many a lovely valley, out of sight,
Was poured from the blue heavens the same soft golden light.
I looked, and thought the quiet of the scene
An emblem of the peace that yet shall be,
When, o'er earth's continents and isles between,
The noise of war shall cease from sea to sea,
And married nations dwell in harmony;
When millions, crouching in the dust to one,
No more shall beg their lives on bended knee,
Nor the black stake be dressed, nor in the sun
The o'erlabored captive toil, and wish his life were done.
Too long, at clash of arms amid her bowers
And pools of blood, the earth has stood aghast,
The fair earth, that should only blush with flowers
And ruddy fruits; but not for aye can last
The storm, and sweet the sunshine when 'tis past.
Lo, the clouds roll away--they break--they fly,
And, like the glorious light of summer, cast
O'er the wide landscape from the embracing sky,
On all the peaceful world the smile of heaven shall lie.
poem by William Cullen Bryant
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part I: To Manon: XVIII
HE LAMENTS THAT HIS LOVE IS DEAD
My love is dead, dead and in spite of me,--
Dead while I lived,--while yet my blood was rife
With hope and pleasure and the pride of life.
For my love ended unexpectedly
During the Winter, stricken like a tree
By a night's cold, and frozen to the blood,
Whose leaves fell off and never were renewed
By any promise of the years to be.
And, when the Spring came, and the birds, to mate
Among its branches, lo! they found it bare,
Though all around was Summer in the wood.
Yet they took heart awhile, incredulous
That such a tree should be for ever dead.
``'Tis early yet,'' they cried. ``The Spring is late.
It shall still be as in the days that were.''
But Summer came and went while the tree stood
Bare in the sun like a deserted house.
--Then the birds suddenly despaired and fled.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Flight
Voices out of the shade that cried,
And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,
And country eyes, and quiet faces -
All these were round my steady paces.
Those that I could have loved went by me;
Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
I heard the whisper of water nigh me,
Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone
In the green and gold. And I went on.
For if my echoing footfall slept,
Soon a far whispering there'd be
Of a little lonely wind that crept
From tree to tree, and distantly
Followed me, followed me. . . .
But the blue vaporous end of day
Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite,
Where between pine-woods dipped the way.
I turned, slipped in and out of sight.
I trod as quiet as the night.
The pine-boles kept perpetual hush;
And in the boughs wind never swirled.
I found a flowering lowly bush,
And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled,
Hidden at rest from all the world.
Safe! I was safe, and glad, I knew!
Yet - with cold heart and cold wet brows
I lay. And the dark fell. . . . There grew
Meward a sound of shaken boughs;
And ceased, above my intricate house;
And silence, silence, silence found me. . . .
I felt the unfaltering movement creep
Among the leaves. They shed around me
Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep;
And stroked my face. I fell asleep.
poem by Rupert Brooke (1919)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Flight
Voices out of the shade that cried,
And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,
And country eyes, and quiet faces -
All these were round my steady paces.
Those that I could have loved went by me;
Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
I heard the whisper of water nigh me,
Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone
In the green and gold. And I went on.
For if my echoing footfall slept,
Soon a far whispering there'd be
Of a little lonely wind that crept
From tree to tree, and distantly
Followed me, followed me. . . .
But the blue vaporous end of day
Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite,
Where between pine-woods dipped the way.
I turned, slipped in and out of sight.
I trod as quiet as the night.
The pine-boles kept perpetual hush;
And in the boughs wind never swirled.
I found a flowering lowly bush,
And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled,
Hidden at rest from all the world.
Safe! I was safe, and glad, I knew!
Yet - with cold heart and cold wet brows
I lay. And the dark fell. . . . There grew
Meward a sound of shaken boughs;
And ceased, above my intricate house;
And silence, silence, silence found me. . . .
I felt the unfaltering movement creep
Among the leaves. They shed around me
Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep;
And stroked my face. I fell asleep.
poem by Rupert Brooke (1910)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The House Of Dust: Part 03: 12: Witches' Sabbath
Now, when the moon slid under the cloud
And the cold clear dark of starlight fell,
He heard in his blood the well-known bell
Tolling slowly in heaves of sound,
Slowly beating, slowly beating,
Shaking its pulse on the stagnant air:
Sometimes it swung completely round,
Horribly gasping as if for breath;
Falling down with an anguished cry . . .
Now the red bat, he mused, will fly;
Something is marked, this night, for death . . .
And while he mused, along his blood
Flew ghostly voices, remote and thin,
They rose in the cavern of his brain,
Like ghosts they died away again;
And hands upon his heart were laid,
And music upon his flesh was played,
Until, as he was bidden to do,
He walked the wood he so well knew.
Through the cold dew he moved his feet,
And heard far off, as under the earth,
Discordant music in shuddering tones,
Screams of laughter, horrible mirth,
Clapping of hands, and thudding of drums,
And the long-drawn wail of one in pain.
To-night, he thought, I shall die again,
We shall die again in the red-eyed fire
To meet on the edge of the wood beyond
With the placid gaze of fed desire . . .
He walked; and behind the whisper of trees,
In and out, one walked with him:
She parted the branches and peered at him,
Through lowered lids her two eyes burned,
He heard her breath, he saw her hand,
Wherever he turned his way, she turned:
Kept pace with him, now fast, now slow;
Moving her white knees as he moved . . .
This is the one I have always loved;
This is the one whose bat-soul comes
To dance with me, flesh to flesh,
In the starlight dance of horns and drums . . .
The walls and roofs, the scarlet towers,
Sank down behind a rushing sky.
He heard a sweet song just begun
Abruptly shatter in tones and die.
It whirled away. Cold silence fell.
And again came tollings of a bell.
* * * * *
This air is alive with witches: the white witch rides
Swifter than smoke on the starlit wind.
In the clear darkness, while the moon hides,
They come like dreams, like something remembered . .
Let us hurry! beloved; take my hand,
Forget these things that trouble your eyes,
Forget, forget! Our flesh is changed,
Lighter than smoke we wreathe and rise . . .
The cold air hisses between us . . . Beloved, beloved,
What was the word you said?
Something about clear music that sang through water . . .
I cannot remember. The storm-drops break on the leaves.
Something was lost in the darkness. Someone is dead.
Someone lies in the garden and grieves.
Look how the branches are tossed in this air,
Flinging their green to the earth!
Black clouds rush to devour the stars in the sky,
The moon stares down like a half-closed eye.
The leaves are scattered, the birds are blown,
Oaks crash down in the darkness,
We run from our windy shadows; we are running alone.
* * * * *
The moon was darkened: across it flew
The swift grey tenebrous shape he knew,
Like a thing of smoke it crossed the sky,
The witch! he said. And he heard a cry,
And another came, and another came,
And one, grown duskily red with blood,
Floated an instant across the moon,
Hung like a dull fantastic flame . . .
The earth has veins: they throb to-night,
The earth swells warm beneath my feet,
The tips of the trees grow red and bright,
The leaves are swollen, I feel them beat,
They press together, they push and sigh,
They listen to hear the great bat cry,
The great red bat with the woman's face . . .
Hurry! he said. And pace for pace
That other, who trod the dark with him,
Crushed the live leaves, reached out white hands
And closed her eyes, the better to see
The priests with claws, the lovers with hooves,
The fire-lit rock, the sarabands.
I am here! she said. The bough he broke—
Was it the snapping bough that spoke?
I am here! she said. The white thigh gleamed
Cold in starlight among dark leaves,
The head thrown backward as he had dreamed,
The shadowy red deep jasper mouth;
And the lifted hands, and the virgin breasts,
Passed beside him, and vanished away.
I am here! she cried. He answered 'Stay!'
And laughter arose, and near and far
Answering laughter rose and died . . .
Who is there? in the dark? he cried.
He stood in terror, and heard a sound
Of terrible hooves on the hollow ground;
They rushed, were still; a silence fell;
And he heard deep tollings of a bell.
* * * * *
Look beloved! Why do you hide your face?
Look, in the centre there, above the fire,
They are bearing the boy who blasphemed love!
They are playing a piercing music upon him
With a bow of living wire! . . .
The virgin harlot sings,
She leans above the beautiful anguished body,
And draws slow music from those strings.
They dance around him, they fling red roses upon him,
They trample him with their naked feet,
His cries are lost in laughter,
Their feet grow dark with his blood, they beat and
beat,
They dance upon him, until he cries no more . . .
Have we not heard that cry before?
Somewhere, somewhere,
Beside a sea, in the green evening,
Beneath green clouds, in a copper sky . . .
Was it you? was it I?
They have quenched the fires, they dance in the darkness,
The satyrs have run among them to seize and tear,
Look! he has caught one by the hair,
She screams and falls, he bears her away with him,
And the night grows full of whistling wings.
Far off, one voice, serene and sweet,
Rises and sings . . .
'By the clear waters where once I died,
In the calm evening bright with stars. . . .'
Where have I heard these words? Was it you who sang them?
It was long ago.
Let us hurry, beloved! the hard hooves trample;
The treetops tremble and glow.
* * * * *
In the clear dark, on silent wings,
The red bat hovers beneath her moon;
She drops through the fragrant night, and clings
Fast in the shadow, with hands like claws,
With soft eyes closed and mouth that feeds,
To the young white flesh that warmly bleeds.
The maidens circle in dance, and raise
From lifting throats, a soft-sung praise;
Their knees and breasts are white and bare,
They have hung pale roses in their hair,
Each of them as she dances by
Peers at the blood with a narrowed eye.
See how the red wing wraps him round,
See how the white youth struggles in vain!
The weak arms writhe in a soundless pain;
He writhes in the soft red veiny wings,
But still she whispers upon him and clings. . . .
This is the secret feast of love,
Look well, look well, before it dies,
See how the red one trembles above,
See how quiet the white one lies! . . . .
Wind through the trees. . . .and a voice is heard
Singing far off. The dead leaves fall. . . .
'By the clear waters where once I died,
In the calm evening bright with stars,
One among numberless avatars,
I wedded a mortal, a mortal bride,
And lay on the stones and gave my flesh,
And entered the hunger of him I loved.
How shall I ever escape this mesh
Or be from my lover's body removed?'
Dead leaves stream through the hurrying air
And the maenads dance with flying hair.
* * * * *
The priests with hooves, the lovers with horns,
Rise in the starlight, one by one,
They draw their knives on the spurting throats,
They smear the column with blood of goats,
They dabble the blood on hair and lips
And wait like stones for the moon's eclipse.
They stand like stones and stare at the sky
Where the moon leers down like a half-closed eye. . .
In the green moonlight still they stand
While wind flows over the darkened sand
And brood on the soft forgotten things
That filled their shadowy yesterdays. . . .
Where are the breasts, the scarlet wings? . . . .
They gaze at each other with troubled gaze. . . .
And then, as the shadow closes the moon,
Shout, and strike with their hooves the ground,
And rush through the dark, and fill the night
With a slowly dying clamor of sound.
There, where the great walls crowd the stars,
There, by the black wind-riven walls,
In a grove of twisted leafless trees. . . .
Who are these pilgrims, who are these,
These three, the one of whom stands upright,
While one lies weeping and one of them crawls?
The face that he turned was a wounded face,
I heard the dripping of blood on stones. . . .
Hooves had trampled and torn this place,
And the leaves were strewn with blood and bones.
Sometimes, I think, beneath my feet,
The warm earth stretches herself and sighs. . . .
Listen! I heard the slow heart beat. . . .
I will lie on this grass as a lover lies
And reach to the north and reach to the south
And seek in the darkness for her mouth.
* * * * *
Beloved, beloved, where the slow waves of the wind
Shatter pale foam among great trees,
Under the hurrying stars, under the heaving arches,
Like one whirled down under shadowy seas,
I run to find you, I run and cry,
Where are you? Where are you? It is I. It is I.
It is your eyes I seek, it is your windy hair,
Your starlight body that breathes in the darkness there.
Under the darkness I feel you stirring. . . .
Is this you? Is this you?
Bats in this air go whirring. . . .
And this soft mouth that darkly meets my mouth,
Is this the soft mouth I knew?
Darkness, and wind in the tortured trees;
And the patter of dew.
* * * * *
Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!
Dance till the brain is red with speed!
Dance till you fall! Lift your torches!
Kiss your lovers until they bleed!
Backward I draw your anguished hair
Until your eyes are stretched with pain;
Backward I press you until you cry,
Your lips grow white, I kiss you again,
I will take a torch and set you afire,
I will break your body and fling it away. . . .
Look, you are trembling. . . .Lie still, beloved!
Lock your hands in my hair, and say
Darling! darling! darling! darling!
All night long till the break of day.
Is it your heart I hear beneath me. . . .
Or the far tolling of that tower?
The voices are still that cried around us. . . .
The woods grow still for the sacred hour.
Rise, white lover! the day draws near.
The grey trees lean to the east in fear.
'By the clear waters where once I died . . . .'
Beloved, whose voice was this that cried?
'By the clear waters that reach the sun
By the clear waves that starward run. . . .
I found love's body and lost his soul,
And crumbled in flame that should have annealed. . .
How shall I ever again be whole,
By what dark waters shall I be healed?'
Silence. . . .the red leaves, one by one,
Fall. Far off, the maenads run.
Silence. Beneath my naked feet
The veins of the red earth swell and beat.
The dead leaves sigh on the troubled air,
Far off the maenads bind their hair. . . .
Hurry, beloved! the day comes soon.
The fire is drawn from the heart of the moon.
* * * * *
The great bell cracks and falls at last.
The moon whirls out. The sky grows still.
Look, how the white cloud crosses the stars
And suddenly drops behind the hill!
Your eyes are placid, you smile at me,
We sit in the room by candle-light.
We peer in each other's veins and see
No sign of the things we saw this night.
Only, a song is in your ears,
A song you have heard, you think, in dream:
The song which only the demon hears,
In the dark forest where maenads scream . . .
'By the clear waters where once I died . . .
In the calm evening bright with stars . . . '
What do the strange words mean? you say,—
And touch my hand, and turn away.
poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Spirit of Poetry, The
There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
That dwells where'er the gentle south-wind blows;
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade,
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air,
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread.
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought,
When the fast ushering star of morning comes
O'er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf;
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve,
In mourning weeds, from out the western gate,
Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves
In the green valley, where the silver brook,
From its full laver, pours the white cascade;
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter.
And frequent, on the everlasting hills,
Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself
In all the dark embroidery of the storm,
And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid
The silent majesty of these deep woods,
lts presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth,
As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air
Their tops the green trees lift. Hence gifted bards
Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades.
For them there was an eloquent voice in all
The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun,
The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way,
Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds,
The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun
Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes,
Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in,
Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale,
The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees,
In many a lazy syllable, repeating
Their old poetic legends to the wind.
And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill
The world; and, in these wayward days of youth,
My busy fancy oft embodies it,
As a bright image of the light and beauty
That dwell in nature; of the heavenly forms
We worship in our dreams, and the soft hues
That stain the wild bird's wing, and flush the clouds
When the sun sets. Within her tender eye
The heaven of April, with its changing light,
And when it wears the blue of May, is hung,
And on her lip the rich, red rose. Her hair
Is like the summer tresses of the trees,
When twilight makes them brown, and on her cheek
Blushes the richness of an autumn sky,
With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath,
It is so like the gentle air of Spring,
As, front the morning's dewy flowers, it comes
Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy
To have it round us, and her silver voice
Is the rich music of a summer bird,
Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence.
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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