The Potato Harvest
A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne
Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky
Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly
In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn
To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;
A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by
A pond and cattle; from the homestead nigh
The long deep summonings of the supper horn.
Black on the ridge, against that lonely flush,
A cart, and stoop-necked oxen; ranged beside
Some barrels; and the day-worn harvest-folk,
Here emptying their baskets, jar the hush
With hollow thunders. Down the dusk hillside
Lumbers the wain; and day fades out like smoke.
poem by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
The Herring Weir
Back to the green deeps of the outer bay
The red and amber currents glide and cringe,
Diminishing behind a luminous fringe
Of cream-white surf and wandering wraiths of spray.
Stealthily, in the old reluctant way,
The red flats are uncovered, mile on mile,
To glitter in the sun a golden while.
Far down the flats, a phantom sharply grey,
The herring weir emerges, quick with spoil.
Slowly the tide forsakes it. Then draws near,
Descending from the farm-house on the height,
A cart, with gaping tubs. The oxen toil
Sombrely o'er the level to the weir,
And drag a long black trail across the light.
poem by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Big Black Smoke
She was sick and tired of country life.
A little country home,
A little country folk,
Made her blood run cold.
Now her mother pines her heart away,
Looking for her child in the big black smoke,
In the big black smoke.
Frailest, purest girl the world has seen,
According to her ma, according to her pa,
And everybody said,
That she knew no sin and did no wrong,
Till she walked the streets of the big black smoke,
Of the big black smoke.
Well, she slept in caffs and coffee bars and bowling alleys,
And every penny she had
Was spent on purple hearts and cigarettes.
She took all her pretty coloured clothes,
And ran away from home
And the boy next door,
For a boy named joe.
And he took her money for the rent
And tried to drag her down in the big black smoke,
In the big black smoke.
In the big black smoke.
In the big black smoke.
song performed by by Kinks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy
From a shack by a mountain stream
To a room in new orleans
So far from my blue ridge mountain home
The men I meet aint warm and friendly
Like the one in old virginie
Oh they aint real like my blue ridge mountain boy
I was just a little past eighteen
When I came to new orleans
Id never been beyond my home state line
There was a boy who loved me dearly
But I broke his heart severely
When I left my blue ridge mountain boy
Life was dull in my hometown
Lights were out when the sun went down
And I thought that city life was more my style
But nights get lonely away from home
And its easy to go wrong
The men aint kind like my blue ridge mountain boy
New orleans held things in store
Things Id never bargained for
And every night a different man knocks on my door
But late at night when all is still
I can hear a whippoorwill
As I cry for my blue ridge mountain boy
Oh but I can never go back home
Since the boy I love is gone
He grew tired of waiting for me to return
They say he married last october
But I never will get over
Oh the sweet love of my blue ridge mountain boy
Blue ridge mountain boy
song performed by by Dolly Parton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Before the Squall
The wind is rising on the sea,
The windy white foam-dancers leap;
And the sea moans uneasily,
And turns to sleep, and cannot sleep.
Ridge after rocky ridge uplifts,
Wild hands, and hammers at the land,
Scatters in liquid dust, and drifts
To death among the dusty sand.
On the horizon's nearing line,
Where the sky rests, a visible wall,
Grey in the offing, I divine,
The sails that fly before the squall.
poem by Arthur Symons
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Garden
Bountiful Givers,
I look along the years
And see the flowers you threw…
Anemones
And sprigs of gray
Sparse heather of the rocks,
Or a wild violet
Or daisy of a daisied field…
But each your best.
I might have worn them on my breast
To wilt in the long day…
I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase
And watched each petal sallowing…
I might have held them so - mechanically -
Till the wind winnowed all the leaves
And left upon my hands
A little smear of dust.
Instead
I hid them in the soft warm loam
Of a dim shadowed place…
Deep
In a still cool grotto,
Lit only by the memories of stars
And the wide and luminous eyes
Of dead poets
That love me and that I love…
Deep… deep…
Where none may see - not even ye who gave -
About my soul your garden beautiful.
poem by Lola Ridge
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Song of the Wheat
We have sung the song of the droving days,
Of the march of the travelling sheep;
By silent stages and lonely ways
Thin, white battalions creep.
But the man who now by the land would thrive
Must his spurs to a plough-share beat.
Is there ever a man in the world alive
To sing the song of the Wheat!
It's west by south of the Great Divide
The grim grey plains run out,
Where the old flock-masters lived and died
In a ceaseless fight with drought.
Weary with waiting and hope deferred
They were ready to own defeat,
Till at last they heard the master-word—
And the master-word was Wheat.
Yarran and Myall and Box and Pine—
’Twas axe and fire for all;
They scarce could tarry to blaze the line
Or wait for the trees to fall,
Ere the team was yoked, and the gates flung wide,
And the dust of the horses’ feet
Rose up like a pillar of smoke to guide
The wonderful march of Wheat.
Furrow by furrow, and fold by fold,
The soil is turned on the plain;
Better than silver and better than gold
Is the surface-mine of the grain;
Better than cattle and better than sheep
In the fight with drought and heat;
For a streak of stubbornness, wide and deep,
Lies hid in a grain of Wheat.
When the stock is swept by the hand of fate,
Deep down in his bed of clay
The brave brown Wheat will lie and wait
For the resurrection day:
Lie hid while the whole world thinks him dead;
But the Spring-rain, soft and sweet,
Will over the steaming paddocks spread
The first green flush of the Wheat.
Green and amber and gold it grows
When the sun sinks late in the West;
And the breeze sweeps over the rippling rows
Where the quail and the skylark nest.
Mountain or river or shining star,
There’s never a sight can beat—
Away to the sky-line stretching far—
A sea of the ripening Wheat.
When the burning harvest sun sinks low,
And the shadows stretch on the plain,
The roaring strippers come and go
Like ships on a sea of grain;
Till the lurching, groaning waggons bear
Their tale of the load complete.
Of the world’s great work he has done his share
Who has gathered a crop of wheat.
Princes and Potentates and Czars,
They travel in regal state,
But old King Wheat has a thousand cars
For his trip to the water-gate;
And his thousand steamships breast the tide
And plough thro’ the wind and sleet
To the lands where the teeming millions bide
That say: “Thank God for Wheat!”
poem by Andrew Barton Paterson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Warrigal
The warrigal's lair is pent in bare,
Black rocks at the gorge's mouth;
It is set in ways where Summer strays
With the sprites of flame and drouth;
But when the heights are touched with lights
Of hoar-frost, sleet, and shine,
His bed is made of the dead grass-blade
And the leaves of the windy pine.
Through forest boles the storm-wind rolls,
Vext of the sea-driv'n rain;
And, up in the clift, through many a rift,
The voices of torrents complain.
The sad marsh-fowl and the lonely owl
Are heard in the fog-wreaths grey,
When the warrigal wakes, and listens, and takes
To the woods that shelter the prey.
In the gully-deeps the blind creek sleeps,
And the silver, showery moon
Glides over the hills, and floats, and fills,
And dreams in the dark lagoon;
While halting hard by the station yard,
Aghast at the hut-flame nigh,
The warrigal yells, and flats and fells
Are loud with his dismal cry.
On the topmost peak of mountains bleak
The south wind sobs, and strays
Through moaning pine and turpentine,
And the rippling runnel ways;
And strong streams flow, and great mists go,
Where the warrigal starts to hear
The watch-dog's bark break sharp in the dark,
And flees like a phantom of fear!
The swift rains beat, and the thunders fleet
On the wings of the fiery gale,
And down in the glen of pool and fen,
The wild gums whistle and wail,
As over the plains and past the chains
Of waterholes glimmering deep,
The warrigal flies from the shepherd's cries,
And the clamour of dogs and sheep.
He roves through the lands of sultry sands,
He hunts in the iron range,
Untamed as surge of the far sea verge,
And fierce and fickle and strange.
The white man's track and the haunts of the black
He shuns, and shudders to see;
For his joy he tastes in lonely wastes
Where his mates are torrent and tree.
poem by Henry Kendall
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Horses
Those lumbering horses in the steady plough,
On the bare field - I wonder, why, just now,
They seemed terrible, so wild and strange,
Like magic power on the stony grange.
Perhaps some childish hour has come again,
When I watched fearful, through the blackening rain,
Their hooves like pistons in an ancient mill
Move up and down, yet seem as standing still.
Their conquering hooves which trod the stubble down
Were ritual that turned the field to brown,
And their great hulks were seraphims of gold,
Or mute ecstatic monsters on the mould.
And oh the rapture, when, one furrow done,
They marched broad-breasted to the sinking sun!
The light flowed off their bossy sides in flakes;
The furrows rolled behind like struggling snakes.
But when at dusk with steaming nostrils home
They came, they seemed gigantic in the gloam,
And warm and glowing with mysterious fire
That lit their smouldering bodies in the mire.
Their eyes as brilliant and as wide as night
Gleamed with a cruel apocalyptic light,
Their manes the leaping ire of the wind
Lifted with rage invisible and blind.
Ah, now it fades! It fades! And I must pine
Again for the dread country crystalline,
Where the blank field and the still-standing tree
Were bright and fearful presences to me.
poem by Edwin Muir
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Opening Run
The rain-sodden grass in the ditches is dying,
The berries are red to the crest of the thorn ;
Coronet-deep where the beech leaves are lying
The hunters stand tense to the twang of the horn ;
Where rides are re-filled with the green of the mosses,
All foam-flecked and fretful their long line is strung,
You can see the white gleam as a starred forehead tosses,
You can hear the low chink as a bit-bar is flung.
The world's full of music. Hounds rustle the rover
Through brushwood and fern to a glad 'Gone away!'
With a 'Come along, Pilot! '-one spur-touch and over-
The huntsman is clear on his galloping grey;
Before him the pack's running straight on the stubble-
Toot-toot-too-too-too-oot ! ,_, Tow-row-ow-ow-ow ! '
The leaders are clambering up through the double
And glittering away on the brown of the plough.
The front rank, hands down, have the big fence's measure;
The faint hearts are craning to left and to right;
The Master goes through with a crash on The Treasure,
The grey takes the lot like a gull in his flight.
There's a brown crumpled up, lying still as a dead one.
There 's a roan mare refusing, as stubborn as sin,
While the breaker flogs up on a green underbred one
And smashes the far-away rail with a grin.
The chase carries on over hilltop and hollow,
The life of Old England, the pluck and the fun;
And who would ask more than a stiff line to follow
With hounds running hard in the Opening Run?
poem by William Henry Ogilvie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Green Hills
Green hills,
embroidered
mist, rich
rising ridge
fog filled
plunging fields
cattle,
black, weightless
rise poised
from bare bank
grazing
the grass of
heaven
poem by Steven Federle
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
On the Raising of the Mary Rose
'Long since I sailed me
I and ‘Great Harry’
Pride of the ragged fleet
When we were merrie,
Heel at the wind, my tars,
Gunports at ready.'
'There sat the Frenchman
Here, our great ships,
Hard on the helm we are
As the port dips,
Long cries of ‘Mary Rose’
Die on their lips.'
'Deep-dredged these centuries
Now wedged on high
Stark, as my timbers
Wide-arc the sky;
Where now ‘Great Harry’,
Where does he lie? '
'Torn from my bitter-rest
Borne to your day,
Wide-eyed and wild is my
Sad disarray;
Tell my ‘Great Harry’ now –
Your world is grey.'
14 October 1982
poem by David Lewis Paget
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Dispossessed
Tender and tremulous green of leaves
Turned up by the wind,
Twanging among the vines -
Wind in the grass
Blowing a clear path
For the new-stripped soul to pass…
The naked soul in the sunlight…
Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlight
On the hill-side shimmering.
Dance light on the wind, little soul,
Like a thistle-down floating
Over the butterflies
And the lumbering bees…
Come away from that tree
And its shadow grey as a stone…
Bathe in the pools of light
On the hillside shimmering -
Shining and wetted and warm in the sun-spray falling like golden rain -
But do not linger and look
At that bleak thing under the tree.
poem by Lola Ridge
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Beach at Acheron
The ship lay a hundred yards offshore
gently rocking to starboard
in rolling swells
Shining black sand on the beach
shards of mica glittering
in afternoon sun
dark shrubs scattered
on a rockstrewn hillside
trees twisted and gnarled
hover on the ridge
odor of cordite
and a barking dog
just out of range
a single raven
circling overhead
poem by Michael Pruchnicki
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Homeward Going
GRAY smoke in the green leaves,
Someone homeward going,
No sound in the lone hills . . .
Only cattle lowing.
Still trees and a hushed world,
Leaf and limb unshaken,
No wind in the tall grass,
Creeksides bird-forsaken.
Pale, pale and with mute lips
One in shadow lying —
Near gone from the green world,
Sorrow nigh him sighing.
Day's strife and a life's strife
Each in quiet ending;
Life's light and the dark of death
Softly interblending.
One star on a far ridge,
Home the Homeward going,
No sound on the lone hills . . .
Only cattle lowing.
poem by Roderic Quinn
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Furrow And The Hearth
I
STRIDE the hill, Sower,
Up to the sky ridge,
Flinging the seed,
Scattering, exultant!
Mouthing great rhythms
To the long sea-beats
On the wide shore, behind
The ridge of the hillside.
Below in the darkness
The slumber of mothers,
The cradles at rest,
The fire-seed sleeping
Deep in white ashes!
Give to darkness and sleep,
O Sower, O Seer!
Give me to the earth
With the seed I would enter!
Oh, the growth through the silence
From strength to new strength;
Then the strong bursting forth
Against primal forces,
To laugh in the sunshine,
To gladden the world!
II
Who will bring the red fire
Unto a new hearth?
Who will lay the wide stone
On the waste of the earth?
Who is fain to begin
To build day by day
To raise up his house
Of the moist yellow clay?
There's clay for the making
Moist in the pit,
There are horses to trample
The rushes through it.
Above where the wild duck
Arise up and fly,
There one can build
To the wind and the sky.
There are boughs in the forest
To pluck young and green,
O'er them thatch of the crop
Shall be heavy and clean.
I speak unto him
Who in dead of the night
Sees the red streaks
In the ash deep and white;
While around him he hears
Men stir in their rest,
And the stir of the babe
That is close to the breast!
He shall arise,
He shall go forth alone,
Lay stone on the earth,
And bring fire to stone.
poem by Padraic Colum
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
A Young Rebel
The sun is setting behind the range,
his golden rays pour down
On a little figure, childish, strange,
Bending over a volume worn,
Whose green-clad cover, dusty and torn,
Bears a 'harp without a crown'.
The young eyes turn to the distant west,
Where the sunset colours glow,
And thoughts are thrilling the childish breast
Of gallant, valorous deeds long done,
Of glorious battles, fought and won
In the days of long ago.
His fancy peoples the lonely glen
With the ghosts of the vanished past,
Till he hears the tramp of armed men,
And O'Niall's plumed horsemen ridge
While the 'Red Hand' flutters in all its pride
Above them on the blast.
And just where the road winds into the creek
Where the jasmine stars the shade,
With the soft wind kissing her blushful cheek,
Beautiful grey-eyed Dierdrie stands
Stretching to Naisi her snowy hands--
Half -welcoming, half- dismayed.
The purple hues of the gully change
With the deepening shades of night,
And, far in a nook of the distant range
Is Michael Dwyer, of the Wicklow glen,
Holding his desperate stand again,
'Gainst the redcoat soldier's might.
The west wind rises across the creek,
And with it the crash of steel
Carries a flush to the listener's cheek—
'Tis only the crash of branches dry,
But in it he hears the battle-cry,
And the patriot's words of zeal.
And martyred shades come thronging around,
To the roll-call of Liberty;
Louder their eager voices sound,
Till towering tree-tops and glowing sky,
Are echoing back the defiant cry----
'Michael answer for me!'
The moon is rising above the creek,
The shining stars look down
On a little dreamer, whose pillowed cheek
Rests, in a volume worn,
Whose green-clad cover, dusty and torn,
Bears ' Harp without a Crown'.
poem by Alice Guerin Crist
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Trust in God
Deep trust in God—for that I still have sought
Through all the grim doubts that bemock the soul,
When in the amazement of far-reaching throught,
We list the labourings that for ever roll
Like dubious thunders through those clouded regions
Where night and destiny the counsels keep
Of Time developing his shadowy legions.
And when I ve stood upon some hazardous steep
Of speculation—heaving up its bare
And rugged ridge high in the nebulous air
Of endless change, and thence tremendously
Throwing its shadow, like a blind man’s stare,
Out through the dread unknown—deep trust in Thee,
O God! Hath likewise been my refuge there.
poem by Charles Harpur
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Deer Hunt
Because the warden is my cousin, my
mountain friends hunt in summer, when the deer
cherish each rattler-ridden spring, and I
have waited hours by a pool in fear
that manhood would require I shoot, or that
the steady drip of the hill would dull my ear
to a snake whispering near the log I sat
upon, and listened to the yelping cheer
of dogs and men resounding ridge to ridge.
I flinched at every lonely rifle crack,
my knuckles whitening where I gripped the edge
of age and clung, like retching, sinking back
then gripping once again the monstrous gun,
since I, to be a man, had taken one.
poem by Judson Jerome
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
My Face
you only see half of my eyes
a part of my nose you shall kiss
my mustache rugged like the mountain ridge
of cracking stones and parched mud
of wilted grasses under the cruel sun of long droughts
my lips are thick as the dark night and
silent like the short lived dusk
my beard are uncut for months now
my hair black and long is blown by the wind
always eastward bound
blending with the bleakness
of my future.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Bush Girl
So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,”
Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn---
You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect
That you were glad to be gone;
You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her
By the homestead receding from view,
And you breathed with relief as you rounded the spur,
For the world was a wide world to you.
Grey eyes that grow sadder than sunset or rain,
Fond heart that is ever more true
Firm faith that grows firmer for watching in vain---
She’ll wait by the sliprails for you.
Ah! The world is a new and a wide one to you,
But the world to your sweetheart is shut,
For a change never comes to the lonely Bush girl
From the stockyard, the bush, and the hut;
And the only relief from the dullness she feels
Is when ridges grow softened and dim,
And away in the dusk to the sliprails she steals
To dream of past meetings “with him.”
Do you think, where, in place of bare fences, dry creeks,
Clear streams and green hedges are seen---
Where the girls have the lily and rose in their cheeks,
And the grass in midsummer is green---
Do you think now and then, now or then, in the whirl
Of the city, while London is new,
Of the hut in the Bush, and the freckled-faced girl
Who is eating her heart out for you?
Grey eyes that are sadder than sunset or rain,
Bruised heart that is ever more true,
Fond faith that is firmer for trusting in vain---
She waits by the sliprails for you
poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!