Spring In Canada
SEASON of life's renewal, love's rebirth,
And all hope's young espousals; in your dream,
I feel once more the ancient stirrings of Earth.
Now in your moods benign of sun and wind,
The worn and aged, winter-wrinkled Earth,
Forgetting sorrow, sleep and iced snows,
Turns joyful to the glad sun bland and kind,
And in his kiss forgets her ancient woes.
Men scorn thy name in song in these late days
When life is sordid, crude, material, grim,
And love a laughter unto brutish minds,
Song a weariness or an idle whim,
The scoff of herds of this world's soulless hinds,
Deaf to the melody of your brooks and winds,
Blind to the beauty of your splendid dream.
Because earth's hounds and jackals bay the moon,
Must then poor Philomel forbear to sing,
Or that life's barn fowl croak in dismal tune,
Love's lark in heaven fail to lift her wing.
And even I, who feel thine ancient dreams,
Do hail thee, wondrous Spring,
Love's rare magician of this waking world,
Who turnest to melody all Earth's harshest themes,
And buildest beauty out of each bleak thing
In being, where thy roseate dreams are furled.
In thee, old age once more renews his youth,
And turns him kindling to his memoried past,
Reviving golden moments now no more,
By blossoming wood and wide sun-winnowed shore;
While youth by some supreme, divine intent,
Some spirit beneath all moods that breathe and move,
Builds o'er all earth a luminous, tremulous tent
In which to dream and love.
All elements and spirits stir and wake
From haunts of dream and death.
Loosened the waters from their iced chains
Go roaring by loud ways from fen and lake,
While all the world is filled with voice of rains,
And tender droppings toward the unborn flowers,
And rosy shoots in sunward blossoming bowers.
Loosened, the snows of Winter, cerements
From off the corpse of Autumn, waste and flee;
Loosened the gyves of slumber, plain and stream,
And all the spirits of life who build and dream
Enfranchised, glad and free.
Far out around the world by woods and meres,
Rises, like morn from night, a magic haze,
Filled with dim pearly hints of unborn days,
Of April's smiles and tears.
Far in the misty woodlands, myriad buds,
Shut leaves and petals, peeping one by one,
As in a night, leafy infinitudes,
By some kind inward magic of the sun,
Where yestereve the sad-voiced lonesome wind
Wailed a wild melody of mad Winter's mind,
Now clothed with tremulous glories of the Spring.
Or in low meadow lands some chattering brook
But last eve silent, or in slumbrous tune
Whispering hushed melodies to the wan-faced moon,
Like life slow ebbing; now with all life's dowers,
Goes loudly shouting down the joyous hours.
Wan weeds and clovers, tiny spires of green,
Rising from myriad meadows and far fields,
Drinking within the warm rains sweet and clear;
Put on the infinite glory of the year.
After long months of waiting, months of woe,
Months of withered age and sleep and death,
Months of bleak cerements of iced snow,
After dim shrunken days and long-drawn nights
Of pallid storm and haunted northern lights,
Wakens the song, the bud, the brook, the thrill,
The glory of being and the petalled breath,—
The newer wakening of a magic will,
Of life re-stirring to its infinite deeps,
By wave and shore and hooded mere and hill;—
And I, too, blind and dumb, and filled with fear,
Life-gyved and frozen, like a prisoned thing,
Feel all this glory of the waking year,
And my heart fluttering like a young bird's wing,
Doth tune itself in joyful guise to sing
The splendour and hope of all the splendid year,
The magic dream of Spring !
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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Even So
THE DAYS go by—the days go by,
Sadly and wearily to die:
Each with its burden of small cares,
Each with its sad gift of gray hairs
For those who sit, like me, and sigh,
“The days go by! The days go by!”
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes,
Shedding a rain of rare perfumes
That men call memories, they are borne
As in life’s many-visioned morn,
When Love sang in the myrtle-blooms—
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes!
Where is my life? Where is my life?
The morning of my youth was rife
With promise of a golden day.
Where have my hopes gone? Where are they—
The passion and the splendid strife?
Where is my life? Where is my life?
My thoughts take hue from this wild day,
And, like the skies, are ashen gray;
The sharp rain, falling constantly,
Lashes with whips of steel the sea:
What words are left for Hope to say?
My thoughts take hue from this wild day.
I dreamt—my life is all a dream!—
That I should sing a song supreme
To gladden all sad eyes that weep,
And take the Harp to Time, and sweep
Its chords to some eternal theme.
I dreamt—my life is all a dream.
The world is very old and wan—
The sun that once so brightly shone
Is now as pale as the pale moon.
I would that Death came swift and soon;
For all my dreams are dead and gone.
The world is very old and wan.
The world is young, the world is strong,
But I in dreams have wandered long.
God lives. What can Death do to me
The sun is shining on the sea.
Yet shall I sing my splendid song—
The world is young, the world is strong.
poem by Victor James Daley
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The Days go by
THE DAYS go by—the days go by,
Sadly and wearily to die:
Each with its burden of small cares,
Each with its sad gift of gray hairs
For those who sit, like me, and sigh,
“The days go by! The days go by!”
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes,
Shedding a rain of rare perfumes
That men call memories, they are borne
As in life’s many-visioned morn,
When Love sang in the myrtle-blooms—
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes!
Where is my life? Where is my life?
The morning of my youth was rife
With promise of a golden day.
Where have my hopes gone? Where are they—
The passion and the splendid strife?
Where is my life? Where is my life?
My thoughts take hue from this wild day,
And, like the skies, are ashen gray;
The sharp rain, falling constantly,
Lashes with whips of steel the sea:
What words are left for Hope to say?
My thoughts take hue from this wild day.
I dreamt—my life is all a dream!—
That I should sing a song supreme
To gladden all sad eyes that weep,
And take the Harp to Time, and sweep
Its chords to some eternal theme.
I dreamt—my life is all a dream.
The world is very old and wan—
The sun that once so brightly shone
Is now as pale as the pale moon.
I would that Death came swift and soon;
For all my dreams are dead and gone.
The world is very old and wan.
. . . . .
The world is young, the world is strong,
But I in dreams have wandered long.
God lives. What can Death do to me
The sun is shining on the sea.
Yet shall I sing my splendid song—
The world is young, the world is strong.
poem by Victor James Daley
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To Hope
Oh! take, young Seraph, take thy harp,
And play to me so cheerily;
For grief is dark, and care is sharp,
And life wears on so wearily.
Oh! take thy harp!
Oh! sing as thou wert wont to do,
When, all youth's sunny season long,
I sat and listened to thy song,
And yet 'twas ever, ever new,
With magic in its heaven-tuned string—
The future bliss thy constant theme.
Oh! then each little woe took wing
Away, like phantoms of a dream;
As if each sound
That flutter'd round,
Had floated over Lethe's stream!
By all those bright and happy hours
We spent in life's sweet eastern bow'rs,
Where thou wouldst sit and smile, and show,
Ere buds were come, where flowers would blow,
And oft anticipate the rise
Of life's warm sun that scaled the skies;
By many a story of love and glory,
And friendships promised oft to me;
By all the faith I lent to thee,—
Oh! take, young Seraph, take thy harp,
And play to me so cheerily;
For grief is dark, and care is sharp,
And life wears on so wearily.
Oh! take thy harp!
Perchance the strings will sound less clear,
That long have lain neglected by
In sorrow's misty atmosphere;
It ne'er may speak as it hath spoken
Such joyous notes so brisk and high;
But are its golden chords all broken?
Are there not some, though weak and low,
To play a lullaby to woe?
But thou canst sing of love no more,
For Celia show'd that dream was vain;
And many a fancied bliss is o'er,
That comes not e'en in dreams again.
Alas! alas!
How pleasures pass,
And leave thee now no subject, save
The peace and bliss beyond the grave!
Then be thy flight among the skies:
Take, then, oh! take the skylark's wing,
And leave dull earth, and heavenward rise
O'er all its tearful clouds, and sing
On skylark's wing!
Another life-spring there adorns
Another youth—without the dread
Of cruel care, whose crown of thorns
Is here for manhood's aching head.
Oh! there are realms of welcome day,
A world where tears are wiped away!
Then be thy flight among the skies:
Take, then, oh! take the skylark's wing,
And leave dull earth, and heavenward rise
O'er all its tearful clouds, and sing
On skylark's wing!
poem by Thomas Hood
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Bereavement of the Fields
1 Soft fall the February snows, and soft
2 Falls on my heart the snow of wintry pain;
3 For never more, by wood or field or croft,
4 Will he we knew walk with his loved again;
5 No more, with eyes adream and soul aloft,
6 In those high moods where love and beauty reign,
7 Greet his familiar fields, his skies without a stain.
8 Soft fall the February snows, and deep,
9 Like downy pinions from the moulting breast
10 Of all the mothering sky, round his hushed sleep,
11 Flutter a million loves upon his rest,
12 Where once his well-loved flowers were fain to peep,
13 With adder-tongue and waxen petals prest,
14 In young spring evenings reddening down the west.
15 Soft fall the February snows, and hushed
16 Seems life's loud action, all its strife removed,
17 Afar, remote, where grief itself seems crushed,
18 And even hope and sorrow are reproved;
19 For he whose cheek erstwhile with hope was flushed,
20 And by the gentle haunts of being moved,
21 Hath gone the way of all he dreamed and loved.
22 Soft fall the February snows, and lost,
23 This tender spirit gone with scarce a tear,
24 Ere, loosened from the dungeons of the frost,
25 Wakens with yearnings new the enfranchised year,
26 Late winter-wizened, gloomed, and tempest-tost;
27 And Hesper's gentle, delicate veils appear,
28 When dream anew the days of hope and fear.
29 And Mother Nature, she whose heart is fain,
30 Yea, she who grieves not, neither faints nor fails,
31 Building the seasons, she will bring again
32 March with rudening madness of wild gales,
33 April and her wraiths of tender rain,
34 And all he loved,—this soul whom memory veils,
35 Beyond the burden of our strife and pain.
36 Not his to wake the strident note of song,
37 Nor pierce the deep recesses of the heart,
38 Those tragic wells, remote, of might and wrong;
39 But rather, with those gentler souls apart,
40 He dreamed like his own summer days along,
41 Filled with the beauty born of his own heart,
42 Sufficient in the sweetness of his song.
43 Outside this prison-house of all our tears,
44 Enfranchised from our sorrow and our wrong,
45 Beyond the failure of our days and years,
46 Beyond the burden of our saddest song,
47 He moves with those whose music filled his ears,
48 And claimed his gentle spirit from the throng,—
49 Wordsworth, Arnold, Keats, high masters of his song.
50 Like some rare Pan of those old Grecian days,
51 Here in our hours of deeper stress reborn,
52 Unfortunate thrown upon life's evil ways,
53 His inward ear heard ever that satyr horn
54 From Nature's lips reverberate night and morn,
55 And fled from men and all their troubled maze,
56 Standing apart, with sad, incurious gaze.
57 And now, untimely cut, like some sweet flower
58 Plucked in the early summer of its prime,
59 Before it reached the fulness of its dower,
60 He withers in the morning of our time;
61 Leaving behind him, like a summer shower,
62 A fragrance of earth's beauty, and the chime
63 Of gentle and imperishable rhyme.
64 Songs in our ears of winds and flowers and buds
65 And gentle loves and tender memories
66 Of Nature's sweetest aspects, her pure moods,
67 Wrought from the inward truth of intimate eyes
68 And delicate ears of him who harks and broods,
69 And, nightly pondering, daily grows more wise,
70 And dreams and sees in mighty solitudes.
71 Soft fall the February snows, and soft
72 He sleeps in peace upon the breast of her
73 He loved the truest; where, by wood and croft,
74 The wintry silence folds in fleecy blur
75 About his silence, while in glooms aloft
76 The mighty forest fathers, without stir,
77 Guard well the rest of him, their rare sweet worshipper.
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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Hopes
A PRINCESS, sleeping in enchanted bowers,
Earth springs to waking at Spring's voice and kiss,
And after winter's cold, unlovely hours,
Laughs out to find how beautiful she is.
Spring flings a song across the field and fold,
And sighs it through the glad wood's tangled ways;
And million, million tales of love are told,
And dreams are dreamed of undivided days.
In hollows where so late but dead leaves lay,
Through the dead leaves the primroses push up;
And wind-flowers fleck the copse, and fields are gay
With daisies and the budding buttercup.
So in our hearts, though thick the dead leaves lie
Of grief--heaped up by winds of old despair--
May there not be a spring-time by-and-by,
When flowers of joy shall blossom even there?
So long has Winter held our hearts in his,
We dare not dream of Spring and all her flowers?
Ah! the undreamed-of happiness it is
That comes--the dreamed-of joy is never ours!
When late the trees were brown and hedges bare,
And keen east wind cut sharp as human pain,
Did the Earth guess how soon she would be fair
With Spring's dear dainty loveliness again?
We do not guess of joy, but hope alone--
Like life's mysterious force that thrills the earth--
Lives in our souls, unrecognised, unknown,
Till time shall bring unhoped-for joy to birth.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Life Is Just a Dream
Life is just a dream
We dream of beautiful
Things.
Like roses and crystal
Springs.
Life is just a dream
Filled with love and
Heartaches..
Life is just a dream
Of beautiful places
And things..
Life is just a dream
Like the beauty of the
Night,
With stars hanging
Like strings,
Twinkling in the night..
Life is just a dream
With love coming
Atcha like a magnet
To slip away like
As thief in the night.
Life is just a dream
Filled with laughter
And woes.
Life is just a dream
Filled With riches of the
World..
Too tears and regrats.
Life is just a dream
Filled happiness and
Sadness..
Life is just a dream
Like rain on a rainy
Day..
poem by Carolyn Sears
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The Clear Vision
I did but dream. I never knew
What charms our sternest season wore.
Was never yet the sky so blue,
Was never earth so white before.
Till now I never saw the glow
Of sunset on yon hills of snow,
And never learned the bough's designs
Of beauty in its leafless lines.
Did ever such a morning break
As that my eastern windows see?
Did ever such a moonlight take
Weird photographs of shrub and tree?
Rang ever bells so wild and fleet
The music of the winter street?
Was ever yet a sound by half
So merry as you school-boy's laugh?
O Earth! with gladness overfraught,
No added charm thy face hath found;
Within my heart the change is wrought,
My footsteps make enchanted ground.
From couch of pain and curtained room
Forth to thy light and air I come,
To find in all that meets my eyes
The freshness of a glad surprise.
Fair seem these winter days, and soon
Shall blow the warm west-winds of spring,
To set the unbound rills in tune
And hither urge the bluebird's wing.
The vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods
Grow misty green with leafing buds,
And violets and wind-flowers sway
Against the throbbing heart of May.
Break forth, my lips, in praise, and own
The wiser love severely kind;
Since, richer for its chastening grown,
I see, whereas I once was blind.
The world, O Father! hath not wronged
With loss the life by Thee prolonged;
But still, with every added year,
More beautiful Thy works appear!
As Thou hast made thy world without,
Make Thou more fair my world within;
Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt;
Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin;
Fill, brief or long, my granted span
Of life with love to thee and man;
Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest,
But let my last days be my best!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Call of the Winds
Ho, come out with the wind of spring,
And step it blithely in woodlands waking;
Friend am I of each growing thing
From the gray sod into sunshine breaking;
Mine is the magic of twilights dim,
Of violets blue on the still pool's rim,
Mine is the breath of the blossoms young
Sweetest of fragrances storied or sung
Come, ye earth-children, weary and worn,
I will lead you over the hills of morn.
Ho, come out with the summer wind,
And loiter in meadows of ripening clover,
Where the purple noons are long and kind,
And the great white clouds drift fleecily over.
Mine is immortal minstrelsy,
The fellowship of the rose and bee,
Beguiling laughter of willowed rills,
The rejoicing of pines on inland hills,
Come, ye earth-children, by dale and stream,
I will lead you into the ways of dream.
Ho, when the wind of autumn rings
Through jubilant mornings crisp and golden,
Come where the yellow woodland flings
Its hoarded wealth over by-ways olden.
Mine are the grasses frosted and sere,
That lisp and rustle around the mere,
Mine are the flying racks that dim
The lingering sunset's reddening rim,
Earth-children, come, in the waning year,
I will harp you to laughter and buoyant cheer.
Ho, when the wind of winter blows
Over the uplands and moonlit spaces,
Come ye out to the waste of snows,
To the glimmering fields and the silent places.
I whistle gaily on starry nights
Through the arch of the elfin northern lights,
But in long white valleys I pause to hark
Where the ring of the home-lights gems the dark.
Come, ye earth-children, whose hearts are sad,
I will make you valiant and strong and glad!
poem by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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Flight To Nature
SICK of the crowd, the toil, the strife,
Sweet Nature, how I turn to thee,
Seeking for renovated life,
By brawling brook and shady tree!
I knew thy rocks had spells of old,
To soothe the wanderer's woe to calm,
And in thy waters, clear and cold,
My fev'rish brow would seek for balm.
I've bent beneath thy ancient oak,
And sought for slumber in its shade,
And, as the clouds above me broke,
I dream'd to find the boon I pray'd;
For light--a blessed light--was given,
Wide streaming round me from above,
And in the deep, deep vaults of heaven,
There shone, methought, a look of love.
And, through the long, long summer hours,
When every bird had won its wing,
How sweet to think, amidst thy flowers,
That youth might yet renew its spring;--
That sacred season of the heart,
When every pulse with hope is strong,
And, still untaught by selfish art,
Truth fears no guile, and love no wrong.
And who, but nature's self, could yield
The blessing in the prayer I made,
Throned in her realm of wood and field,
Of rocky realm and haunted shade?
Who, but that magic queen, whose sway
Drives winter from his path of strife,
Whilst all her thousand fingers play,
With bud and bird, in games of life!
With these a kindred life I ask,--
Not wealth that mortals vainly seek;
But, in heaven's sunshine let me bask,
My heart as glowing as my cheek;--
An idle heart, that would not heed
That chiding voice, when duty comes,
To drag the soul, but freshly freed,
Back to cold toils and weary glooms.
No lure she finds in mortal schemes,
Which wiser fancies still reprove,--
Far happier in her woodland dreams,
With one sweet teacher, taught by love!
Thou, Nature, that magician be,
Restore each dream that taught the boy,
That warm'd his hope, that made him free,
While wisdom took the shape of joy;
And I will bless thee with a song,
As fond as hers, that idle bird,
That sings above me all day long,
As if she knew I watch'd and heard.
poem by William Gilmore Simms
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The Ways Are Green
The ways are green with the gladdening sheen
Of the young year's fairest daughter.
O, the shadows that fleet o'er the springing wheat!
O, the magic of running water!
The spirit of spring is in every thing,
The banners of spring are streaming,
We march to a tune from the fifes of June,
And life's a dream worth dreaming.
It's all very well to sit and spell
At the lesson there's no gainsaying;
But what the deuce are wont and use
When the whole mad world's a-maying?
When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows,
And the air's with love-motes teeming,
When fancies break, and the senses wake,
O, life's a dream worth dreaming!
What Nature has writ with her lusty wit
Is worded so wisely and kindly
That whoever has dipped in her manuscript
Must up and follow her blindly.
Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme
In the being and the seeming,
And they that have heard the overword
Know life's a dream worth dreaming.
poem by William Ernest Henley
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March: An Ode
I
Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite.
II
And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and ravin and spoil of the snow,
And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low,
How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born
So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn?
Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow
As a lover's that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn,
Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow.
III
Fain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the sun have dispelled and consumed,
Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous burden the branches implumed
Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds are, but petalled as flowers,
Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a fountain that shines as it showers,
But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till by time or by tempest entombed,
As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is no more than an hour's,
One hour of the sun's when the warm wind wakes him to wither the snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed.
IV
As the sunshine quenches the snowshine; as April subdues thee, and yields up his kingdom to May;
So time overcomes the regret that is born of delight as it passes in passion away,
And leaves but a dream for desire to rejoice in or mourn for with tears or thanksgivings; but thou,
Bright god that art gone from us, maddest and gladdest of months, to what goal hast thou gone from us now?
For somewhere surely the storm of thy laughter that lightens, the beat of thy wings that play,
Must flame as a fire through the world, and the heavens that we know not rejoice in thee: surely thy brow
Hath lost not its radiance of empire, thy spirit the joy that impelled it on quest as for prey.
V
Are thy feet on the ways of the limitless waters, thy wings on the winds of the waste north sea?
Are the fires of the false north dawn over heavens where summer is stormful and strong like thee
Now bright in the sight of thine eyes? are the bastions of icebergs assailed by the blast of thy breath?
Is it March with the wild north world when April is waning? the word that the changed year saith,
Is it echoed to northward with rapture of passion reiterate from spirits triumphant as we
Whose hearts were uplift at the blast of thy clarions as men's rearisen from a sleep that was death
And kindled to life that was one with the world's and with thine? hast thou set not the whole world free?
VI
For the breath of thy lips is freedom, and freedom's the sense of thy spirit, the sound of thy song,
Glad god of the north-east wind, whose heart is as high as the hands of thy kingdom are strong,
Thy kingdom whose empire is terror and joy, twin-featured and fruitful of births divine,
Days lit with the flame of the lamps of the flowers, and nights that are drunken with dew for wine,
And sleep not for joy of the stars that deepen and quicken, a denser and fierier throng,
And the world that thy breath bade whiten and tremble rejoices at heart as they strengthen and shine,
And earth gives thanks for the glory bequeathed her, and knows of thy reign that it wrought not wrong.
VII
Thy spirit is quenched not, albeit we behold not thy face in the crown of the steep sky's arch,
And the bold first buds of the whin wax golden, and witness arise of the thorn and the larch:
Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the wildest of winds that blow,
Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden with blossom are sprinkled with snow,
And his lips breathe winter, and laugh, and relent; and the live woods feel not the frost's flame parch;
For the flame of the spring that consumes not but quickens is felt at the heart of the forest aglow,
And the sparks that enkindled and fed it were strewn from the hands of the gods of the winds of March.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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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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After Many Years
The song that once I dreamed about,
The tender, touching thing,
As radiant as the rose without,
The love of wind and wing:
The perfect verses, to the tune
Of woodland music set,
As beautiful as afternoon,
Remain unwritten yet.
It is too late to write them now --
The ancient fire is cold;
No ardent lights illume the brow,
As in the days of old.
I cannot dream the dream again;
But, when the happy birds
Are singing in the sunny rain,
I think I hear its words.
I think I hear the echo still
Of long-forgotten tones,
When evening winds are on the hill
And sunset fires the cones;
But only in the hours supreme,
With songs of land and sea,
The lyrics of the leaf and stream,
This echo comes to me.
No longer doth the earth reveal
Her gracious green and gold;
I sit where youth was once, and feel
That I am growing old.
The lustre from the face of things
Is wearing all away;
Like one who halts with tired wings,
I rest and muse to-day.
There is a river in the range
I love to think about;
Perhaps the searching feet of change
Have never found it out.
Ah! oftentimes I used to look
Upon its banks, and long
To steal the beauty of that brook
And put it in a song.
I wonder if the slopes of moss,
In dreams so dear to me --
The falls of flower, and flower-like floss --
Are as they used to be!
I wonder if the waterfalls,
The singers far and fair,
That gleamed between the wet, green walls,
Are still the marvels there!
Ah! let me hope that in that place
Those old familiar things
To which I turn a wistful face
Have never taken wings.
Let me retain the fancy still
That, past the lordly range,
There always shines, in folds of hill,
One spot secure from change!
I trust that yet the tender screen
That shades a certain nook
Remains, with all its gold and green,
The glory of the brook.
It hides a secret to the birds
And waters only known:
The letters of two lovely words --
A poem on a stone.
Perhaps the lady of the past
Upon these lines may light,
The purest verses, and the last,
That I may ever write:
She need not fear a word of blame:
Her tale the flowers keep --
The wind that heard me breathe her name
Has been for years asleep.
But in the night, and when the rain
The troubled torrent fills,
I often think I see again
The river in the hills;
And when the day is very near,
And birds are on the wing,
My spirit fancies it can hear
The song I cannot sing.
poem by Henry Kendall
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Quieta Ne Movete II
IF one should wake one's frozen faith
In sunlight of her radiant eyes,
Bid it forget its dream of death,
In this new dream of Paradise,
Bid it forget the long, slow pain,
The agony when, all in vain,
It fought for life, and how one swore,
Once cold, it should not waken more;
If hope one buried long ago
Should thrill beneath those smiles of hers,
Should in one's sere life stir and grow,
As in brown woods the young spring stirs;
If, breaking icy bonds of grief,
One's soul should start to bud and leaf,
It might forget in that springtide
How last year's leaves fell off and died.
If from warm faith and hope set high
A lovely living child was born,
With lips more pure than starlit sky,
And eyes as clear as summer morn,
Child-love might grow till one forgot
Old love, that was and now is not--
Forgot that far-off time of tears,
And all these desolated years.
And yet of faith, hope, love, one knows
So well what end the years will make,
If one should dig beneath Time's snows
And wake them now for her sweet sake.
New life may mean new joy; but then,
What lives again may die again,
And to that second death there may
Be no new resurrection-day.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Birthday Song
If I could say the things I feel, it wouldn't be the same
Some things are not spoken of, some things have no name
And though the words come hard to me, I'll say them just for you
For this is something rare for me this feeling is so new
You see I love the way you love me
Love the way you smile at me,
I love the way we live this life we're in
Long ago I heard the song that lovers sing to me
And through the days with each new phrase I hummed that melody
And all along I loved the song but I never learned it through
But since the day you came along, I've saved it just for you
You see I love the way you love me
Love the way you smile at me,
I love the way we live this life we're in
I don't believe in magic but I do believe in you
And when you say you believe in me
There's so much magic I can do
Now you see me now you don't watch me dive below
Deep down in your love lake where the sweet fish come and go
And I might sink and I might drown but death don't mean a thing
'Cause life continues right or wrong when I play this birthday song
I learned from you, and you can't even sing
song performed by by Don McLean
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In Winter's Arms
Winter holds me with his arms of icy white,
and kissed my breath with frost upon the pane.
Subdued by touch of winter's frigid hand,
I pray for spring to find me once again.
O'wind, you whistle to the winter's tune.
Your melody is heard 'pon day and night,
but one day spring will come to rescue me,
and wisk away your song of winter's blight.
O'tree, you're frozen in the winter's dream.
Your leaves have left you 'neath a moon of white,
but when my prayers are answered 'pon spring's dawn,
you'll thaw beneath its sun with warm delight.
O'field, your harvest has been reaped and spent ~
and winter blankets you 'neath snowy mounds.
Yet one day soon in springtime's rising mist
you'll feel the greening of your earth rebound.
Winter holds me with his arms of icy white,
and kissed my breath with frost upon the pane ~
but deep within I somehow always know,
that spring will come and find me once again.
poem by Hazelmarie Elliott
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To a Robin in November
Sweet, sweet and the soft listening heaven reels
In one blue ecstasy above thy song
In the red heart of all the opening year,
In the hushed murmur of low dreaming fields
Hung under heaven ’twixt dim blue and blue;
Where the young Summer, purpled and pearled in dew,
Mirrors herself in June, and knows no wrong.
Sweet, sweet, throwing thy lack of fear
Back to the heart of God, till heaven feels
The throbbing of earth’s music through and through.
Dreaming in song,—great pulsing-hearted hills,
Cradling the dawn in mists and purple veils
Of vapors, over pearls of lakes and brooks
Girdled about the neck of half the world,
When the red birth of the young dreaming June
Kisses the lands with gales, and murmurs, and trills
Of melody, lips that blossom with tales
Of music and color and form and beauty of looks
And snowy argosies in heaven furled,
All summer set to one sweet warbled tune.
And thou, red-throated, comest back to me
Here in the bare November bleak and chill,
Breathing the red-ripe of the lusty June
Over the rime of withered field and mere;
O heart of music, while I dream of thee,
Thou gladdest note in the dead Summer’s tune,
Great God! thou liest dead outside my sill,
Starved of the last chill berry on thy tree,
Like some sweet instrument left all unstrung,
The melodious orchestra of all the year.
Dead with the sweet dead summer thou had’st sung;
Dead with the dead year’s voices and clasp of hands;
Dead with all music and love and laughter and light;
While chilly and bleak comes up the winter night,
And shrieks the gust across the leafless lands.
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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Winter Gone
Winter is closed for another year
Spring has sprung upon us
Was the winter kind to you
I miss winter now its gone laying by the fire
The charcoal wood the flickering of the flames
Now the warmer days are coming
New life is born in spring
New dreams are dreamed
New beginings sad endings
The days will be longer now the cold has left the ground
For three months now we will have spring shower and sunshine
I miss you winter and all your beauty
But you will be back this i am certain
After the spring comes the summer
The scorching heat the rolls of thunder
I love the summer storms the lightning the rain
But i miss you winter and all your beauty
So goodbye my beauty for another year
I will miss you until autumn appears
Dreaming Reality
In the real world, as in dreams,
Nothing is quite as it seems.
To see what we have never seen,
To be what we have never been,
To shed the chrysalis, learn to fly,
Depart the earth, kiss the sky,
To be reborn, be someone new,
Is this a dream or is it true?
Is my life in fact a dream?
Are things not always as they seem?
Are daylight hours reality,
Or do I dream eternally?
In the dream world or the real,
We cannot know what we can't feel.
What is not a dream by day,
Comes to us at night to stay.
Dreams - vivid colors of life,
Or fleeting, obscure, murky strife?
Façade of reality brings,
To the mind, exquisite things:
Love, regret, memories, cheer,
Imagination, even fear.
The lives we live appear, it seems,
To be a dream within a dream.
A long dream of hopeless sorrow,
I'll dream my life again tomorrow.
(27 February 2005)
poem by Richard Stamper
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Awaiting Thee
When thou art gone;
I sing my lonely song.
When thou art gone;
My waking hours are filled only with thoughts of thee.
When I sleep,
My dreams are filled with thee-
As I long for thee.
My love;
I await thee-
Lonely day,
After lonely day.
Lonely night,
After lonely night.
When The sun shines bright,
And the songbirds sing their joyous chorus-
It reminds me of this love of ours-
As I long for thee.
I await thee,
My love-
Throughout the lonely day-
Till the setting sun dwindles in dusk’s twilight-
Beyond golden pastures-
Fading in the night.
My love;
I long for thee.
My love;
I await thee-
Throughout the lonely night,
As the crickets chirp their symphony,
And in the darkness,
Like floating candles,
The fireflies glow.
And I remember our love,
As I gaze at the silver moon,
And diamond stars.
Forever embracing this love of ours.
As I sleep at night,
I dream only of being with thee,
My love.
As I awake,
And the sun rises at dawn over the emerald mountain tops,
I await thee,
My love.
Longing for you-
Day through day,
Night through night-
I await thee,
My love.
My love;
When thou art gone;
I sing my lonely song…
poem by Philip Alarie
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