The Complete Works of L M Montgomery
Page 762
THE WIND
O, wind! what saw you in the South,
In lilied meadows fair and far?
I saw a lover kiss his lass
New-won beneath the evening star.
O, wind! what saw you in the West
Of passing sweet that wooed your stay?
I saw a mother kneeling by
The cradle where her first-born lay.
O, wind! what saw you in the North
That you shall dream of evermore?
I saw a maiden keeping tryst
Upon a gray and haunted shore.
O, wind! what saw you in the East
That still of ancient dole you croon?
I saw a wan wreck on the waves
And a dead face beneath the moon.
THE WOOD POOL
Here is a voice that soundeth low and far
And lyric — voice of wind among the pines,
Where the untroubled, glimmering waters are,
And sunlight seldom shines.
Elusive shadows linger shyly here,
And wood-flowers blow, like pale, sweet spirit-bloom,
And white, slim birches whisper, mirrored clear
In the pool’s lucent gloom.
Here Pan might pipe, or wandering dryad kneel
To view her loveliness beside the brim,
Or laughing wood-nymphs from the byways steal
To dance around its rim.
’Tis such a witching spot as might beseem
A seeker for young friendship’s trysting place,
Or lover yielding to the immortal dream
Of one beloved face.
DOWN STREAM
Comrades, up! Let us row down stream in this first rare dawnlight,
While far in the clear north-west the late moon whitens and wanes;
Before us the sun will rise, deep-purpling headland and islet,
It is well to meet him thus, with the life astir in our veins!
The wakening birds will sing for us in the woods wind-shaken,
And the solitude of the hills will be broken by hymns to the light,
As we sweep past drowsing hamlets, still feathered by dreams of
slumber,
And leave behind us the shadows that fell with the falling of night.
The young day’s strength is ours in sinew and thew and muscle,
We are filled and thrilled with the spirit that dwells in the waste
and wold,
Glamor of wind and water, charm of the wildernesses —
Oh, the dear joy of it, greater than human hearts can hold!
While the world’s tired children sleep we bend to our oars with faces
Set in our eager gladness towards the morning’s gate;
Lo, ’tis the sweet of the day! On, comrades mine, for beyond us
All its dower of beauty, its glory and wonder, wait.
ECHO DELL
In a lone valley fair and far,
Where many sweet beguilements are,
I know a spot to lag and dream
Through damask morns and noons agleam;
For feet fall lightly on the fern
And twilight is a wondrous thing,
When the winds blow from some far bourne
Beyond the hill rims westering;
There echoes ring as if a throng
Of fairies hid from mortal eyes
Sent laughter back in spirit guise
And song as the pure soul of song;
Oh, ’tis a spot to love right well,
This lonely, witching Echo Dell!
Even the winds an echo know,
Elusive, faint, such as might blow
From wandering elf-land bugles far,
Beneath an occidental star;
And I have thought the blue bells lent
A subtle music to my ear,
And that the pale wild roses bent
To harken sounds I might not hear.
The tasselled fir trees softly croon
The fabled lore of elder days.
And through the shimmering eastern haze
Floats slowly up the mellow moon;
Come, heart o’ mine, for love must dwell
In whispering, witching Echo Dell.
THE ROVERS
Over the fields we go, through the sweets of the purple clover,
That letters a message for us as for every vagrant rover;
Before us the dells are abloom, and a leaping brook calls after,
Feeling its kinship with us in lore of dreams and laughter.
Out of the valleys of moonlight elfin voices are calling;
Down from the misty hills faint, far greetings are falling;
Whisper the grasses to us, murmuring gleeful and airy,
Knowing us pixy-led, seeking the haunts of faery.
The wind is our joyful comrade wherever our free feet wander,
Over the tawny wolds to the meres and meadows yonder;
The mild-eyed stars go with us, or the rain so swiftly flying,
Racing us over the wastes where the hemlocks and pines are sighing.
Across the upland dim, down through the beckoning hollow —
Oh, we go too far and fast for the feet of care to follow!
The gypsy fire in our hearts for the wilderness wide and luring;
Other loves may fail but this is great and enduring.
Other delights may pall, but the joy of the open never;
The charm of the silent places must win and hold us forever;
Bondage of walls we leave with never a glance behind us.
Under the lucent sky the delights of the rover shall find us.
AMONG THE PINES
Here let us linger at will and delightsomely hearken
Music aeolian of wind in the boughs of pine,
Timbrel of falling waters, sounds all soft and sonorous,
Worshipful litanies sung at a bannered shrine.
Deep let us breathe the ripeness and savor of balsam,
Tears that the pines have wept in sorrow sweet,
With its aroma comes beguilement of things forgotten,
Long-past hopes of the years on tip-toeing feet.
Far in the boskiest glen of this wood is a dream and a silence —
Come, we shall claim them ours ere look we long;
A dream that we dreamed and lost, a silence richly hearted,
Deep at its lyric core with the soul of a song.
If there be storm, it will thunder a march in the branches,
So that our feet may keep true time as we go;
If there be rain, it will laugh, it will glisten, and beckon,
Calling to us as a friend all lightly and low.
If it be night, the moonlight will wander winsomely with us,
If it be hour of dawn, all heaven will bloom,
If it be sunset, it’s glow will enfold and pursue us.
To the remotest valley of purple gloom.
Lo! the pine wood is a temple where the days meet to worship,
Laying their cark and care for the nonce aside,
God, who made it, keeps it as a witness to Him forever,
Walking in it, as a garden, at eventide.
A DAY IN THE OPEN
Ho, a day
Whereon we may up and away,
With a fetterless wind that is out on the downs,
And there piping a call to the fallow and shore,
Where the sea evermore
Surgeth over the gray reef, and drowns
The fierce rocks with white foam;
It is ours with untired feet to roam
Where the pines in green gloom of wide vales make their murmuring home,
Or the pools that the sunlight hath kissed
Mirror back a blue sky that is winnowed of cloud and of mist!
Ho, a day
Whereon we may up and away
Through the orient distances hazy and pied,
Hand in hand with the gy
psying breezes that blow
Here and there, to and fro,
O’er the meadows all rosy and wide,
Where a lyric of flowers
Is sweet-sung to the frolicking hours,
And the merry buds letter the foot-steps of tip-toeing showers;
We may climb where the steep is beset
With a turbulent waterfall, loving to clamor and fret!
Ho, a day
Whereon we may up and away
To the year that is holding her cup of wild wine;
If we drink we shall be as the gods of the wold
In the blithe days of old
Elate with a laughter divine;
Yea, and then we shall know
The rare magic of solitude so
We shall nevermore wish its delight and its dreams to forego,
And our blood will upstir and upleap
With a fellowship splendid, a gladness impassioned and deep!
MIDNIGHT IN CAMP
Night in the unslumbering forest! From the free,
Vast pinelands by the foot of man untrod,
Blows the wild wind, roaming rejoicingly
This wilderness of God;
And the tall firs that all day long have flung
Balsamic odors where the sunshine burned,
Chant to its harping primal epics learned
When this old world was young.
Beyond the lake, white, girdling peaks uplift
Untroubled brows to virgin skies afar,
And o’er the uncertain water glimmers drift
Of fitful cloud and star.
Sure never day such mystic beauty held
As sylvan midnight here in this surcease
Of toil, when the kind darkness gives us peace
Garnered from years of eld.
Lo! Hearken to the mountain waterfall
Laughing adown its pathway to the glen
And nearer, in the cedars, the low call
Of brook to brook again;
Voices that garish daytime may not know
Wander at will along the bosky steeps,
And silent, silver-footed moonlight creeps
Through the dim glades below.
Oh, it is well to waken with the woods
And feel, as those who wait with God alone,
The forest’s heart in these rare solitudes
Beating against our own.
Close-shut behind us are the gates of care,
Divinity enfolds us, prone to bless,
And our souls kneel. Night in the wilderness
Is one great prayer.
THE HILL MAPLES
Here on a hill of the occident stand we shoulder to shoulder,
Comrades tried and true through a mighty swath of the years!
Spring harps glad laughter through us, and ministrant rains of
the autumn
Sing us again the songs of ancient dolor and tears.
The glory of sunrise smites on our fair, free brows uplifted
When the silver-kirtled day steps over the twilight’s bars;
At evening we look adown into valleys hearted with sunset,
And we whisper old lore together under the smouldering stars.
Crescent moons of the summer gleam through our swaying branches,
Knee-deep in fern we stand while the days of the sun-time go;
And the winds of winter love us — the keen, gay winds of the winter,
Coming to our gray arms from over the plains of snow.
Down in the valleys beneath us is wooing and winning and wedding,
Down in the long, dim valleys earth-children wail and weep;
But here on these free hills we grow and are strong and flourish,
Comrades shoulder to shoulder our watch of the years to keep.
A SUMMER DAY
I
The dawn laughs out on orient hills
And dances with the diamond rills;
The ambrosial wind but faintly stirs
The silken, beaded gossamers;
In the wide valleys, lone and fair,
Lyrics are piped from limpid air,
And, far above, the pine trees free
Voice ancient lore of sky and sea.
Come, let us fill our hearts straightway
With hope and courage of the day.
II
Noon, hiving sweets of sun and flower,
Has fallen on dreams in wayside bower,
Where bees hold honeyed fellowship
With the ripe blossom of her lip;
All silent are her poppied vales
And all her long Arcadian dales,
Where idleness is gathered up
A magic draught in summer’s cup.
Come, let us give ourselves to dreams
By lisping margins of her streams.
III
Adown the golden sunset way
The evening comes in wimple gray;
By burnished shore and silver lake
Cool winds of ministration wake;
O’er occidental meadows far
There shines the light of moon and star,
And sweet, low-tinkling music rings
About the lips of haunted springs.
In quietude of earth and air
’Tis meet we yield our souls to prayer.
SEPTEMBER
Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days
Gleaned by the year in autumn’s harvest ways,
With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember,
Some crimson poppy of a late delight
Atoning in its splendor for the flight
Of summer blooms and joys —
This is September.
IN LOVERS’ LANE
I know a place for loitering feet
Deep in the valley where the breeze
Makes melody in lichened boughs,
And murmurs low love-litanies.
There slender harebells nod and dream,
And pale wild roses offer up
The fragrance of their golden hearts,
As from some incense-brimméd cup.
It holds the sunshine sifted down
Softly through many a beechen screen,
Save where, by deeper woods embraced,
Cool shadows linger, dim and green.
And there my love and I may walk
And harken to the lapsing fall
Of unseen brooks and tender winds,
And wooing birds that sweetly call.
And every voice to her will say
What I repeat in dear refrain,
And eyes will meet with seeking eyes,
And hands will clasp in Lovers’ Lane.
Come, sweet-heart, then, and we will stray
Adown that valley, lingering long,
Until the rose is wet with dew,
And robins come to evensong,
And woo each other, borrowing speech
Of love from winds and brooks and birds,
Until our sundered thoughts are one
And hearts have no more need of words.
ON THE HILLS
Through the pungent hours of the afternoon,
On the autumn slopes we have lightly wandered
Where the sunshine lay in a golden swoon
And the lingering year all its sweetness squandered.
Oh, it was blithesome to roam at will
Over the crest of each westering hill,
Over those dreamy, enchanted lands
Where the trees held to us their friendly hands!
Winds in the pine boughs softly crooned,
Or in the grasses complained most sweetly,
With all the music of earth attuned
In this dear ripe time that must pass so fleetly:
Golden rod as we idled by
Held its torches of flame on high,
And the asters beckoned along our way
Like fair fine ladies in silk array.
We passed by
woods where the day aside
Knelt like a pensive nun and tender,
We looked on valleys of purple pride
Where she reigned a queen in her misty splendor;
But out on the hills she was wild and free,
A comrade to wander right gipsily,
Luring us on over waste and wold
With the charm of a message half sung, half told.
And now, when far in the shining west
She has dropped her flowers on the sunset meadow,
We turn away from our witching quest
To the kindly starshine and gathering shadow;
Filled to the lips of our souls are we
With the beauty given so lavishly,
And hand in hand with the night we come
Back to the light and the hearth of home.
AN AUTUMN EVENING
Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow
And wake among the harps of leafless trees
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies.
The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar,
And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blue
In the southwest glimmers a great gold star
Above the darkening druid glens of fir
Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir.
And so I wander through the shadows still,
And look and listen with a rapt delight,
Pausing again and yet again at will
To drink the elusive beauty of the night,
Until my soul is filled, as some deep cup,
That with divine enchantment is brimmed up.
NOVEMBER EVENING
Come, for the dusk is our own; let us fare forth together,
With a quiet delight in our hearts for the ripe, still, autumn weather,
Through the rustling valley and wood and over the crisping meadow,
Under a high-sprung sky, winnowed of mist and shadow.
Sharp is the frosty air, and through the far hill-gaps showing
Lucent sunset lakes of crocus and green are glowing;
’Tis the hour to walk at will in a wayward, unfettered roaming,
Caring for naught save the charm, elusive and swift, of the gloaming.
Watchful and stirless the fields as if not unkindly holding