With the rain and the wind on their death-white faces,
Come to the lure of our leaping fire.
But we bar them out with this rose-red splendor
From our blithe domain,
And drown the whimper of wind and rain
With undaunted laughter, echoing long,
Cheery old tale and gay old song;
Ours is the joyance of ripe fruition,
Attained ambition.
Ours is the treasure of tested loving,
Friendship that needs no further proving;
No more of springtime hopes, sweet and uncertain,
Here we have largess of summer in fee —
Pile high the logs till the flame be leaping,
At bay the chill of the autumn keeping,
While pilgrim-wise, we may go a-reaping
In the fairest meadow of memory!
UNCOLLECTED POEMS
CONTENTS
The Mayflower’s Message
Apple Blossoms
In Lilac Time
In Haying Time
An Autumn Shower
When Autumn Comes
The Last Bluebird
The Lullaby
November Dusk
The First Snowfall
Buttercups
Echo
The Pond Pasture
Drought
After Drought
Rain In The Country
The Tree Lovers
In Untrod Woods
The Wild Places
A Perfect Day
Requiem
In Twilight Fields
Twilight In Abegweit
Night In The Pastures
Night
On The Gulf Shore
When The Tide Goes Out
Before Storm
The Sandshore In September
Home From Town
If I Were Home
Interlude
Last Night In Dreams
Southernwood,
The Apple-Picking Time
Coiling Up The Hay
The Gable Window
Grandmother’s Garden
The Light In Mother’s Eyes
An Old Face
At The Dance
Comparisons
If Love Should Come
The Parting Soul
I Asked Of God
A Thanksgiving
We Have Seen His Star
Could We But Know
I Wish You
The Land Of Some Day
The Only Way
The Revelation
A Smile
Success
The Test
The Two Guests
The Words I Did Not Say
Which Has More Patience — Man Or Woman?
All A board For Dreamland
The Grumble Family
In Twilight Land
The Quest Of Lazy-Lad
Up In The Poplars
What Children Know
The New Year’s Book
Farewell
On Cape Le Force
June!
The Mayflower’s Message
Here on the gray old hillside where minstrel breezes blow,
And fir-trees dim and ancient with mossy branches grow,
‘Mid grasses brown and broken where scarce our faces show,
All bravely and undaunted we bloom above the snow.
The winds are chill and bitter that o’er the valleys ring,
And not a vagrant bluebird as yet is here to sing;
But all the world is waiting to greet the news we bring,
And all our blossoms letter a message from the spring.
We are the blithe forerunners of sunshine and of May,
And many a wood-bird’s rondel and many a merry day.
Therefore, sad earth, we bid you all joyous be and gay,
For we are sent to tell you that springtime comes this way.
Apple Blossoms
White as the snows on sunless peaks,
Pink as the earliest blush of morn,
Pure as the thought of a stainless soul,
Perfect and sweet as a joy new-born:
Always they bloom in these long rare days,
When Maytime drifts into balmy June,
When the winds purr lightly among the leaves,
And meadow and woodland are all atune;
Ever and always there they blow —
Apple-blossoms of rose and snow!
Purple twilights and rose-red dawns,
Dimmest of hazes on far green hills,
Wonderful midnights and clear blue days,
Rapturous music of wild-bird trills:
Lightness of heart and dreams of joy,
Subtlest visions and fancies fair,
Tenderest hopes for the hours to come,
Freedom from worry and grief and care:
Come where the apple-blossoms blow —
Perfumed driftings of rose and snow.
In Lilac Time
When the hills in the distance are misty
With hazes of shimmering blue,
When the birds sing with rapture at dawning
And the pastures are silver with dew,
When the skies are of sapphire radiance
And the apple tree boughs are ablow,
Then the lilacs hang out in the garden
Their clusters of purple and snow.
When a new moon shines after the sunset
In the heart of the mellow southwest,
And the winds astray in the meadows
Are bent on their summertime quest,
When the cherry trees down in the orchard
Are white as the robe of a bride.
The lilac trees here at my window
Are decked in their splendor and pride.
In the odorous hush of the twilight
The evening breeze steals their perfume,
Till the rain-freshened nooks of the garden
Are sweet with the breath of their bloom,
And at morning a bluebird a-tilting
On the tip of a tremulous spray
Pipes out in their thicket of sweetness
A madrigal buoyant and gay.
Oh! our hearts are atune with the music
Of summer and blossom and bird!
It is worth our while just to be living
When the pulses of nature are stirred.
There’s nothing so sweet as the joyance
That comes when the June breezes blow
And the lilac trees out in the garden
Are crowned with their purple and snow.
In Haying Time
Wide meadows under lucent skies
Lie open, free to sun and breeze,
Where bird and bee and rustling leaf
Blend all their air-born melodies
In one sweet symphony of sound.
The lush green grasses bend and sway,
And fleet winds steal from new-mown slopes
The fragrance of the clover hay.
The fields at dawn are silver-white,
And wet with their baptismal dew;
They ripen in the long rare noons
Beneath a dome of cloudless blue;
And in the twilight’s purple dusk,
How solemn, hushed, and dim they lie!
At night a mellow moon looks down
From silent, star-sown, depths of sky.
Each passing hour of night and day
Some new and rare enchantment brings,
In flowers that bloom and winds that blow,
And joy of shy, blithe, living things
That hide within the meadows green,
Or murmur in the drowsy fields;
And all the golden air is sweet
With incense rose-red clover yields.
Faint whispers wander to and fro,
On idle winds, from east to west.
The dainty blossoms lift their cups
Of perfume o’er the bluebir
d’s nest;
The meadowlarks their raptures trill
To drown the brooklet’s murmuring chime,
When ripened summer ushers in
The witcheries of the haying time.
An Autumn Shower
Upon the russet fringes of the hill
The shadow of a cloud falls dark and still;
Then with a sweep and rush of wind the rain
Comes down the valley and across the plain,
Where many a spicy cup
Of asters pale and sweet is lifted up.
The pattering feet of raindrops are astir
In pine-land aisles and resinous glens of fir,
And dance across the harbor till afar,
Beyond the restless moaning of the bar,
They croon in harmony
With all the harp-like voices of the sea.
The cloud is swift in passing — in an hour
The sun is shining on the parting shower
Athwart the flaming maples; and the cup
Of the long glistening valley is brimmed up
With wine of airy mist,
Purple and silver and faint amethyst.
The wind from many a wild untrodden bourne
Comes sweet with breath of drenched and tangled fern
To croon in minstrel grasses; where it stirs
The goldenrod its kingly vesture wears;
Meadow and wood and plain
Have caught the benediction of the rain!
When Autumn Comes
The city is around us, and the clamor of the mart:
Its grip is on our pulses, and its clutch upon our heart.
We cannot hear the music of the olden dreams and days:
We have no time to tread in thought the sweet forgotten ways.
But when the tang of autumn air sweeps up the breathless street,
With sudden hint of reddening leaves and garnered fields of wheat,
Of golden lights on pastures wide and shadows in the glen,
Our souls thrill with the yearning wish to be at home again.
Out there the misty sea laps glad on crisp and windy sands;
Out there the smoke-blue asters blow on breezy meadow lands;
Out there the joyous marigolds in marsh and swamp are bright —
Despite the breath of chilly morn and nip of frosty night.
The air is ripe and pungent, and the sky is free from stain;
The fallen leaves are whispering in many a woodland lane;
And O to roam upon the hills when all the west is red,
When the moon rises from the sea and stars shine overhead!
And O to see the homelight from the farmhouse window glow,
Athwart the purple-falling dusk as in the long ago;
To hail it with our eager eyes when pilgrimage is o’er,
And dream one dream of boyhood ‘neath our father’s roof once more!
The Last Bluebird
The grasses are sere and the meadows are brown,
The last clinging red leaf has fluttered adown;
The swallows and thrushes have long ago flown,
The woods are all voiceless, the valleys all lone,
And soon I must flee
Far over the sea
Where warm sunny southlands are waiting for me.
The sunsets are crimson, and all through the days
The tired earth is napping in magical haze;
But the mornings are frosty, the twilights are cold,
The woodways are lost in their driftings of gold,
And well do I know
That full soon comes the snow,
And in spite of the sunshine it’s high time to go.
For the breath of the north wind is bitter and chill
And my nest-tree is bare on the slope of the hill:
Earth’s music has fled, and the winter is long,
And over the sea I must follow my song;
So I twitter good-by
Once again ere I fly
To a far away land and a sunnier sky.
But the winter will pass, and once more in the spring
The violets will bloom and the robins will sing;
The orchards grow white, and the gay brooklets chime
Their welcome again to the fair summer time,
And over the sea
With a song glad and free,
I’ll come back to my nest in the old apple tree.
The Lullaby
Today I walked on the uplands
Where the vagrant breezes blow,
And I heard the autumn singing
A lullaby soft and low,
As she tucked the flowers and grasses
In a cradle warm and deep,
Like a loving nurse and tender,
Crooning them all to sleep.
“The swallows are southward flying,”
So ran the song I heard,
“And last night in the russet valley
The breath of the frost-king stirred;
So you must sleep my darlings,
While the drear days come and go,
Dreaming of springtide wakening
Deep down under the snow.
“Goldenrod, you must slumber
Here on the brown hill’s crest;
Wood flowers all, you must nestle
Close to the forest’s breast;
Asters, clovers, and daisies,
Warmly I fold you away —
In the wide kind arms of the meadows
Sleep till the call of May.
Sleep till the swallows northward
Come from across the sea,
And all the summer sunshine
Laughs out o’er the windy lea.
Sleep, my dear little blossoms,
While your slumber song I sing
Sleep, little leaves and grasses
And waken up in the spring.
November Dusk
A weird and dreamy stillness falls upon
The purple breathless earth, the windless woods,
The wimpling rims of valley solitudes,
The wide gray stubble-fields, and fallows wan —
A quiet hush, as if, her heyday gone,
Tired Nature folded weary hands for rest
Across the faded vesture of her breast,
Knowing her wintry slumbers hasten on.
Far and away beyond the ocean’s rim
The dull-red sunset fades into the gray
Of sombre wind-rent clouds, that marshal grim
Around the closing portals of the day,
While from the margin of the tawny shore
Comes up the voice of waters evermore.
The First Snowfall
A bitter chill has fallen o’er the land
In this dull breathlessness of afternoon:
Voiceless and motionless the maples stand,
Heart-broken, with each other to commune
In silent hopelessness. The cold gray sky
Has blotted out the mountain’s misty blue,
The nearer hills are palled in sombre guise
Where shivering gleams of fitful light fall through.
Then comes the snowfall, as pale Autumn folds
A misty bridal veil about her hair,
And lingers waiting in the yellowed wolds
Until her wintry bridegroom greet her there.
The hills are hidden and we see the woods
Like hosts of phantoms in the waning light.
The grassless fields, the leaf-strewn solitudes,
Grow dim before the fast oncoming night.
The lonely meadows pale and whiten swift,
The trees their tracery of ermine weave,
Like larger flakes dim flocks of snowbirds drift
Across the fading landscape of the eve.
Darkness comes early and beneath its wings
We see a wraith-like world with spectres filled —
Naught but cold semblances of real thin
gs
As though Earth’s breathing were forever stilled.
Buttercups
Like showers of gold dust on the marsh,
Or an inverted sky,
The buttercups are dancing now
Where silver brooks run by.
Bright, bright,
As fallen flakes of light,
They nod
In time to every breeze
That chases shadows swiftly lost
Amid those grassy seas.
See, what a golden frenzy flies
Through the light-hearted flowers!
In mimic fear they flutter now;
Each fairy blossom cowers.
Then up, then up,
Each shakes its yellow cup
And nods
In careless grace once more —
A very flood of sunshine seems
Across the marsh to pour.
Echo
Here in my bosky glen, beneath dim pines I hide,
Unseen by the curious eyes of men, alone in the hills I bide,
Where the sunrise is born and the cataract leaps down
the mountain side.
Ever I wrap me round in my leafy solitude
With my gleaming wreath of myrtle crowned, in the depth of
waste and wood,
To laugh at the world from the heart of the hills and mimic
its every mood.
Dark are my eyes and hair, and my breast is white as snow,
But never a mortal may see how fair... I am fleeter than the roe,
And the silver notes of my mocking voice are all that the world may know.
You may hear me call at night, from the springs of haunted rills;
You may hear my laughter floating light, when the starry dew distils.
I am the nymph of the airy voice and my home is in the hills.
Whenever you call to me I will answer to you again;
But my form and face you will never see, you of the race of men,
I flee afar when you follow me to the heart of my purple glen!
The Pond Pasture
It is purely fair and fragrant in its wide unbroken green,
Where the water laps and murmurs on the margin thick with fern;
All the slope is sweet and tangled with the clover’s rose red screen,
And the comers are a-flutter where the orange lilies bum.
There are countless shadows flying where the white-stemmed birches bend
Over lisping wave and ripple on its hushed and dreamy shore.
There are minstrel breezes blowing where the swaying grasses blend,
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 767