The Complete Works of L M Montgomery
Page 768
And the buttercups are rhyming all their golden fairy lore.
Here is always balm and healing for a world-worn, weary heart,
Nature’s hieroglyphic message that the centuries have conned;
Not a hint is here of striving or the turmoil of the mart —
Just a world of rest and beauty in the pasture by the pond!
Drought
So long it is since kindly rain
Fell on the thirsty meadow lands;
The birds forget their old refrain;
The trees uplift their pleading hands
To hard bright skies that do not heed,
But arch above the valley dim,
And touch the far hill’s burning rim,
And care not for our mighty need.
Athwart the dusty highway’s glare
The wan white daisies, drooping, lean;
The roses faint in their despair
On pasture slopes no longer green;
The plaintive brooks have ceased to pray,
Unfed by springs whose lips are dry,
And the dull evening in the sky
Shuts out the brazen edge of day.
Great Father, listen to our prayer,
And send on us Thy gracious rain
To hush the moan of our despair
And drown the memory of our pain;
Then all the hills to Thee will raise
A psalm of utter thankfulness;
Thy name each thirsty blossom bless,
And every meadow hymn Thy praise.
After Drought
Last night all through the darkling hours we heard
The voices of the rain,
And every languid pulse in nature stirred
Responsive to the strain;
The morning brought a breath of strong sweet air
From shadowy pinelands blown,
And over field and upland everywhere
A new-born greenness shone.
The saintly meadow lilies offer up
Their white hearts to the sun,
And every wildwood blossom lifts its cup
With incense overrun;
The brook whose voice was silent yestereve
Now sings its old refrain,
And all the world is grateful to receive
The blessing of the rain.
Rain In The Country
Here in the country the cool sweet rain
Falls on the daisies and growing grain,
Shadows the pond with widening rings,
Kisses the lips of the lowland springs,
Plays with the pines on the hill-top dim
And fills the valley with mist abrim.
It splashes in shadowy forest nooks,
Dimples the faces of woodland brooks,
Whispers with leaves in untrodden ways,
Wraps the distance in sober grays,
Dances o’er meadows of lushest green
And scatters the petals where roses lean.
The Tree Lovers
They grew in the fringe of woodland at the foot of the
homestead hill,
Where ran like a silver ribbon a dimpling summer rill —
A spruce and a leafy maple — so close together they grew
That hardly a lance of sunlight might pierce their greenness through.
Their mingled branches swaying cast ever a cooling shade
O’er the strip of emerald grassland where the happy children played,
And a slender lad and thoughtful, with dreamy eyes of blue,
Said the tree was a maple maiden and the spruce her lover true.
The fancy pleased the children, as fancies children will,
For it gave them a sense of friendship with the trees below the hill:
As if the spruce and the maple had a life to their own akin,
And beneath their bark imprisoned beat human hearts within.
They saw how the maple nestled to the spruce’s sheltering side,
As his rugged green arms clasped her with fond protecting pride.
He was the taller and stronger; she the more graceful tree,
And never could human lovers more kind and faithful be.
When the winter snows were silver, and the winter winds were keen,
The gray-cloaked bride was leafless but the sturdy spruce was green;
And when the springtime rapture thrilled all the woodlands through,
The tender tints of maple were blent with his somber hue.
All through the days of summer they talked and whispered low,
While the gentle west-winds wavered their branches to and fro;
And in autumn the little maple, in her splendor of crimson gay,
Stood proudly close to her lover in his rugged and dark array.
The children have grown and wandered from the ken of the
homestead hill,
But the trees through seasons many are green and faithful still.
Still nestles the little maple to her knightly lover’s side,
And still the spruce-tree shelters with his mighty arms his bride,
Though the winter winds are biting, but the closer drawn are they,
As fond as when summer sunbeams among their branches play:
Time passes o’er them as lightly as it does o’er the ribbon rill,
There, as each season passes, at the foot of the homestead hill.
In Untrod Woods
Lonely, think you, this deep unbroken hush,
Unstirred save by leaf-murmurs or the rush
Of fitful winds on-sweeping?
Nay, nay, not so! You have not learned the store
Of deep enchantment that forever more
These untrod woods are keeping.
They are not voiceless — in the night and day
Wood-whispers creep around and wood-winds stray
In mossy beechen alleys,
And dusking pines are crooning evermore
Their mysteries of half-forgotten lore
In sunlight-threaded valleys.
Slim birches lean o’er many a clear spring’s heart,
As maidens viewing by themselves apart
Their lissome charms reflected —
Now steals the chime of water murmurings,
And now some unseen woodbird’s rondel sings,
As sweet as unexpected.
The woods are never lonely, as I stray
Adown rain-freshened slopes I hear today
All shy blithe forest voices,
Calling around me till the great wood’s calm
Falls on my spirit with a wondrous balm,
And my vexed heart rejoices.
The Wild Places
Oh, here is joy that cannot be
In any market bought or sold,
Where forests beckon fold on fold
In a pale silver ecstasy,
And every hemlock is a spire
Of faint moon-fire.
For music we shall have the chill
Wild bugle of a vagrant wind
Seeking for what it cannot find,
A lonely trumpet on the hill,
Or keening in the dear dim white
Chambers of night.
And there are colours in the wild:
The royal purple of old kings;
Rose-fire of secret dawn; clear springs
Of emerald in valleys aisled
With red pine stems; and tawny stir
Of dying fir.
And we shall know as lovers do
The wooing rain, the eternal lure
Of tricksy brook and beckoning moor,
The hidden laughters that pursue,
As if the gods of elder day
Were here at play.
For these wild places hold their own
Boon myths of faun and goblin still,
And have a lingering good-will
For folk in green if truth were known;
Oh, what an old delightful fear —
Hush, listen, hear!
A Perfect Day
A day came up this morning o’er the sea —
Dawn-eyed and virgin from an orient shore —
And dear were the delights it brought to me,
Dearer than any day had given before:
’Tis with sweet sorrow at the sunset bell
I bid my day farewell.
For never, as I think, was light so fair
On the green waves, and never rang so clear
The haunting elfin music of the air,
And never fell so subtly on the ear
The antic pipes of freakish winds astir
In bosky glens of fir.
The roses bloomed as if they only had
One day of all the year on which to bloom,
And, bent on making wild and garden glad,
Flung forth their long upgathering of perfume;
It seemed to me that every dappled hour
Burst into lavish flower.
Then when the sunset came the rainbow west
Was splendid, as if all days fair and good
Were at its portal to receive as guest
My day into their purple sisterhood,
Crowning it on the ancient hills afar
With an immortal star.
Forever shall it be a lyric page
Of verse ambrosial, to be often conned,
Holding its treasure safe from touch of age
Forever kept in a remembrance fond:
For this my day that came across the sea
Brought heart’s desire to me!
Requiem
Tonight, when the twilight fell,
Died the beautiful Day!
On the far dim hills she lay,
With her garland of asphodel —
Ring, wild winds, her knell.
Gems in her long dark hair
Scattered the kindly Night;
Over her bier the white
Clear stars are watching there —
Oh, the dead Day is fair!
Fair was she when she stood
Poised on the hills of dawn,
While their radiance over her shone
In the blithesome laughing mood
Of her mirthful maidenhood.
Fair was she then. Ah fair!
But fairer is she now
With the awful peace on her brow,
That only the dead may wear,
And the starlight on her hair.
Let us take our last farewell
Of the beautiful calm-lipped Day,
Ere the Night will hide her away
With a star for sentinel —
Ring, wild winds, her knell.
In Twilight Fields
O’er dewy meadows, dim and gray,
There comes a breath of balm,
And wilding slopes of far away
Are wrapped in pensive calm;
Afar the lustrous skies are deep,
And crystal planets shine,
Where roaming winds have dropped asleep
Among the hills of pine.
The daisies float above the grass,
Like spirits of the dew,
And low sweet voices faintly pass
The lush green thickets through.
Slow fades the mellow sunset light;
The dusker shadows creep;
Beneath the soothing touch of night
The world has found its sleep.
No echoes of the troubled day
Can stir this wondrous hour;
Noon’s feverish breath is far away,
And care has lost its power.
Lulled on her broad maternal breast,
Our kind earth mother yields
A deep untainted peace and rest
In tranquil twilight fields.
Twilight In Abegweit
A filmy western sky of smoky red,
Blossoming into stars above a sea
Of soft mysterious dim silver spread
Beyond the long gray dunes’ serenity:
Where the salt grasses and sea poppies press
Together in a wild sweet loneliness.
Seven slim poplars on the windy hill
Talk some lost language of an elder day,
Taught by the green folk that inhabit still
The daisied field and secret friendly way —
Forever keeping in their solitudes
The magic ritual of our northern woods.
The darkness woos us like a perfumed flower
To reedy meadow pool and wise old trees,
To beds of spices in a garden bower,
And the spruce valley’s dear austerities;
I know their lure of dusk, but evermore
I turn to the enchantment of the shore.
The idle ships dream-like at anchor ride,
Beside the pier where wavelets lap and croon;
One ghostly ship sails outward with the tide
That swells to meet the pale imperial moon,
O — fading ship, between the dark and light,
I send my heart and hope with you tonight.
Night In The Pastures
The night wind steals from the tranquil hills,
And its noiseless footsteps pass
O’er the dim hushed breadths of the pasture fields,
And the dew-wet trampled grass.
The stars are thick in the velvet sky,
Where a white young moon shines clear
Through the airy boughs of the poplars tall,
And the peace of the night is here.
The brook’s soft gurgle is sweet and low,
And the sorrowful whip-poor-wills
Are grieving afar in the purple gloom
Of the dark encircling hills;
And the faint weird murmurs of elfin things
Through the shadowy pine-trees creep,
But the air is sweet with the hush of dreams,
And the fields have gone to sleep.
The placid cattle have laid them down
At the roots of the mystic firs,
And the sheep in the lowland are dimly white
Where the wind in the bracken stirs.
The hills are chanting a solemn hymn
At the altar of star and sky;
In a rapturous silence, a dim-lit calm,
The dewy pastures lie.
Here, in these meadows of starry rest,
In these mysteries of the night,
The manifold voices of Nature breathe
With a meaning of strange delight.
The passionless calm of the dreaming fields
Has the power of a holy prayer,
And the infinite love of the far dim hills
Shuts out every thought of care.
Night
A pale enchanted moon is sinking low
Behind the dunes that fringe the shadowy lea,
And there is haunted starlight on the flow
Of immemorial sea.
I am alone and need no more pretend
Laughter or smile to hide a hungry heart;
I walk with solitude as with a friend
Enfolded and apart.
We tread an eerie road across the moor
Where shadows weave upon their ghostly looms,
And winds sing an old lyric that might lure
Sad queens from ancient tombs.
I am a sister to the loveliness
Of cool far hill and long-remembered shore,
Finding in it a sweet forgetfulness
Of all that hurt before.
The world of day, its bitterness and cark,
No longer have the power to make me weep;
I welcome this communion of the dark
As toilers welcome sleep.
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.
&n
bsp; 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.
On The Gulf Shore
Lap softly on the curving shore
Where sandpeeps leave their footprints small;
Lap softly, purple waves, where o’er
The gleaming sand the ripples fall.
Aloft the sky is blue; the clouds
Are soft and white above the sea;
The seagulls fly in snowy crowds;
The boats are floating lazily.
Then lap, lap softly, purple waves!
No tempests toss your crests today —
Your azure dimples are the graves
Where millions buried sunbeams play.
The curving dunes are golden brown;
The shore-grass nods its slender head;
The hot white sand sifts slowly down,
Or slips beneath our hasty tread
Far runs the shore, a silver strand,
And skies meet seas in clouds of pearl;
The ocean’s arms embrace the land,
And far aloft the swallows whirl.
Then lap, lap softly, on the shore,
Blue waters, lap! I rest and dream
Of ships that sail your surface o’er
And watch the shifting sunshine gleam.
Sail onward, ships! White wings, sail on,
Till past the horizon’s purple bar
You drift from sight! In flush of dawn
Sail on, and, ‘neath the evening star,
Fair skies be o’er you! Fair winds fill
Your swelling sails, till half the world
Be circled, and, in havens still,
Your weary wings be calmly furled.
Swoop, seagulls, swoop above the blue,
Nor fold till eve your pinions’ snow!
Where sleep you, seagulls, when the dew
Dampens the sand and moons outglow?
Lap softly, purple waves! I dream,
And dreams are sweet. I’ll wake no more,
But ever watch the white sails gleam,
And plovers flit along the shore!
When The Tide Goes Out
The boats sail out over murmurous seas,
O’er reaches of dazzling blue,
Past islands like purple Hesperides
Whence at dawn the sea-gulls flew;
Their white sails glisten in galaxies,
When the tide goes out.
Afar, where the sky bends down to meet