Minstrel Weather

by

Marian Storm

Minstrel Weather

BY

MARIAN STORM

With Illustrations and Decorations
By Clinton Balmer

Knowledge, we are not foes.
Long hast thou toiled with me;
But the world with a great wind blows,
Crying, and not of thee!

EURIPIDES

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

Minstrel Weather
Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published November, 1920

For

AMY LOVEMAN

The Minstrel Made His Tune
of Hours and Seasons

Dewfall, moonrise, high sweet clover,
Chimney swifts at their twilight play;
Quail call, owl hoot, moth a-hover,
Midnight pale at the step of day.

Star wane, cobweb, brown-plumed bracken;
Morning laughs, with the frost in flower;
Duck flight, hound cry; wild grapes blacken.
Day leaps up at the amber hour.

Sun dark, snowcloud, eaves ice cumbered,
Gray sand piled on a carmine West;
Faint wing, flake dance; winds unnumbered
Swing the cradles where leaf-buds rest.

Wide light, bough flush, gold-fringed meadows,
Berries red in the rippled grass;
Stream song, nest note, dream deep shadows
Drawn back slowly for noon to pass.

CONTENTS

CHAP.PAGE
[I.][Faces of Janus][1]
[II.][A Woodland Valentine][7]
[III.][Ways of the March Hare][13]
[IV.][The April Moment][19]
[V.][The Crest of Spring][25]
[VI.][Hay Harvest Time][31]
[VII.][The Month of Yellow Flowers][37]
[VIII.][The Mood of August][43]
[IX.][Summer Pauses][48]
[X.][When the Oaks Wear Damson][54]
[XI.][November Traits][60]
[XII.][The Christmas Woods][66]
[XIII.][Landscapes Seen in Dreams][72]
[XIV.][Hiding Places][78]
[XV.][The Play of Leaves][84]
[XVI.][The Brown Frontier][90]
[XVII.][Far Altars][96]

ILLUSTRATIONS

[The Milky Way Revealed to Lonely Herdsmen]Frontispiece
[The Comforting Symbolism of Firelight at Play upon Clean Hearths]Facing p.4
[The Powers of Light]"10
[On the Topmost Boughs the Fairies Sleep]"26
[The Rejoicing Shout of Coming Summer]"28
[The Swooping Bat Darts Noiselessly]"34
[Now the Mountaineer’s Girl Hurries Indoors at Nightfall from the Hallooing Specter of the Wild Huntsman in the Clouds]"54
[Baldwins Mellow by Twelfth-night]"58
[December Acknowledges an Unpitying Fate—Anything May Happen]"68