The morning sky is white with mist, the earth
White with the inspiration of the dew.
The harvest light is on the hills anew,
And cheer in the grave acres’ fruitful girth.
Only in this high pasture is there dearth,
Where the gray thistles crowd in ranks austere,
As if the sod, close-cropt for many a year,
Brought only bane and bitterness to birth.
But in the crisp air’s amethystine wave
How the harsh stalks are washed with radiance now,
How gleams the harsh turf where the crickets lie
Dew-freshened in their burnished armour brave!
Since earth could not endure nor heaven allow
Aught of unlovely in the morn’s clear eye.
INDIAN SUMMER
What touch hath set the breathing hills afire
With amethyst, to quench them with a tear
Of ecstasy? These common fields appear
The consecrated home of hopes past number.
So many visions, so entranced a slumber,
Such dreams possess the noonday’s luminous sphere,
That earth, content with knowing Heaven so near,
Hath done with aspiration and desire.
In these unlooked-for hours of Truth’s clear reign
Unjarring fitness hath surprised our strife.
This radiance, that might seem to cheat the view
With loveliness too perfect to be true,
But shows this vexed and self-delusive life
Ideals whereto our Real must attain.
THE PUMPKINS IN THE CORN
Amber and blue, the smoke behind the hill,
Where in the glow fades out the Morning Star,
Curtains the Autumn cornfield, sloped afar,
And strikes an acrid savour on the chill.
The hilltop fence shines saffron o’er the still
Unbending ranks of bunched and bleaching corn
And every pallid stalk is crisp with morn,
Crisp with the silver Autumn morn’s distil.
Purple the narrowing alleys stretched between
The spectral shooks, a purple harsh and cold,
But spotted, where the gadding pumpkins run,
With bursts of blaze that startle the serene
Like sudden voices,—globes of orange bold,
Elate to mimic the unrisen sun.
THE WINTER FIELDS
Winds here, and sleet, and frost that bites like steel.
The low bleak hill rounds under the low sky.
Naked of flock and fold the fallows lie,
Thin streaked with meagre drift. The gusts reveal
By fits the dim grey snakes of fence, that steal
Through the white dusk. The hill-foot poplars sigh,
While storm and death with winter trample by,
And the iron fields ring sharp, and blind lights reel.