LOUELLA C. POOLE
WITH WAVES AND WINGS
Waves and Wings and Growing Things!
As through the gladden sight ye flow
And flit and glow,
Ye win me so
In soul to go,
I too am waves, I too am wings,
And kindred motion in me springs.
With thee I pass, glad growing grass!—
I climb the air with lissome mien;
Unsheathing keen
The vivid sheen
Of springing green,
I thrill the crude, exalt the crass
Fine-flex’d and fluent from Earth’s mass.
And impulse craves with thee, Sea Waves!—
To make all mutable the floor
Of Earth’s firm shore,
With flashing pour
Whose brimming o’er
Impassion’d motion loves and laves
And livens sombre slumbering caves.
Then soaring where the wild birds fare,
My song would sweep the windy lyre
Of Heaven’s choir,
Pulsing desire
For starry fire,
Abashing chilling vagues of air
With throbbing of warm breasts that dare!
CHARLOTTE PORTER
BLUEBERRIES
Upon the hills of Garlingtown
Beneath the summer sky,
In many pleasant pastures
On sunny slopes and high,
Their skins abloom with dusty blue,
Asleep, the berries lie.
And all the lads of Garlingtown,
And all the lasses too,
Still climb the tranquil hillsides,
A merry, barefoot crew;
Still homeward plod with unfilled pails
And mouths of berry blue.
And all the birds of Garlingtown,
When flocking back to nest,
Remember well the patches
Where berries are the best;
They pick the ripest ones at dawn
And leave the lads the rest.
Upon the hills of Garlingtown
When berry-time was o’er,
I looked into the sunset,
And saw an open door,
And from the hills of Garlingtown
I went, and came no more.
FRANK PRENTICE RAND
NOCTURNE
Night of infinite power and infinite silence and space,
From you may mortals infer, if ever, the scope divine!
The jealous sun conceals all but his arrogant face,
You bid the Milky Way and a million suns to shine.
Each star to numberless planets gives light and motion and heat,
But you enmantle them all, the nearest and most remote;
And the lustres of all the suns are but spangles under your feet,—
Mere bubbles and beads of noon, they circle and shine and float.
WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER