McCLURE'S LIBRARY OF CHILDREN'S CLASSICS
EDITED BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
AND NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH
GOLDEN NUMBERS
A BOOK OF VERSE FOR YOUTH
THE POSY RING
A BOOK OF VERSE FOR CHILDREN
PINAFORE PALACE
A BOOK OF RHYMES FOR THE NURSERY
Library of Fairy Literature
THE FAIRY RING
MAGIC CASEMENTS A SECOND FAIRY BOOK
OTHER VOLUMES TO FOLLOW
Send to the publishers for Complete Descriptive Catalogue
GOLDEN NUMBERS
A BOOK OF VERSE FOR YOUTH
CHOSEN AND CLASSIFIED BY
Kate Douglas Wiggin
AND
Nora Archibald Smith
WITH INTRODUCTION AND INTERLEAVES BY
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
"To add to golden numbers, golden numbers."
Thomas Dekker.
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1909
Copyright, 1902, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
Published, October, 1902, N
GOLDEN NUMBERS
Then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Hark! the numbers soft and clear
Gently steal upon the ear;
Now louder, and yet louder rise,
And fill with spreading sounds the skies;
Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,
In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats.
Alexander Pope.
A NOTE
We are indebted to the following firms for permission to use poems mentioned:
Frederick Warne & Co., for poems of George Herbert and Reginald Heber; Small, Maynard & Co., for two poems by Walt Whitman, and "The Tax-Gatherer," by John B. Tabb; George Routledge & Son, for "Sir Lark and King Sun," George Macdonald; Longmans, Green & Co., for Andrew Lang's "Scythe Song"; Lee & Shepard, for "A Christmas Hymn," "Alfred Dommett," and "Minstrels and Maids," William Morris; J. B. Lippincott Co., for three poems by Thomas Buchanan Read; John Lane, for "The Forsaken Merman," Matthew Arnold, and "Song to April," William Watson; "The Skylark," Frederick Tennyson; E. P. Dutton & Co., for "O Little Town of Bethlehem," Phillips Brooks; Dana, Estes & Co., for "July," by Susan Hartley Swett; Little, Brown & Co., for poems of Christina G. Rossetti, and for the three poems, "The Grass," "The Bee," and "Chartless" by Emily Dickinson; D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works, for "March," "Planting of the Apple Tree," "To the Fringed Gentian," "Death of Flowers," "To a Waterfowl," and "The Twenty-second of December"; Charles Scribner's Sons, for "The Wind" and "A Visit from the Sea," both taken from "A Child's Garden of Verses"; "The Angler's Reveille," from "The Toiling of Felix"; "Dear Land of All My Love," from "Poems of Sidney Lanier," and "The Three Kings," from "With Trumpet and Drum," by Eugene Field; The Churchman, for "Tacking Ship Off Shore," by Walter Mitchell; The Whitaker-Ray Co., for "Columbus" and "Crossing the Plains," from The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller; The Macmillan Co., for "At Gibraltar," from "North Shore Watch and Other Poems," by George Edward Woodberry.
The following poems are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton, Mifflin Co., the authorized publishers:
T. B. Aldrich, "A Turkish Legend," "Before the Rain," "Maple Leaves," and "Tiger Lilies"; Christopher P. Cranch, "The Bobolinks"; Alice Cary, "The Gray Swan"; Margaret Deland, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night"; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Forbearance," "The Humble-Bee," "Duty," "The Rhodora," "Concord Hymn," "The Snow Storm," and Ode Sung in the Town Hall, Concord; James T. Fields, "Song of the Turtle and the Flamingo"; Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Old Ironsides" and "The Chambered Nautilus"; John Hay, "The Enchanted Shirt"; Julia Ward Howe, "Battle Hymn of the Republic"; Bret Harte, "The Reveille" and "A Greyport Legend"; T. W. Higginson, "The Snowing of the Pines"; H. W. Longfellow, "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Psalm of Life," "Home Song," "The Three Kings," and "The Harvest Moon"; James Russell Lowell, "Washington," extracts from "The Vision of Sir Launfal," "The Fatherland," "To the Dandelion," "The Singing Leaves," and "Stanzas on Freedom"; Lucy Larcom, "Hannah Binding Shoes"; Edna Dean Proctor, "Columbia's Emblem"; T. W. Parsons, "Dirge for One Who Fell in Battle"; E. C. Stedman, "The Flight of the Birds" and "Going A-Nutting"; E. R. Sill, "Opportunity"; W. W. Story, "The English Language"; Celia Thaxter, "The Sandpiper" and "Nikolina"; J. T. Trowbridge, "Evening at the Farm" and "Midwinter"; Bayard Taylor, "A Night With a Wolf" and "The Song of the Camp"; J. G. Whittier, "The Corn Song," "The Barefoot Boy," "Barbara Frietchie," extracts from "Snow-Bound," "Song of the Negro Boatman," and "The Pipes at Lucknow"; W. D. Howells, "In August"; J. G. Saxe, "Solomon and the Bees."
CONTENTS
A CHANTED CALENDAR Page
Daybreak. By Percy Bysshe Shelley [1]
Morning. By John Keats [1]
A Morning Song. By William Shakespeare [2]
Evening in Paradise. By John Milton [2]
Evening Song. By John Fletcher [3]
Night. By Robert Southey [4]
A Fine Day. By Michael Drayton [5]
The Seasons. By Edmund Spenser [5]
The Eternal Spring. By John Milton [5]
March. By William Cullen Bryant [6]
Spring. By Thomas Carew [7]
Song to April. By William Watson [7]
April in England. By Robert Browning [8]
April and May. By Ralph Waldo Emerson [9]
May. By Edmund Spenser [9]
Song on May Morning. By John Milton [10]
Summer. By Edmund Spenser [10]
June Weather. By James Russell Lowell [11]
July. By Susan Hartley Swett [13]
August. By Edmund Spenser [14]
In August. By William Dean Howells [14]
Autumn. By Edmund Spenser [15]
Sweet September. By George Arnold [15]
Autumn's Processional. By Dinah M. Mulock [16]
October's Bright Blue Weather. By H. H. [16]
Maple Leaves. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich [17]
Down to Sleep. By H. H. [18]
Winter. By Edmund Spenser [19]
When Icicles Hang by the Wall. By William Shakespeare [19]
A Winter Morning. By James Russell Lowell [20]
The Snow Storm. By Ralph Waldo Emerson [21]
Old Winter. By Thomas Noel [22]
Midwinter. By John Townsend Trowbridge [23]
Dirge for the Year. By Percy Bysshe Shelley [25]
THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL
The World Beautiful. By John Milton [27]
The Harvest Moon. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [27]
The Cloud. By Percy Bysshe Shelley [28]
Before the Rain. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich [31]
Rain in Summer. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [32]
Invocation to Rain in Summer. By William C. Bennett [34]
The Latter Rain. By Jones Very [35]
The Wind. By Robert Louis Stevenson [35]
Ode to the Northeast Wind. By Charles Kingsley [36]
The Windy Night. By Thomas Buchanan Read [39]
The Brook. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [40]
The Brook in Winter. By James Russell Lowell [42]
Clear and Cool. By Charles Kingsley [44]
Minnows. By John Keats [45]
Snow-Bound (Extracts). By John G. Whittier [46]
Highland Cattle. By Dinah M. Mulock [50]
A Scene in Paradise. By John Milton [52]
The Tiger. By William Blake [53]
The Spacious Firmament on High. By Joseph Addison [54]
GREEN THINGS GROWING
Green Things Growing. By Dinah M. Mulock [57]
The Sigh of Silence. By John Keats [58]
Under the Greenwood Tree. By William Shakespeare [59]
The Planting of the Apple Tree. By William Cullen Bryant [59]
The Apple Orchard in the Spring. By William Martin [63]
Mine Host of "The Golden Apple." By Thomas Westwood [64]
The Tree. By Jones Very [65]
A Young Fir-Wood. By Dante G. Rossetti [65]
The Snowing of the Pines. By Thomas W. Higginson [66]
The Procession of the Flowers. By Sydney Dobell [67]
Sweet Peas. By John Keats [68]
A Snowdrop. By Harriet Prescott Spofford [69]
Almond Blossom. By Sir Edwin Arnold [69]
Wild Rose. By William Allingham [70]
Tiger-Lilies. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich [71]
To the Fringed Gentian. By William Cullen Bryant [72]
To a Mountain Daisy. By Robert Burns [73]
Bind-Weed. By Susan Coolidge [74]
The Rhodora. By Ralph Waldo Emerson [76]
A Song of Clover. By "Saxe Holm" [76]
To the Dandelion (Extract). By James Russell Lowell [77]
To Daffodils. By Robert Herrick [78]
The Daffodils. By William Wordsworth [79]
The White Anemone. By Owen Meredith [80]
The Grass. By Emily Dickinson [81]
The Corn-Song. By John G. Whittier [82]
Columbia's Emblem. By Edna Dean Proctor [84]
Scythe Song. By Andrew Lang [86]
Time to Go. By Susan Coolidge [86]
The Death of the Flowers. By William Cullen Bryant [88]
Autumn's Mirth. By Samuel Minturn Peck [90]
ON THE WING
Sing On, Blithe Bird. By William Motherwell [93]
To a Skylark. By Percy Bysshe Shelley [94]
Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable. By George Macdonald [99]
The Skylark. By Frederick Tennyson [101]
The Skylark. By James Hogg [102]
The Bobolinks. By Christopher P. Cranch [103]
To a Waterfowl. By William Cullen Bryant [105]
Goldfinches. By John Keats [107]
The Sandpiper. By Celia Thaxter [107]
The Eagle. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [109]
Child's Talk in April. By Christina G. Rossetti [109]
The Flight of the Birds. By Edmund Clarence Stedman [111]
The Shepherd's Home. By William Shenstone [112]
To a Cricket. By William C. Bennett [113]
On the Grasshopper and Cricket. By John Keats [114]
The Tax-Gatherer. By John B. Tabb [114]
To the Grasshopper and the Cricket. By Leigh Hunt [115]
The Bee. By Emily Dickinson [116]
The Humble-Bee. By Ralph Waldo Emerson [116]
All Things Wait Upon Thee. By Christina G. Rossetti [119]
Providence. By Reginald Heber [119]
THE INGLENOOK
A New Household. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [121]
Two Heavens. By Leigh Hunt [121]
A Song of Love. By "Lewis Carroll" [122]
Mother's Song. Unknown [123]
The Bonniest Bairn in a' the Warl'. By Robert Ford [125]
Cuddle Doon. By Alexander Anderson [126]
I am Lonely. By George Eliot [128]
Brother and Sister. By George Eliot [129]
Home. By William Ernest Henley [131]
Love Will Find Out the Way. Unknown [133]
The Sailor's Wife. By William J. Mickle [134]
Evening at the Farm. By John Townsend Trowbridge [136]
Home Song. By Henry W. Longfellow [138]
Étude Réaliste. By Algernon C. Swinburne [139]
We Are Seven. By William Wordsworth [141]
FAIRY SONGS AND SONGS OF FANCY
Puck and the Fairy. By William Shakespeare [145]
Lullaby for Titania. By William Shakespeare [146]
Oberon and Titania to the Fairy Train. By William Shakespeare [147]
Ariel's Songs. By William Shakespeare [147]
Orpheus with His Lute. By William Shakespeare [149]
The Arming of Pigwiggen. By Michael Drayton [149]
Hesperus' Song. By Ben Jonson [151]
L'Allegro (Extracts). By John Milton [152]
Sabrina Fair. By John Milton [157]
Alexander's Feast. By John Dryden [158]
Kubla Khan. By Samuel Taylor Coleridge [160]
The Magic Car Moved On. By Percy Bysshe Shelley [162]
Arethusa. By Percy Bysshe Shelley [165]
The Culprit Fay (Extracts). By Joseph Rodman Drake [168]
A Myth. By Charles Kingsley [173]
The Fairy Folk. By William Allingham [174]
The Merman. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [177]
The Mermaid. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [178]
Bugle Song. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [181]
The Raven. By Edgar Allan Poe [182]
The Bells. By Edgar Allan Poe [189]
SPORTS AND PASTIMES
Blowing Bubbles. By William Allingham [195]
Bicycling Song. By Henry C. Beeching [196]
Going A Maying. By Robert Herrick [197]
Jog On, Jog On. By William Shakespeare [200]
A Vagabond Song. By Bliss Carman [201]
Swimming. By Algernon C. Swinburne [201]
Swimming. By Lord Byron [202]
The Angler's Reveille. By Henry van Dyke [203]
The Angler's Invitation. By Thomas Tod Stoddart [207]
Skating. By William Wordsworth [207]
Reading. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning [209]
On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer. By John Keats [210]
Music's Silver Sound. By William Shakespeare [210]
The Power of Music. By William Shakespeare [211]
Descend, Ye Nine! By Alexander Pope [212]
Old Song. By Edward Fitzgerald [213]
The Barefoot Boy. By John G. Whittier [214]
Leolin and Edith. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [218]
Going A-Nutting. By Edmund Clarence Stedman [219]
Whittling. By John Pierpont [220]
Hunting Song. By Sir Walter Scott [222]
The Hunter's Song. By Barry Cornwall [223]
The Blood Horse. By Barry Cornwall [225]
The Northern Seas. By William Howitt [226]
The Needle. By Samuel Woodwork [228]
A GARDEN OF GIRLS
A Portrait. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning [231]
Little Bell. By Thomas Westwood [234]
A Child of Twelve. By Percy Bysshe Shelley [237]
Chloe. By Robert Burns [238]
O, Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet. By Robert Burns [239]
Who Is Silvia? By William Shakespeare [240]
To Mistress Margaret Hussey. By John Skelton [240]
Ruth. By Thomas Hood [242]
My Peggy. By Allan Ramsay [243]
Annie Laurie. By William Douglas [243]
Lucy. By William Wordsworth [245]
Jessie. By Bret Harte [246]
Olivia. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [247]
Nikolina. By Celia Thaxter [248]
The Solitary Reaper. By William Wordsworth [249]
Helena and Hermia. By William Shakespeare [250]
Phyllis. By William Drummond [251]
So Sweet is She. By Ben Jonson [251]
I Love My Jean. By Robert Burns [252]
My Nannie's Awa'. By Robert Burns [253]
THE WORLD OF WATERS
To the Ocean. By Lord Byron [255]
A Life on the Ocean Wave. By Epes Sargent [257]
The Sea. By Barry Cornwall [258]
A Sea-Song. By Allan Cunningham [259]
A Visit from the Sea. By Robert Louis Stevenson [261]
Drifting. By Thomas Buchanan Read [262]
Tacking Ship Off Shore. By Walter Mitchell [265]
Windlass Song. By William Allingham [268]
The Coral Grove. By James Gates Percival [269]
The Shell. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [270]
Bermudas. By Andrew Marvell [272]
Where Lies the Land? By Arthur Hugh Clough [273]
FOR HOME AND COUNTRY
The First, Best Country. By Oliver Goldsmith [275]
My Native Land. By Sir Walter Scott [276]
Loyalty. By Allan Cunningham [276]
My Heart's in the Highlands. By Robert Burns [277]
The Minstrel Boy. By Thomas Moore [278]
The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls. By Thomas Moore [279]
Fife and Drum. By John Dryden [280]
The Cavalier's Song. By William Motherwell [280]
The Old Scottish Cavalier. By Wm. Edmondstoune Aytoun [281]
The Song of the Camp. By Bayard Taylor [284]
Border Ballad. By Sir Walter Scott [286]
Gathering Song of Donuil Dhu. By Sir Walter Scott [287]
The Reveille. By Bret Harte [288]
Ye Mariners of England. By Thomas Campbell [290]
The Knight's Tomb. By Samuel Taylor Coleridge [292]
How Sleep the Brave! By William Collins [292]
Dirge. By Thomas William Parsons [293]
The Burial of Sir John Moore. By Charles Wolfe [295]
Soldier, Rest! By Sir Walter Scott [296]
Recessional. By Rudyard Kipling [297]
The Fatherland. By James Russell Lowell [298]
NEW WORLD AND OLD GLORY
Dear Land of All My Love. By Sidney Lanier [301]
Columbus. By Joaquin Miller [301]
Pocahontas. By William Makepeace Thackeray [303]
Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. By Felicia Hemans [305]
The Twenty-second of December. By William Cullen Bryant [306]
Washington. By James Russell Lowell [307]
Warren's Address. By John Pierpont [308]
Carmen Bellicosum. By Guy Humphreys McMaster [309]
The American Flag. By Joseph Rodman Drake [311]
Old Ironsides. By Oliver Wendell Holmes [312]
Indians. By Charles Sprague [313]
Crossing the Plains. By Joaquin Miller [314]
Concord Hymn. By Ralph Waldo Emerson [315]
Ode. By Ralph Waldo Emerson [316]
Stanzas on Freedom. By James Russell Lowell [317]
Abraham Lincoln. By Richard Henry Stoddard [318]
Lincoln, the Great Commoner. By Edwin Markham [319]
Abraham Lincoln. By Henry Howard Brownell [321]
O Captain! My Captain! By Walt Whitman [323]
The Flag Goes By. By Henry Holcomb Bennett [324]
The Black Regiment. By George Henry Boker [326]
Night Quarters. By Henry Howard Brownell [329]
Battle-Hymn of the Republic. By Julia Ward Howe [331]
Sheridan's Ride. By Thomas Buchanan Read [332]
Song of the Negro Boatman. By John G. Whittier [335]
Barbara Frietchie. By John G. Whittier [337]
Two Veterans. By Walt Whitman [340]
Stand by the Flag! By John Nichols Wilder [342]
At Gibraltar. By George Edward Woodberry [343]
Faith and Freedom. By William Wordsworth [345]
Our Mother Tongue. By Lord Houghton [345]
The English Language (Extracts). By William Wetmore Story [346]
To America. By Alfred Austin [347]
The Name of Old Glory. By James Whitcomb Riley [349]
IN MERRY MOOD
On a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes. By Thomas Gray [353]
The Priest and the Mulberry Tree. By Thomas Love Peacock [355]
The Council of Horses. By John Gay [356]
The Diverting History of John Gilpin. By William Cowper [359]
To a Child of Quality. By Matthew Prior [369]
Charade. By Winthrop M. Praed [370]
A Riddle. By Hannah More [371]
A Riddle. By Jonathan Swift [372]
A Riddle. By Catherine M. Fanshawe [373]
Feigned Courage. By Charles and Mary Lamb [374]
Baucis and Philemon. By Jonathan Swift [375]
The Lion and the Cub. By John Gay [378]
Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog. By Oliver Goldsmith [379]
The Walrus and the Carpenter. By "Lewis Carroll" [381]
Song of the Turtle and Flamingo. By James T. Fields [385]
Captain Reece. By William S. Gilbert [387]
The Cataract of Lodore. By Robert Southey [391]
The Enchanted Shirt. By John Hay [395]
Made in the Hot Weather. By William Ernest Henley [398]
The Housekeeper. By Charles Lamb [400]
The Monkey. By Mary Howitt [401]
November. By Thomas Hood [402]
Captain Sword. By Leigh Hunt [403]
STORY POEMS: ROMANCE AND REALITY
The Singing Leaves. By James Russell Lowell [407]
Seven Times Two. By Jean Ingelow [411]
The Long White Seam. By Jean Ingelow [413]
Hannah Binding Shoes. By Lucy Larcom [414]
Lord Ullin's Daughter. By Thomas Campbell [416]
The King of Denmark's Ride. By Caroline E. Norton [418]
The Shepherd to His Love. By Christopher Marlowe [420]
Ballad. By Charles Kingsley [422]
Romance of the Swan's Nest. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning [423]
Lochinvar. By Sir Walter Scott [427]
Jock of Hazeldean. By Sir Walter Scott [430]
The Lady of Shalott. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [431]
The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire. By Jean Ingelow [438]
The Forsaken Merman. By Matthew Arnold [444]
The Sands of Dee. By Charles Kingsley [450]
The "Gray Swan." By Alice Gary [452]
The Wreck of the Hesperus. By Henry W. Longfellow [454]
A Greyport Legend. By Bret Harte [458]
The Glove and the Lions. By Leigh Hunt [460]
How's My Boy? By Sydney Dobell [462]
The Child-Musician. By Austin Dobson [463]
How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. By Robert Browning [464]
The Inchcape Rock. By Robert Southey [468]
A Night with a Wolf. By Bayard Taylor [471]
The Dove of Dacca. By Rudyard Kipling [472]
The Abbot of Inisfalen. By William Allingham [474]
The Cavalier's Escape. By George Walter Thornbury [479]
The Pied Piper of Hamelin. By Robert Browning [480]
Hervé Riel. By Robert Browning [493]
Vision of Belshazzar. By Lord Byron [500]
Solomon and the Bees. By John G. Saxe [502]
The Burial of Moses. By Cecil Frances Alexander [504]
WHEN BANNERS ARE WAVING
When Banners Are Waving. Unknown [509]
Battle of the Baltic. By Thomas Campbell [511]
The Pipes at Lucknow. By John Greenleaf Whittier [514]
The Battle of Agincourt. By Michael Drayton [517]
The Battle of Blenheim. By Robert Southey [522]
The Armada. By Lord Macaulay [524]
Ivry. By Lord Macaulay [530]
On the Loss of the Royal George. By William Cowper [535]
The Charge of the Light Brigade. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson [537]
Bannockburn. By Robert Burns [539]
The Night Before Waterloo. By Lord Byron [540]
Hohenlinden. By Thomas Campbell [542]
Incident of the French Camp. By Robert Browning [544]
Marco Bozzaris. By Fitz-Greene Halleck [545]
The Destruction of Sennacherib. By Lord Byron [548]
TALES OF THE OLDEN TIME
Sir Patrick Spens. Old Ballad [551]
The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington. Old Ballad [555]
King John and the Abbot of Canterbury. Old Ballad [558]
Lord Beichan and Susie Pye. Old Ballad [563]
The Gay Gos-hawk. Old Ballad [569]
Earl Mar's Daughter. Old Ballad [576]
Chevy-Chace. Old Ballad [582]
Hynde Horn. Old Ballad [593]
Glenlogie. Old Ballad [597]
LIFE LESSONS
Life. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [601]
In a Child's Album. By William Wordsworth [602]
To-Day. By Thomas Carlyle [602]
The Noble Nature. By Ben Jonson [603]
Forbearance. By Ralph Waldo Emerson [603]
The Chambered Nautilus. By Oliver Wendell Holmes [604]
Duty. By Ralph Waldo Emerson [605]
On His Blindness. By John Milton [606]
Sir Launfal and the Leper. By James Russell Lowell [606]
Opportunity. By Edward Rowland Sill [608]
Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel. By Leigh Hunt [609]
Be True. By Horatio Bonar [610]
The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation. By John Bunyan [610]
A Turkish Legend. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich [611]
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. By Thomas Gray [612]
Polonius to Laertes. By William Shakespeare [618]
The Olive-Tree. By S. Baring-Gould [619]
Coronation. By H. H. [620]
December. By John Keats [622]
The End of the Play. By William Makepeace Thackeray [623]
A Farewell. By Charles Kingsley [625]
A Boy's Prayer. By Henry C. Beeching [626]
Chartless. By Emily Dickinson [626]
Peace. By Henry Vaughan [627]
Consider. By Christina G. Rossetti [628]
The Elixir. By George Herbert [629]
One by One. By Adelaide A. Procter [629]
The Commonwealth of the Bees. By William Shakespeare [631]
The Pilgrim. By John Bunyan [632]
Be Useful. By George Herbert [633]
THE GLAD EVANGEL
A Christmas Carol. By Josiah Gilbert Holland [635]
The Angels. By William Drummond [636]
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night. By Margaret Deland [637]
The Star Song. By Robert Herrick [638]
Hymn for Christmas. By Felicia Hemans [639]
New Prince, New Pomp. By Robert Southwell [640]
The Three Kings. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [641]
The Three Kings. By Eugene Field [644]
A Christmas Hymn. By Alfred Dommett [646]
O Little Town of Bethlehem. By Phillips Brooks [648]
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night. By Nahum Tate [649]
Christmas Carol. Old English [650]
Old Christmas. By Mary Howitt [652]
God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen. By Dinah Maria Mulock [653]
Minstrels and Maids. By William Morris [654]
An Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour. By Robert Herrick [656]
Old Christmas Returned. Old English [657]
Ceremonies for Christmas. By Robert Herrick [658]
Christmas in England. By Sir Walter Scott [659]
The Gracious Time. By William Shakespeare [661]
Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning. By Reginald Heber [661]
INTRODUCTION
On the Reading of Poetry
There is no doubt, I fear, that certain people are born without, as certain other people are born with, a love of poetry. Any natural gift is a great advantage, of course, be it physical, mental, or spiritual. The dear old tales which suggest the presence of fairies at the cradle of the new-born child, dealing out, not very impartially, talents, charms, graces, are not so far from the real truth. You may have been given a straight nose, a rosy cheek, a courteous manner, a lively wit, a generous disposition; but perhaps the Fairy Fine-Ear, who hears the grass grow, and the leaf-buds throb, had a pressing engagement at somebody else's cradle-side when you most needed her benefactions. There is another elf too, a Dame o' Dreams; she is clad all in color-of-rose, and when she touches your eyelids you see visions forever after; beautiful haunting things hidden from duller eyes, visions made of stars and dew and magic. Never any great poet lived but these two fairies were present at his birth, and it may be that they stole a moment to visit you. If such was the case you love, need, crave poetry, to understand yourself, your neighbor, the world, God; and you will find that nothing else will satisfy you so completely as the years go on. If, on the other hand, these highly mythical but interesting personages were absent when the question of your natural endowment was being settled, do not take it too much to heart, but try to make good the deficiencies.
You must have liked the rhymes and jingles of your nursery-days:
Ride a Cock-horse
To Banbury Cross!
or
Mistress Mary quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
I am certain you remember what pleasure it gave you to make "contrary" rhyme with "Mary" instead of pronouncing it in the proper and prosy way.
"But" you answer, "I did indeed like that sort of verse, and am still fond of it when it dances and prances, or trips and patters and tinkles; it is what is termed "sublime" poetry that is dull and difficult to understand; the verb is always a long distance from its subject; the punctuation comes in the middle of the lines, so that it reads like prose in spite of one, and it is generally sprinkled with allusions to Calypso, Œdipus, Eurydice, Hesperus, Corydon, Arethusa, and the Acroceraunian Mountains; or at any rate with people and places which one has to look up in the atlas and dictionary."
Of course, all poems are not equally simple in sound and sense. It does not require much intelligence to read or chant Poe's Raven, and if one does not quite understand it, one is so taken captive by the weird, haunting music of the lines, the recurrence of phrases and repetition of words, that one does not think about its meaning:
"While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
''Tis some visitor, I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more.'"
The moment, however, that your eye falls upon the following lines from "Paradise Lost" you confess privately that if you were obliged to parse and analyze them the task would cause you a weary half-hour with Lindley Murray or Quackenbos.
"Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Under a tuft of shade that on a green
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain-side,
They sat them down;"
Very well then, do not try to parse them; Paradise Lost was not written exclusively for the grammarians; content yourself with enjoying the picture; the frisking of the beasts of the earth, while Adam and Eve watched them from a fountain-side in Paradise.
No one need be ashamed of liking a good deal of rhyme and rhythm, swing and movement and melody in poetry; absolute perfection of form, though all too rarely attained, is one of the chief delights of the verse-lover. "The procession of beautiful sounds that is a poem," says Walter Raleigh. It is quite natural to love the music of verse before you catch the deeper thought, and you feel, in some of the greatest poetry, as if only the angels could have put the melodious words together. There is more in this music than meets the eye or ear; it is what differentiates prose from poetry, which, to quote Wordsworth, is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge. Prose it is said can never be too truthful or too wise, but song is more than mere Truth and Wisdom, it is the "rose upon Truth's lips, the light in Wisdom's eyes." That is why the thought in it finds its way to the very heart of one and makes one glow and tremble, fills one with desire to do some splendid action, right some wrong, be something other than one is, more noble, more true, more patient, more courageous.
We who have selected the poems in this book have had to keep in mind the various kinds of young people who are to read it. The boys may wish that there were more story and battle poems, and verses ringing with spirited and war-like adventures; the girls may think that there are too many already; while both, perhaps, may miss certain old favorites like Horatius or The Ancient Mariner, omitted because of their great length. Some of you will yawn if the book flies open at Milton; some will be bored whenever they chance upon Pope; others will never read Wordsworth except on compulsion. Romantic little maids will turn away from "Tacking Ship off Shore," while their brothers will disdain "The Swan's Nest Among the Reeds"; but it was necessary to make the book for all sorts and conditions of readers, and such a volume must contain a taste of the best things, whether your special palate is ready for them or not. When you are twenty-one you may say, loftily, "I do not care for Pope and Dryden, I prefer Spenser and Tennyson, or Ben Jonson and Herrick," or whatever you really do prefer,—but now, although, of course, you have your personal likes and dislikes, you cannot be sure that they are based on anything real or that they will stand the test of time and experience.
So you will find between these covers we hope, a little of everything good, for we have searched the pages of the great English-speaking poets to find verses that you would either love at first sight, or that you would grow to care for as you learn what is worthy to be loved. Where we found one beautiful verse, quite simple and wholly beautiful, we have given you that, if it held a complete thought or painted a picture perfect in itself, even although we omitted the very next one, which perhaps would have puzzled and wearied the younger ones with its involved construction or difficult phraseology.
Will you think, I wonder, that this very simple talk is too informal to be quite proper when one remembers that it is to serve as introduction to the greatest poets that ever lived? Informality is very charming in its place, no doubt (for so the thought might cross your mind), but one does not use it with kings and queens; still the least things, you know, may sometimes explain or interpret the greatest. The brook might say, "I am nothing in myself, I know, but I am showing you the way to the ocean; follow on if you wish to see something really vast and magnificent."
There are besides gracious courtesies to be observed on certain occasions. If a famous poet or author should chance to come to your village or city and appear before the people, someone would have to introduce the stranger and commend him to your attention; and if he did it modestly it would only be an act of kindliness; a wish to serve you and at the same time bespeak for him a gentle and a friendly hearing. Once introduced—Presto, change! If he is a great poet he is a great wizard; the words he uses, the method and manner in which he uses them, the cadence of his verse, the thoughts he calls to your mind, the way he brings the quick color to your cheek and the tear to your eye, all these savor of magic, nothing else. Who could be less than modest in his presence? Who could but wish to bring the whole world under his spell? You will readily be modest, too, when you confront these splendid poems, even although some of you may not wholly comprehend as yet their grandeur and their majesty; may not fully understand their claim to immortality. Where is there a girl who would not make a low curtsey to Shakespeare's Silvia, Milton's Sabrina, Wordsworth's Lucy, or Mrs. Browning's Elizabeth? And if there is a boy who could stand with his head covered before Horatius, Hervé Riel, Sir Launfal, or Motherwell's Cavalier he is not one of those we had in mind when we made this book. Neither is it altogether the personality of hero or heroine that fills us with reverence; it is the beauty and perfection of the poem itself that almost brings us to our knees in worship. A little later on you will have the same feeling of admiration and awe for Shelley's Skylark, Emerson's Snow Storm, Wordsworth's Daffodils, Keats's Daybreak, and for many another poem not included in this book, to which you must hope to grow. For it is a matter of growth after all, and growth, in mind and spirit, as in body, is largely a matter of will. It is all ours, the beauty in the world: your task is merely to enter into possession. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare are yours as much as another's. The great treasury of inspiring thoughts that has been heaped together as the ages went by, that "rich deposit of the centuries," is your heritage; if you wish to assert your heirship no one can say you nay; if you will to be a Crœsus in the things of the mind and spirit, no one can ever keep you poor.
We have brought you only English verse, so you must wait for the years to give you Homer, Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Schiller, Victor Hugo, and many another; and of English verse we have only given a hint of the treasures in store for you later on.
We have quoted you poems from the grand old masters, those "bards sublime,"
"Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time,"
and many a verse:—
—"from some humbler poet
Whose songs gushed from his heart
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies."
Since you will not like everything in the book equally well, may we advise you how to use it? First find something you know and love, and read it over again. (Penitent, indeed, shall we be if it has been omitted!) The meeting will be like one with a dear playfellow and friend in a new and strange house, and the house will seem less strange after you have met and welcomed the friend.
Then search the pages until you see a verse that speaks to you instantly, catches your eye, begs you to read it, willy-nilly. There are dozens of such poems in this collection, as simple as if they had been written for six-year-olds instead of for the grown-up English-speaking world: little masterpieces like Tennyson's Brook, Kingsley's Clear and Cool, Shakespeare's Fairy Songs, Burns's Mountain Daisy, Emerson's Rhodora, Motherwell's Blithe Bird, Hogg's Skylark, Wordsworth's Pet Lamb, Scott's Ballads, and scores of others.
This so far is pure pleasure, but why not, as another step, find something difficult, something you instinctively draw back from? It will probably be Milton, Pope, Dryden, Browning, or Shelley. You cannot find any "story" in it; its rhymes do not run trippingly off the tongue; there are a few strange and unpronounceable words, the punctuation and phrasing puzzle you, and worse than all you are obliged to read it two or three times before you really understand its meaning. Very well, that is nothing to be ashamed of, and you surely do not want to be vanquished by a difficulty. You will realize some time or other that all learning, like all life, is a sort of obstacle race in which the strongest wins.
I once said to a dear old minister who was preaching to a very ignorant and unlearned congregation, "It must be very difficult, sir, for you to preach down to them"; for he was a man of rare scholarship and true wisdom;—"I try to be very simple a part of the time," he answered, "but not always; about once a month I fling the fodder so high in the rack that no man can catch at a single straw without stretching his neck!"
Now pray do not laugh at that illustration; smile if you will, but it serves the purpose. Just as we develop our muscles by exercising our bodies, so do we grow strong mentally and spiritually by this "stretching" process. You are not obliged to love an impersonal, remote, or complex poem intimately and passionately, but read it faithfully if you do not wish to be wholly blind and deaf to beauties of sense or sound that happier people see and hear. Joubert says most truly: "You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you," but there are some splendid things in verse as in prose that you stand in too great awe of to love in any real, childlike way. It is never scenes from Paradise Lost that run through your mind when you are going to sleep. It is something with a lilt, like:
"Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;"
or a poem with a gallant action in it like Marco Bozzaris, or with a charming story like The Singing Leaves, or a mysterious and musical one, like Kubla Khan or The Bells, or something that when first you read it made you a little older and a little sadder, in an odd, unaccustomed way quite unlike that of real grief:
"A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles rain."
When you read that verse of Longfellow's afterwards you see that he has expressed your mood exactly. That is what it means to be a poet, and that is what poetry is always doing for us; revealing, translating thoughts we are capable of feeling, but not expressing.
Perhaps you will not for a long time see the beauty of certain famous reflective poems like Gray's Elegy, but we must include a few of such things whether they appeal to you very strongly or not, merely because it is necessary that you should have an acquaintance, if not a friendship, with lines that the world by common consent has agreed to call immortal. They show you, without your being conscious of it, show you by their lines "all gold and seven times refined,"—how beautiful the English language can be when it is used by a master of style. Young people do not think or talk very much about style, but they come under its spell unconsciously and respond to its influence quickly enough. To give a sort of definition: style is a way of saying or writing a thing so that people are compelled to listen. When you grow sensitive to beauty of language you become, in some small degree at least, capable of using it yourself. You could not, for instance, read daily these "honey-tongued" poets without gathering a little sweetness for your own unruly member.
There are certain spiritual lessons to be gained from many of these immortal poems, lessons which the oldest as well as the youngest might well learn. Turn to Milton's Ode on his Blindness. It is not easy reading, but you will begin to care for it when experience brings you the meaning of the line, "They also serve who only stand and wait." It is one of a class of poems that have been living forces from age to age; that have quickened aspiration, aroused energy, deepened conviction; that have infused a nobler ardor and loftier purpose into life wherever and whenever they were read.
Prefacing each of the divisions of this volume you will find a page or "interleaf" of comment on, and appreciation of, the poems that follow. These pages you may read or not as you are minded; they are only friendly or informal letters from an old traveller to a pilgrim who has just taken his staff in hand.
By and by you will add poem after poem to your list of favorites, and so, gradually, you will make your own volume of Golden Numbers, which will be far better than any book we can fashion for you. Perhaps you will copy single verses and whole poems in it and, later, learn them by heart. Such treasures of memory "will henceforth no longer be forgettable, detachable parts of your mind's furniture, but well-springs of instinct forever."
Kate Douglas Wiggin.
GOLDEN NUMBERS
INTERLEAVES
A Chanted Calendar
Here is the Year's Processional in verse; the story of her hours, her days, her seasons, told as only poets can, because they see and hear things not revealed to you and me, and are able by their magic to make us sharers in the revelation. Read the first six poems and ask yourself whether you have ever realized the glories of the common day; from the moment when morning from her orient chambers comes, and the lark at heaven's gate sings, to the hour when the moon, unveiling her peerless light, throws her silver mantle o'er the dark, and the firmament glows with living sapphires.
It is the task of poetry not only to say noble things, but to say them nobly; having beautiful fancies, to clothe them in beautiful phrases, and if you search these poems you will find some of the most wonderful word-pictures in the English language. How charming Drayton's description of the summer breeze:
"The wind had no more strength than this,
That leisurely it blew,
To make one leaf the next to kiss
That closely by it grew."
If the day is dreary you need only read Lowell's "June Weather," and like the bird sitting at his door in the sun, atilt like a blossom among the leaves, your "illumined being" will overrun with the "deluge of summer it receives."
Then turn the page; the picture fades as you read Trowbridge's "Midwinter." The speckled sky is dim; the light flakes falter and fall slow; the chickadee sings cheerily; lo, the magic touch again and the house mates sit, as Emerson saw them,
"Around the radiant fireplace enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm."
I
A CHANTED CALENDAR
Daybreak
Day had awakened all things that be,
The lark, and the thrush, and the swallow free,
And the milkmaid's song, and the mower's scythe,
And the matin bell and the mountain bee:
Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn,
Glowworms went out, on the river's brim,
Like lamps which a student forgets to trim:
The beetle forgot to wind his horn,
The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun,
Night's dreams and terrors, every one,
Fled from the brains which are its prey,
From the lamp's death to the morning ray.
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Morning
Now morning from her orient chambers came,
And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill:
Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,
Silvering the untainted gushes of its rill,
Which, pure from mossy beds of simple flowers
By many streams a little lake did fill,
Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,
And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.
John Keats.
A Morning Song
Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings.
And Phœbus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With every thing that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise:
Arise, arise!
William Shakespeare.
From "Cymbeline."
Evening in Paradise
Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird—
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
John Milton.
From "Paradise Lost."
Evening Song
Shepherds all, and maidens fair,
Fold your flocks up, for the air
'Gins to thicken, and the sun
Already his great course hath run.
See the dew-drops how they kiss
Every little flower that is,
Hanging on their velvet heads,
Like a rope of crystal beads:
See the heavy clouds low falling,
And bright Hesperus down calling
The dead Night from under ground;
At whose rising, mists unsound,
Damps and vapors fly apace,
Hovering o'er the wanton face
Of these pastures, where they come,
Striking dead both bud and bloom:
Therefore, from such danger lock
Every one his lovèd flock;
And let your dogs lie loose without,
Lest the wolf come as a scout
From the mountain, and, ere day,
Bear a lamb or kid away;
Or the crafty thievish fox
Break upon your simple flocks.
To secure yourselves from these,
Be not too secure in ease;
Let one eye his watches keep,
Whilst the other eye doth sleep;
So you shall good shepherds prove,
And for ever hold the love
Of our great god. Sweetest slumbers,
And soft silence, fall in numbers
On your eyelids! So, farewell!
Thus I end my evening's knell.
John Fletcher.
Night
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine
Rolls through the dark-blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert-circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!
A Fine Day
Clear had the day been from the dawn,
All chequer'd was the sky,
Thin clouds like scarfs of cobweb lawn
Veil'd heaven's most glorious eye.
The wind had no more strength than this,
That leisurely it blew,
To make one leaf the next to kiss
That closely by it grew.
Michael Drayton.
The Seasons
So forth issued the seasons of the year;
First, lusty Spring, all dight in leaves of flowers
That freshly budded, and new blooms did bear,
In which a thousand birds had built their bowers.
Edmund Spenser.
From "The Faerie Queene."
The Eternal Spring
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring.
March[1]
The stormy March is come at last,
With wind, and cloud, and changing skies;
I hear the rushing of the blast
That through the snowy valley flies.
Ah, passing few are they who speak,
Wild, stormy month, in praise of thee;
Yet though thy winds are loud and bleak,
Thou art a welcome month to me.
For thou, to northern lands, again
The glad and glorious sun dost bring;
And thou hast joined the gentle train
And wear'st the gentle name of Spring.
Then sing aloud the gushing rills
In joy that they again are free,
And, brightly leaping down the hills,
Renew their journey to the sea.
Thou bring'st the hope of those calm skies,
And that soft time of sunny showers,
When the wide bloom, on earth that lies,
Seems of a brighter world than ours.
William Cullen Bryant.
[1] By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works.
Spring
Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes; and now no more the frost
Candies the grass or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream:
But the warm sun thaws the benumbèd earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo and the bumble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful spring!
The valleys, hills, and woods, in rich array,
Welcome the coming of the longed-for May.
Thomas Carew.
Song to April[2]
April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
April, that mine ears
Like a lover greetest,
If I tell thee, sweetest,
All my hopes and fears,
April, April,
Laugh thy golden laughter,
But the moment after,
Weep thy golden tears!
William Watson.
[2] By courtesy of John Lane.
April in England
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree hole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field, and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops,—at the bent spray's edge—
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower,
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon flower.
Robert Browning.
April and May
April cold with dropping rain
Willows and lilacs brings again,
The whistle of returning birds,
And trumpet-lowing of the herds;
The scarlet maple-keys betray
What potent blood hath modest May;
What fiery force the earth renews,
The wealth of forms, the flush of hues;
What Joy in rosy waves outpoured,
Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
From "May-Day."
May
Then came fair May, the fairest maid on ground,
Deck'd all with dainties of her season's pride,
And throwing flowers out of her lap around:
Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride;
The twins of Leda, which on either side
Supported her like to their sovereign queen.
Lord! how all creatures laught when her they spied,
And leapt and danced as they had ravish'd been.
And Cupid's self about her fluttered all in green.
Edmund Spenser.
Song on May Morning
Now the bright morning star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
John Milton.
Summer
Then came jolly Summer, being dight
In a thin silken cassock, colored green,
That was unlined, all to be more light,
And on his head a garland well beseene.
Edmund Spenser.
June Weather
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking;
'T is heaven alone that is given away,
'T is only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,—
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
Now is the high tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it;
No matter how barren the past may have been,
'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;
The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For other couriers we should not lack,
We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,—
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!
James Russell Lowell.
From "The Vision of Sir Launfal."
July[3]
When the scarlet cardinal tells
Her dream to the dragon fly,
And the lazy breeze makes a nest in the trees,
And murmurs a lullaby,
It is July.
When the tangled cobweb pulls
The cornflower's cap awry,
And the lilies tall lean over the wall
To bow to the butterfly,
It is July.
When the heat like a mist-veil floats,
And poppies flame in the rye,
And the silver note in the streamlet's throat
Has softened almost to a sigh,
It is July.
When the hours are so still that time
Forgets them, and lets them lie
'Neath petals pink till the night stars wink
At the sunset in the sky,
It is July.
Susan Hartley Swett.
[3] By courtesy of Dana Estes & Co.
August
The sixth was August, being rich arrayed
In garment all of gold down to the ground;
Yet rode he not, but led a lovely maid
Forth by the lily hand, the which was crowned
With ears of corn, and full her hand was found:
That was the righteous Virgin, which of old
Lived here on earth, and plenty made abound.
Edmund Spenser.
In August
All the long August afternoon,
The little drowsy stream
Whispers a melancholy tune,
As if it dreamed of June,
And whispered in its dream.
The thistles show beyond the brook
Dust on their down and bloom,
And out of many a weed-grown nook
The aster flowers look
With eyes of tender gloom.
The silent orchard aisles are sweet
With smell of ripening fruit.
Through the sere grass, in shy retreat
Flutter, at coming feet,
The robins strange and mute.
There is no wind to stir the leaves,
The harsh leaves overhead;
Only the querulous cricket grieves,
And shrilling locust weaves
A song of summer dead.
William Dean Howells.
Autumn
Then came the Autumn all in yellow clad,
As though he joyèd in his plenteous store,
Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad
That he had banished hunger, which to-fore
Had by the belly oft him pinchèd sore:
Upon his head a wreath, that was enroll'd
With ears of corn of every sort, he bore;
And in his hand a sickle he did hold,
To reap the ripen'd fruits the which the earth had yold.
Edmund Spenser.
From "The Faerie Queene."
Sweet September
O sweet September! thy first breezes bring
The dry leafs rustle and the squirrel's laughter,
The cool, fresh air, whence health and vigor spring,
And promise of exceeding joy hereafter.
Autumn's Processional
Then step by step walks Autumn,
With steady eyes that show
Nor grief nor fear, to the death of the year,
While the equinoctials blow.
Dinah Maria Mulock.
October's Bright Blue Weather
O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;
When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;
When gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;
When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;
When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;
When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.
O sun and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.
H. H.
Maple Leaves
October turned my maple's leaves to gold;
The most are gone now; here and there one lingers:
Soon these will slip from out the twigs' weak hold,
Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.
"Down to Sleep"
November woods are bare and still,
November days are clear and bright,
Each noon burns up the morning's chill,
The morning's snow is gone by night,
Each day my steps grow slow, grow light,
As through the woods I reverent creep,
Watching all things "lie down to sleep."
I never knew before what beds,
Fragrant to smell and soft to touch,
The forest sifts and shapes and spreads.
I never knew before, how much
Of human sound there is, in such
Low tones as through the forest sweep,
When all wild things "lie down to sleep."
Each day I find new coverlids
Tucked in, and more sweet eyes shut tight.
Sometimes the viewless mother bids
Her ferns kneel down full in my sight,
I hear their chorus of "good night,"
And half I smile and half I weep,
Listening while they "lie down to sleep."
November woods are bare and still,
November days are bright and good,
Life's noon burns up life's morning chill,
Life's night rests feet that long have stood,
Some warm, soft bed in field or wood
The mother will not fail to keep
Where we can "lay us down to sleep."
H. H.
Winter
Lastly came Winter cloathèd all in frize,
Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill;
Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freeze,
And the dull drops that from his purple bill
As from a limbeck did adown distill;
In his right hand a tippèd staff he held
With which his feeble steps he stayèd still,
For he was faint with cold and weak with eld,
That scarce his loosèd limbs he able was to weld.
Edmund Spenser.
When Icicles Hang by the Wall
When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit!
To-who!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit!
To-who!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
William Shakespeare.
From "Love's Labor's Lost."
A Winter Morning
There was never a leaf on bush or tree,
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly;
The river was dumb and could not speak,
For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun;
A single crow on the tree-top bleak
From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun;
Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold,
As if her veins were sapless and old,
And she rose up decrepitly
For a last dim look at earth and sea.
James Russell Lowell.
From "The Vision of Sir Launfal."
The Snow Storm
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north-wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work:
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Old Winter
Old Winter sad, in snow yclad,
Is making a doleful din;
But let him howl till he crack his jowl,
We will not let him in.
Ay, let him lift from the billowy drift
His hoary, hagged form,
And scowling stand, with his wrinkled hand
Outstretching to the storm.
And let his weird and sleety beard
Stream loose upon the blast,
And, rustling, chime to the tinkling rime
From his bald head falling fast.
Let his baleful breath shed blight and death
On herb and flower and tree;
And brooks and ponds in crystal bonds
Bind fast, but what care we?
Let him push at the door,—in the chimney roar,
And rattle the window pane;
Let him in at us spy with his icicle eye,
But he shall not entrance gain.
Let him gnaw, forsooth, with his freezing tooth,
On our roof-tiles, till he tire;
But we care not a whit, as we jovial sit
Before our blazing fire.
Come, lads, let's sing, till the rafters ring;
Come, push the can about;—
From our snug fire-side this Christmas-tide
We'll keep old Winter out.
Thomas Noel.
Midwinter
The speckled sky is dim with snow,
The light flakes falter and fall slow;
Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale,
Silently drops a silvery veil;
And all the valley is shut in
By flickering curtains gray and thin.
But cheerily the chickadee
Singeth to me on fence and tree;
The snow sails round him as he sings,
White as the down of angels' wings.
I watch the slow flakes as they fall
On bank and brier and broken wall;
Over the orchard, waste and brown,
All noiselessly they settle down,
Tipping the apple-boughs, and each
Light quivering twig of plum and peach.
On turf and curb and bower-roof
The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof;
It paves with pearl the garden-walk;
And lovingly round tattered stalk
And shivering stem its magic weaves
A mantle fair as lily-leaves.
The hooded beehive small and low,
Stands like a maiden in the snow;
And the old door-slab is half hid
Under an alabaster lid.
All day it snows: the sheeted post
Gleams in the dimness like a ghost;
All day the blasted oak has stood
A muffled wizard of the wood;
Garland and airy cap adorn
The sumach and the wayside thorn,
And clustering spangles lodge and shine
In the dark tresses of the pine.
The ragged bramble, dwarfed and old,
Shrinks like a beggar in the cold;
In surplice white the cedar stands,
And blesses him with priestly hands.
Still cheerily the chickadee
Singeth to me on fence and tree:
But in my inmost ear is heard
The music of a holier bird;
And heavenly thoughts as soft and white
As snow-flakes on my soul alight,
Clothing with love my lonely heart,
Healing with peace each bruised part,
Till all my being seems to be
Transfigured by their purity.
John Townsend Trowbridge.
Dirge for the Year
"Orphan Hours, the Year is dead!
Come and sigh, come and weep!"
"Merry Hours, smile instead,
For the Year is but asleep;
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping."
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
INTERLEAVES
The World Beautiful
"Study Nature, not books," said that inspired teacher, Louis Agassiz.
The poets do not bring you the fruit of conscious study, perhaps, for they do not analyze or dissect Dame Nature's methods; with them genius begets a higher instinct, and it is by a sort of divination that they interpret for us the power and grandeur, romance and witchery, beauty and mystery of "God's great out-of-doors." The born poet, like the born naturalist, seems to have additional senses. Emerson says of his friend Thoreau that he saw as with microscope and heard as with ear-trumpet, while his memory was a photographic register of all he saw and heard; and Thoreau the naturalist might have said the same of Emerson the poet.
Glance at the succession of beautiful images in Shelley's "Cloud" or Aldrich's "Before the Rain", lend your ear to the tinkle of Tennyson's "Brook." Contrast them with the bracing lines of the "Northeast Wind," the rough metre of "Highland Cattle," the chill calm of "Snow Bound," the grand style of Milton's "Morning," the noble simplicity of Addison's "Hymn," and note how the great poet bends his language to the mood of Nature, grim or sunny, stormy or kind, strong or tender. There is a stanza in Pope's "Essay on Criticism" which conveys the idea perfectly:
"Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow:
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main."
II
THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL
The World Beautiful
Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistening with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night
With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon,
And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train.
John Milton.
From "Paradise Lost."
The Harvest Moon
It is the harvest moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, oh the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests;
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The Cloud
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack
When the morning-star shines dead,
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath
Its ardors of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky:
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Before the Rain
We knew it would rain, for all the morn,
A spirit on slender ropes of mist
Was lowering its golden buckets down
Into the vapory amethyst
Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens—
Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers,
Dipping the jewels out of the sea,
To sprinkle them over the land in showers.
We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
The white of their leaves, the amber grain
Shrunk in the wind—and the lightning now
Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Rain in Summer
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
From the neighboring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Engulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.
In the country on every side,
Where, far and wide,
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!
In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand,
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapors that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow after toil,
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man's spoken word.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Invocation to Rain in Summer
O gentle, gentle summer rain,
Let not the silver lily pine,
The drooping lily pine in vain
To feel that dewy touch of thine—
To drink thy freshness once again,
O gentle, gentle summer rain!
In heat the landscape quivering lies;
The cattle pant beneath the tree;
Through parching air and purple skies
The earth looks up, in vain, for thee;
For thee—for thee, it looks in vain,
O gentle, gentle summer rain!
Come, thou, and brim the meadow streams,
And soften all the hills with mist,
O falling dew! from burning dreams
By thee shall herb and flower be kissed;
And Earth shall bless thee yet again,
O gentle, gentle summer rain!
The Latter Rain
The latter rain,—it falls in anxious haste
Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare,
Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste
As if it would each root's lost strength repair;
But not a blade grows green as in the spring;
No swelling twig puts forth its thickening leaves;
The robins only 'mid the harvests sing,
Pecking the grain that scatters from the sheaves;
The rain falls still,—the fruit all ripened drops,
It pierces chestnut-bur and walnut-shell;
The furrowed fields disclose the yellow crops;
Each bursting pod of talents used can tell;
And all that once received the early rain
Declare to man it was not sent in vain.
Jones Very.
The Wind[4]
I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies' skirts across the grass—
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid,
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all—
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
Robert Louis Stevenson.
[4] From "A Child's Garden of Verses." By courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons.
Ode to the Northeast Wind
Welcome, wild Northeaster!
Shame it is to see
Odes to every zephyr;
Ne'er a verse to thee.
Welcome, black Northeaster!
O'er the German foam;
O'er the Danish moorlands,
From thy frozen home.
Tired we are of summer,
Tired of gaudy glare,
Showers soft and steaming,
Hot and breathless air.
Tired of listless dreaming,
Through the lazy day;
Jovial wind of winter
Turn us out to play!
Sweep the golden reed-beds;
Crisp the lazy dyke;
Hunger into madness
Every plunging pike.
Fill the lake with wild-fowl;
Fill the marsh with snipe;
While on dreary moorlands
Lonely curlew pipe.
Through the black fir forest
Thunder harsh and dry,
Shattering down the snowflakes
Off the curdled sky.
Hark! the brave Northeaster!
Breast-high lies the scent,
On by holt and headland,
Over heath and bent.
Chime, ye dappled darlings,
Through the sleet and snow,
Who can override you?
Let the horses go!
Chime, ye dappled darlings,
Down the roaring blast;
You shall see a fox die
Ere an hour be past.
Go! and rest to-morrow,
Hunting in your dreams,
While our skates are ringing
O'er the frozen streams.
Let the luscious South-wind
Breathe in lovers' sighs,
While the lazy gallants
Bask in ladies' eyes.
What does he but soften
Heart alike and pen?
'Tis the hard gray weather
Breeds hard English men.
What's the soft Southwester?
'Tis the ladies' breeze,
Bringing home their true loves
Out of all the seas;
But the black Northeaster,
Through the snowstorm hurled,
Drives our English hearts of oak,
Seaward round the world!
Come! as came our fathers,
Heralded by thee,
Conquering from the eastward,
Lords by land and sea.
Come! and strong within us
Stir the Vikings' blood;
Bracing brain and sinew;
Blow, thou wind of God!
The Windy Night[5]
Alow and aloof,
Over the roof,
How the midnight tempests howl!
With a dreary voice, like the dismal tune
Of wolves that bay at the desert moon;—
Or whistle and shriek
Through limbs that creak,
"Tu-who! tu-whit!"
They cry and flit,
"Tu-whit! tu-who!" like the solemn owl!
Alow and aloof,
Over the roof,
Sweep the moaning winds amain,
And wildly dash
The elm and ash,
Clattering on the window-sash,
With a clatter and patter,
Like hail and rain
That well nigh shatter
The dusky pane!
Alow and aloof,
Over the roof,
How the tempests swell and roar!
Though no foot is astir,
Though the cat and the cur
Lie dozing along the kitchen floor,
There are feet of air
On every stair!
Through every hall—
Through each gusty door,
There's a jostle and bustle,
With a silken rustle,
Like the meeting of guests at a festival!