Read Ebook: Among the Millet and Other Poems by Lampman Archibald

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Ebook has 447 lines and 44323 words, and 9 pages

POEMS.

Among the Millet 1 April 2 An October Sunset 5 The Frogs 6 An Impression 9 Spring on the River 10 Why do ye call the Poet lonely 11 Heat 12 Among the Timothy 14 Freedom 18 Morning on the Li?vres 21 In October 23 Lament of the Winds 24 Ballade of Summer's Sleep 25 Winter 27 Winter Hues Recalled 30 Storm 34 Midnight 37 Song of the Stream-Drops 38 Between the Rapids 40 New Year's Eve 43 Unrest 45 Song 46 One Day 47 Sleep 48 Three Flower Petals 50 Passion 51 A Ballade of Waiting 52 Before Sleep 53 A Song 56 What Do Poets Want With Gold 58 The King's Sabbath 60 The Little Handmaiden 61 Abu Midjan 64 The Weaver 67 The Three Pilgrims 69 The Coming of Winter 73 Easter Eve 74 The Organist 82 The Monk 87 The Child's Music Lesson 103 An Athenian Reverie 105

SONNETS.

Love-Doubt 123 Perfect Love 124 Love-Wonder 125 Comfort 126 Despondency 127 Outlook 128 Gentleness 129 A Prayer 130 Music 131 Knowledge 132 Sight 133 An Old Lesson from the Fields 134 Winter-Thought 135 Deeds 136 Aspiration 137 The Poets 138 The Truth 139 The Martyrs 140 A Night of Storm 141 At the Railway Station 142 A Forecast 143 In November 144 The City 145 Midsummer Night 146 The Loons 147 March 148 Solitude 149 The Maples 150 The Dog 151

POEMS.

POEMS.

AMONG THE MILLET.

The dew is gleaming in the grass, The morning hours are seven, And I am fain to watch you pass, Ye soft white clouds of heaven.

Ye stray and gather, part and fold; The wind alone can tame you; I think of what in time of old The poets loved to name you.

They called you sheep, the sky your sward, A field without a reaper; They called the shining sun your lord, The shepherd wind your keeper.

Your sweetest poets I will deem The men of old for moulding In simple beauty such a dream, And I could lie beholding,

Where daisies in the meadow toss, The wind from morn till even, Forever shepherd you across The shining field of heaven.

APRIL.

Pale season, watcher in unvexed suspense, Still priestess of the patient middle day, Betwixt wild March's humored petulence And the warm wooing of green kirtled May, Maid month of sunny peace and sober grey, Weaver of flowers in sunward glades that ring With murmur of libation to the spring:

As memory of pain, all past, is peace, And joy, dream-tasted, hath the deepest cheer, So art thou sweetest of all months that lease The twelve short spaces of the flying year. The bloomless days are dead, and frozen fear No more for many moons shall vex the earth, Dreaming of summer and fruit laden mirth.

The grey song-sparrows full of spring have sung Their clear thin silvery tunes in leafless trees; The robin hops, and whistles, and among The silver-tasseled poplars the brown bees Murmur faint dreams of summer harvestries; The creamy sun at even scatters down A gold-green mist across the murmuring town.

All day across the ever-cloven soil, Strong horses labour, steaming in the sun, Down the long furrows with slow straining toil, Turning the brown clean layers; and one by one The crows gloom over them till daylight done Finds them asleep somewhere in dusk?d lines Beyond the wheatlands in the northern pines.

The old year's cloaking of brown leaves that bind The forest floor-ways, plated close and true-- The last love's labour of the autumn wind-- Is broken with curled flower buds white and blue In all the matted hollows, and speared through With thousand serpent-spotted blades up-sprung, Yet bloomless, of the slender adder-tongue.

In the warm noon the south wind creeps and cools, Where the red-budded stems of maples throw Still tangled etchings on the amber pools, Quite silent now, forgetful of the slow Drip of the taps, the troughs, and trampled snow, The keen March mornings, and the silvering rime And mirthful labour of the sugar prime.

Ah, I have wandered with unwearied feet, All the long sweetness of an April day, Lulled with cool murmurs and the drowsy beat Of partridge wings in secret thickets grey, The marriage hymns of all the birds at play, The faces of sweet flowers, and easeful dreams Beside slow reaches of frog-haunted streams;

Wandered with happy feet, and quite forgot The shallow toil, the strife against the grain, Near souls, that hear us call, but answer not, The loneliness, perplexity and pain, And high thoughts cankered with an earthly stain And then the long draught emptied to the lees, I turn me homeward in slow pacing ease,

Cleaving the cedar shadows and the thin Mist of grey gnats that cloud the river shore, Sweet even choruses, that dance and spin Soft tangles in the sunset; and once more The city smites me with its dissonant roar. To its hot heart I pass, untroubled yet, Fed with calm hope, without desire or fret.

So to the year's first altar step I bring Gifts of meek song, and make my spirit free With the blind working of unanxious spring, Careless with her, whether the days that flee Pale drouth or golden-fruited plenty see, So that we toil, brothers, without distress, In calm-eyed peace and godlike blamelessness.

AN OCTOBER SUNSET.

One moment the slim cloudflakes seem to lean With their sad sunward faces aureoled, And longing lips set downward brightening To take the last sweet hand kiss of the king, Gone down beyond the closing west acold; Paying no reverence to the slender queen, That like a curv?d olive leaf of gold Hangs low in heaven, rounded toward sun, Or the small stars that one by one unfold Down the gray border of the night begun.

THE FROGS.

Breathers of wisdom won without a quest, Quaint uncouth dreamers, voices high and strange, Flutists of lands where beauty hath no change, And wintery grief is a forgotten guest, Sweet murmurers of everlasting rest, For whom glad days have ever yet to run, And moments are as aeons, and the sun But ever sunken half-way toward the west.

Often to me who heard you in your day, With close wrapt ears, it could not choose but seem That earth, our mother, searching in what way, Men's hearts might know her spirit's inmost dream, Ever at rest beneath life's change and stir, Made you her soul, and bade you pipe for her.

In those mute days when spring was in her glee, And hope was strong, we knew not why or how, And earth, the mother, dreamed with brooding brow. Musing on life, and what the hours might be, When love should ripen to maternity, Then like high flutes in silvery interchange Ye piped with voices still and sweet and strange, And ever as ye piped, on every tree

The great buds swelled; among the pensive woods The spirits of first flowers awoke and flung From buried faces the close fitting hoods, And listened to your piping till they fell, The frail spring-beauty with her perfumed bell, The wind-flower, and the spotted adder-tongue.

All the day long, wherever pools might be Among the golden meadows, where the air Stood in a dream, as it were moor?d there Forever in a noon-tide reverie, Or where the birds made riot of their glee In the still woods, and the hot sun shone down, Crossed with warm lucent shadows on the brown Leaf-paven pools, that bubbled dreamily,

Or far away in whispering river meads And watery marshes where the brooding noon, Full with the wonder of its own sweet boon, Nestled and slept among the noiseless reeds, Ye sat and murmured, motionless as they, With eyes that dreamed beyond the night and day.

And when, day passed and over heaven's height, Thin with the many stars and cool with dew, The fingers of the deep hours slowly drew The wonder of the ever-healing night, No grief or loneliness or wrapt delight Or weight of silence ever brought to you Slumber or rest; only your voices grew More high and solemn; slowly with hushed flight

Ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn, Nor ever stirred, watching with fathomless eyes, And with your countless clear antiphonies Filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn, Last-risen, found you with its first pale gleam, Still with soft throats unaltered in your dream.

And slowly as we heard you, day by day, The stillness of enchanted reveries Bound brain and spirit and half-clos?d eyes, In some divine sweet wonder-dream astray; To us no sorrow or upreared dismay Nor any discord came, but evermore The voices of mankind, the outer roar, Grew strange and murmurous, faint and far away.

Morning and noon and midnight exquisitely, Wrapt with your voices, this alone we knew, Cities might change and fall, and men might die, Secure were we, content to dream with you, That change and pain are shadows faint and fleet, And dreams are real, and life is only sweet.

AN IMPRESSION.

I heard the city time-bells call Far off in hollow towers, And one by one with measured fall Count out the old dead hours;

I felt the march, the silent press Of time, and held my breath; I saw the haggard dreadfulness Of dim old age and death.

SPRING ON THE RIVER.

O sun, shine hot on the river; For the ice is turning an ashen hue, And the still bright water is looking through, And the myriad streams are greeting you With a ballad of life to the giver, From forest and field and sunny town, Meeting and running and tripping down, With laughter and song to the river.

Oh! the din on the boats by the river; The barges are ringing while day avails, With sound of hewing and hammering nails, Planing and painting and swinging pails, All day in their shrill endeavour; For the waters brim over their wintry cup, And the grinding ice is breaking up, And we must away down the river.

Oh! the hum and the toil of the river; The ridge of the rapid sprays and skips: Loud and low by the water's lips, Tearing the wet pines into strips, The saw mill is moaning ever. The little grey sparrow skips and calls On the rocks in the rain of the water falls, And the logs are adrift in the river.

Oh! restlessly whirls the river; The rivulets run and the cataract drones: The spiders are flitting over the stones: Summer winds float and the cedar moans; And the eddies gleam and quiver. O sun, shine hot, shine long and abide In the glory and power of thy summer tide On the swift longing face of the river.

WHY DO YE CALL THE POET LONELY.

Why do ye call the poet lonely, Because he dreams in lonely places? He is not desolate, but only Sees, where ye cannot, hidden faces.

HEAT.

From plains that reel to southward, dim, The road runs by me white and bare; Up the steep hill it seems to swim Beyond, and melt into the glare. Upward half way, or it may be Nearer the summit, slowly steals A hay-cart, moving dustily With idly clacking wheels.

Beyond me in the fields the sun Soaks in the grass and hath his will; I count the marguerites one by one; Even the buttercups are still. On the brook yonder not a breath Disturbs the spider or the midge. The water-bugs draw close beneath The cool gloom of the bridge.

Where the far elm-tree shadows flood Dark patches in the burning grass, The cows, each with her peaceful cud, Lie waiting for the heat to pass. From somewhere on the slope near by Into the pale depth of the noon A wandering thrush slides leisurely His thin revolving tune.

In intervals of dreams I hear The cricket from the droughty ground; The grass-hoppers spin into mine ear A small innumerable sound. I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze: The burning sky-line blinds my sight: The woods far off are blue with haze; The hills are drenched in light.

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