A New England Thanksgiving
IT is the mellow season
When gold enchantment lies
On stream and road and woodland,
To gladden soul's surmise.
The little old grey homesteads
Are quiet as can be,
Among their stone-fenced orchards
And meadows by the sea.
Here lived the men who gave us
The purpose that holds fast,
The dream that nerves endeavor,
The glory that shall last.
Here strong as pines in winter
And free as ripening corn,
Our faith in fair ideals —
Our fathers' faiths —was born.
Here shone through simple living,
With pride in word and deed,
And consciences of granite,
The old New England breed.
With souls assayed by hardship,
Illumined, self-possessed,
Strongly they lived, and left us
Their passion for the best.
On trails that cut the sunset,
Above the last divide,
The vision has not vanished,
The whisper has not died.
From Shasta to Katahdin,
Blue Hill to Smoky Ridge,
Still stand the just convictions
That stood at Concord Bridge.
Beneath our gilded revel,
Behind our ardent boast,
Above our young impatience
To value least and most,
Sure as the swinging compass
To serve at touch of need,
Square to the world's four corners,
Abides their fearless creed.
Still fired with wonder-working,
Intolerant of peers,
Impetuous and sanguine
After the hundred years,
In likeness to our fathers,
Beyond the safe-marked scope
Of reason and decorum,
We jest and dare and hope.
Thank we the Blood that bred us,
Clear fibre and clean strain —
The Truth which straightly sighted
Lets no one swerve again.
And may almighty Goodness
Give us the will to be
As sweet as upland pastures,
And strong as wind at sea.
New England June
THESE things I remember
Of New England June,
Like a vivid day-dream
In the azure noon,
While one haunting figure
Strays through every scene,
Like the soul of beauty
Through her lost demesne.
Gardens full of roses
And peonies a-blow
In the dewy morning,
Row on stately row,
Spreading their gay patterns,
Crimson, pied and cream,
Like some gorgeous fresco
Or an Eastern dream.
Nets of waving sunlight
Falling through the trees;
Fields of gold-white daisies
Rippling in the breeze;
Lazy lifting groundswells,
Breaking green as jade
On the lilac beaches,
Where the shore-birds wade.
Orchards full of blossom,
Where the bob-white calls
And the honeysuckle
Climbs the old gray walls;
Groves of silver birches,
Beds of roadside fern,
In the stone-fenced pasture
At the river's turn.
Out of every picture
Still she comes to me
With the morning freshness
Of the summer sea, —
A glory in her bearing,
A sea-light in her eyes,
As if she could not forget
The spell of Paradise.
Thrushes in the deep woods,
With their golden themes,
Fluting like the choirs
At the birth of dreams.
Fireflies in the meadows
At the gate of Night,
With their fairy lanterns
Twinkling soft and bright.
Ah, not in the roses,
Nor the azure noon,
Nor the thrushes' music,
Lies the soul of June.
It is something finer,
More unfading far,
Than the primrose evening
And the silver star;
Something of the rapture
My beloved had,
When she made the morning
Radiant and glad,—
Something of her gracious
Ecstasy of mien,
That still haunts the twilight,
Loving though unseen.
When the ghostly moonlight
Walks my garden ground,
Like a leisurely patrol
On his nightly round,
These things I remember
Of the long ago,
While the slumbrous roses
Neither care nor know.
