Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete

A DAY.

     Talk not of sad November, when a day
     Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,
     And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,
     Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

     On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines
     Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,
     Singing a pleasant song of summer still,
     A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.

     Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees,
     In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more;
     But still the squirrel hoards his winter store,
     And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.

     Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high
     Above, the spires of yellowing larches show,
     Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow
     And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat defy.

     O gracious beauty, ever new and old!
     O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear
     When the low sunshine warns the closing year
     Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold!

     Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing
     The sweet day yields; and, not disconsolate,
     With the calm patience of the woods I wait
     For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring!

     29th, Eleventh Month, 1886.