WOOD-FOLK
LORE. TO T.B.M.
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FOR
every one
Beneath the sun,
Where Autumn walks with quiet eyes,
There is a word,
Just overheard |
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| When
hill to purple hill replies.
This afternoon,
As warm as June,
With the red apples on the bough,
I set my ear
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To hark
and hear
The wood-folk talking, you know how.
There comes a "Hush!"
And then a "Tush,"
As tree to scarlet tree responds,
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"Babble
away!
He’ll not betray
The secrets of us vagabonds.
"Are we not all,
Both great and small,
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Cousins
and kindred in a joy
No school can teach,
No worldling reach,
Nor any wreck of chance destroy?"
And so we are,
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However
far
We journey ere the journey ends,
One brotherhood
With leaf and bud
And everything that wakes or wends. |
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The wind that blows
My autumn rose
Where Grand Pré looks to Blomidon,—
How great must be
The company |
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| Of roses
he has leaned upon,
Since first he shed
Their petals red
Through Persian gardens long ago,
When Omar heard
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His
muttered word
Rumoring things we may not know!
Our brother ghost,
He is a most
Incorrigible wanderer;
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And
still to-day
He takes his way
About my hills of spruce and fir;
Will neither bide
By the great tide,
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In apple
lands of Acadie,
Nor in the leaves
About your eaves,
Where Scituate looks out to sea. |
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