AT
HOME AND ABROAD
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My
modest Northern garden
Is full of yellow flowers,
And quaking leaves and sunlight
And long noon hours.
It
hangs upon the hillside
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Above
the little town;
And there in pleasant weather
You can look far down,
To the broad dikes of Grand Pré
Roamed over by the herds,
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And
the purple Minas water
Where fish the white sea-birds.
I
watch the little vessels,
Where the slow rivers glide
Between the grassy orchards,
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| Come
in upon the tide.
For daily there accomplished
Is the sea's legerdemain,
To fill the land with rivers
And empty it again.
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Before you lies North Mountain,
Built like a long sea-wall—
A wonder in blue summer
And in the crimson fall.
The
sea-fogs cloud and mantle
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Along
its fir-dark crest,
While under it the fruit-lands
Have shelter and have rest.
And
when the goblin moonlight
Loiters upon her round
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Of
valley, marsh and mountain
To bless my garden-ground,—
(The
harvest moon that lingers
Until her task is done,
And all the grain is ripened
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| For
her great lord, the sun,)
I know that there due northward,
Under the polar star,
Sir Blomidon is fronting
Whatever storms there are.
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I cannot see those features
I love so well by day,
Calmed by a thousand summers,
Scarred by the winter's play;
Yet
there above the battle
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Of
the relentless tides,
Under the solemn starlight
He muses and abides.
And
in the magic stillness,
The moonlight's ghostly gleam |
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Makes
me its sylvan brother,
To rove the world a-dream.
That
wayward and oblivious
Mortal I seem to be
Shall habit not forever
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This
garden by the sea.
Not
Blomidon nor Grand Pré
Shall be his lasting home,
Nor all the Ardise country
Give room enough to roam. |
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Even to-night a little
He strays, and will not bide
The gossip of the flowers,
The rumour of the tide.
He
must be forth and seeking,
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Beyond
this garden-ground,
The arm-in-arm companion
For whom the sun goes round.
And
in the soft May weather
I walk with you again,
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Where
the terraces of Meudon
Look down upon the Seine. |
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