A March Wind / Francis Sherman

A March Wind

High above the trees, swinging in across the hills,
   There’s a wide cloud, ominous and slow;
And the wind that rushes over sends the little stars to cover
   And the wavering shadow fade along the snow.
Surely on my window (Hark the tumult of the night!)
   That’s a first, fitful drop of scanty rain;
And the hillside wakes and quivers with the strength of newborn rivers
   Come to make our Northland glad and free again.

O remember how the snow fell the long winter through!
   Was it yesterday I tied your snowshoes on?
All my soul grew wild with yearning for the sight of your returning
   But I waited all those hours that you were gone.
For I watched you from our window through the blurring flakes that fell
   Till you gained the quiet wood, and then I knew
(When our pathways lay together how we reveled in such weather!)
   That the ancient things I loved would comfort you.

Now I knew that you would tarry in the shadow of the firs
   And remember many winters overpast;
All the hidden signs I found you of the hiding life around you,
   Sleeping patient till the year should wake at last.
Here a tuft of fern underneath the rounded drift;
   A rock, there, behind a covered spring;
And here, nowhither tending, tracks beginning not nor ending,— 
   Was it bird or shy four-footed furry thing?

And remember how we followed down the woodman’s winding trail!
   By the axe-strokes ringing louder, one by one,
Well we knew that we were nearing now the edges of the clearing,—
   O the gleam of chips all yellow in the sun!
But the twilight fell about us as we watched him at his work;
   And in the south a sudden moon, hung low,
Beckoned us beyond the shadows — down the hill — across the meadows
   Where our little house loomed dark against the snow.

And that night, too — remember?— outside our quiet house,
   Just before the dawn we heard the moaning wind;
Only then its wings were weighted with the storm itself created
   And it hid the very things it came to find.
In the morn, when we arose, and looked out across the fields,
   (Hark the branches! how they shatter overhead!)
Seemed it not that Time was sleeping, and the whole wide world was keeping
   All the silence of the Houses of the Dead?

Ah, but that was long ago! And tonight the wind foretells
   (Hark, above the wind, the little laughing rills!)
Earth’s forgetfulness of sorrow when the dawn shall break tomorrow
   And lead me to the bases of the hills:
To the low southern hills where of old we used to go —
   (Hark the rumor of ten thousand ancient Springs!)
O my love, to thy dark quiet — far beyond our North’s mad riot —
   Do thy new Gods bring remembrance of such things?

~~
Francis Sherman (1871-1926)
From A Canadian Calendar: XII lyrics, 1900

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Francis Sherman biography