An October Sunset / Archibald Lampman

An October Sunset

One moment, the slim cloudflakes seem to lean
With their sad sunward faces aureoled,
And longing lips set downward brightening
To take the last sweet hand kiss of the king,
Gone down beyond the closing west acold;
Paying no reverence to the slender queen,
That like a curvèd olive leaf of gold
Hangs low in heaven, rounded toward sun,
Or the small stars that one by one unfold
Down the gray border of the night begun.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1883
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

 "An October Sunset" read by Richard Mitchley. Courtesy Richard Mitchley - Topic.

For My Darling / Archibald Lampman

from The Growth of Love

Hans Makart (1840-1885),

 Lady in a White Dress.
Wikimedia Commons.

    II – For My Darling

My lady is not learned in many books,
    Nor hath much love for grave discourses strung
    With gaudy similes, for she is young,
And full of merry pranks and laughing looks.
But yet her heart hath many tender nooks
    Of fervour and sweet charity; her tongue,
    For all its laughter, yet is often wrung
With soft compassion for life's painful crooks.

I love my lady for her lovely face,
    And for her mouth, and for her eyes, and hair;
More still I love her for her laughing grace,
    And for her wayward ways, and changeful air;
But most of all love gaineth ground apace,
    Because my lady's heart is pure and fair.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1885
from At the Long Sault, and other new poems, 1943

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Archibald Lampman biography

Valentine's Day on The Penny Blog

Winter-thought / Archibald Lampman

Evelyn Simak, Buttersups in the marshes, 2008 (detail). CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Winter-thought

The wind-swayed daisies, that on every side
    Throng the wide fields in whispering companies,
    Serene and gently smiling like the eyes
Of tender children long beatified,
The delicate thought-wrapped buttercups that glide
    Like sparks of fire above the wavering grass,
    And swing and toss with all the airs that pass,
Yet seem so peaceful, so preoccupied;

These are the emblems of pure pleasures flown,
    I scarce can think of pleasure without these.
Even to dream of them is to disown
    The cold forlorn midwinter reveries,
Lulled with the perfume of old hopes new-blown,
    No longer dreams, but dear realities.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Winter-thought" read for Audiobook Passion.

Autumn Maples / Archibald Lampman

Autumn Maples

The thoughts of all the maples who shall name,
    When the sad landscape turns to cold and grey?
    Yet some for very ruth and sheer dismay,
Hearing the northwind pipe the winter's name,
Have fired the hills with beaconing clouds of flame;
    And some with softer woe that day by day,
    So sweet and brief, should go the westward way,
Have yearned upon the sunset with such shame,
    That all their cheeks have turned to tremulous rose;
        Others for wrath have turned a rusty red,
        And some that knew not either grief or dread,
    Ere the old year should find its iron close,
Have gathered down the sun's last smiles acold,
Deep, deep, into their luminous hearts of gold.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Autumn Maples" read for Audiobook Passion.

Snow / Archibald Lampman

Snow

White are the far-off plains, and white
    The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
    And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
    Falls down scarce audibly.

The road before me smooths and fills
    Apace, and all about
The fences dwindle, and the hills
    Are blotted slowly out;      
The naked trees loom spectrally
    Into the dim white sky.

The meadows and far-sheeted streams
    Lie still without a sound;
Like some soft minister of dreams
    The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
    A silence everywhere.

Save when at lonely intervals
    Some farmer’s sleigh, urged on,  
With rustling runners and sharp bells,
    Swings by me and is gone;
Or from the empty waste I hear
    A sound remote and clear;

The barking of a dog, or call
    To cattle, sharply pealed,
Borne echoing from some wayside stall
    Or barnyard far a-field;
Then all is silent, and the snow
    Falls, settling soft and slow.  

The evening deepens, and the gray
    Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
    Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream,  
    Plod dumbly on, and dream.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Lyrics of Earth, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Snow" composed & sung by Loreena McKennitt. Courtesy autostopowitz 70.

Winter Solitude / Archibald Lampman

Winter Solitude

I saw the city's towers on a luminous pale-gray sky;
Beyond them a hill of the softest mistiest green,
With naught but frost and the coming of night between,
And a long thin cloud above the colour of August rye.

I sat in the midst of a plain on my snowshoes with bended knee
Where the thin wind stung my cheeks,
And the hard snow ran in little ripples and peaks,
Like the fretted floor of a white and petrified sea.

And a strange peace gathered about my soul and shone,
As I sat reflecting there,
In a world so mystically fair,
So deathly silent  —  I so utterly alone.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from At the Long Sault, and other new poems, 1943

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Winter Solitude" film and reading by Finn Harvor.

Indian Summer / Archibald Lampman

Indian Summer

The old grey year is near his term in sooth,
And now with backward eye and soft-laid palm
Awakens to a golden dream of youth,
A second childhood lovely and most calm,
And the smooth hour about his misty head                            
An awning of enchanted splendour weaves,
Of maples, amber, purple and rose-red,
And droop-limbed elms down-drooping golden leaves.
With still half-fallen lids he sits and dreams
Far in a hollow of the sunlit wood,    
Lulled by the murmur of thin-threading streams,
Nor sees the polar armies overflood
The darkening barriers of the hills, nor hears
The north-wind ringing with a thousand spears.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Alcyone, 1899

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

In March / Archibald Lampman

In March

The sun falls warm: the southern winds awake:
The air seethes upward with a steamy shiver:
Each dip of the road is now a crystal lake,
And every rut a little dancing river.
Through great soft clouds that sunder overhead  
The deep sky breaks as pearly blue as summer:
Out of a cleft beside the river’s bed
Flaps the black crow, the first demure newcomer.
The last seared drifts are eating fast away
With glassy tinkle into glittering laces:        
Dogs lie asleep, and little children play
With tops and marbles in the sunbare places;
And I that stroll with many a thoughtful pause
Almost forget that winter ever was.

~~

Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)

from Alcyone, 1899

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"In March". Courtesy The Poetry Parlor.

Winter Evening / Archibald Lampman

Winter Evening

To-night the very horses springing by
Toss gold from whitened nostrils. In a dream
The streets that narrow to the westward gleam
Like rows of golden palaces; and high
From all the crowded chimneys tower and die
A thousand aureoles. Down in the west
The brimming plains beneath the sunset rest,
One burning sea of gold. Soon, soon shall fly
The glorious vision, and the hours shall feel
A mightier master; soon from height to height,
With silence and the sharp unpitying stars,
Stern creeping frosts, and winds that touch like steel,
Out of the depth beyond the eastern bars,
Glittering and still shall come the awful night.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Alcyone, 1899

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Winter Evening" read for LibriVox.org. Courtesy Vintage Entertainment.

Morning on the Lièvres / Archibald Lampman

Morning on the Lièvres

Far above us where a jay
Screams his matins to the day,
Capped with gold and amethyst,
Like a vapour from the forge
Of a giant somewhere hid,
Out of hearing of the clang
Of his hammer, skirts of mist
Slowly up the woody gorge
Lift and hang.

Softly as a cloud we go,                
Sky above and sky below,
Down the river, and the dip
Of the paddles scarcely breaks,
With the little silvery drip
Of the water as it shakes              
From the blades, the crystal deep
Of the silence of the morn,
Of the forest yet asleep,
And the river reaches borne
In a mirror, purple grey,              
Sheer away
To the misty line of light,
Where the forest and the stream
In a shadow meet and plight,
Like a dream.                          

From amid a stretch of reeds,
Where the lazy river sucks
All the water as it bleeds
From a little curling creek,
And the muskrats peer and sneak        
In around the sunken wrecks
Of a tree that swept the skies
Long ago,
On a sudden seven ducks
With a splashy rustle rise,            
Stretching out their seven necks,
One before, and two behind,
And the others all arow,
And as steady as the wind
With a swivelling whistle go,
Through the purple shadow led,
Till we only hear their whir
In behind a rocky spur,
Just ahead.

 ~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1886
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain world-wide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Morning on the Lievre" read by George Whalley, 1961. Courtesy National Film Board.

(Poem begins at 5:00)

In October / Archibald Lampman

In October

Along the waste, a great way off, the pines,
     Like tall slim priests of storm, stand up and bar
The low long strip of dolorous red that lines
     The under west, where wet winds moan afar.
The cornfields all are brown, and brown the meadows
     With the blown leaves' wind-heaped traceries,
And the brown thistle stems that cast no shadows,
     And bear no bloom for bees.

As slowly earthward leaf by red leaf slips,
     The sad leaves rustle in chill misery,
A soft strange inner sound of pain-crazed lips,
     That move and murmur incoherently;
As if all leaves, that yet have breath, were sighing,
     With pale hushed throats, for death is at the door,
So many low soft masses for the dying
     Sweet leaves that live no more.

Here I will sit upon this naked stone,
     Draw my coat closer with my numbed hands,
And hear the ferns sigh, and the wet woods moan,
     And send my heart out to the ashen lands;
And I will ask myself what golden madness,
     What balmed breaths of dreamland spicery,
What visions of soft laughter and light sadness
     Were sweet last month to me.

The dry dead leaves flit by with thin weird tunes,
     Like failing murmurs of some conquered creed,
Graven in mystic markings with strange runes,
     That none but stars and biting winds may read;
Here I will wait a little; I am weary,
     Not torn with pain of any lurid hue,
But only still and very gray and dreary,
     Sweet sombre lands, like you.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"In October" read for LibriVox.org. Courtesy The Finest Archive.

September / Archibald Lampman

September

Now hath the summer reached her golden close,
     And, lost amid her corn-fields, bright of soul,
Scarcely perceives from her divine repose
     How near, how swift, the inevitable goal:
Still, still, she smiles, though from her careless feet
     The bounty and the fruitful strength are gone,
     And through the soft long wondering days goes on
The silent sere decadence sad and sweet.

The kingbird and the pensive thrush are fled,
     Children of light, too fearful of the gloom;
The sun falls low, the secret word is said,
     The mouldering woods grow silent as the tomb;
Even the fields have lost their sovereign grace,
     The cone-flower and the marguerite; and no more,
     Across the river's shadow-haunted floor,
The paths of skimming swallows interlace.

Already in the outland wilderness
     The forests echo with unwonted dins;
In clamorous gangs the gathering woodmen press
     Northward, and the stern winter's toil begins.
Around the long low shanties, whose rough lines
     Break the sealed dreams of many an unnamed lake,
     Already in the frost-clear morns awake
The crash and thunder of the falling pines.

Where the tilled earth, with all its fields set free,
     Naked and yellow from the harvest lies,
By many a loft and busy granary,
     The hum and tumult of the thrashers rise;
There the tanned farmers labor without slack,
     Till twilight deepens round the spouting mill,
     Feeding the loosened sheaves, or with fierce will,
Pitching waist-deep upon the dusty stack.

Still a brief while, ere the old year quite pass,
     Our wandering steps and wistful eyes shall greet
The leaf, the water, the beloved grass;
     Still from these haunts and this accustomed seat
I see the wood-wrapt city, swept with light,
     The blue long-shadowed distance, and, between,
     The dotted farm-lands with their parcelled green,
The dark pine forest and the watchful height.

I see the broad rough meadow stretched away
     Into the crystal sunshine, wastes of sod,
Acres of withered vervain, purple-gray,
     Branches of aster, groves of goldenrod;
And yonder, toward the sunlit summit, strewn
     With shadowy boulders, crowned and swathed with weed,
     Stand ranks of silken thistles, blown to seed,
Long silver fleeces shining like the noon.

In far-off russet corn-fields, where the dry
     Gray shocks stand peaked and withering, half concealed
In the rough earth, the orange pumpkins lie,
     Full-ribbed; and in the windless pasture-field
The sleek red horses o'er the sun-warmed ground
     Stand pensively about in companies,
     While all around them from the motionless trees
The long clean shadows sleep without a sound.

Under cool elm-trees floats the distant stream,
     Moveless as air; and o'er the vast warm earth
The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream,
     A liquid cool elixir – all its girth
Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency,
     Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills
     The utmost valleys and the thin last hills,
Nor mars one whit their perfect clarity.

Thus without grief the golden days go by,
     So soft we scarcely notice how they wend,
And like a smile half happy, or a sigh,
     The summer passes to her quiet end;
And soon, too soon, around the cumbered eaves
     Sly frosts shall take the creepers by surprise,
     And through the wind-touched reddening woods shall rise
October with the rain of ruined leaves.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Lyrics of Earth, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"September" read org by Bruce Kachuk for LibriVox. Courtesy Books: Two.

April in the Hills / Archibald Lampman

April in the Hills

To-day the world is wide and fair
With sunny fields of lucid air,
And waters dancing everywhere;
    The snow is almost gone;
The noon is builded high with light,                      
     And over heaven’s liquid height,
In steady fleets serene and white,
    The happy clouds go on.

The channels run, the bare earth steams,
And every hollow rings and gleams                          
With jetting falls and dashing streams;
    The rivers burst and fill;
The fields are full of little lakes,
And when the romping wind awakes
The water ruffles blue and shakes,                        
    And the pines roar on the hill.

The crows go by, a noisy throng;
About the meadows all day long
The shore-lark drops his brittle song;
    And up the leafless tree                              
The nut-hatch runs, and nods, and clings;
The bluebird dips with flashing wings,
The robin flutes, the sparrow sings,
    And the swallows float and flee.

I break the spirit’s cloudy bands,                        
A wanderer in enchanted lands,
I feel the sun upon my hands;
    And far from care and strife
The broad earth bids me forth. I rise
With lifted brow and upward eyes.                          
I bathe my spirit in blue skies,
    And taste the springs of life.

I feel the tumult of new birth;
I waken with the wakening earth;
I match the bluebird in her mirth;                            
     And wild with wind and sun,
A treasurer of immortal days,
I roam the glorious world with praise,
The hillsides and the woodland ways,
    Till earth and I are one.                              

~~

Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Lyrics of Earth, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"April in the Hills" read by Mackenzie Nikol Greenwood. Courtesy Insight Swami.

Solitude / Archibald Lampman

Solitude

How still it is here in the woods. The trees
Stand motionless, as if they did not dare
To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air
Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze.
Even this little brook, that runs at ease,
Whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed,
Seems but to deepen, with its curling thread
Of sound, the shadowy sun-pierced silences.
Sometimes a hawk screams or a woodpecker
Startles the stillness from its fixèd mood
With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear
The dreamy white-throat from some far off tree
Pipe slowly on the listening solitude,
His five pure notes succeeding pensively.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Among the Millett, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Solitude" read for Audiobook Passion.

Heat / Archibald Lampman

Heat

From plains that reel to southward, dim,
  The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
  Beyond, and melt into the glare.
Upward half-way, or it may be
  Nearer the summit, slowly steals
A hay-cart, moving dustily
  With idly clacking wheels.

By his cart's side the wagoner
  Is slouching slowly at his ease,
Half-hidden in the windless blur
  Of white dust puffing to his knees.
This wagon on the height above,
  From sky to sky on either hand,
Is the sole thing that seems to move
  In all the heat-held land.

Beyond me in the fields the sun
  Soaks in the grass and hath his will;
I count the marguerites one by one;
  Even the buttercups are still.
On the brook yonder not a breath
  Disturbs the spider or the midge.
The water-bugs draw close beneath
  The cool gloom of the bridge.

Where the far elm-tree shadows flood
  Dark patches in the burning grass,
The cows, each with her peaceful cud,
  Lie waiting for the heat to pass.
From somewhere on the slope near by
  Into the pale depth of the noon
A wandering thrush slides leisurely
  His thin revolving tune.

In intervals of dreams I hear
  The cricket from the droughty ground;
The grasshoppers spin into mine ear
  A small innumerable sound.
I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze:
  The burning sky-line blinds my sight:
The woods far off are blue with haze;
  The hills are drenched in light.

And yet to me not this or that
  Is always sharp or always sweet;
In the sloped shadow of my hat
  I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Nay more, I think some blessed power
  Hath brought me wandering idly here:
In the full furnace of this hour
  My thoughts grow keen and clear.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1887
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

Midsummer Night / Archibald Lampman

Midsummer Night

Mother of balms and soothings manifold,
Quiet-breathed night whose brooding hours are seven,
To whom the voices of all rest are given,
And those few stars whose scattered names are told,
Far off beyond the westward hills outrolled,
Darker than thou, more still, more dreamy even,
The golden moon leans in the dusky heaven,
And under her one star – a point of gold:

And all go slowly lingering toward the west,
As we go down forgetfully to our rest,
Weary of daytime, tired of noise and light:
Ah, it was time that thou should'st come; for we
Were sore athirst, and had great need of thee,
Thou sweet physician, balmy-bosomed night.

~~
Archibald Lampman  (1861-1899)
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Midsummer Night" sung for Eterknity.

Ballade of Summer's Sleep / Archibald Lampman

Ballade of Summer's Sleep

Sweet summer is gone; they have laid her away —
     The last sad hours that were touched with her grace —
In the hush where the ghosts of the dead flowers play;
    The sleep that is sweet of her slumbering space
Let not a sight or a sound erase
     Of the woe that hath fallen on all the lands:
Gather, ye dreams, to her sunny face,
     Shadow her head with your golden hands.

The woods that are golden and red for a day
     Girdle the hills in a jewelled case,
Like a girl’s strange mirth, ere the quick death slay
     The beautiful life that he hath in chase.
Darker and darker the shadows pace
     Out of the north to the southern sands,
Ushers bearing the winter’s mace:
     Keep them away with your woven hands.

The yellow light lies on the wide wastes gray,
     More bitter and cold than the winds that race,
From the skirts of the autumn, tearing away,
     This way and that way, the woodland lace.
In the autumn’s cheek is a hectic trace;
     Behind her the ghost of the winter stands;
Sweet summer will moan in her soft gray place:
     Mantle her head with your glowing hands.

Envoi

Till the slayer be slain and the spring displace
     The might of his arms with her rose-crowned bands,
Let her heart not gather a dream that is base:
      Shadow her head with your golden hands.

~~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

"Ballade of Summer's Sleep" read for Audiobook Passion.

Archibald Lampman biography

After Rain / Archibald Lampman

After Rain

For three whole days across the sky,
In sullen packs that loomed and broke,
With flying fringes dim as smoke,
The columns of the rain went by;
At every hour the wind awoke;
The darkness passed upon the plain;
The great drops rattled at the pane.

Now piped the wind, or far aloof
Fell to a sough remote and dull;
And all night long with rush and lull
The rain kept drumming on the roof:
I heard till ear and sense were full
The clash or silence of the leaves,
The gurgle in the creaking eaves.

But when the fourth day came  – at noon,
The darkness and the rain were by;
The sunward roofs were steaming dry;
And all the world was flecked and strewn
With shadows from a fleecy sky.
The haymakers were forth and gone,
And every rillet laughed and shone.

Then, too, on me that loved so well
The world, despairing in her blight,
Uplifted with her least delight,
On me, as on the earth, there fell
New happiness of mirth and might;
I strode the valleys pied and still;
I climbed upon the breezy hill.

I watched the gray hawk wheel and drop,
Sole shadow on the shining world;
I saw the mountains clothed and curled,
With forest ruffling to the top;
I saw the river's length unfurled,
Pale silver down the fruited plain,
Grown great and stately with the rain.

Through miles of shadow and soft heat,
Where field and fallow, fence and tree,
Were all one world of greenery,
I heard the robin ringing sweet,
The sparrow piping silverly,
The thrushes at the forest's hem;
And as I went I sang with them.

---
Archibald Lampman
From Lyrics of Earth, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"After Rain". Courtesy shortpoetry.

The Last Storm / Archibald Lampman

The Last Storm

From north, from east, the strong wind hurries down;
Against the window-pane the sleet rings fast;
The moon hath hid her face away, aghast,
And darkness keeps each corner of the town.
The garden hedges wear a heavy crown,
And the old poplars shriek, as night drifts past,
That, leagues on desolate leagues away, at last
One comes to know that he must surely drown.
And yet at noon, tomorrow, when I go
Out to the white, white edges of the plain,
I shall not grieve for this night's hurricane,
Seeing how, in a little hollow, sinks the snow
Around the southmost tree, where a lean crow
Sits noisily impatient for the rain.

---
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1897
from Complete Poems, 1900

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

Winter Uplands / Archibald Lampman

  
Winter Uplands

The frost that stings like fire upon my cheek,
The loneliness of this forsaken ground,
The long white drift upon whose powdered peak
I sit in the great silence as one bound;
The rippled sheet of snow where the wind blew
Across the open fields for miles ahead;
The far-off city towered and roofed in blue
A tender line upon the western red;
The stars that singly, then in flocks appear,
Like jets of silver from the violet dome,
So wonderful, so many and so near,
And then the golden moon to light me home —
     The crunching snowshoes and the stinging air,
     And silence, frost, and beauty everywhere.

---
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1899
from Poems, 1900

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

"Winter Uplands" read by Jo-Ann Dawson. 

Courtesy St. Mary Magdalene, Toronto - Anglican Church.