The Snowing of the Pines / Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The Snowing of the Pines

Softer than silence, stiller than still air
Float down from high pine-boughs the slender leaves.
The forest floor its annual boon receives
That comes like snowfall, tireless, tranquil, fair.
Gently they glide, gently they clothe the bare
Old rocks with grace. Their fall a mantle weaves
Of paler yellow than autumnal sheaves
Or those strange blossoms the witch-hazels wear.
Athwart long aisles the sunbeams pierce their way;
High up, the crows are gathering for the night;
The delicate needles fill the air; the jay
Takes through their golden mist his radiant flight;
They fall and fall, till at November’s close
The snow-flakes drop as lightly — snows on snows.

~~
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911)
from The World's Best Poetry, 1904

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas Wentworth Higginson biography

The Pines and the Sea / Christopher Pearse Cranch

XXI

The Pines and the Sea

Beyond the low marsh-meadows and the beach,
Seen through the hoary trunks of windy pines,
The long blue level of the ocean shines.
The distant surf, with hoarse, complaining speech,
Out from its sandy barrier seems to reach;
And while the sun behind the woods declines,
The moaning sea with sighing boughs combines,
And waves and pines make answer, each to each.
O melancholy soul, whom far and near,
In life, faith, hope, the same sad undertone
Pursues from thought to thought! thou needs must hear
An old refrain, too much, too long thine own:
'T is thy mortality infects thine ear;
The mournful strain was in thyself alone.

~~
Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892)
from Ariel and Caliban, with other poems, 1887

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Christopher Pearse Cranch biography

Pines against the Light - Pins à contre-jour / Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau

         

from Looking and Playing in Space

III - Outdoor Sketches

Pines against the Light

In the sun their foliage is like water
Islands of bright water
On the evergreens shaded black against the light

They trickle
Each feather and tuft
An island of bright water ending each branch
Each needle glint a thread of white water
Each feather dripping like a bubbling springlet

And flow away
No one knows where

They stream as I saw this spring
Willows dripping
The whole tree
Similarly silver
All glint all wave
All outflow of water's way
Like wind made visible
And appearing
Liquid
Through some magic window.

---
Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
translated by George J. Dance

[All rights reserved by the translator - used with permission]




Pins à contre-jour

Dans la lumière leur feuillage est comme l'eau
Des îles d'eau claire
Sur le noir de l'épinette ombrée à contre-jour

Ils ruissellent
Chaque aigrette et la touffe
Une île d'eau claire au bout de chaque branche
Chaque aiguille un reflet un fil d'eau vive
Chaque aigrette ruisselle comme une petite source qui bouillonne

Et s'écoule
On ne sait où.

Ils ruissellent comme j'ai vu ce printemps
Ruisseler les saules eux l'arbre entier
Pareillement argent tout reflet tout onde
Tout fuite d'eau passage
Comme du vent rendu visible
Et paraissant
Liquide
À travers quelque fenêtre magique.

~~
Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau (1912-1943)
de Regards et Jeux dans L'espace, 1937

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

Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau biography

The Pines / Robert Service

The Pines

We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines;
The gray moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines,
And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines.

On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions massed;
We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the ocean blast;
From empire of sea to empire of snow we grip our empire fast.

To the niggard lands were we driven, 'twixt desert and floes are we penned;
To us was the Northland given, ours to stronghold and defend;
Ours till the world be riven in the crash of the utter end;

Ours from the bleak beginning, through the aeons of death-like sleep;
Ours from the shock when the naked rock was hurled from the hissing deep;
Ours through the twilight ages of weary glacier creep.

Wind of the East, Wind of the West, wandering to and fro,
Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know
The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last to go!

We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar;
The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash and roar;
But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score.

We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap we lie;
From the white foam-fringe, where the breakers cringe to the peaks that tusk the sky,
We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked mere that gleams like a golden eye.

Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge where the vision ranges free:
Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye can see;
A steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant empery.

Sun, moon and stars give answer; shall we not staunchly stand,
Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand,
Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last, lone land?

~~ 
Robert Service (1874-1958)
from Songs of a Sourdough, 1907

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

Robert Service biography