For August, be your dwelling thirty towers Within an Alpine valley mountainous, Where never the sea-wind may vex your house,
But clear life separate, like a star, be yours.
There horses shall wait saddled at all hours, That ye may mount at morning or at eve: On each hand either ridge ye shall perceive,
A mile apart, which soon a good beast scours.
So alway, drawing homewards, ye shall tread Your valley parted by a rivulet Which day and night shall flow sedate and smooth.
There all through noon ye may possess the shade, And there your open purses shall entreat The best of Tuscan cheer to feed your youth.
~~ Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?) translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) from The Early Italian Poets, 1861
Fragrant odor of the dawn,
Sweet incense to waking souls,
While the fresh dew spreads the lawn,
And your spirit day controls,
Let me, underneath this tree
Standing, be possessed of thee.
See the robin in a dream
Poising on a grassy bank;
Hear, beneath, the singing stream,
In a meadow dewy-dank;
See the mother-pearly tips
Of the pink-white sorrel's lips.
Now adown the hilly slope
Like a father steps the sun,
And the pretty blossoms ope
Wide their eyelids, one by one;
And they seem to stir and say
Lisped prayers unto the day.
He who sleeps at dawn is dead
To more wonders than he knows;
Let me forth and early tread
Where the sunlit water flows,
Where the elm at dewy dawn
Flings his shadow down the lawn.
Let me feel, and yet be still;
Let me take, and yet not give;
Drink, till I have drunk my fill;
Then anew go forth and live.
Man has little honeyed pleasure
Unmixed in his manhood's measure.
~~
James Herbert Morse (1841-1923)
from Summer Haven Songs, 1886
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
~~ Dylan Thomas (1914-1954) from Deaths and Entrances, 1946
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]
Now the trees rest: the moon hath taught them sleep.
Like drowsy wings of bats are all their leaves,
Clinging together. Girls at ease who fold
Fair hands upon white necks and thro' dusk fields
Walk all content,— of them the trees have taken
Their way of evening rest; the yellow moon
With her pale gold hath lit their dreams that lisp
On the wind's murmurous lips. And low beyond
Burn those bright lamps beneath the moon more bright,
Lamps that but flash and sparkle and light not
The inward eye and musing thought, nor reach
Where, poplar-like, that tall-built campanile
Lifts to the neighbouring moon her head and feels
The pale gold like an ocean laving her.
~~
John Freeman (1880-1929)
from Fifty Poems, 1911
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
From the upland hidden, Where the hill is sunny Tawny like pure honey In the August heat,
Memories float unbidden Where the thicket serries Fragrant with ripe berries And the milk-weed sweet.
Like a prayer-mat holy Are the patterned mosses Which the twin-flower crosses With her flowerless vine;
In fragile melancholy The pallid ghost flowers hover As if to guard and cover The shadow of a shrine.
Where the pine-linnet lingered The pale water searches, The roots of gleaming birches Draw silver from the lake; The ripples, liquid-fingered, Plucking the root-layers, Fairy like lute players Lulling music make.
O to lie here brooding Where the pine-tree column Rises dark and solemn To the airy lair,
Where, the day eluding, Night is couched dream laden, Like a deep witch-maiden Hidden in her hair.
In filmy evanescence Wraithlike scents assemble, Then dissolve and tremble A little until they die;
Spirits of the florescence Where the bees searched and tarried Till the blossoms all were married In the days before July.
Light has lost its splendour, Light refined and sifted, Cool light and dream drifted Ventures even where,
(Seeping silver tender) In the dim recesses, Trembling mid her tresses, Hides the maiden hair.
Covered with the shy-light, Filling in the hushes, Slide the tawny thrushes Calling to their broods,
Hoarding till the twilight The song that made for noon-days Of the amorous June days Preludes and interludes.
The joy that I am feeling Is there something in it Unlike the warble the linnet Phrases and intones?
Or is a like thought stealing With a rapture fine, free Through the happy pine tree Ripening her cones?
In some high existence In another planet Where their poets cannot Know our birds and flowers,
Does the same persistence Give the dreams they issue Something like the tissue Of these dreams of ours?
O to lie athinking — Moods and whims! I fancy Only necromancy Could the web unroll, Only somehow linking Beauties that meet and mingle In this quiet dingle With the beauty of the whole.
~~ Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947) from Lundy's Lane, and other poems, 1916
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
O gold is the West and gold the river-waters
Washing past the sides of my yellow birch canoe,
Gold are the great drops that fall from my paddle,
The far-off hills cry a golden word of you.
I can almost see you! Where its own shadow
Creeps down the hill’s side, gradual and slow.
There you stand waiting; the goldenrod and thistle
Glad of you beside them — the fairest thing they know.
Down the worn foot-path, the tufted pines behind you,
Grey sheep between,— unfrightened as you pass;
Swift through the sun-glow, I to my loved one
Come, striving hard against the long trailing grass.
Soon shall I ground on the shining gravel-reaches:
Through the thick alders you will break your way:
Then your hand in mine, and our path is on the waters,—
For us the long shadows and the end of day.
Whither shall we go? See, over to the westward,
An hour of precious gold standeth still for you and me;
Still gleams the grain, all yellow on the uplands;
West is it, or East, O Love that you would be?
West now, or East? For, underneath the moonrise,
Also it is fair; and where the reeds are tall,
And the only little noise is the sound of quiet waters,
Heavy, like the rain, we shall hear the duck-oats fall.
And perhaps we shall see, rising slowly from the driftwood,
A lone crane go over to its inland nest:
Or a dark line of ducks will come in across the islands
And sail overhead to the marshes of the west.
Now a little wind rises up for our returning;
Silver grows the East as the West grows grey;
Shadows on the waters, shaded are the meadows,
The firs on the hillside — naught so dark as they.
Yet we have known the light!— Was ever such an August?
Your hand leaves mine; and the new stars gleam
As we separately go to our dreams of opened heaven, —
The golden dawn shall tell you that you did not dream.
~~ 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]
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