free-verse54 lines
Wood-Folk Lore. To T. B. M.
by Bliss Carman (William)For every one
Beneath the sun,
Where Autumn walks with quiet eyes,
There is a word,
Just overheard
When hill to purple hill replies.
This afternoon,
As warm as June,
With the red apples on the bough,
I set my ear
To hark and hear
The wood-folk talking, you know how.
There comes a "Hush!"
And then a "Tush,"
As tree to scarlet tree responds,
"Babble away!
He'll not betray
The secrets of us vagabonds.
"Are we not all,
Both great and small,
Cousins and kindred in a joy
No school can teach,
No worldling reach,
Nor any wreck of chance destroy?"
And so we are,
However far
We journey ere the journey ends,
One brotherhood
With leaf and bud
And everything that wakes or wends.
The wind that blows
My autumn rose
Where Grand Pr' looks to Blomidon,--
How great must be
The company
Of roses he has leaned upon,
Since first he shed
Their petals red
Through Persian gardens long ago,
When Omar heard
His muttered word
Rumoring things we may not know!
Our brother ghost,
He is a most
Incorrigible wanderer;
And still to-day
He takes his way
About my hills of spruce and fir;
Will neither bide
By the great tide,
In apple lands of Acadie,
Nor in the leaves
About your eaves,
Where Scituate looks out to sea.