Anthology of Massachusetts Poets | Page 4

brotherhood
From sea to
shining sea!
KATHERINE LEE BATES
YELLOW CLOVER
MUST I, who walk alone,
come on it still,
This Puck of plants

The wise would do away with,
The sunshine slants
To play with,

Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,
Which once in Parting
for a time
That then seemed long,
Ere time for you was over,
We
sealed our own?
Do you remember yet,
O Soul beyond the stars,

Beyond the uttermost dim bars
Of space,
Dear Soul, who found
earth sweet,
Remember by love's grace,
In dreamy hushes of the
heavenly song,
How suddenly we halted in our climb,
Lingering,
reluctant, up that farthest hill,
Stooped for the blossoms closest to our
feet,
And gave them as a token
Each to Each,
In lieu of speech,

In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,
Those little, gypsy,
wondering blossoms wet
With a strange dew of tears?
So it began,
This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover,
To be our
tenderest language. All the years
It lent a new zest to the summer
hours,
As each of us went scheming to surprise
The other with our
homely, laureate flowers.
Sonnets and odes
Fringing our daily
roads.
Can amaranth and asphodel
Bring merrier laughter to your
eyes?
Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes,

Keep any wistful
consciousness of earth,
Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love,

Simplicities of mirth,
Must follow them above
With touches of
vague homesickness that pass
Like shadows of swift birds across the
grass.
Beneath some foreign arch of sky,
How many a time the
rover
You or I,
For life oft sundered look from look,
And voice
from voice, the transient dearth
Schooling my soul to brook
This
distance that no messages may span,
Would chance
Upon our

wilding by a lonely well,
Or drowsy watermill,
Or swaying to the
chime of convent bell,
Or where the nightingales of old romance

With tragical contraltos fill
Dim solitudes of infinite desire;
And
once I joyed to meet
Our peasant gadabout
A trespasser on trim,
seigniorial seat,
Twinkling a saucy eye
As potentates paced by.
Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame
From friendship's altar fire!

How proudly we would pluck and tame
The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay!
How swiftly they were sent

Far, far away
On journeys wide,
By sea and continent,
Green
miles and blue leagues over,
From each of us to each,
That so our
hearts might reach,
And touch within the yellow clover,
Love's letter to be glad about
Like sunshine when it came!
My sorrow asks no healing; it is love;
Let love then make me brave

To bear the keen hurts of
This careless summertide,
Ay, of our own
poor flower,
Changed with our fatal hour,
For all its sunshine
vanished when you died;
Only white clover blossoms on your grave.
KATHERINE LEE BATES
THE RETURNING
We long for her, we yearn for her--
Yes, ardently we yearn
For her
return.
Recalling those beloved days
(Days intimate with ways
Of
friends so near to us
And life so dear to us),
We yearn unspeakably
for her return.
And come she must. . .Yet while we trust
We soon may see the
passing of this agony
Which makes intrusive years still seem
A
fearsome dream,
We know that when she comes

She really comes
not back again.

She'll come in other guise
And under fairer skies--
And yet to bitter
pain!
That day she went away
Our homes with laughing youth were
filled.
Where then was happiness
Is now distress,
The laughter
stilled;
For when she left
Youth followed herWe
stay bereft.
So all our golden joy
For what she brings
Must carry gray alloy:

The sorrow that she can not lay,
The mysery that she can not
stayWhile
all the gladsome songs she sings
Must bear for
undertones
Old sighs and echoed moans.
As they who go away
In flush of youth
May come quite worn and
gray
And bringing naught but ruthSo,
when the strife shall cease,

And when she comes at last,
When all the armies vast
Shall at her
feet
Kneel down to greet
Thrice welcome Peace,
This world will
be so changed
(So many dear ones dead,
So many friends estranged,

So many blessings fled,
So many wonted ways forever barred,
So
many coming days forever marred)
That then
She truly comes not
back again--
She, the Peace we knew.
Yet how we long for her!
How ardently we yearn
For her return!
SYLVESTER BAXTER
TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL
I.
YOUTH
I LOVE to watch the world from here, for all
The numberless living
portraits that are drawn
Upon the mind. Far over is the sea,

Fronting
the sand, a few great yellow dunes,
A salt marsh stumbling after, rank
and green,
With brackish gullies wandering in between,
All this
from the hill.
And more: a clump of dwarfed and twisted cedars,

Sentinels over the marsh, and bright with the sun
A field of daises

wandering in the wind
As though a hidden serpent glided through,

A broken wall, a new-plowed field, and then
The dusty road and the
abodes of men
Surrounding the hill.
How small the enclosure is
wherein there lives
Each phase and passion of life, the distant sail

Dips in the limpid bosom of the sea,
From that far place to where in
state the turf
Raises a throne for me upon the hill,
Each little love
and lust of a living thing
Can thus be compassed in a rainbow ring

And seen from the hill.
II.
AGE
Why did I build my cottage on a hill
Facing the sea?
Why did I plan each terraced lawn to slope
Down to the deep