We hunt the sweet berry
With purple-stained ardour;
Each bramble one hooks in
Is bent 'neath its load:
It's free and it's merry
In nature's rich larder-
But O to hunt books in
The Charing Cross Road!
As daylight expires in
This best of Septembers,
A coolness comes blowing-
A chill wintry hint!
But-think! it blows fires in,
And dream-kindling embers,
And candle-light glowing
On time-mellowed print!
This glory of summer
One's being rejoices;
Yet hail to this flavour
Of summer's decay.
It's bringing the glamour,
The lights and the voices,
The dear homely savour
Of London this way!
EASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-
eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swathe and all its twinèd flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them-thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourne;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
HE mellow year is hastening to its close;
The little birds have almost sung their last,
Their small notes twitter in the dreary
blast-
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows;
The patient beauty of the scentless rose,
Oft with the morn's hoar crystal quaintly glassed,
Hangs, a pale mourner for the summer past,
And makes a little summer where it grows;
In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day
The dusky waters shudder as they shine,
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define,
And the gaunt woods, in ragged scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy-twine.
Hartley Coleridge.
HAT time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the
cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more
strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Shakespeare.
HE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling.
Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black, and grey;
Let your light sisters play
Ye, follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.
Ode to the North-East Wind
ELCOME, wild North-easter!
Shame it is to see
Odes to every zephyr,
Ne'er a verse to thee.
Welcome, black North-easter!
O'er the German foam;
O'er the Danish moorlands,
From thy frozen home.
Tired we are of summer,
Tired of gaudy glare,
Showers soft and steaming,
Hot and breathless air.
Tired of listless dreaming,
Through the lazy day;
Jovial wind of winter,
Turn us out to play!
Sweep the golden reed-beds;
Crisp the lazy dyke,
Hunger into madness
Every plunging pike,
Fill the air with wild-fowl,
Fill the marsh with snipe;
While on dreary moorlands
Lonely curlew pipe,
Through the black fir forest
Thunder harsh and dry,
Scattering down the snow-flakes
Off the curdled sky.
Hark! the brave North-easter!
Breast-high lies the scent,
On by holt and headland,
Over heath and bent.
Chime, ye dappled darlings,
Through the sleet and snow!
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