The Winter Scene Bliss Carman Bliss Carman was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, April 15, 1861. He was educated at the University of New Brunswick, the University of Edinburgh, and Harvard. He studied law and was engaged in editorial work, but since 1894 has devoted himself entirely to literary pursuits. He is the author of many volumes of prose and verse. The following blank-verse description of a northern winter runs true to form, having a more expansive background than the more localized and specific descriptions found in Whittier's "Snow Bound." If the reader keenly visualizes the scenes described, the vocal rendition will offer no special difficulty. I THE rutted roads are all like iron; the skies 2 Out of the silent portal of the hours, When frosts are come and all the hosts put on Slowly above the world Orion wheels His glittering square, while on the shadowy hill Lord of the winter night, august and pure, 3 Russet and white and gray is the oak wood A foghorn booming through the smother,-hark! 4 When the day changed and the mad wind died down, The powdery drifts that all day long had blown Across the meadows and the open fields, Or whirled like diamond dust in the bright sun, The lengthening bluish shadows on the snow Like a rare masterpiece by Hokusai, Where on a background gray, with flaming breath The crimson dragon dies in dusky gold. Reprinted by permission of the author. Deserted Madison Cawein Madison Cawein was born at Louisville, Kentucky in 1865, and died in 1915. He began writing at twenty-two years of age and continued until his death. He was preeminently a poet of Nature. Picture yourself abroad on such a night as the poet here describes. See the old, deserted house. Strive to reproduce in yourself the emotions you would feel when contemplating it. The pitch is low, the movement slow. THE old house leans upon a tree Like some old man upon a staff; The heaven is wrapped in flying clouds The starlight, fluttering in and out, The dark is full of whispers. Now A fox-hound howls: and through the night, Reprinted by permission of, and special arrangement with, E. P. Dutton and Company. Down the Mississippi John Gould Fletcher John Gould Fletcher was born at Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1886. He was educated at Harvard, but soon after went to England, where he has since spent most of his time. His early works were highly fanciful, but "Lincoln" and his later works are strong and moving. His works include "Goblins and Pagodas," published by Houghton Mifflin and Co., "The Tree of Life," published by Chatto and Windus, London, and "Breakers and Granite," published by The Macmillan Company, New York. This composition might well be styled a "poem of pictures and moods." The moods are the result of the pictures. Let the reader see the different scenes vividly and let them work their magic upon his "bodily texture." Notice a certain unity, too, through the entire poem. Do not neglect the sublimity of the last lines. Embarkation DULL masses of dense green, The forests range their sombre platforms. Between them silently, like a spirit, The river finds its own mysterious path. Loosely the river sways out, backward, forward, Always fretting the outer side; Shunning the invisible focus of each crescent, Like an enormous serpent, dilating, uncoiling, Displaying a broad scaly back of earth-smeared gold; Swaying out sinuously between the dull motionless forests, As molten metal might glide down the lip of a vase of dark bronze. Heat As if the sun had trodden down the sky, Until no more it holds air for us, but only humid vapor, The heat, pressing upon earth with irresistible languor, Turns all the solid forest into half-liquid smudge. The heavy clouds, like cargo-boats, strain slowly up 'gainst its current; And the flickering of the heat haze is like the churning of ten thousand paddles Against the heavy horizon, pale blue and utterly windless, Whereon the sun hangs motionless, a brassy disk of flame. Full Moon Flinging its arc of silver bubbles, quickly shifts the moon |