Chapter VII

BERKSHIRE
NOTES

_Winter Sun_

(Lenox)

There was a bush with scarlet berries
And there were hemlocks heaped with snow;
With a sound like surf on long sea-beaches
They took the wind and let it go.

The hills were shining in their samite,
Fold after fold they flowed away--
“Let come what may,” your eyes were saying,
“At least we two have had to-day.”

_A December Day_

Dawn turned on her purple pillow
And late, late came the winter day,
Snow was curved to the boughs of the willow,
The sunless world was white and grey.

At noon we heard a blue-jay scolding,
At five the last thin light was lost
From snow-banked windows faintly holding
The feathery filigree of frost.

_February Twilight_

I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature
That saw what I could see--
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.

“_I Have Seen the Spring_”

Nothing is new, I have seen the spring too often;
There have been other plum-trees white as this one
Like a silvery cloud tethered beside the road,
I have been waked from sleep too many times
By birds at dawn boasting their love is beautiful.
The grass-blades gleam in the wind, nothing is changed.
Nothing is lost, it is all as it used to be,
Unopened lilacs are still as deep a purple,
The boughs of the elm are dancing still in a veil of tiny leaves,
Nothing is lost but a few years from my life.

_Wind Elegy_

(W. E. W.)

Only the wind knows he is gone,
Only the wind grieves,
The sun shines, the fields are sown,
Sparrows mate in the eaves;

But I heard the wind in the pines he planted
And the hemlocks overhead,
“His acres wake, for the year turns,
But he is asleep,” it said.

_In the Wood_

I heard the water-fall rejoice
Singing like a choir,
I saw the sun flash out of it
Azure and amber fire.

The earth was like an open flower
Enamelled and arrayed,
The path I took to find its heart
Fluttered with sun and shade.

And while earth lured me, gently, gently,
Happy and all alone,
Suddenly a heavy snake
Reared black upon a stone.

_Autumn Dusk_

I saw above a sea of hills
A solitary planet shine,
And there was no one near or far
To keep the world from being mine.