A. Ethelwyn Wetherald

“ Oh happy thoughts, that with the streams
The trees and meadows share
The sky path to the gate of dreams,
In their white shepherd’s care.
{14}
Fall and Spring
FROM the time the wind wakes
To the time of snowflakes,
That’s the time the heart aches
Every cloudy day;
That’s the time the heart takes
Thought of all its heart-breaks,
That’s the time the heart makes
Life a cloudy way.
From the time the grass creeps
To the time the wind sleeps,
That’s the time the heart leaps
To the golden ray ”

“ Your great heart be a fire burned out.—Ah, then,
What shall remain for me beneath the skies
Of glad, or good, or beautiful, or wise,
That can relume and thrill my life again?
This shall remain, a love that cannot fail,
A life that joys in your great joy, yet grieves
In memory of sweet days fled too soon. ”

“ But if ever a word of love thinks he,
It falls from his heart still-born;{81}
Who bends to the rose does not haste to close
His hand around bud and thorn.
The beautiful soul that is in him turns
His beautiful face agleam;
My own soul flies to feast in his eyes,
Where the silent love-words teem.
Our talk is of books, and of thoughts and moods,
Of the wild flowers in the rain ”

“ Child-heart, child-thoughts, come back again!
Bring back the tall grass at my cheek,
The grief more swift than summer rain,
The joy that knew no words to speak.
{70}
The buttercup’s uplifted gold
That strives to reach my hands in vain,
The love that never could grow cold—
Child-heart, child-thoughts, come back again! ”

“ Swayed by the eager, jostling, hasting throng,
Where Traffic’s voice grows harsher and more strong,
I see within the stream of hurrying feet
A company of trees in their retreat,
Dew-bathed, dream-wrapped, and with a thrush’s song
Emparadising all the place, along
Whose paths I hear the pulse of Beauty beat.
’Twas yesterday I walked beneath the trees,
To-day I tread the city’s stony ways;
And still the spell that o’er my spirit came
Turns harshest sounds to shy bird ecstasies,
Pours scent of pine through murky chimney haze,
And gives each careworn face a woodland frame. ”

“ And felt with thoughts I cannot understand,
And know not how to speak,
A daisy reaching up its little hand
To lay it on my cheek.
{57}
The Fields of Dark
THE wreathing vine within the porch
Is in the heart of me,
The roses that the noondays scorch
Shall burn in memory;
Alone at night I quench the light,
And without star or spark
The grass and trees press to my knees,
And flowers throng the dark. ”

“ A day like a soul that has never sinned,
New dropped from Paradise.
And ’tis oh, for a long walk in the rain,
By the side of the warm, wet breeze,
With the thoughts washed clean of dust and stain
As the leaves on the shining trees.
{72}
June Apples
GREEN apple branches full of green apples
All around me unfurled,
Here where the shade and the sunlight dapples
A grass-green, apple-green world.
Little green children stirred with the heaving
Of the warm breast of the air,
When your old nurse, the wind, is grieving
Comfortlessly you fare. ”

“ Nor knew that in the heart of her
Who felt his presence nigh,
His love was all the lovelier
Because his look was shy.
{49}
In April
WHEN Spring unbound comes o’er us like a flood,
My spirit slips its bars,
And thrills to see the trees break into bud
As skies break into stars ”

“ High in the upper wold;
And shepherd-like it gathers all
My thoughts into its fold.
Oh happy thoughts, that wheresoe’er
They wander through the day,
Come home at eve to upper air
Along a shining way. ”