Poems of Archibald Lampman, 1861-1899

 

Of the alders and cherries
Its bunches of beautiful berries,
Orange and red.

And the snowbirds flee,
Tossing up on the far brown field,
Now flashing and now concealed,
Like fringes of spray
That vanish and gleam on the gray
Field of the sea.

Flickering light,
Come the last of the leaves down borne,
And patches of pale white corn
In the wind complain,
Like the slow rustle of rain
Noticed by night.

Withered and thinned,
The sentinel mullein looms,
With the pale gray shadowy plumes
Of the goldenrod;
And the milkweed opens its pod,
Tempting the wind.

Aloft on the hill,
A cloudrift opens and shines
Through a break in its gorget of pines,
And it dreams at my feet
In a sad, silvery sheet,
Utterly still.

All things that be
Seem plunged into silence, distraught,
By some stern, some necessitous thought:
It wraps and enthralls
Marsh, meadow, and forest; and falls
Also on me.

28. Snow

from Lyrics of Earth, 1893

White are the far-off plains, and white
      The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
      And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
      Falls down scarce audibly.

The road before me smooths and fills
      Apace, and all about
The fences dwindle, and the hills
      Are blotted slowly out;
The naked trees loom spectrally
      Into the dim white sky.

The meadows and far-sheeted streams
      Lie still without a sound;
Like some soft minister of dreams
      The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
      A silence everywhere.

Save when at lonely intervals
      Some farmer's sleigh, urged on,
With rustling runners and sharp bells,
      Swings by me and is gone;
Or from the empty waste I hear
      A sound remote and clear;

The barking of a dog, or call
      To cattle, sharply pealed,
Borne echoing from some wayside stall
      Or barnyard far a-field;
Then all is silent, and the snow
      Falls, settling soft and slow.

The evening deepens, and the gray
      Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
      Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream,
      Plod dumbly on, and dream.

29. In March

from Alcyone, 1899

To sunder is to split apart.

The sun falls warm: the southern winds awake:
The air seethes upward with a steamy shiver:
Each dip of the road is now a crystal lake,
And every rut a little dancing river.
Through great soft clouds that sunder overhead
The deep sky breaks as pearly blue as summer:
Out of a cleft beside the river's bed
Flaps the black crow, the first demure newcomer.
The last seared drifts are eating fast away
With glassy tinkle into glittering laces:
Dogs lie asleep, and little children play
With tops and marbles in the sunbare places;
And I that stroll with many a thoughtful pause
Almost forget that winter ever was.

30. To the Cricket

from Alcyone, 1899

Didst thou not tease and fret me to and fro,
Sweet spirit of this summer-circled field,
With that quiet voice of thine that would not yield
Its meaning, though I mused and sought it so?
But now I am content to let it go,
To lie at length and watch the swallows pass,
As blithe and restful as this quiet grass,
Content only to listen and to know
That years shall turn, and summers yet shall shine,
And I shall lie beneath these swaying trees,
Still listening thus; haply at last to seize,
And render in some happier verse divine
That friendly, homely, haunting speech of thine,
That perfect utterance of content and ease.

31. A Thunderstorm

from Alcyone, 1899

A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.
The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,
The hurrying centres of the storm unite
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge
Tower darkening on. And now from heaven's height
With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash
That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,
Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,
Column on column comes the drenching rain.

32. Indian Summer

from Alcyone, 1899

"Indian Summer" is a period of warm, dry weather in autumn.

The old grey year is near his term in sooth,
And now with backward eye and soft-laid palm
Awakens to a golden dream of youth,
A second childhood lovely and most calm,
And the smooth hour about his misty head
An awning of enchanted splendour weaves,
Of maples, amber, purple and rose-red,
And droop-limbed elms down-dropping golden leaves.
With still half-fallen lids he sits and dreams
Far in a hollow of the sunlit wood,
Lulled by the murmur of thin-threading streams,
Nor sees the polar armies overflood
The darkening barriers of the hills, nor hears
The north-wind ringing with a thousand spears.

33. Good Speech

from Alcyone, 1899

Think not, because thine inmost heart means well,
Thou hast the freedom of rude speech: sweet words
Are like the voices of returning birds
Filling the soul with summer, or a bell
That calls the weary and the sick to prayer.
Even as thy thought, so let thy speech be fair.

34. White Pansies

from Alcyone, 1899

In 1892, Archibald and Maud Lampman had their first child, a daughter named Natalie; their next child, Arnold, was born in 1894, but he died in infancy. His father wrote this poem in remembrance of his son.

Day and night pass over, rounding,
      Star and cloud and sun,
Things of drift and shadow, empty
      Of my dearest one.

Soft as slumber was my baby,
      Beaming bright and sweet;
Daintier than bloom or jewel
      Were his hands and feet.

He was mine, mine all, mine only,
      Mine and his the debt;
Earth and Life and Time are changers;
      I shall not forget.

Pansies for my dear one--heartsease--
      Set them gently so;
For his stainless lips and forehead,
      Pansies white as snow.

Would that in the flower-grown little
      Grave they dug so deep,
I might rest beside him, dreamless,
      Smile no more, nor weep.

35. Winter Uplands

from The Poems of Archibald Lampman, 1900

This is the last poem Lampman wrote, about a week before his death.

The frost that stings like fire upon my cheek,
The loneliness of this forsaken ground,
The long white drift upon whose powdered peak
I sit in the great silence as one bound;
The rippled sheet of snow where the wind blew
Across the open fields for miles ahead;
The far-off city towered and roofed in blue
A tender line upon the western red;
The stars that singly, then in flocks appear,
Like jets of silver from the violet dome,
So wonderful, so many and so near,
And then the golden moon to light me home--
The crunching snowshoes and the stinging air,
And silence, frost, and beauty everywhere.

36. The Sweetness of Life

From Lyrics of Earth and Alcyone

Marguerites are daisies.

It fell on a day I was happy,
      And the winds, the concave sky,
The flowers and the beasts in the meadow
      Seemed happy even as I;
And I stretched my hands to the meadow,
      To the bird, the beast, the tree:
"Why are ye all so happy?"
      I cried, and they answered me.

What sayest thou, Oh meadow,
      That stretches so wide, so far,
That none can say how many
      Thy misty marguerites are?
And what say ye, red roses,
      That o'er the sun-blanched wall
From your high black-shadowed trellis
      Like flame or blood-drops fall?
            "We are born, we are reared, and we linger
            A various space and die;
      We dream, and are bright and happy,
            But we cannot answer why."

What sayest thou, Oh shadow,
      That from the dreaming hill
All down the broadening valley
      Liest so sharp and still?
And thou, Oh murmuring brooklet,
      Whereby in the noonday gleam
The loosestrife burns like ruby,
      And the branchèd asters dream?
            "We are born, we are reared, and we linger
            A various space and die;
      We dream and are very happy,
            But we cannot answer why."

And then of myself I questioned,
      That like a ghost the while
Stood from me and calmly answered,
      With slow and curious smile:
"Thou art born as the flowers, and wilt linger
      Thine own short space and die;
Thou dream'st and art strangely happy,
      But thou canst not answer why."