“The Summer Stream” by Alfred B. Street

The Summer Stream
Alfred Billings Street
From The Opal, a Gift for the Holydays, 1847, pp. 159-61

Above the surface of the stirless grass
The false rain trembles. To the upward eye
Wavers the heat. Along the horizon’s rim,
Breaking its mist, are peaks of coppery clouds.
Keen darts of light are shot from every leaf,
And the whole landscape droops in sultriness.
With languid tread I drag myself along
Across the wilting fields. Around my steps
Spring myriad grasshoppers, their cheerful notes
Loud in my ear. The ground-bird whirrs away,
Then drops again, and groups of butterflies,
Spotting the path, up flicker as I come.
At length I catch the sparkles of the brook
From its deep thickets, whose refreshing green
Soothes my blear’d eyesight. The dark shadows fall
Like balm upon me from the boughs o’erhead.
My coming strikes a terror on the scene.
All the sweet sylvan sounds are hushed. I catch
Glimpses of vanishing wings; an azure shape
Shows, darting down the vista of the brook,
The scared Kingfisher, and an echoing splash
And turbid streak upon the streamlet’s face
The water rat’s quick dive and trampling path
Along the bottom to its burrow’d home.
The moss is soft and deep; the tawny leaves
Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs
Startle my wandering eye like basking snakes.
Where this thick bush has pitch’d its emerald tent
I stretch my weary frame, for solitude
To steal within my heart. At first the scene
How hushed, and then to the accustomed ear
How full of sounds so full of harmony
They seem’d like silence—the monotonous purl
Of yon small water-break—the transient hum
Swung past me by the bee—the low meek burst
Of bubbles as the trout darts up to seize
The skipping spider—the light lashing sound
As the kine, mid-leg in the shady pool,
Whisk the dark flies away—the ceaseless chirp
Of crickets and the tree-frog’s quavering notes.
As in the thicket’s depth I lie concealed
Once more the birds that haunt the summer brook
Seek the cool gloom; the silver-breasted snipe
Twitters and see-saws on the pebbly spots
Bare in the channel. The brown swallow dips
Its wings, swift darting round on every side,
And from yon nook of clustered water plants
The wood duck, slaking its green-purple neck,
Skims out, displaying through the liquid glass
Its yellow feet, as though up-borne in air.
Musing upon my couch, this lovely stream
I liken to the humble good man’s life.
Shunning the gaze, on glides his quiet course,
Making existence green, where’er he goes,
With blessings which in turn bring thoughts that wake
Their happy songs for ever in his heart.

“Alone on the Hill” by Frederick R. McCreary

Alone on the Hill
Frederick R. McCreary
From Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, vol. XIX, October-March 1921-22, pg. 257

Alone on the hill
In the warm October noon,
With the woods below
And beyond their brilliance the sea:
The moment has come,
The rapt still instant of being,
When water and wood are gone.
There is nothing now
But the on-running fluid of hours
Gleaming with blue, yellow, crimson.
Now quick! Let me run on sharp stones,
Let me strangle in surf choked with the bitter salt-water!
Let me feel pain, feel torture,
And the acid hunger of loneliness!
Give me self, self—
Before I am lost
In this madness of space eternal,
This horror of dream triumphant.

“St. Valentine’s Day” by Charles Fenno Hoffman

St. Valentine’s Day
Charles Fenno Hoffman
From Love’s Calendar, Lays of the Hudson, and Other Poems (1847)

The snow yet in the hollow lies;
But, where by shelvy hill ‘tis seen,
In myriad rills it trickling flies
To lace the slope with threads of green;
Down in the meadow glancing wings
Flit in the sunshine round a tree,
Where still a frosted apple clings,
Regale for early Chickadee:

And chestnut buds begin to swell,
Where flying squirrels peep to know
If from the tree-top, yet, ‘twere well
To sail on leathery wing below—
As gently shy and timorsome,
Still holds she back who should be mine;
Come, Spring, to her coy bosom, come,
And warm it toward her Valentine!

Come, Spring, and with the breeze that calls
The wind-flower by the hill-side rill,
The soft breeze that by orchard walls
First dallies with the daffodil—
Come lift the tresses from her cheek,
And let me see the blush divine,
That mantling there, those curls would seek
To hide from her true Valentine.

Come, Spring, and with the Red-breast’s note,
That tells of bridal tenderness,
Where on the breeze he’ll warbling float
Afar his nesting mate to bless—
Come, whisper, ‘tis not always Spring!
When birds may mate on every spray—
That April boughs cease blossoming!
With love it is not always May!

Come, touch her heart with thy soft tale,
Of tears within the floweret’s cup,
Of fairest things that soonest fail,
Of hopes we vainly garner up—
And while, that gentle heart to melt,
Like mingled wreath, such tale you twine,
Whisper what lasting bliss were felt
In lot shared with her Valentine.

“A Thought for the New Year” by Henry Stebbing

A Thought for the New Year
By Rev. Henry Stebbing
From the Athenaeum, January 7, 1832

The Future!—who can tell of thee?
Whose womb is like the deep,
Where gems and weeds lie mixedly,
And fistful breezes sweep,—
Casting to these who watch the tide
Sometimes a thing of worth,
But leaving nought for all beside
But refuse of the earth.

Who can depict thy shadowy form
For fane or household hearth—
Tell of the sunshine or the storm
That waits upon thy path?
Who knows thee, fearful stranger?—who
Dares all unveil thy face—
Or track thee, were that power his due,
To thy far dwelling-place?

And yet, who would not haste thee on,
Whate’er thy form may be?
The very herds-boy stops his song,
To hear men talk of thee.
The reveller hails thee at his board,
The maiden in her bower,
The miser as he counts his hoard,
The bard in his lone hour.

And thou wilt come—and some shall know
Early thy fearful part,
By the gray hair upon their brow,
Or the chill at their heart;
And some thy hand shall gently lead
Along a flowery way,
Making a quick and silent speed
To the last hour of day.

And others as they pass shall deem
Thy whispers strange and new,
Thinking what was before a dream,
Substantial thou and true;—
And they shall count thy steps and feel,
Borne on by thy strong power,
As if they saw a burning seal
Set on one fated hour.

Spirit unknown! but doomed to be
Mother of all we fear,
Distant as stars we cannot see,
And yet for ever near!
I fain would look thee in the face,
Thy solemn records read,
The sinews of my heart to brace
Ere fall the ills decreed.

Yet never canst thou seem to me
So fearful as to some;—
Leave but my spirit sound and free,
No stranger wilt thou come;
For many a silent hour of thought,
And many a conquered care,
Hath oft and well my bosom taught,
Whate’er thou bring’st to bear!

“An October Ramble” by Alfred B. Street

An October Ramble
Alfred B. Street
From The Poems of Alfred B. Street, 1845

A glorious afternoon; the moving shades
Have wheel’d their slow half-circles, pointing now
Toward the sunshiny east; a shadowy haze
Trembles amidst the azure overhead,
Deepening to purple at the horizon’s skirts.
Nature is smiling sweetly, and my feet
Are wandering in the pleasant woods once more.
Keen nights have told of Winter on his way,
And Autumn from the dark gaunt trees has drawn,
(Save a few shreds upon the beech and oak,)
His gorgeous robe, and cast it oe’r the earth
For Indian Summer’s glimmering form to rest
Awhile upon it, ere the blighting frost
And muffling snow. More golden is the sun
Than in its summer radiance, and it throws
Its charm on all around. Along this path
I tread, light-hearted, glad to be alone
With Nature. Beautiful and grand art thou!
Man with his passions dims thy light, his voice
Jars with thy sounds, his walls and towers but mar
Thy proud exhaustless glory. Solitude
With its soft dreamy silence is the mate
The fittest for thee, visible smile of God.
I gaze around me; trunks and boughs and leaves!
The robin on yon dog-wood’s branch I see
Picking the crimson berries; now and then
The flicker drops his hammer on the bark,
And the soft echo starts, as breaks on high
The hoarse voice of the sluggish passing crow.
My foot stirs up the oval butternut
From the dead leaves, its dark brown tinged with gold,
And, strewed around this old oak’s knotted roots,
Are acorn chalices with braided sides,
Left by the fays to fill their depths with dew
For the next moonlight revel on the moss.
That strange awakener at cold Winter’s verge,
The low witch-hazel, shows its yellow stars
Curl’d thick along its boughs: yon tall slim plant
Dangles with blossoms like a Chinese tower
Pendent with bells; and this blue gentian, tight
Has twisted the fringed rim of its long cup,
To keep from frost the topaz set within.
The air is richest perfume from the fern,
Sweetest when dying, like a virtuous life
Diffusing its example at its close:
I pluck a branch—what delicate tracery
Of veins minute! and see upon its back
The seeds in brown and regular array
Secreted, as the partridge hides her young
Beneath her wings. Yon aster, that display’d
A brief while since its gorgeous bloom, has now
Around the shells that multiply its life
Woven soft downy plumes. How wonderful
And perfect is thy care, O Thou most high
Creator, Father, God! The flower and man
Protected equally by Thee.
The woods
Are left, and hills and glades and fields are round.
Yon piny knoll, thick cover’d with the brown
Dead fringes, in the sunshine’s bathing flood
Looks like dark gold. From every tip of grass
And plant, a web of gossamer is stretch’d
Far as the eye can see, with varying hues
Shooting and shifting quick along the threads.
The sun now rests upon the western ridge
That seems dissolving in a golden haze
Where rests his blazing circle: as he sinks
The haze melts off; rich purple clothes the mount,
The brief gray twilight brings the scatter’d stars,
And soon upwheels the full broad Hunter’s moon
Shedding her affluent silver o’er the earth.