Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/367

1840-50.] ALICE GARY. 351 When reaj^ers sing among the harvest-gold, And the mown meadow scents the quiet air, And yet who never say, with all their heart, How good, my Father, oh, how good thou Or picking jagged leaves from the slim spikes Of tender pinks — with warbled interfuse Of poesy divine. That haply long ago Some wretched borderer of the realm of art! woe. Wrought to a dulcet line ; — If in your lovely years There be a sorrow that may touch with tears LYRA. Maidens, whose tresses shine, Crowned with daffodil and eglantine, The eyelids piteously, they must be shed For Lyra, dead. The mantle of the May Was blown almost within the Summer's reach. Or, from their stringed buds of brier-roses, And all the orchard trees. Bright as the vermeil closes Of April twilights after sobbing rains, Fall down in rippled skeins And golden tangles low About your bosoms, dainty as new snow ; While the warm shadows blow in softest Apple, and pear, and peach, Were full of yellow bees, Flown from their hives away. The callow dove upon the dusty beam, Fluttered its little wings in streaks of light. gales Fair hawthorn flowers and cherry blos- And the gay swallow twittered full in sight ; soms white Harmless the unyoked team Against your kirtles, like the froth from pails O'er brimmed with milk at night, When lowing heifers bury their sleek flanks Browsed from the budding elms, and thrill- ing lays Made musical prophecies of brighter days; And all went jocundly. I could but say, Ah ! well-a-day ! — In winrows of sweet hay or clover banks — What time spring thaws the wold. Come near and hear, I pray, And in dead leaves come up sprouts of My plained roundelay. Where creeping vines o'errun the sunny leas, gold, And green, and ribby blue, that after-hours Encrown with flowers ; Sadly, sweet souls, I watch your shining bands. Filling with stained hands Heavily lies my heart From all delights apart, Even as an echo hungry for the wind, Your leafy cups with lush red strawber- When fail the silver-kissing waves to un- ries ; bind Or deep in murmurous glooms, In yellow mosses full of starry blooms. Sunken at ease — each busied as she likes, The music bedded in the drowsy strings Of the sea's golden shells — That, sometimes, with their honeyed mur- Or stripping from the grass the beaded dews. murings Fill all its underswells ; —