Nature

The waking YEAR A LADY red upon the hill Her annual secret keeps; A lady white within the field In placid lily sleeps! The tidy breezes with their brooms Sweep vail, and hill, and tree! Prithee, my pretty housewives! Who may expected be? The neighbors do not yet suspect! The woods exchange a smile,— Orchard, and buttercup, and bird, In such a little while! And yet how still the landscape stands, How nonchalant the wood, As if the resurrection Were nothing very odd! AUTUMN THE MORNS are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry’s cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I ’ll put a trinket on. BECLOUDED THE SKY is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates if it will go. A narrow wind complains all day How someone treated him: Nature, like us, is sometimes caught Without her diadem. FRINGED GENTIAN GOD made a little gentian; It tried to be a rose And failed, and all the summer laughed; But just before the snows There came a purple creature That ravished all the hill; And summer hid her forehead, And mockery was still. The frosts were her condition; The Tyrian would not come Until the North evoked it:— “Creator! shall I bloom?”