AT
MICHAELMAS
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ABOUT
the time of Michael’s feast
And all his angels,
There comes a word to man and beast
By dark evangels.
Then hearing what the wild things say
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To one
another,
Those creatures first born of our gray
Mysterious Mother,
The greatness of the world’s unrest
Steals through our pulses;
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Our
own life takes a meaning guessed
From the torn dulse’s.
The draft and set of deep sea-tides
Swirling and flowing,
Bears every filmy flake that rides,
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| Grandly
unknowing.
The sunlight listens; thin and fine
The crickets whistle;
And floating midges fill the shine
Like a seeding thistle.
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The hawkbit flies his golden flag
From rocky pasture,
Bidding his legions never lag
Through morning’s vasture.
Soon we shall see the red vines ramp
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Through
forest borders,
And Indian summer breaking camp
To silent orders.
The glossy chestnuts swell and burst
Their prickly houses
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Agog
at news which reached them first
In sap’s carouses.
The long noons turn the ribstons red,
The pippins yellow;
The wild duck from his reedy bed
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| Summons
his fellow.
The robins keep the underbrush
Songless and wary,
As though they feared some frostier hush
Might bid them tarry;
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Perhaps
in the great North they heard
Of silence falling
Upon the world without a word,
White and appalling.
The ash-tree and the lady-fern,
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In russet
frondage,
Proclaim ’t is time for our return
To vagabondage.
All summer idle have we kept;
But on a morning,
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Where
the blue hazy mountains slept,
A scarlet warning
Disturbs our day-dream with a start;
A leaf turns over;
And every earthling is at heart
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| Once
more a rover.
All winter we shall toil and plod,
Eating and drinking;
But now’s the little time when God
Sets folk to thinking.
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"Consider,"
says the quiet sun,
"How far I wander;
Yet when had I not time on one
More flower to squander?"
"Consider," says the restless tide,
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"My
endless labor;
Yet when was I content beside
My nearest neighbor?"
So wander-lust to wander-lure,
As seed to season,
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Must
rise and wend, possessed and sure
In sweet unreason.
For doorstone and repose are good,
And kind is duty;
But joy is in the solitude
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| With
shy-heart beauty.
And Truth is one whose ways are meek
Beyond foretelling;
And far his journey who would seek
Her lowly dwelling.
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She
leads him by a thousand heights,
Lonelily faring,
With sunrise and with eagle flights
To mate his daring.
For her he fronts a vaster fog
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Than
Leif of yore did,
Voyaging for continents no log
Has yet recorded.
He travels by a polar star,
Now bright, now hidden,
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For
a free land, though rest be far
And roads forbidden,
Till on a day with sweet coarse bread
And wine she stays him,
Then in a cool and narrow bed
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| To slumber
lays him.
So we are hers. And, fellows mine
Of fin and feather,
By shady wood and shadowy brine,
When comes the weather
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100 |
For
migrants to be moving on,
By lost indenture
You flock and gather and are gone:
The old adventure!
I too have my unwritten date,
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105 |
My gypsy
presage;
And on the brink of fall I wait
The darkling message.
The sign, from prying eyes concealed,
Is yet how flagrant!
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110 |
Here’s
ragged-robin in the field,
A simple vagrant. |
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