The Gates of Time and Other Poems

by Frederick George Scott

 

SUNRISE

 
O rising Sun, so fair and gay,
What are you bringing me, I pray,
Of sorrow or of joy to-day?

You look as if you meant to please,
Reclining in your gorgeous ease
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Behind the bare-branched apple-trees.

The world is rich and bright, as though
The pillows where your head is low
Had lit the fields of driven snow.

The hoar-frost on the window turns
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Into a wood of giant ferns
Where some great conflagration burns.

And all my childhood comes again
As lightsome and as free from stain
As those frost-pictures on the pane.
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I would that I could mount on high
And meet you, Sun—that you and I
Had to ourselves the whole wide sky.

But here my poor soul has to stay,
So tell me, rising Sun, I pray,
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What are you bringing me to-day?

What shall this busy brain have thought;
What shall these hands and feet have wrought;
What sorrows shall the hours have brought,

Before thy brilliant course is run,
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Before this new-born day is done,
Before you set, O rising Sun?