Songs of the Common Day, and Ave!

An Ode for the Shelley Centenary

by Charles G.D. Roberts

 

BUCKWHEAT

 
THIS smell of home and honey on the breeze,
     This shimmer of sunshine woven in white and pink
     That comes, a dream from memory's visioned brink,
Sweet, sweet and strange across the ancient trees,—
It is the buckwheat, boon of the later bees,
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     Its breadths of heavy-handed bloom appearing
     Amid the blackened stumps of this high clearing,
Freighted with cheer of comforting auguries.

But when the blunt, brown grain and red-ripe sheaves,
Brimming the low log barn beyond the eaves,

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     Crisped by the first frost, feel the thresher's flail,
Then flock the blue wild-pigeons in shy haste
     All silently down Autumn's amber trail,
To glean at dawn the chill and whitening waste.