Autumn Landscape by Albert Bierstadt, 1880s
In Haying Time
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Wide meadows under lucent skies
Lie open, free to sun and breeze,
Where bird and bee and rustling leaf
Blend all their air-born melodies
In one sweet symphony of sound.
The lush green grasses bend and sway,
And fleet winds steal from new-mown slopes
The fragrance of the clover hay.
The fields at dawn are silver-white,
And wet with their baptismal dew;
They ripen in the long rare noons
Beneath a dome of cloudless blue;
And in the twilight’s purple dusk,
How solemn, hushed, and dim they lie!
At night a mellow moon looks down
From silent, star-sown, depths of sky.
Each passing hour of night and day
Some new and rare enchantment brings,
In flowers that bloom and winds that blow,
And joy of shy, blithe, living things
That hide within the meadows green,
Or murmur in the drowsy fields;
And all the golden air is sweet
With incense rose-red clover yields.
Faint whispers wander to and fro,
On idle winds, from east to west.
The dainty blossoms lift their cups
Of perfume o’er the bluebird’s nest;
The meadowlarks their raptures trill
To drown the brooklet’s murmuring chime,
When ripened summer ushers in
The witcheries of the haying time.
To see the periodical in which this poem was first published, click here.
~Stephanie
Thank you for sharing the periodical. That is so great to look at.