"I am from the fields, you know..."

Lupine Days

A friend asked for me to get some pictures of the lupines that bloom along our roadsides and fields at the beginning of summer, and of course I was more than happy to oblige! 😁 Enjoy!!! 

The Pageant

A brightness which outshines the morning,

    A splendor brooking no delay,

    Beckons and tempts my feet away.

I leave the trodden village highway

    For virgin snow-paths glimmering through

    A jewelled elm-tree avenue;

Where, keen against the walls of sapphire,

    The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed,

    Hold up their chandeliers of frost.

I tread in Orient halls enchanted,

    I dream the Saga’s dream of caves

    Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves!

I walk the land of Eldorado,

    I touch its mimic garden bowers,

    Its silver leaves and diamond flowers!

The flora of the mystic mine-world

    Around me lifts on crystal stems

    The petals of its clustered gems!

What miracle of weird transforming

    In this wild work of frost and light,

    This glimpse of glory infinite!

This foregleam of the Holy City

    Like that to him of Patmos given,

    The white bride coming down from heaven!

How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders,

    Through what sharp-glancing spears of reeds

    The brook its muffled water leads!

Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb,

    Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire

    Rays out from every grassy spire.

Each slender rush and spike of mullein,

    Low laurel shrub and drooping fern,

    Transfigured, blaze where’er I turn.

Here, where the forest opens southward,

    Between its hospitable pines,

    As through a door, the warm sun shines.

Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven!

    Thou stainless earth, lay not on me,

    Thy keen reproach of purity,

If, in this August presence-chamber,

    I sigh for summer’s leaf-green gloom

    And warm airs thick with odorous bloom!

Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble,

    And let the loosened tree-boughs swing,

    Till all their bells of silver ring.

Shine warmly down, thou sun of noontime,

    On this chill pageant, melt and move

    The winter’s frozen heart with love.

And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing,

    Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze

    Thy prophecy of summer days.

Come with thy green relief of promise,

    And to this dead, cold splendor bring

    The living jewels of the spring!

                                                    ~John Greenleaf Whittier

Songs of the Winter Days

The sky has turned its heart away,

The earth its sorrow found;

The daisies turn from childhood's play,

And creep into the ground.

The earth is black and cold and hard;

Thin films of dry white ice,

Across the rugged wheel-tracks barred,

The children's feet entice.

Dark flows the stream, as if it mourned

The winter in the land;

With idle icicles adorned,

That mill-wheel soon will stand.

But, friends, to say 'tis cold, and part,

Is to let in the cold;

We'll make a summer of the heart,

And laugh at winter old.

With vague dead gleam the morning white

Comes through the window-panes;

The clouds have fallen all the night,

Without the noise of rains.

As of departing, unseen ghost,

Footprints go from the door;

The man himself must long be lost

Who left those footprints hoar!

Yet follow thou; tread down the snow;

Leave all the road behind;

Heed not the winds that steely blow,

Heed not the sky unkind;

For though the glittering air grow dark,

The snow will shine till morn;

And long ere then one dear home-spark

Will winter laugh to scorn.

Oh wildly wild the roaring blast

Torments the fallen snow!

The wintry storms are up at last,

And care not how they go!

A spectral ocean lies outside,

Torn by a tempest dark;

Its ghostly billows, dim descried,

Leap on my stranded bark.

A morning clear, with frosty light

From sunbeams late and low;

They shine upon the snow so white,

And shine back from the snow.

And when the bright sad sun is low

Behind the mountain-dome,

A twilight wind will come and blow

Around the children's home,

And puff and waft the powdery snow,

As feet unseen did pass;

While, waiting in its bed below,

Green lies the summer grass. 

                                                          ~George Macdonald

Talk Not of Sad November

Talk not of sad November, when a day

Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,

And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,

Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines

Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,

Singing a pleasant song of summer still,

A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.

Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees,

In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more;

But still the squirrel hoards his winter store,

And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.

Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high

Above, the spires of yellowing larches show,

Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow

And jay and nut-hatch winter’s threat defy.

O gracious beauty, ever new and old!

O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear

When the low sunshine warns the closing year

Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold!

Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing

The sweet day yields; and, not disconsolate,

With the calm patience of the woods I wait

For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring!

                                                                ~John Greenleaf Whittier

O All Wide Places...

O all wide places, far from feverous towns;

  Great shining seas; pine forests; mountains wild;

Rock-bosomed shores; rough heaths, and sheep-cropt downs;

  Vast pallid clouds; blue spaces undefiled—

Room! give me room! give loneliness and air—

Free things and plenteous in your regions fair.

White dove of David, flying overhead,

  Golden with sunlight on thy snowy wings,

Outspeeding thee my longing thoughts are fled

  To find a home afar from men or things;

Where in His temple, earth o’erarched with sky,

God’s heart to mine may speak, my heart reply.

 

O God of mountains, stars, and boundless spaces,

  O God of freedom and of joyous hearts,

When Thy face looketh forth from all men’s faces,

  There will be room enough in crowded marts!

Brood Thou around me, and the noise is o’er,

Thy universe my closet with shut door.

Heart, heart, awake! The love that loveth all

  Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb’s cave,

God in thee, can His children’s folly gall?

  Love may be hurt, but shall not love be brave?—

Thy holy silence sinks in dews of balm;

Thou art my solitude, my mountain-calm! 

                                                         ~George MacDonald