Bliss Carman

Over the hills of April
With soft winds hand in hand,
Impassionate and dreamy-eyed,
Spring leads her saraband.…

I hear a rainbird singing
Far off. How fine and clear
His plaintive voice comes ringing
With rapture to the ear!Over the misty wood-lots,…

The starry midnight whispers,
As I muse before the fire
On the ashes of ambition
And the embers of desire,"Life has no other logic,…

Time out of mind I have stood
Fronting the frost and the sun,
That the dream of the world might endure,
And the goodly will be done.…

NOW the joys of the road are chiefly these:
A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees;A vagrant's morning wide and blue,
In early fall, when the wind walks too;A shadowy highway cool and brown,
Alluring up and enticing downFrom rippled water to dappled swamp,…

When April came with sunshine
And showers and lilac bloom,
My heart with sudden gladness
Was like a fragrant room.Her eyes were heaven's own azure,…

Here we came when love was young.
Now that love is old,
Shall we leave the floor unswept
And the hearth acold?Here the hill-wind in the dusk.…

O all the little rivers that run to Hudson’s Bay,
They call me and call me to follow them away.
Missinaibi, Abitibi, Little Current--where they run
Dancing and sparkling I see them in the sun.…

Soul, art thou sad again
With the old sadness?
Thou shalt be glad again
With a new gladness,…

I like the old house tolerably well,
Where I must dwell
Like a familiar gnome;
And yet I never shall feel quite at home.…

In the wondrous star-sown night,
In the first sweet warmth of spring,
I lie awake and listen
To hear the glad earth sing.I hear the brook in the wood…

Oh, well the world is dreaming
Under the April moon,
Her soul in love with beauty,
Her senses all a-swoon!Pure hangs the silver crescent…

Where are the ships I used to know,
That came to port on the Fundy tide
Half a century ago,
In beauty and stately pride?In they would come past the beacon light,…

ILORD of the grass and hill,
Lord of the rain,
White Overlord of will,
Master of pain,I who am dust and air…

At evening and at morning
By an enchanted way
I walk the world in wonder,
And have no word to say.It is the path we traversed…

O my dear, the world to-day
Is more lovely than a dream!
Magic hints from far away
Haunt the woodland, and the stream…

I
Soul, what art thou in the tribes of the sea?LORD, said a flying fish,
Below the foundations of storm
We feel the primal wish…

I know a shining meadow stream
That winds beneath an Eastern hill,
And all year long in sun or gloom
Its murmuring voice is never still.The summer dies more gently there,…

Over the wintry threshold
Who comes with joy today,
So frail, yet so enduring,
To triumph o'er dismay?Ah, quick her tears are springing,…

First all the host of Raphael
In liveries of gold,
Lifted the chorus on whose rhythm
The spinning spheres are rolled,–…

Once more in misted April
The world is growing green.
Along the winding river
The plumey willows lean.Beyond the sweeping meadows…

Not in the ancient abbey,
Nor in the city ground,
Not in the lonely mountains,
Nor in the blue profound,…

I am homesick for the mountains—
My heroic mother hills—
And the longing that is on me
No solace ever stills.I would climb to brooding summits…

IWho called us forth out of darkness and gave us the gift of life,
Who set our hands to the toiling, our feet in the field of strife?Darkly they mused, predestined to knowledge of viewless things,
Sowing the seed of wisdom, guarding the living springs.Little they reckoned privation, hunger or hardship or cold,
If only the life might prosper, and the joy that grows not old.With sorceries subtler than music, with knowledge older than speech,…