This View’s Poetry  


    Woodbines in October    
         
   

As dyed in blood the streaming vines appear,
   While long and low the wind about them grieves:
The heart of Autumn must have broken here,
   And poured its treasure out upon the leaves.

   
         
    Charlotte Fiske Bates    
   

An American Anthology, 1787–1900 (1900) # 735
ed. Edmund Clarence Stedman

   

    Zilpha Marsh    
         
   

At four o’clock in late October
I sat alone in the country school-house
Back from the road ’mid stricken fields,
And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,
And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,
With its open door blurring the shadows
With the spectral glow of a dying fire.
In an idle mood I was running the planchette —
All at once my wrist grew limp,
And my hand moved rapidly over the board,
Till the name of “Charles Guiteau” was spelled,
Who threatened to materialize before me.
I rose and fled from the room bare-headed
Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.
And after that the spirits swarmed —
Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe,
Cleopatra and Mrs. Surrat —
Wherever I went, with messages, —
Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed.
You talk nonsense to children, don’t you?
And suppose I see what you never saw
And never heard of and have no word for,
I must talk nonsense when you ask me
What it is I see!

   
         
    Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950)    
   

Spoon River Anthology (1916) # 230

   

    October    
         
   

Across the land a faint blue veil of mist
Seems hung; the woods wear yet arrayment sober
Till frost shall make them flame; silent and whist
The drooping cherry orchards of October
Like mournful pennons hang their shrivelling leaves
Russet and orange: all things now decay;
Long since ye garnered in your autumn sheaves,
And sad the robins pipe at set of day.

Now do ye dream of Spring when greening shaws
Confer with the shrewd breezes, and of slopes
Flower-kirtled, and of April, virgin guest;
Days that ye love, despite their windy flaws,
Since they are woven with all joys and hopes
Whereof ye nevermore shall be possessed.

   
         
    Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)    
   

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems (1918) # 48

   

    Triad    
         
    From the Silence of Time, Time’s Silence borrow.
In the heart of To-day is the word of To-morrow.
The Builders of Joy are the Children of Sorrow.
   
         
    William Sharp (1856-1902)    
   

Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse p. 400
ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee

   



  This View’s Poetry