Page 14 - Poetry-Country

Noon in a New England Pasture

With scattered birch the pasture’s slope is crowned;
The sunburnt grass that clings to mountain-sides,
Cropped by small mouths of timid sheep, scarce hides,
Like a scant coverlet, the hard dry ground,
Through which, with stony ledge or rocky knee,
The strong world breaks. The ragged ferns that fill
Each dimple on the shoulders of the hill
Rustle with faint sharp sound if but the bee
Slips through their stems to find his mossy nest.
With soft, thick, wilted leaves the mulleins grow,
Like tall straight candles with pale yellow glow,
Their stalks star-flowered toward the cloudless west.
The crooning cricket with an endless song
Jars the hot silence. The crumbling fence is grayed
By the slow-creeping lichen, held and stayed
By arms of wandering rose, that, tough and strong,
Bind firm its slipping stones. The rusty brier
And scarlet fingers of the bitter-sweet
Cast a light shade that shelters from the heat
A thousand voiceless little lives. Higher
Than maiden birch or solitary pine,
Poised in the brooding blue, on speckled wings,
A hawk hangs motionless: so straight he flings
His shadow to the earth, like plummet-line
It drops through seas of air. As in a swoon
Of light the great world lies, and life stands still,
Wrapped in a breathless hush; till up the hill
Drift dappled shadows of the afternoon.

— Margaret Deland (Harper’s Monthly, 1887)

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