Poems (Howard)/September Song

by Hattie Howard

September Song.

These beautiful clays of September
 For me have a wonderful charm,
Because of the joys I remember
 Of old autumn-life on the farm.

Was ever a spot more inviting
 To wayfarer weary and lone?
Where guests ever vied in requiting
 The manifold courtesies shown.

Where industry rendered abundant
 Each annual gathering-in
Of harvests, till rich and redundant
 Became every storehouse and bin.

As benisons graciously given,
 That household I cannot forget
Accepted the largess of heaven,
 And humbly acknowledged the debt.

Oh, earth has a million of places
 To tarry—but only one home!
And dear to my heart are the faces
 That haunt me wherever I roam.

Among them is one of a brother,
 So ardent and loyal and brave;
In battle like many another,
 His life for his country he gave.

A leader, collected and ready,
 'Mid tumult of cannon and shell—
"On, comrades! and keep the line steady!"
 The words that he uttered—and fell.

How meager appear the diversions
 That then could rusticity please!
The quilting-bees, huskings, excursions
 In "pirogues" hewn out of the trees.

A saucy-faced maiden of twenty,
 In home-made habiliments dressed,
If parties and suitors were plenty,
 No higher ambition possessed.

But under my eyelids are welling
 Sad tears for the dearest of earth,
The promise and light of our dwelling—
 For this was the month of her birth.

I am sure that so gentle a spirit,
 Embodying goodness and love—
Her birthright—must also inherit
 A place in the "mansions above."

Before me in exquisite vision
 Are scenes that enchanted me then,
And in this September Elysian
 The past I live over again.