Poems (Kimball)/A Woodland Hour
A WOODLAND HOUR.
THE stillness of the year in sweet decline!
(Precious of all things silence in its turn!)
'T is like the loving rest for which we yearn
When summer hopes no longer bloom and shine.
In the soft shadow of this changeless pine
The maple boughs have almost ceased to burn.
How brown the brake! yet this so delicate fern
Is at its greenest. Feathery fair and fine
It waves and floats these mossy trunks between—
These trunks that veil the axeman's cruel scars;
(There are some lives that no misfortune mars!)
Sweet day! Against yon background dusky green
That slender birch in the fair distance seen
Shows like a twinkling cloud of yellow stars.
(Precious of all things silence in its turn!)
'T is like the loving rest for which we yearn
When summer hopes no longer bloom and shine.
In the soft shadow of this changeless pine
The maple boughs have almost ceased to burn.
How brown the brake! yet this so delicate fern
Is at its greenest. Feathery fair and fine
It waves and floats these mossy trunks between—
These trunks that veil the axeman's cruel scars;
(There are some lives that no misfortune mars!)
Sweet day! Against yon background dusky green
That slender birch in the fair distance seen
Shows like a twinkling cloud of yellow stars.