Poems (Van Rensselaer)/A Psalm for October

by Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer

A PSALM FOR OCTOBER

For the days he ordained who is Maker of trees
His forests have flourished, fair green, in the sun.
From the balm of the rain and the heartening breeze,
From the noon and the night and the cool of the morn,
New strength to themselves they have won;
For the hour of the quick'ning to be
They have ripened the seed of the tree;
They have sheltered the paths where the wayfarers pass,
And stood as a barrier stout for the corn
And the meadows of grass;
In the web of the moss and the cup of the spring
They have gathered the myriad drops that will keep
The rivers content with clear waters and deep;
And the wild-folk, the timid of foot and of wing,
In the cleft of the rock, in the root and the head
Of the tree, they have hidden and fed.

Long months, saith the Maker, the leaves of his trees
Have exulted, fair green, in the sun.
Is it meet, now their laughter must cease,
Now the gain of their living is won,
Is it meet that unhonored they wait for their death?
Shall a blast come forth
From the mouth of the north,
Shall the cold come down
From the pole's ice-crown,
And scatter, unheeded, these leaves with its breath?
Nay, saith the Maker, they shall not so fare;
They shall triumph in passing, and dying declare
The worth and the grace of their service. On pyres
That each shall ignite with its own heart's fires,
The trees of the forest shall yield up the dress
That was lent them for use and for loveliness;
And the crown of the seasons shall be,
Not noon of the summer nor dawn of the spring,
But the time when a splendor of flaming shall bring
The death of the leaves of the tree.

Now the trees of the Maker have heard—
Who doubteth?—the sound of his word,
For the forest grows bright with the glow at its heart,
And everywhere gleams
The kindling of trees that are standing apart
On the slopes of the meadows, the borders of streams.
Flame-red is the frond of the sumach now,
Fire-gold the long arch of the elm-tree bough;
As quivering light in the peace of the air
Is the flicker of aspens, the birchen-tree's flare;
Yellow and scarlet and crimson-red,
From the low-lying swamp to the hilltop spread,
Burns the blaze of the maple-trees, higher and higher,
And molten and lambent grow chestnut and beech,
Till pinnacles, pyramids, pillars of fire
Toward the crystalline dome of the azure upreach,
And an incense from braziers of smouldering oak,
From the torch of the ash tipped with duskier smoke,
Is blent with the mist that at nightfall o'erfills
The hollows and folds of the hills.

Incandescent the hills 'neath the far pure sky
Where the sun and the rivers of stars roll by,
Incandescent the valleys and marshlands lie;
Yet verdant, unscathed, stand the hemlock and fir
And the column and crown of the pine
In the clasp of the flame—from the Maker a sign
That the life in the veins of his forest shall stir,
And shall break into greenness again,
In the warmth of the spring, in the springtime rain.

Shall only the children of Adam behold
Such glory unrolled?
Shall only the gaze of the earthborn desire
The miracle wrought with these wreathings of fire?
Not so. In the calm of the white sunrise
The Maker looks down with his holy eyes,
And the seraphs that stand
At his left and right hand
Chant the song of the season of sacrifice:
The psalm of the earth when, her harvesting done,
She lifts up her arms to the path of the sun,
And offers, with tithes of her vines and her sheaves,
The life of her leaves—
Their beauty of burning as praise
To the Ancient of Days.
 For H. M.
  Lenox, 1905.