Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SPRING BEHIND ASCUTNEY, by PERCY MACKAYE



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SPRING BEHIND ASCUTNEY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When first the pussy-willow shows
Last Line: Shall brand her image, bright with mutability.
Alternate Author Name(s): Mackaye, Percy Wallace
Subject(s): Ascutney, Vermont; Spring


When first the pussy-willow shows
Her fairy muffs of gray,
While still amid the poplar tree
The blithe, familiar chicadee
His morning suet gratis gets. ...
When first the consternating crows
Break on the winter-keen repose
Of February day
Their strident cawings,
Startling with Stygian silhouettes
The Virgin snows
To wake, and with faint thawings,
Like speech half-audible,
Murmur of spring, until we houselings feel ...
Or dream we feel ... the breath
Of blowing violets,
That start where the old oak-leaf floats to death,
At such a time. ...
On this your birthday morning, winter-weary,
Once more the stealing rhyme
Runs up within my heart, to greet you, dearie.

For now through all of nature that we love
A vernal change, like love's, has late begun;
The northing sun
That nightly from Ascutney shall remove
Farther its setting, fills
The valley-chalice of the Cornish hills
With wine of warmer splendors; by woodways
Those spurting flames of blue, the jays,
Less oft the eye and ear amaze,

Mock musical, with gong-like throat,
Ringing the red-wing'd blackbird's note;
More seldom sounds the frosty axe,
And by the rabbit-run
Our gaunt embroideries of snowshoe tracks
Grow softly blurred and charr'd
On their south edgings, while the logging-bells
Tinkle less coldly through the hemlock dells,
Or cease, amid snow-muffled lumber-stacks,
Where sledges come to "whoa!" in the mill yard.

Therefore, because this lovely season leaves,
Like all else, only memory to take
Joy of its vestiges, now for the sake
Of fleet delights that never may return,
Watch, dear, with me, where, 'neath the drooping eaves
The iris-dewed icicles burn and burn,
Till Beauty on our minds indelibly
Shall brand her image, bright with mutability.





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