Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, STRAWBERRY TIME, by MARGARET ELIZABETH MUNSON SANGSTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

STRAWBERRY TIME, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When the strawberry, ripening, blushes
Last Line: From fields where the berries are thick.
Alternate Author Name(s): Van Deth, Gerrit, Mrs.
Subject(s): Childhood Memories; Fruit; Harvest; Labor & Laborers; Strawberries; Work; Workers


WHEN the strawberry, ripening, blushes
To meet the sweet looks of the sun,
Then faintly the fair laurel flushes;
Then gayly the eager winds run
To tell, upon hillside and meadow,
The coming of festival days,
While out from his nest in the shadow
The bird pours his jubilant lays.

The pasture-lands dimple with clover,
The buttercups dazzle and shine;
The wide fields of summer brim over
With dreams of a perfume divine;
And forth go the children as merry,
As harvesters seeking for sheaves,
With bright eyes discerning the berry,
A ruby mid emerald leaves.

Brown-handed, sun-freckled, they linger
To eat the sweet globes while they pick;
What care they for stain on the finger,
So ripe is the treasure, and thick;
Like music their innocent laughter
Rings out o'er their frolic and haste;
Ah! never will berries hereafter
Hold nectar so rich to the taste.

Hereafter, when shrill voices cry them,
Discordant, through streets of the town,
And gravely they bargain and buy them,
Their value in silver pay down,—
Yet haply remembering childhood,
They'll say, as at evening they eat:
"The berries we found in the wildwood,
Unsugared, were surely more sweet."

And yet can the dear, evanescent,
Illusive, full charm of the fruit
Be known to the children whose present
Suffices unto them? The root
Of every glad hour of pleasure
Must grow, deeply struck, in the past;
And so is our berry a treasure
Less prized at the first than at last.

For now as the shy things are blushing
Low down mid their leaves on the ground,
As the delicate laurels are flushing
On hillock and meadow and mound,—
We, working and weary with labor,
Shut in among houses of brick,
Hear sounds, as of pipe and of tabor,
From fields where the berries are thick.





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