Classic Poem

Through deep heaven's intense blue,
Over grain fields bowed with dew
The bell in the white church-tower tolls
Summons to accustomed souls.
Folk go by in twos and threes
Under the full-leafèd trees
Of the central village street,
In their best, stiff and complete,
With hushed stir. Their words are slow.

They are past. Now swiftly grow,
Moss in hollow pear-tree croft,
Cricket song in hid hayloft!
An old spider floats out free,
Borne along invisibly.
In and out the hollyhocks
Bees go moving the tall stalks.
Pollen-dusted out they creep
With hum that lulls silence asleep.
The old-fashioned garden glows
As though jewels of the mine,
Sighing souls out for repose
Of waving air and garden-close,
Hither came all hot to shine.
Poppies purple, white and red,
Swift and fragile flame have spread.
Zinnia and marigold
Spring's blithe hardihood unfold.
Here are the blue sailors, and
Indigo of Samarcand,
Coreopsis' fiery stars
Made to flash on scimitars,
Gold laburnum, brilliant phlox
Some pied elfin shepherd leads
Teasingly through haunts of weeds;
Portulaca's sun-cupped wine
Like the draught of youth divine;
Columbine, lorn for bare rocks

And solitary water-spring;
Four-o'clock, unwakening;
Basil of old tragic story,
Mignonette, and morning-glory
Thin-misted with the breath of dawn.
A yellow rambler-rose swings on
The gnarled trunk of an agèd pine,
High and higher up to twine,
Till on branches buds are seen
Laughing with the evergreen
Like a mystic's glad and free
Dream of immortality.

Past the garden is a shed.
All around it junk is spread,—
Tools that ought to spade or hew
Or cut, yet never did, nor do,—
Things hacked out ere rise of sun
And mercifully left half done.
Rank and lush the weeds abound
Over the outlawèd ground.
Ragweed, pigweed, burdock show
Higher than a man can grow.
The few vagrant garden seeds
That spring up are choked by weeds.
The wild grape and the red lily,
Watchers on abandoned farms,
Sleep here in each other's arms.
Jewel-weed shakes gleaming, chilly
Dewdrops to the wind. Bee-balms,
Thistle and day primrose thrive
Over a forgotten scythe.

Ho! I thought that all the people
Were in church beneath the steeple.
There's another loiterer.
An old man sits at his door
Bowed and motionless and hoar.
Full of years he seems to be
As I am of heresy.
Year by year he strove with stones,
Weather, weeds, and insect-blight,
Rising up by candle-light,
Swinging scythe at sultry noon,
Sometimes under the cold moon.
Now he feels it in his bones.
Mild blue eyes he has, and vast
Beard. The village life goes past
Where he sits before his door
Bowed and motionless and hoar.
I know not what things he sees
Over the unmoving trees.