The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse
The Beechnut GathererPamelia Sarah Vining Yule (18251897)
A
Golden, and green, and grey,
Crimson, and scarlet, and yellow,
The Autumn foliage lay.
The sun of the Indian Summer
Laughed at the bare old trees,
As they shook their leafless branches
In the soft autumnal breeze.
The brightest, and goldenest lay;
And I thought of a forest hill-side
And an Indian Summer day,
An eager, little child-face,
O’er the fallen leaves that bent,
As she gathered her cup of beechnuts
With innocent content.
Gleaning them one by one;
With the partridge drumming near her
In the forest bare and dun,
And the jet-black squirrel winking
His saucy jealous eye
At those tiny, pilfering fingers,
From his sly nook up on high.
With thy bonnetless, sunburnt brow!
Thou glean’st no more on the hill-side—
Where art thou gleaning now?
I knew by the lifted glances
Of the dark, imperious eye,
That the tall trees bending o’er thee
Would not shelter thee by and by.
With its mossy roof, is gone;
The cattle have left the uplands,
The young lambs left the lawn;
Gone are thy blue-eyed sister,
And thy brother’s laughing brow;—
And the beechnuts lie ungathered
On the lonely hill-side now.
Brought to thy heart since then,
In thy long and weary wand’rings
In the paths of busy men?
Has the Angel of grief or of gladness
Set his seal upon thy brow?
Maiden! joyous or tearful,
Where art thou gleaning now?