Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Poems of Home: V. The HomeBy the Fireside
Lucy Larcom (18261893)W
Mutters and sighs, and yields reluctant breath,
As if in the red embers some desire,
Some word prophetic burned, defying death?
Lie down for us in flames of martyrdom:
A human, household warmth, their death-fires shine;
Yet fragrant with high memories they come,
Sang of the torrent, and the plashy edge
Of storm-swept lakes; and echoes that arouse
The eagles from a splintered eyrie ledge;
And earthy odors of the moss and fern;
And hum of rivulets; smell of ripening fruits;
And green leaves that to gold and crimson turn.
What rare Octobers drop with every coal!
Within these costly ashes, dumb and dark,
Are hid spring’s budding hope, and summer’s soul.
Visions of friends who walk among these trees,
Whose presence, like the free air, could inspire
A wingèd life and boundless sympathies;
When sunset through its autumn beauty shines,
Or the blue gentian’s look of silent speech,
To heaven appealing as earth’s light declines;
From the familiar glens, the haunted hills,—
Most pitiful and strange it is to stay
Without you in a world your lost love fills.
Or in full sunshine on the hills of God,—
Who miss you from the shadow and the breeze,
And tints and perfumes of the woodland sod?
Watching these sad, bright pictures come and go;
That waning years are with your memory lit
Is the one lonely comfort that we know.
Burst on the hearth into fresh leaf and bloom;
Waft a vague, far-off sweetness through the house,
And give close walls the hillside’s breathing room.
They find,—a life won only out of death.
O sainted souls, within you still is nursed
For us a name not fed by mortal breath.
Wafts from the heavenly hills, immortal air;
No flood can quench your hearts’ warmth, or abate;
Ye are our gladness, here and everywhere.