Margaret Gill Currie
By the St. John
THE broad round-shouldered giant Earth
Upbears no land more sweet
Than that whereon in heedless mirth
Went free my childish feet;
No fairer river furroweth,
With its strong steel-blue share,
The hill-sides and the vales of earth,
Than that which floweth there.
For rigid fasting hermit John
They named the glorious stream,
As seamen on his holy morn
Beheld its harbor’s gleam.
It was like rigid hermit John,
A voice amid the wild,
Its honey and its fatness drawn
From forests undefiled.
Now that the green is on the plain,
The azure in the sky,
Wherewith clear sunshine after rain
Decketh the rich July,
Broad is the leaf and bright the flower;
Close to the pale gray sands
Coarse alder grows, and virgin’s bower
Grasps it with slender hands.
With honeysuckles, meadow-sweets,
And rue the banks are lined;
O’er wide fields dance gay marguerites
To pipe of merry wind.
By the tall tiger-lily’s side
Stands the rich golden-rod,
A king’s son wooing for his bride,
The daughter of a god.
When fresh and bright were all green things,
And June was in the sky,
The dandelions made them wings,
And did as riches fly;
Now the bright buttercups with gold
Empave a toil-trod road—
Can wayfarers their sheen behold
Nor sigh for streets of God?
The birds are homed amid the boughs
Of oak and elm trees grand;
As for the snipe, her lowly house
She maketh in the sand;
The robin loves the dawning’s hush,
The eve’s the chickadee,
The thistle-bird the garden bush,
The bobolink the lea.
From intervale and swampy dale
Are wafts of fragrance blown,
Of fern and mint and calamus,
And wild hay newly mown.
God’s fiery touch hath reached the earth,
And lo! its odors rise
Like incense pure of priceless worth
Offered in sacrifice.