 | [Poems by Cary in] The Poetical Works Of Alice and Phoebe Cary |  |
[Very pale lies Annie Clayville]
Very pale lies Annie Clayville,
Still her forehead, shadow-crowned,
And the watchers hear her saying,
As they softly tread around—
“Go out, reapers! for the hill-tops
Twinkle with the summer's heat;
Lay out your swinging cradles,
Golden furrows of ripe wheat!
While the little laughing children,
Lightly mingling work with play,
From between the long green winrows
Glean the sweetly-scented hay,
Let your sickles shine like sunbeams
In the silvery flowing rye;
Ears grow heavy in the corn fields
That will claim you by and by.
Go out, reapers, with your sickles,
Gather home the harvest store!
Little gleaners, laughing gleaners,
I shall go with you no more!”
Still her forehead, shadow-crowned,
And the watchers hear her saying,
As they softly tread around—
“Go out, reapers! for the hill-tops
Twinkle with the summer's heat;
Lay out your swinging cradles,
Golden furrows of ripe wheat!
While the little laughing children,
Lightly mingling work with play,
From between the long green winrows
Glean the sweetly-scented hay,
Let your sickles shine like sunbeams
In the silvery flowing rye;
Ears grow heavy in the corn fields
That will claim you by and by.
Go out, reapers, with your sickles,
Gather home the harvest store!
Little gleaners, laughing gleaners,
I shall go with you no more!”
Round the red moon of October,
White and cold, the eve stars climb;
Birds are gone, and flowers are dying—
'T is a lonesome, lonesome time!
Yellow leaves along the woodland
Surge to drift; the elm-bought sways,
Creaking at the homestead window,
All the weary nights and ays;
Dismally the rain is falling,
Very dismally and cold!
Close within the village grave-yard,
By a heap of freshest ground,
With a simple, nameless head-stone,
Lies a low and narrow mound;
And the brow of Annie Clayville
Is no longer shadow-crowned.
Rest thee, lost one! rest thee calmly,
Glad to go where pain is o'er;
Where they say not, through the night-time.
“I am weary!” any more.
White and cold, the eve stars climb;
Birds are gone, and flowers are dying—
'T is a lonesome, lonesome time!
Yellow leaves along the woodland
Surge to drift; the elm-bought sways,
41
All the weary nights and ays;
Dismally the rain is falling,
Very dismally and cold!
Close within the village grave-yard,
By a heap of freshest ground,
With a simple, nameless head-stone,
Lies a low and narrow mound;
And the brow of Annie Clayville
Is no longer shadow-crowned.
Rest thee, lost one! rest thee calmly,
Glad to go where pain is o'er;
Where they say not, through the night-time.
“I am weary!” any more.
| [Poems by Cary in] The Poetical Works Of Alice and Phoebe Cary | |