Sonnets
Odhner, Madefrey & Reeves, W. P. & Stella, Sister Maris & Morton, David & Hartsock, Ernest & Harding, Philip M.
646 THE COMMONWEAL October 23, 1929 ml 1,, SONNETS gdYa land October Land of the purple apples and fat churns, Ripe hermitage of hardihood and peace, Home to your harvest hills my...
...Thick in your meadows where rich rivers run, The wigwams of the gathered corn are set, As round the campfire of the crimson sun The Indian Summer smokes its calumetHere may I spend when summer days depart, The mellow brief October of my heart...
...One Passing Play me no music, now . . . there is enough Of sadness in these leaves along the ground, And in the bare boughs they are dreaming of In a wide silence deeper than all sound...
...MADEFREY ODHNER...
...On Dante's lines Longfellow set the seal Of native idiommthe daily task Upheld the men five years...
...DAVID MORTON...
...Only a poet may a poet heal: Bryant to Homer turned, whose art austere Challenged an English version, true and clear...
...Their bits of down, of twig, of twine, of grass, Survive the summer and their young have learned A winging wisdom on the southward pass, But we who gave of youth, of youth bereaved, Must mourn an April youngling, unconceived...
...All night, like some half-ghost, I had gone down Linked intervals of wind and mist, through clatter Of water on dead leaves and the rain-blown Uneasiness of sound...
...SISTER MARIS ST~LLA...
...Even waters poured all night under a mill May be forgot, but on a distant hill, When carillons die out across the plain There will come back some morning's purity Of bells, peal after peal of silver song, Magdalen's sweet tune, or the tumultuous chimes Of all the bells on some high noon in glee Reverberant...
...or, echoing deep and long, The bell of Christ's, tolling its hundred times...
...zl Use in Measured Language" When death upon two poets turned the key, Taking that other self, comrade and wife, What earthly good availed, when common life Spread gaunt reminders of felicity...
...There is no music anywhere so lonely As long farewells that fill this listening air, Where no sound is and no sure light, but only The misty starshine where the trees are bare...
...We heard the lispings of precocious spring And blushed to lose the covering of words That cloaked our love...
...There was a stir of thunder to the south, A tremor of hushed light along the form Of nothingness, and I had felt my mouth Ripe on the stark dimensions of the storm...
...Something is passing, now, in this half-light, Out of the world forever, over the rim Of lost horizons--and so frail, so slight That none has heard her footfall, and so dim That none has seen her grave and lovely face, Whose going saddens every lonely place...
...PHILIP M. HARDING...
...gl]e Who Gave of Youth Into those patterned maple lanes we walked In that dim April's shadow-dappled air And when from clouds the sun winked out, we talked, But when the shadows spoke, we silent were...
...7/]Tater-Golor I heard the rapiers of the swift rain quiver And etch a muted fugue in silver on The pressure of the dark, and on the river, And on the slow wind's chili oblivion...
...646 THE COMMONWEAL October 23, 1929 ml 1,, SONNETS gdYa land October Land of the purple apples and fat churns, Ripe hermitage of hardihood and peace, Home to your harvest hills my heart returns, Seeking the fields where autumn's golden fleece Teaches the weary argonaut his goal...
...We said not anything, But seeing autumn, nested as the birds Nest, counting gold in fallows still unturned...
...Oxford Bells Always the ghost of these will wake again, When other bells have clamored and been stillNowhere are bells that half so sweetly fill The shaken tower, the drifting flaws of rainOf myriad sounds these only will remain...
...I saw clouds scatter And race--and clash again--and break apart...
...Yours is the fragrant pasture, the sweet loam Where urgencies of earth refresh the soulLand of the great red barn, the great white home...
...ERNEST HARTSOCK...
...Nothing was quiet but my weathered heart...
...W. P. REEVES...
...If one could ask For courage to endure a leaden sorrow, What better than communion on the morrow With a recorded soul, whose manly word In alien ear renewed, may still be heard...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 25
