AT MICHAELMAS. 
 
At Michaelmas 
 
 r-^ . ." ■, ■. • ' ' X '': 
 
 A. Lyric 
 
 Kf 
 
 T3y l^liss Carman 
 
 1895 
 

'•■ :■* 
 
 To T. B M. 
 
 For every one 
 
 Beneath the sun, 
 Where Autumn walks icith quiet eyes. 
 
 There is a word, 
 
 Just overheard / 
 
 Whert hill to purple hill replies 
 
 This afternoon 
 
 As warm as June, 
 With the red apples on the bough. 
 
 I set my ear 
 
 To hark^ and hear 
 The wood-folk talking, you knotc hoic. 
 
 198449 
 
ThfiTe comes a ^'Hush /** 
 
 And then a *' 7ush^" 
 As tree to scarlet tree responds, 
 
 *' Babble away I 
 
 Hell not betray 
 The secrets of us vagabonds. 
 
 "^Are we not all, 
 
 Both great and smalls 
 Cousins and kindred in a joy 
 
 No school can teach. 
 
 No worldling reach. 
 Nor any wreck of chance destroy ?" 
 
 And so, we are^ 
 
 However far 
 We Journey ere the journey ends, 
 
 One brotherhood 
 
 With leaf and bud 
 And every thing that wakes or wends. 
 
The breath that blows 
 
 My Autumn rose 
 Through apple lands of Ac^die^ 
 
 Talks in the leaves 
 
 About your eaves, 
 Where Tortoise Shell looks mif to sea. 
 
 • 
 
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 -I . . • ^-.,■ 
 
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\ \ AT MICHAELMAS. J 
 
 About the time of Michaor.s fenst 
 
 And all his angels, 
 There comes a word to man and beasf- 
 
 By dark evangels. 
 
 Then hearing what the wild things H.iy 
 
 To one another, 
 Those creatures firstborn of our gray 
 
 Mysterious Mother, 
 
 The greatness of the world's unrest 
 
 Steals through our pulses ; 
 Our own life takes a meaning guessed 
 
 From the torn dulse's. 
 
 The draft and set of deep sea tides ^ 
 
 Swirling and flowing, 
 Bears every filmy flake that rides 
 
 Grandly unknowing. 
 
The sunlight listens ; thin and Sne 
 
 The crickets whistle ; 
 And floating midges fill the shine 
 
 Like tt seedintf thistle. 
 
 The hawkbit flies his golden flag 
 
 From rocky pasture, 
 J^i'lduig liis legions never lag 
 
 Through morning's vasiure. 
 
 Soon we shall see the red vinos vump 
 
 Through forest borders, 
 And Indian summer breaking camp 
 
 To silent orders. 
 
 The glossy che^>tnuts swell and burst 
 
 Their prickly houses, 
 Agog at news which reached them first 
 
 In sap's carouses. 
 
 The long noons turn the ribstons red, 
 
 The pippins yellow ; 
 The wild duck from his reedy bed 
 
 Summons his fellow. 
 
The rol)ins lump tlie undorhnisli, 
 
 Songless und wary. 
 As though they fejired sonu' frostier 
 husli 
 
 Might bid them t;v2Ty ; 
 
 Perhaps in the great uojtli tliey liourd ^ 
 
 Of silence fulling 
 Upon tlie world without a w».jd, 
 
 White and appalling. 
 
 Tlie ash tree and the lady fern. 
 
 In russet frondage. 
 Proclaim 'tis time for our return 
 
 To vagabondage. 
 
 All summer idle have we kept ; 
 
 But on a morning, 
 Where the blue hazy mountain slept, 
 
 A scarlet warning 
 
 Disturbs our day-dream with a start ; 
 
 A leaf turns over ; 
 And every earthling is at heart 
 
 Once more a rover. 
 
All winter we shall toil and plod, 
 
 Eating and drinking ; ^ ■ t 
 
 But now's the little time when God 
 Sets folk a-thinking. \ > 
 
 "Consider," says the quiet sun, ^ ^^ 
 
 "How far I wander ; ' " 
 
 Yet when had I not time on one ; s' '^ /^ 
 More flower to squander ?'* - k 
 
 "Consider," says the restless tide, 
 
 "My endless labor ; 
 Yet when was T content beside ■"' 
 
 My nearest neighbor ?" '■ 
 
 So wander-lust to wander-lure, 
 
 As seed to season, ■'>..;• 
 
 Must rise and wend, possessed and sure 
 In swee': unreason. 
 
 For door stone and repose are good, 
 
 And kind is duty ; 
 But joy is in the solitude 
 
 With shy-heart beauty. 
 
 m'-'M' 
 
 :■«».■; 
 
 
■•■■ ■y:r\:ri-: 
 
 And truth is one whose ways are lueek 
 Beyond foretelling ; < 
 
 Yet they must journey far who seek 
 Her lowly dwelling. 
 
 Broad are the eaves, the hearth is warm, 
 
 And wide the portal ; 
 And there is shelter from the storm 
 
 For every mortal. 
 
 •She leads him by a thousand heights. 
 
 Lonelily faring, 
 With sunrise and with eagle flights 
 
 To mate his darintr. 
 
 For her he fronts a vaster foj/ 
 
 Than Leif of yore did, 
 Voyaging for continents no log 
 
 Has yet recorded. 
 
 He travels by a polar star, 
 
 Now bright, now hidden, 
 For a free land, though rest be far 
 
 And roads forbidden. 
 
Till on a tUy with sweec cciarso brend 
 
 And wine slie stays him, 
 Then in a cool and narrow bod 
 
 To slumber lays him. 
 
 So we are liers ; and, fellows mine 
 
 Of fin and feather, 
 By shady wood and shadowy brine, 
 
 When conies the weather 
 
 For migrants to be movincr on. 
 
 By lost indenture 
 You flock and gather and are gone : 
 
 The old adventure I 
 
 T to ,> have my unwritten date, 
 
 ^y gipsy presage ; 
 And on the brink of fall I wait 
 
 The darkling message. 
 
 The sign, from prying eyes concealed, 
 
 Is yet how flagrant ! 
 Hero's ragged-robin in the field, 
 
 A simple vagrant. 
 
Written at The Little Red Bouse h> 
 the Orchard^ (iiid privately printed In 
 om hundred copies at ''The Acadian ' 
 Press, Wolfvdle, Nova Scotia, during 
 October, 1895.