The Best Road of All

The Best Road of All

I like a road that leads away to prospects white and fair,
A road that is an ordered road, like a nun's evening prayer;
But best of all I love a road that leads to God knows where.

You come upon it suddenly -- you cannot seek it out;
It's like a secret still unheard and never noised about;
But when you see it, gone at once is every lurking doubt.

It winds beside some rushing stream where aspens lightly quiver;
It follows many a broken field by many a shining river;
It seems to lead you on and on, forever and forever.

You tramp along its dusty way beneath the shadowy trees,
And hear, beside you chattering birds or happy booming bees,
And all around you golden sounds, the green leaves' litanies.

And here's a hedge and there's a cot; and then, strange, sudden turns --
A dip, a rise, a little glimpse where the red sunset burns;
A bit of sky at evening time, the scent of hidden ferns.

A winding road, a loitering road, the finger mark of God,
Traced where the Maker of the world leaned over ways untrod.
See!  Here He smiled His glowing smile, and lo, the golden rod!

I like a road that wanders straight; the kin's highway is fair,
And lovely are the sheltered lanes that take you here and there;
But best of all I love a road that leads to God knows where.

~ Chas. Hanson Towne

From my mother's poetry notebook

The Eagle

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands,
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

from my mother's poetry notebook

Contentment

John Burroughs Speaks of Contentment

I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side.  The hum of the wind in the tree-tops has always been good music to me, and the face of the fields has often comforted me more than the faces of men.

I am in love with this world, by my constitution I have nestled lovingly in it.  It has been home.  It has been my point of outlook into the universe.  I have not bruised myself against it, nor tried to use it ignobly.

I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its harvest, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have reaped what I have sown.

While I delved I did not lose sight of the sky overhead.  While I gathered its bread and meat for my body, I did not neglect to gather its bread and meat for my soul.

I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.

From my mother's poetry notebook

April Music

April Music

Thy lyric sound of laughter
Fills all the April hills.
The joy song of the crocus,
Thy mirth of daffodils --

They ring their golden changes
Through all the azure vales;
The sunny cowslips answer
Athwart the reedy swales.

Far down the woodland aisleways
The trillium's voice is heard;
The little wavering windflowers
Join in with jocund word.

The white cry of the dogwood
Mounts up against the sky;
The breath of violet music
Upon the breeze goes by.

Give me to hear, O April,
These choristers of thine
Calling across the distance
Serene and hyaline,

To clear my clouded vision,
Bedimmed and dulled so long,
And heal my aching spirit
With fragrance that is song!

-- Clinton Scollard

From my mother's poetry notebook

God Passed Along Our Countryside

God Passed Along Our Countryside

God passed along our countryside
Last night with quiet tread,
So silently He came and passed
No sleeper turned his head.
And not till dawn His children knew
The pageant of surprise
That all about, on hill and glen,
Lay there like Paradise.

God passed along our countryside
That is as fair and old,
And clothed the poplar and the oak
With crimson and with gold.
He smiled upon the shrinking bush,
The sapling so forlorn,
And gave them robes of purple hue
To match the flaming morn.

God passed along our countryside,
And now His children know
There's greater good for those in store
Who love Him here below.
For every day, like autumn, comes
With blessings new and old.
And helps me think of that fair clime,
Whose gates are pearl and gold.

~ Calvin Lauper

From my mother's poetry notebook

Scarlet Tanager

Scarlet Tanager

I saw him in a mountain gorge
And held my breath with wonder.
So startlingly beautiful
He was, the roaring thunder
Of water falling from the heights,
The pine bough's windy turning
Was but a background for a bird
Whose vivid scarlet burning
Caught my eyes and dazzled them.
A quivering aspen springing
From the wet rocks bore a flame
Like a lantern swinging.
His iridescent tail and wings,
Each black metallic feather
Glittered in the gorgeous light
Of the mountain weather.
Cold green water, silver spray,
An aspen, frail and slender
Against the high dark wall of pines,
A small bird's blazing splendor --
That brilliant picture struck me blind
And burned its beauty on my mind.

~ Grace Noll Crowell

From my mother's poetry notebook

The Winter Scene

The Winter Scene by Bliss Carman

The rutted roads are all like iron; the skies
Are keen and brilliant; only the oak leaves cling
In the bare woods, or hardy bitter-sweet;
Drivers have put their sheepskin jackets on;
And all the ponds are sealed with sheated ice
That rings with stroke of skate and hockey-stick,
Or in the twilight cracks with running whoop.
Bring in the logs of oak and hickory,
And make an ample blaze on the wide hearth.
Now is the time, with winter o'er the world,
For books and friends and yellow candle-light,
And timeless lingering by the settling fire,
While all the shuddering stars are keen and cold.

2.
Out of the silent portal of the hours,
When frosts are come and all the hosts put on
Their burnished gear to march across the night
And o'er a darkened earth in splendor shine,
Slowly above the world Orion wheels
His glittering square, while on the shadowy hill
And throbbing like a sea-light through the dusk,
Great Sirius rises in his flashing blue.
Lord of the winter night, august and pure,
Returning year on year untouched by time,
To kindle faith with thy immortal fire;
There are no hurts that beauty cannot ease,
No ills that love cannot at last repair,
In the courageous progress of the soul.

3.
Russet and white and gray is the oak wood.
In the great snow.  Still from the North it comes,
Whispering, settling, sifting through the trees,
O'er-loading branch and twig.  The road is lost.
Clearing and meadow, stream and ice-bound pond
Are made once more a trackless wilderness
In the white hush where not a creature stirs;
And the pale sun is blotted from the sky.
In the strange twilight the lone traveler halts
To listen while the stealthy snowflakes fall.
And then far off toward the Stamford shore,
Where through the storm the coast-wise liners go,
Faint and recurrent on the muddled air,
A foghorn booming through the Smother, -- hark!

4.
When the day changed and the mad wind died down,
The powdery drifts that all day long had blown
Across the meadows and the open fields,
Or whirled like diamond dust in the bright sun,
Settled to rest, and for a tranquil hour
The lengthening bluish shadows on the snow
Stole down the orchard slope, and a rose light
Flooded the earth with glory and with peace,
Then in the west behind the cedars black
The sinking sun made red the winter dusk.

(Mom's copy of this poem ends here, but I found the rest on-line, here.
The last 4 lines are below along with a few notes for specified lines:)

52With sullen flare upon the snowy ridge,--

            53As in a masterpiece by Hokusai,

            54Where on a background gray, with flaming breath

            55A scarlet dragon dies in dusky gold.

Notes
18] Orion: constellation in Taurus named after a hunter with belt and sword.
21] Sirius: star in constellation Canis Major.
38] Stamford: town in Connecticut.
41] the Smother: thick cloud of snow, fog, spray, etc.
53] Hokusai: Katsushika, Japanese artist (1760-1849).