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Home  »  Anthology of Massachusetts Poets  »  Yellow Clover

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Massachusetts Poets. 1922.

Yellow Clover

MUST I, who walk alone,

come on it still,

This Puck of plants

The wise would do away with,

The sunshine slants

To play with,

Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,

Which once in Parting for a time

That then seemed long,

Ere time for you was over,

We sealed our own?

Do you remember yet,

O Soul beyond the stars,

Beyond the uttermost dim bars

Of space,

Dear Soul, who found earth sweet,

Remember by love’s grace,

In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song,

How suddenly we halted in our climb,

Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,

Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet,

And gave them as a token

Each to Each,

In lieu of speech,

In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,

Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet

With a strange dew of tears?

So it began,

This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover,

To be our tenderest language. All the years

It lent a new zest to the summer hours,

As each of us went scheming to surprise

The other with our homely, laureate flowers.

Sonnets and odes

Fringing our daily roads.

Can amaranth and asphodel

Bring merrier laughter to your eyes?

Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes,

Keep any wistful consciousness of earth,

Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love,

Simplicities of mirth,

Must follow them above

With touches of vague homesickness that pass

Like shadows of swift birds across the grass.

Beneath some foreign arch of sky,

How many a time the rover

You or I,

For life oft sundered look from look,

And voice from voice, the transient dearth

Schooling my soul to brook

This distance that no messages may span,

Would chance

Upon our wilding by a lonely well,

Or drowsy watermill,

Or swaying to the chime of convent bell,

Or where the nightingales of old romance

With tragical contraltos fill

Dim solitudes of infinite desire;

And once I joyed to meet

Our peasant gadabout

A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat,

Twinkling a saucy eye

As potentates paced by.

Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame

From friendship’s altar fire!

How proudly we would pluck and tame

The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay!

How swiftly they were sent

Far, far away

On journeys wide,

By sea and continent,

Green miles and blue leagues over,

From each of us to each,

That so our hearts might reach,

And touch within the yellow clover,

Love’s letter to be glad about

Like sunshine when it came!

My sorrow asks no healing; it is love;

Let love then make me brave

To bear the keen hurts of

This careless summertide,

Ay, of our own poor flower,

Changed with our fatal hour,

For all its sunshine vanished when you died;

Only white clover blossoms on your grave.