clouds of scintillating beauty,
Covering every bush and flower.
As silently as they came did they disappear
And in their place came the music
Of the katydid and the cricket.
Day and night the cheerful songs
Of these tiny insects were our company.

An early blizzard
Buried every green blade and bent to earth
Great trees and slender saplings
Under a thick weight of snow.
To our door came the thrushes
That we thought were gone,--
Shy thrushes, that had turned their backs
Upon us in summer and slipped
Into the depth of the woods,--
And whitethroats and tree sparrows,
Unafraid, waiting for food.
Even now the stillness is alive
With the memory of these friendly folk.

_Storm_

When the storm rushes upon the deep woods,
It lets down curtains of mist
And sheets of rain, that drip
Crystal beads among the trees.
Way above, the branches lash and moan
And weave. Below, it is still,
Still as the undersea.
Soft fern and feathery bracken
Loom through the mist
Like branching coral,
And drifting leaves float down
Like snowy fishes,
Lazily moving.

_A Reminder_

Down beneath the office windows
In a chestnut clump,
A robin sings all day long,
"Joyously, joyously!"

Above the whir of traffic,
The bands and the sirens,
Floats his song all day,
"Joyously, joyously!"

The lilting song brings to me,
The peace of field and merry brook,
And I myself, sing all day, too,
"Joyously, joyously!"

_Buffalo Harbor_

Some say that it is ugly and hurry on through,
But I love these impressive symbols
Of man's ingenuity.
Here are the great grain elevators, looming
In tones and shades of grey, veiled
In the clouds of black smoke from the
Tugs at their feet;
Puffing engines shifting strings of cars,
And huge ships nosed in against each other
Or riding at anchor, and canal boats
In straight lines at the docks.
Farther on, across a slip, there are
Mountains of ore in reds and brown,
And pile upon pile of gravel and slag,
And sand in soft saffron hues,
Heaped up for the steel mills to devour;
Those gigantic mills whose tall stacks
Belch varicolored gases, against
The deep blue of the inner harbor,
Where the waves pound in
Over the sea wall.