Trumbull Stickney (1874-1904)
Mnemosyne
1It 's autumn in the country I remember.
2How warm a wind blew here about the ways!
3And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber
4During the long sun-sweetened summer-days.
5It's cold abroad the country I remember.
6The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain
7At midday with a wing aslant and limber;
8And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain.
9It 's empty down the country I remember.
10I had a sister lovely in my sight:
11Her hair was dark, her eyes were very sombre;
12We sang together in the woods at night.
13It 's lonely in the country I remember.
14The babble of our children fills my ears,
15And on our hearth I stare the perished ember
16To flames that show all starry thro' my tears.
17It 's dark about the country I remember.
18There are the mountains where I lived. The path
19Is slushed with cattle-tracks and fallen timber,
20The stumps are twisted by the tempests' wrath.
21But that I knew these places are my own,
22I 'd ask how came such wretchedness to cumber
23The earth, and I to people it alone.
24It rains across the country I remember.
Notes
22] cumber: trouble, burden.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: The Poems of Trumbull Stickney, ed. George Cabot Lodge, William Vaughn Moody, and John Ellerton Lodge (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1905): 29-30. PS 3537 T525 1905 Robarts Library.
First publication date:
1902
Publication date note: Dramatic Verses (1902), p. 25
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/14
Rhyme: a bab a cac a ...
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