Classic and Contemporary Poetry
STRAWBERRY TIME, by MARGARET ELIZABETH MUNSON SANGSTER Poet's Biography First Line: When the strawberry, ripening, blushes Last Line: From fields where the berries are thick. Alternate Author Name(s): Van Deth, Gerrit, Mrs. Subject(s): Childhood Memories; Fruit; Harvest; Labor & Laborers; Strawberries; Work; Workers | ||||||||
WHEN the strawberry, ripening, blushes To meet the sweet looks of the sun, Then faintly the fair laurel flushes; Then gayly the eager winds run To tell, upon hillside and meadow, The coming of festival days, While out from his nest in the shadow The bird pours his jubilant lays. The pasture-lands dimple with clover, The buttercups dazzle and shine; The wide fields of summer brim over With dreams of a perfume divine; And forth go the children as merry, As harvesters seeking for sheaves, With bright eyes discerning the berry, A ruby mid emerald leaves. Brown-handed, sun-freckled, they linger To eat the sweet globes while they pick; What care they for stain on the finger, So ripe is the treasure, and thick; Like music their innocent laughter Rings out o'er their frolic and haste; Ah! never will berries hereafter Hold nectar so rich to the taste. Hereafter, when shrill voices cry them, Discordant, through streets of the town, And gravely they bargain and buy them, Their value in silver pay down, Yet haply remembering childhood, They'll say, as at evening they eat: "The berries we found in the wildwood, Unsugared, were surely more sweet." And yet can the dear, evanescent, Illusive, full charm of the fruit Be known to the children whose present Suffices unto them? The root Of every glad hour of pleasure Must grow, deeply struck, in the past; And so is our berry a treasure Less prized at the first than at last. For now as the shy things are blushing Low down mid their leaves on the ground, As the delicate laurels are flushing On hillock and meadow and mound, We, working and weary with labor, Shut in among houses of brick, Hear sounds, as of pipe and of tabor, From fields where the berries are thick. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFTER WORKING SIXTY HOURS AGAIN FOR WHAT REASON by HICOK. BOB DAY JOB AND NIGHT JOB by ANDREW HUDGINS BIXBY'S LANDING by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON BUILDING WITH STONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS LINES FROM A PLUTOCRATIC POETASTER TO A DITCH-DIGGER by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS IN CALIFORNIA: MORNING, EVENING, LATE JANUARY by DENISE LEVERTOV ARE THE CHILDREN AT HOME? by MARGARET ELIZABETH MUNSON SANGSTER |
|