Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A RIOT OF MEADOWS, by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A RIOT OF MEADOWS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Meadows! Deep-reasoning meadows, philosopher friends
Last Line: I shall have you happily still wherever I go.
Subject(s): Fields; Pastures; Meadows; Leas


Meadows! deep-reasoning meadows, philosopher friends,
How you have welcomed the blundering steps of a man!
Broadened your green divan,
Taught me your temperate ends,
Counselled of patience and peace and the infinite plan!
Tell me: out of what shadowy, mystic well
Do you draw this flood of content, this tranquil air?
How are you constantly fair,
Ever hopeful and smiling and sweet?
Where did your grasses dwell
Before they came to lay their grace at my feet?
Whence did that tangle of vines
Gather the cool and the calm it entwines?
And where, O meadows, where
Did you find the invincible gladness that sparkles and shines,
Philosopher friends,
As far as your fee extends?

Rising, falling, the gentle contour unrolls
Breathing of flower souls,
Breathing of meadow-sweet, buttercup, Queen Anne's lace,
Dear as a mother's face,
Vocal with meadow-larks, yellowthroats, croon of the bee,
Blithe as the children's glee,
Momently pensive and grave where the cloud-shadows run,
Steadily glad in the sun.

Here is no schedule or system or scheme,
Only a lawful disorder and riotous rule,
Only the logic that lives in a dream,
And the lore that mocks at a school;
Yet here what marvels are swiftly and silently done!
What imperial garments are spun,
What buildings are reared with no tool,
What chemic empires are stanchly won,
What battles are fought without the crash of a gun!
Unseen, unheard,
In the dim green aisles of the grasses winding afar,
What governments are,
Republics of moles and of ants and of brooding bird,
Courts and diplomacies, treaties and balancing tribes,
All without parchments or scribes!

Is it this that I feel
As my spirit mounts from the meadows and ranges high
Along the beckoning sweep of the kindly sky?
This fulness of life
Beating beneath me, outpulsing in shimmering zeal
From a world with godliness rife?

Behold, O meadows, my friends, I am one with you!
Bound to your beauty, and joined to your firmness of law;
Stern outcropping of granite strong and true,
Flowers without flaw,
Dallying butterflies brightly afield with the breeze,
Fatherly trees,
Tender bourgeoning swells of the comrade grass,
And the birds that pass,
Friends, I am one with you all. I leave you here
Through the round of the happy year;
Yet going, I bear you away, and wherever I roam
My heart is your home,
And blessedly there, even there,
In the winter you still are warm and fair,
The clouds float over your bosom still,
The birds and the butterflies work their will,
The trees are never bare.
And Yonder -- O meadows of earth! I know, I know
I shall have you happily still wherever I go.





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