The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-10-13
SELECTED POETRY.
Contrasts.

stood one day upon a rocky cliff
Beside a Southern Sea.
friend was with me and he spake to me
with an exultant pride in voice and eye,
As each new charm he pointed out
OF m ountain city. valley and deep sapphire sky,
"w Where is there in all your storm swept, frozen
North
Aught that with Our Italy compare2"
The scene before me was most radantly fair,
Close to our feet and stretching far away
with rippleof blue waters and white spray
Lay the bright bay of lovely Monterey
Made glorious with sunshine,
While at our right, and reaching far up among the
foothills,
Lay the city, Santa Cruz, empowered In roses.
All her streets and parks and avenues adorned
With the pale green and scarlet of her pepper trees
While the magnolia lent her stately grace
To make perfect. yet, the beauty OF the place
From the Pacific coast Ben Lomond rose on high
His bold, dark form outlined against the Northern
sky;
Up his steep slopes, as far as eye could reach,
Nestled in orchards Of fig, almond, peach,
We're cottages and villas looking down
As though they were the guardians of the bay and
town,
While browning all the summit grew the graceful
Prisoned In whose purpe clusters sleeps the rosy
wine,
And over all perpetual summer lay
Lending the potent magic OF her sway.
/" Here ice and cold and snow come never
The charm that here you see endures forever"
.
fingered long by that enchanted shore
And days and davs went drifting by and nothing
more,
without beginning and without end, years melted
into years,
And side by side the sower and the reaper walked.
Here nature set no bounds, nor planned breathing
spell,
In all the sunny land there was no must,
Children of the summer they need only trust
The wanton, careless opulence OF Mother Earth
And take their pleasure with no fear of dearth.
Then all my soul turned yearningly away
Beyond the Rockies where the King of Day comes
earliest,
Away to distant pralries left behind,
Where now the stern rough rule of stormy March,
though kind,
Had left the whole brown earth shivering a. bare
longed to watch again caprcious Aprirs wiles,
To see, at her light touch the whole bright face Of
nature dimple into smiles.
To the swift, glad bursting into beauty
of the Spring,
When thoughts, and birds and fances all take wing
To watch again the tender, deep'ning tnts on leaf
ana DOugn,
To the carpet of the growing grass spread, soft
ly, everywhere,
To see, and feel the hurryng rush of changing pic
lures there,
And all the radiant landscape with every change
grow fair;
And when the whole wide land droops YEARLY
Beneath the radiance of the summer
Across the low dark clouds like murky banners
hung,
fain would see the fiery signals of the Storm King
flung,
Hear the deep thunders crash the wild winds shrek
and moan,
And browning all the with his brilliant show
OF sparkling crystals which outshine the glow OF
myriad diamonds,
See winter reign supreme once more with stony
clasp
The icy scepter ever in his grasp saying with ges
ture mute as death
Pausei Think and know myself
" Gods thinking time is winter" so the poet saith.
Ali Heaven itself can never be so fair
But would sigh for change If we were mortali
there. olivia Kellogg Batchelder.