Uncollected Poems of Annie Adams Fields
Introduction
Only a few of Fields's uncollected poems appear on this page. In Annie
Adams Fields (1990), Judith Roman lists Fields's known
published poems (pp. 183-5). Many of these are collected in
Fields's two volumes, Under the Olive (1881) and The
Singing Shepherd (1895), but a good number remain
uncollected. Having had reason to work with those below, I have
begun a modest collection. More may be added as circumstances
allow.
Terry Heller
Coe College
July 2020
THE LAZY FARM-BOY.
St. Nicholas 8 (Oct 1881), p. 920.
Lazy in the spring-time, before the leaves are green,
Lazy in the summer-time, beneath their leafy screen,
Sure a lazier farm-boy never yet was seen!
His cheeks are round as apples and browned by sun and breeze,
He bears a pair of patches upon his sturdy knees,
And wears the pleasant countenance of one who loves to please.
The weeds are growing fast, and the master takes his hoe,
And bids his farm-boy follow him, whether he will or no;
He follows as a farm-boy should, but he follows very slow.
His master leads him to the field and shows him all his task,
And leaves him when in sunbeams the earth earth begins to bask,
Just as the boy would like "How long ere dinner-time" to ask;
After a while he thinks he hears an early apple fall,
Now surely from the little wood he hears a phoebe call!
So he halts among the pumpkins beside the pasture-wall.
For half an hour he gazes to find the apple-tree,
And listens for the phoebe, but is not sure 't is she,
Then he takes his hoe and marvels so many weeds should be.
And now the perfect face of heaven, wears not a single cloud,
The lazy boy above his hoe is for a brief space bowed,
But soon, despondent, he stops short before a weed crowd.
"'I think," he says, "(I am so tired!) -- it must be nigh to noon;
I'll listen for the mid-day bell; it should be ringing soon."
He lies down in the shade to hear, and whistles a slow tune.
There is no sound, the breezes die, he soon falls fast asleep;
The weeds do not stop growing -- thus will our labors keep.
He wears a smile, for in his dream he hears a squirrel cheep.
Roused by the clanging bell of noon, he wakes with startled moan;
"I wonder how it is," he says, "so many needs were sown!"
"Because," I answer, "smart farm-boys are not like clover grown."
PASTOR DANKWARDT.
POMERANIA, 1807.
Harper's Magazine 64 ( January 1882), pp. 271-2
‘Twas in the Northern German land,
Fast by the Baltic Sea,
When the French Emperor sent his troops
To bend the people's knee,
And dwell within their houses,
Feasting on wine and corn,
Till German hearts should learn to feel
The might of foreign scorn.
They came to Bodenstede,
A hamlet green and still,
With fountain in the market-place,
Where maids their pitchers fill.
They overran the village street,
They overran the inn,
They stole the peasants' ripening crops,
And strove the maids to win;
And up and down throughout the night
They sang their ribald song,
While hidden evils darted forth
To join the lawless throng.
How fair was Bodenstede!
But deeds the Frenchmen wrought
Among her pleasant summer fields
No peaceful harvest brought.
The people seized the soldiers,
And bore them to the strand,
And shipped them to a barren shore
Within a hostile land,
And then returned rejoicing;
But he, the nations' fate,
Quickly dispatched a mightier corps
To hold the conquered state.
Alas for Bodenstede!
How sad the sun uprose
That day the foreign flags returned
Before his golden close!
Rode forth Commander Mortier:
“Seize all the men,” he cried,
“Who rule in Bodenstede,
And place them side by side;
“And at the signal given,
Shoot each man where he stands.
They that remain shall live to see
Their blazing homes and lands.”
Then forward stepped the pastor;
His eyes were bright as flame:
“If any man is shot, shoot me!
Mine is the guilt and shame.
“I bade the people to revolt,
And drag the men away;
I sent them to the Swedish shore;
'Twas I urged on the fray.
“Hear me, O sire, how innocent
These people surely are;
I pray thee burn my guilty roof,
But all these others spare.”
The stern Commander Mortier
Heard what the pastor said,
One moment stood irresolute,
Then turned his horse's head;
And putting spurs to flank, they rode
Out from the wondering town;
And as they passed, the word was given,
“These fisher-huts burn down"
A few poor sheds where no man dwelt!
No blood that day was spilled.
And thus Commander Mortier
The Emperor's law fulfilled.
Those battle-fields are overgrown,
Dim is their glory now;
But Virtue ever wakeful shines;
The stars are on her brow.
The pastor in his flowing gown,
Before the arméd host,
Joyfully giving life and home
If he may save the lost:
Deep in the German father-land
This rooted memory grows,
And safe within the children's heart
The living picture glows.
HUMILITY
Harper's Magazine 66 ( January 1883), p. 233
Grief lives in the estate of kings,
And care will seek a haughty place;
Joy comes to dwell with common things;
And happiness the swallows chase
When grasses wave on dewy lawn,
And opens the great lid of dawn.
Childhood and joy are with us still,
Though fortune frown upon our state;
The feet of spring return to fill
The rounding fruit, whate'er our fate:
And still the summer's cloudless blue
Opens to let the white birds through.
Then climb not toward the steps of a throne,
A canopy must veil the sky;
From the green field we do not own
We yet may watch the wild birds fly;
There shall remain the ancient heaven
Once unto the child-heart given.
CHRYSALIDES.
Atlantic Monthly 52 (September 1883), pp. 375-6
Night-blue skies of thine,
Egypt, and thy dead who may not rest,
Who with wide eyes
Stand staring in the darkness of the mine!
Thy woman, Egypt, with her breast
Two cups of carven gold;
And hands that no more rise
In praise, or supplication, or to sound
The timbrel in the dance!
White is thy noontide glare,
But no keen glance
Of yet created sun
Can pierce the deeps and caverns of thy dead.
They are overspread
With a new earth, where new men come and go,
And sleep when all is done;
While far below,
Shut from the upper air,
These stirless figures, bound
In awful cerements, must forever wait.
There is another land,
Where in a valley once the god Pan slept,
Under the young blue sky, between two peaks ;
And here, a hero, running as one seeks
For fame, with ardor which his strength outstepped,
Fell dying in the stillness; slow-breathing lay
The rounded marble limbs in the green grass.
An eagle, pausing on his fiery way,
Down swooped. Lo, as he soared, alas!
Nearing his awful steep,
Where only the dews weep,
And bearing in his clutches that bright form,
He heard the hero's voice:
“Eat, bird, and feed thyself! This morsel choice
Shall give thy claws a span;
This courage of a man
Shall bid thy pinions swell,
And by my strength thy wings shall grow an ell."
THE INITIATE.
Atlantic Monthly 52 (December 1883), pp. 745-6
Slowly, with day's dying fall,
And with many a solemn sound,
Slowly from the Athenian wall,
The long procession wound.
Five days of the mystic nine
Clad in solemn thought were passed,
Ere the few could drink the wine
Or seek the height at last.
Then the chosen, young and old,
To Eleusis went their ways;
But no lip the tale has told
Of those mysterious days.
In the seer's seeing eye,
The maiden with a faithful soul,
In youth that did not fear to die,
Was felt that strange control.
Yet no voice the dreadful word
Through these centuries of man
Made the sacred secret heard,
Or showed the hidden plan.
All the horrors born of death
Rose within that nine days' gloom,
Chasing those forms of mortal breath
From awful room to room.
Deep through bowels of the earth
They drove the seekers of the dark,
Hearts that longed to know the worth
Hid in the living spark.
In that moment of despairs
Was revealed -- but who may tell
How the Omnipotent declares
His truth that all is well?
Saw they forms of their own lost?
Heard they voices that have fled?
We know not, -- or know at most
Their joy was no more dead.
Light of resurrection gleamed,
But in what shape we cannot hear;
Glory shone of the redeemed
Beyond this world of fear.
Old books say Demeter came
And smiled upon them, and her smile
Burned all their sorrow in its flame,
Yet left them here awhile.
O shadowed sphere whereon we pause
To live our dream and suffer, thou
Shroudst the initiate days; the cause
Gleams on thy morning brow!
DEISIDAIMONIA.
(Holy Fear)
Atlantic Monthly 54 (March 1884), pp. 350-1.
In the silence of that far-off land
Where dwell the gods, and where the hearts of men,
Leaving this common strand,
Love to disport, --
Knowing nor how nor when
They have fled thither to inherit spheres
Made sacred by the absence of the years, --
In that dread land is one
Tall and most beautiful,
Who like the sun
Awes with her presence all who walk by day;
Many have sought for her,
Longing and wandering, and have gone astray;
But one who found,
Hath wrought her form in marble,
Naming her
Love the Victorious.
Thus she lives for us!
And in that presence, lo! the holy dread
Men knew of old still holds their senses dull
To all things else, while they but gaze,
Nor utter any sound.
High hearts! Fear is not dead,
But walks these alleys green and noonlit ways,
And runs before the fleeting foot of youth,
As when the childhood of the world worshiped both love and
truth.
And who is he that chides
The fainting color and the stumbling speech
In boy or maid!
Who is he derides
Worship for what he sees not, nor can reach!
He cannot hear the voice within the wind,
Nor follow the unbodied feet that fall
Beside him in the woodland, cannot find
Dear faces in the stillness of the mind,
Nor feel the love that sways and governs all.
Upon the night I wake,
And lo, the clouds are chasing wide and far;
Dim beacons break,
Then die on the horizon.
There is no hand, no loving hand,
No voice from strand to strand;
Only the wind across the star-strewn sky
Cries in the trees, then murmurs, and is gone.
Thou holy dread,
Who holdest the dim gates whereby we pass
Between the seen and unseen,
Fade not, lest dim and even as in a glass
We see, and straight forget what we have been!
For in the night, in sorrow of the night,
In awful woodlands and the roar of seas,
The still voice bids us know the thing we are,
And what perchance we may be!
Quicken my sight,
Thou terror of the dawn!
And thou sad breeze,
Quicken my ear!
That when the sun once more salutes the lawn
My soul, awake, shall see
The morning of forgiveness and of peace;
And her one star
Guide to the haven of love, where doubt and dread shall
cease.
SUMMER COMPANIONS
Harper's Magazine 66 ( September 1885), p. 584
'Mid the flowers and the brakes,
In the sun, in the shower,
One with insect and bird,
Children born for an hour;
They pitched their white tent
On my wild blooming sward,
Contented with summer
And nature unbarred.
One morning when storm-wind
Swept over the land,
And the fog-bell was tolling
Blind ships from the strand,
I sought my green pasture
And sail sheltered birds;
There was silence for laughter,
And sadness for words.
Nor again with the season
When soft waves return,
God's sweetness of sunshine,
And lilies that burn,
Do they pitch on my green-sward
Their white-wingéd tent,
Nor dance in cool sunshine
When clover is bent.
Then come, mighty storm-wind,
Companion thou me,
For in dark and in tempest
My spirit is free!
The summer may go,
And the flowers they may die.
On thy wing to my dearest
Ever nearer I fly.
THE PREACHER
Harper's Bazaar 18 (5 December 1885), p. 786
Up to the church we went to pray
And meditate on Love Divine;
Or so we teach, and thus men say,
We, branches all, of Christ the Vine.
The church stood by the village green,
Where two and two or three or four
The people in their best were seen
Slow gathering round the door.
In the old time our fathers came
Bearing their weight of sin and cares;
The service was a holy flame
That purged away their snares.
The little children gazed in awe
To sec their parents bow the knee,
Obedient to a higher law,
A God they could not see.
Now life has changed. The people ask
Who is the preacher, can you tell?
And study his appointed task,
And question, Is it well?
Or gaze with disapproving brows,
And, angry, say, "We like him not;
We do not care for what he knows;
The gift, he has it not."
Returning thus when church was done,
Weary, I kissed a curly head.
"What playest thou my little one?"
"At church-going," she said.
"Who was the preacher?" I asked then.
A solemn look was on her face;
"The same, mother, has always been,
The Lord." A creature base
I felt myself when thus a word
From a young child unconscious brought
Home to my heart how there unheard
God spake, and I learned naught.
AN INVITATION.
Harper's Magazine 73 ( August 1886), p. 397
When in the house the day is warm,
And dogs lie stretched before the door,
Come out to my neglected farm.
And sit upon the grassy floor.
Under the apple-trees' green roof,
Laced with the yellow light of morn,
Share nature's joy without reproof,
Thou man who art to trouble born!
Alas! 'tis said for price of gold
The axe shall hew these leafy towers;
The spade shall trample in the mould
This fragrant grass, these dewy flowers;
And when this pleasure-house is waste,
A mansion built for earthly care,
For waiting days, and tiresome haste,
Shall lift a stately front in air.
Then come, before the day declines,
And hear the bees among the boughs;
See where the early moon entwines
Her crescent in my bloomy house.
Perhaps before the spade shall wound
This turf, to plant the cares of earth,
A smaller plot of turf be found
More green, to tell our nobler birth.
Then hasten ere the day shall die,
And lay thy heart to summer's bliss,
And learn, whatever joys may fly,
To know the permanence of this.
VICTORIA.
Harper's Magazine 74 ( January 1887), p. 251
The brake stands yellow in the field,
The sumach leaves are red,
The hazel swells his furry shield,
And the wild rose is dead.
Still murmurs she, What happy days are mine!
Summer yet here, and vigor in the vine.
White hairs now rest upon her brow,
And grief has touched her heart;
Fair youth has left her vessel's prow,
Nor vanished without smart.
O Love, she cries, behold! thou still art mine,
And happy, I, with summer in the vine!
She sees the golden-rod laid low,
The purple clover fall;
She hears the bitter north-wind blow,
And wintry curlew call;
And still she murmurs, Happy day's are mine,
The sun of love breeds summer in the vine.
Soon leaves shall drop above her head,
Snows drift around her feet,
But who shall say that she is dead
Whose season is so sweet?
While tender autumn echoes, Joy is mine,
And summer sleeps in vigor of the vine.