John Stuart Thomson (1867-1950)
Text from A Century of Canadian Sonnets.
Summer
Beauty and Joy live through the summer day;
The morning rustles by my bed of dreams,
In garments made of woven auroral beams;
And toying zephyrs in the garden stray,
Shaking the dews from each rose-weighted spray
Upon the crimson poppies burning lips.
A white-winged butterfly delighted sips
Of cooling golden wine, his thirst to allay,
The while he poises on the yellow brim
Of buttercups. And when the day is dim;
And shadows flutter in the rising gale;
And oak leaves tremble in the wood afar,
Like falling flakes of gold,--o'er night's dark rail
Pale seraphs lean, each with a censer-star.
An Autumn Wind
A truce with cares and labours! I have cried;
And traced the sweet winds to the barley field,
To watch the strong browned reapers, joyous wield
Their curved and twinkling sickles side by side.
And where the harvest valley opened wide,
A breeze fell down among the rip'ning grain,
Driving the golden waves across the plain,
And dipping in the nooks, where fieldlarks hide.
Brave with its gambol, still it went until
It waved the loosestrifes' ribbons o'er the hill,
And spilled the dazzling sunset from the flow'rs.
Within a forest then it hid at night;
To waken when the morning filled the bow'rs
With fragrance, and with floods of violet light.
