GREAT banks of clouds skim o'er the sky;

Like hasty travellers they go,

Like piled-up drifts of fleecy snow,

They skim and sail and hurry by.

I sit upon a rugged stone

With moss and lichen overgrown;

The trees above are making love,

And talk in language all their own,

Beyond the new-mown meadows stretch

Long fields of yellow-bearded wheat,

And thence the pirate blackbirds fetch

The ripening grain in swift retreat.

Along the streamlet, tall and red.

The tiger lilies raise their head, -

The lilies spared by mower's scythe

Now in the west wind shake and writhe.

And oak and elm and aspen frail

Like arrows shot from out the ground,

Bear on their furrow'd trunks a tale

That in no written book is found.

Beneath them once the timid deer

Would start at eventide to hear

The wild hollo of Indian foe

At wassail in his wigwam near.

But now a fairer day is nigh, -

A day of wealth in teeming fields, -

And hope in richer harvest yields:

Great banks of clouds skim o'er the sky.