In a still room at hush of dawn,
My Love and I lay side by side
And heard the roaming forest wind
Stir in the paling autumn-tide.
I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad
Because the round day was so fair;
While memories of reluctant night
Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.
Outside, a yellow maple tree,
Shifting upon the silvery blue
With tiny multitudinous sound,
Rustled to let the sunlight through.
The livelong day the elvish leaves
Danced with their shadows on the floor;
And the lost children of the wind
Went straying homeward by our door.
And all the swarthy afternoon
We watched the great deliberate sun
Walk through the crimsoned hazy world,
Counting his hilltops one by one.
Then as the purple twilight came
And touched the vines along our eaves,
Another Shadow stood without
And gloomed the dancing of the leaves.
The silence fell on my Love's lips;
Her great brown eyes were veiled and sad
With pondering some maze of dream,
Though all the splendid year was glad.
Restless and vague as a gray wind
Her heart had grown, -- she knew not why.
But hurrying to the open door,
Against the verge of western sky
I saw retreating on the hills,
Looming and sinister and black,
The stealthy figure swift and huge
Of One who strode and looked not back.
Born in Fredricton, New Brunswick on April 15,
1861, Bliss Carman was descended from American Loyalists. He was educated at the University
of New Brunswick, Edinburgh and Harvard.
He later moved to New York where he was an influential editor and writer for
several publications and literary journals. He is also well known for his anthology
and editing work on The World's Best Poetry (1904) and The Oxford book of American verse (1927).
After 1909, he lived in New Canaan, CT. He became a corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
In 1928, the Society awarded him its Lorne Pierce Medal.
Bliss Carman died on June 8, 1929 at the age of 68 in New Canaan. At the time, he was Canada's best known poet.
His body was returned home and interred in the Forest Hill Cemetery in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
