Page:Eight Harvard Poets.djvu/45

 MEMORY

ETWEEN rounded hills, White with patches of buckwheat, whose fragrance fills The little breeze that makes the birch-leaves quiver, Beside a rollicking swift river, Light green in the deeps,— Like your eyes in sunshine,— Winds the canal, Lazy and brown as a water-snake, Full of dazzle and sheen where the breeze sweeps The water with gossamer garments, that shake The reeds standing sentinel, And the marginal line Of birches and willows.

Our little steamer puffs its way With jingle of bells and panting throb Of old engines. In stiff array The water-reeds wave, And solemnly sway To the wash and swell of our passing. Among the reeds the ripples sob, And die away, 34