The Return of the Year

Archibald Lampman 1861 (Upper Canada) – 1899 (Ottawa, Canada)



Again the warm bare earth, the noon
That hangs upon her healing scars,
The midnight round, the great red moon,
The mother with her brood of stars,

The mist-rack and the wakening rain
Blown soft in many a forest way,
The yellowing elm-trees, and again
The blood-root in its sheath of gray.

The vesper-sparrow's song, the stress
Of yearning notes that gush and stream,
The lyric joy, the tenderness,
And once again the dream! the dream!

A touch of far-off joy and power,
A something it is life to learn,
Comes back to earth, and one short hour
The glamours of the gods return.

This life's old mood and cult of care
Falls smitten by an older truth,
And the gray world wins back to her
The rapture of her vanished youth.

Dead thoughts revive, and he that heeds
Shall hear, as by a spirit led,
A song among the golden reeds:
'The gods are vanished but not dead!'

For one short hour, unseen yet near,
They haunt us, a forgotten mood,
A glory upon mead and mere,
A magic in the leafless wood.

At morning we shall catch the glow
Of Dian's quiver on the hill,
And somewhere in the glades I know
That Pan is at his piping still.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:04 min read
83

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB XCXC XDXD EFEF XGEG HIHI JXJX KLKL
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,095
Words 214
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

Archibald Lampman

Archibald Lampman FRSC was a Canadian poet. "He has been described as 'the Canadian Keats;' and he is perhaps the most outstanding exponent of the Canadian school of nature poets." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that he is "generally considered the finest of Canada's late 19th-century poets in English." Lampman is classed as one of Canada's Confederation Poets, a group which also includes Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. more…

All Archibald Lampman poems | Archibald Lampman Books

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