Nancy Byrd Turner

Everything is black and gold,
Black and gold, to-night:
Yellow pumpkins, yellow moon
Yellow candlelight;
...

He played by the river when he was young.
He raced with rabbits along the hills,
He fished for minnows, and climbed and swung,
...

Sometimes the weather is a man
With gray cloak flying free;
His coat of mail is icy hail,
A stormy steed rides he.
...

Only the human dead may lie
In God's good acre wide and fair;
Those of an humbler kind who die
...

Death is only an old door
Set in a garden wall
On gentle hinges it gives, at dusk
When the thrushes call
...

Peace and Mercy and Jonathan,
And Patience (very small),
Stood by the table giving thanks
The first Thanksgiving of all.
...

Who loves his country will not rest
Content with vow and pledge alone,
But flies her banner in his breast
...

There was a boy of other days,
A quiet, awkward, earnest lad,
Who trudged long weary miles to get
A book on which his heart was set—
And then no candle had!
...

Here is this day,

Across the fields of darkness softly come

Into my silent room,
...

The Wooden Dog and the China Cat
Face to face in the doll-house sat,
And they picked a quarrel that grew and grew,
Because they had nothing else to do.
...

Men go out from the places where they dwelled,
They know not why not whither, overborne
At midnight by some awful word, foresworn
Between one dark and day, called and compelled.
...

Amos and Ann had a poem to learn,
A poem to learn one day;
But alas! they sighed, and alack! they cried,
...

They went to the January house,
A house made all of snow,
With windows of ice, and chandeliers
Of icicles all in a row.
...

The house of December was all aglow,
Each room was jolly and red;
There were bulgy stockings ranged in a row,
...

The next house stood just back from the street,
In a gray little narrow lane.
A table loaded with things to eat
...

They went to the February place:
'Twas fashioned, with curious art,
Of colored sugar and paper lace,
With a front door shaped like a heart.
...

The March house, strangely, was built in a tree,
With a fluttering roof of leaves,
And strong, straight boughs for the walls of the house,
And an apple or two in the eaves.
...

The April house was near a pond;
It was made of reeds and of rushes,
All helter-skelter and out of kelter,
And ringed by gooseberry bushes.
...

Very familiar September seemed:
A flag-pole stood in the yard,
And the little path that led from the road
Was trampled bare and hard.
...

A green-thatched cottage was May's sweet home
With velvet moss for a floor,
And a clambering vine in the gay sunshine,
And a Maypole set by the door.
...