Nancy Byrd Turner Poems

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,
...

The June house wasn't a house at all,
But a level and leafy place,
Where a gypsy scamp had pitched his camp-
A gypsy merry of face.
...

The July house was an old, old house,
With an old, old man inside,
Who told them stories of other days,
...

Look up, there's our flag!
We can count every star,-
And the red, blue, and white,
How lovely they are!
...

It was a queer October place-
No house, you'd say, at all!
A wide brown wood with leaves for a floor,
And timbers straight and tall.
...

Oh, such a funny August house-
It really was like a zoo,
For animals roamed in all the rooms
(Even a kangaroo):
...

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
...