大象传媒

It is Autumn now, and log-fires brightly burn,
To welcome you; strange people smile, and smiling yearn,
To give you all the heritage of years.
Which you, how could you know, with all your tears,
From life in dusty, dirty streets, was yours.
Yet all this space is yours, and through these doors
Wide grasslands stretch and trees beyond your dreams,
And although the days are too short it seems
To play as you would in the fields, that smell
So sweetly fresh; in your strange rooms sleep well,
Content; and when maybe your hands are tied
Wet days when one would think all heaven cried:
Then wake, and love such Beauty with your eyes;
Pattern of naked boughs on stormy skies.
Hear the winds chatter in the chimney stack,
And how the crackling branches answer back,
See beauty in the great fires, blazing hot,
In leaping flames that dance around the pot;
Ever striving and reaching to follow
The blue wood smoke, that lies in the hollow,
Every day as evening comes; enjoy it,
And each school day those country boys who sit,
Beside you and their sisters in the school
Make them your friends and thus throughout the grey
And chilly days will help to speed the time
Till winter spreads his icy wings and sunshine warms the day.

And after winter when the spring
Unlocks all living things anew
When first you discover the real spring
What joys life has in store for you:
Whom the glories of Autumn
Could never excite very much.
Dance with the spring and be gay children
Know not of 鈥渨hy?鈥� or of 鈥渨here鈥�.
Don鈥檛 ask, don鈥檛 question, don鈥檛 say children
Why am I here 鈥� why not there?
Never ask 鈥渨ill my father be long?鈥�
Only sing with spring children
A spring that knows but does not show
Those things that if you were to know
Would stop your song

G.A.G. Miller 1939.

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