NAWSA General Correspondence Thompson, Francis N. How Autumn Ends I thought last night was wondrous calm and still, And now the morn reveals this endless white, With romping children shouting their delight; And every tree upon the distant hill Is clad in snow. Now through the air a chill Proclaims the end of autumn; and the sprite Who turns to ice the pond, and sets a light To wave in the north, enchants each rill. It all portends the passing of the year: To tender plants we bid a sad Good-bye,- Their blooms are dead, frost crystals on each bier- For through the fields the growing green will die; And all the upload postures - lone and drear- So cold an white, so calm and silent, lie. FRANCIS NIMS THOMPSON GREENFIELD, MASS. When Autumn Comes Until there comes a chill upon the breeze At even-time, the summer is not old: When nights grow longer, longer and more cold; Pale leaves are dropping from the weaker trees; And twirling down we see some maple keys, Where less'ning sap leads twigs to loose their hold; Then rip'ning sap leads twigs to loose their hold; And partridge, deer and boys wild apples seize. When fruits are ripe, and all the grains have done With growth, and soon the trees their leaves must yield, Comes Autumn, royal Autumn, - dreamy one In purple, with scepter and flow'ry shield: Her goldenrod is as the open sun, And asters purple shadows, on the field. As Autumn Flames To me the restful color of the pine Is never more delightful than in fall When sumacs hear the frost king's trumpet call, The sassafras displays his autumn sign, And sugar maples stand in flaming line. They gaily march in Nature's vaulted hall; A martial motive animates them all: There is no sober spirit here, but mine. I know the host so militant must die: "Will send a fire which shall devour," Amos Foretold; and thus to the flaming leaves I cry; They answer, "Glory alone may claim us!" And scarlet tree and burning bush reply, - Exult, - "Morituri salutamus." So Autumn Fades Now old October turns on us her back: Through barren woods she slowly draws away And none will bid so sere a season stay. All pallid stands the pointed hackmatack Besides a swamp whose soil is cold and black, And barberries alone are bright and gray; For passing years are like fading day When light is dim and fields the sunshine lack. But see, thrown o'er brown limbs, a veil of gold Where weird witch-hazel sways above moist sod: Though violets half hide each purple fold, A Deptford pin holds high its floret odd; And from green star deep-set within the mould The dandelion's face looks up to God. Francis Nims Thompson Judge of Probate Court Greenfield, Massachusetts Nov 13 1937 My dear Mrs. Blackwell: I have received and read your splendid contribution to the spring (1916) number of POET LORE, and I have copied three sheets of the translations. I am returning it in another package today and with it my autumn sonnets and A WOODED HILL which I hope you will accept, if only to pass on to someone loving nature. I was on the wooded hill yesterday (after presiding at a ARMISTICE DAY and CONSTITUTION CELEBRATION in the forenoon). My pastor and I cooked our dinner in the little camp. read each other's literary efforts, washed the dishes, picked up great pine cones for kindling our fires, came down at dark to a parish supper for men, heard some talk and saw the last movie (quite amusing) at a local theatre. A "holiday" and typical pleasure exertion. I wonder if you knew, or knew of, my distant cousin Mary P. Wells Smith (1840-1930),/ who wrote BOY CAPTIVE OF OLD DEERFIELD and (some sixty years ago) the JOLLY GOOD TIMES STORIES on her own girlhood and my mother's. They were the Millie and Lois of those stories. The "district school", [by a brook], they (and later I) attended. This in explanation of my sending you the verses on THE VALLEY in which five generations of Nimses lived and through which some of them were driven to Canada by the French and Indians and others marched to the "Falls Fight" (1676) and to the American Revolution. You seemed interested by my outlook from High Pine upon this Valley or my ancestry. I thank you so heartily for the pleasure of reading the translations. Sincerely yours, Francis Nims Thompson Francis Nims Thompson Francis Nims Thompson Judge of Probate Court Greenfield, Massachusetts October 15 - 1937 Dear Miss Blackwell: May the fact that we appear, this autumn morning, on the same page of the Springfield Republican serve as an introduction? I wish to express my appreciation of a conception of autumn more satisfying than that in the sonnet sequence enclosed, and more lovely in your phrasing than in my own. Its first lines remind me of looking down from my camp above the Mo[w]hawk Trail upon the trail over which my Deerfield ancestors were driven by the French & Indians toward Canada, and upon the farm house of my Greenfield ancestors & the school district of the "Jolly Good Times" of Lois & Millie - my mother and her cousin Mary P. Wells Smith. Sincerely yours, Francis Nims Thompson LIGHT THROUGH AN UMBRELLA Umbrella held aslant above my head, I trod through rain along a dirty street Whose lamps reflected from the wet concrete; A night when toiling man and quadruped Were sodden, chill and much discomforted. Then at the turn there came, to rout defeat, A blessed thing--a shining cross, complete,-- As light fell through the fabric overspread. So now when all seems sad and dark and cold, And fog and tears obscure my groping sight; I think about that stormy night of old And turn again my face unto the light, Well knowing that the cross which shines as gold Will clear the mist and make the dark way bright. May 23 1937 A Sonnet for an Honest-To-God Christian Who has lost physical sight Francis Nims Thompson Greenfield, Mass. High Pine 6-30-1927 Francis Nims Thompson Greenfield, Mass. The Valley Beneath a pine upon the wooded hill I laid myself to dream and idly gaze Below. I sought to penetrate the haze Above the valley there, which seemed to fill With ancient kindred, and events both ill and good. I saw within the moving maze The tragic deeds of all those early days Along that trail where it is now so still. And there I saw the valley's placid stream; The fields that made my old ancestors strong. My grandsire tall was there; and in my dream One young, but like my mother, I watched long. I saw the district school, and had a gleam Of pebbly brook - I hope I caught its song. Francis Nims Thompson Feb. 6 - 1937 [?] ASB The Valley Beneath a pine upon the wooded hill I laid myself to dream and idly gaze Below. I sought to penetrate the haze Above the valley there, which seemed to fill With ancient kindred, and events both ill and good. I saw within the moving maze The tragic deeds of all those early days Along that trail where it is now so still. And there I saw the valley's placid stream; The fields that made my old ancestors strong. My grandsire tall was there; and in my dream One young, but like my mother, I watched long. I saw the district school, and had a gleam Of pebbly brook - I hope I caught its song. Francis Nims Thompson. February, 6, 1937. Out of Bounds Out Of Bounds DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER MARY NIMS THOMPSON 1839-1915 ON THE CENTENARY OF HER BIRTH Francis Nims Thompson Greenfield, Mass. January third 1939. Out Of Bounds Beside the road in Bernardston village there is a run-away garden. It is outside the fence and has scattered its thin line of bloom all the way from the house, as if children in bright-colored dresses were scampering away, dropping gay toys as they ran. If the flowers were moss pinks, bouncing bets and such half wild things, one might think that, instead of running away, they were furtively approaching the little white cottage-home; as if to ask for a drink of water, though hoping, shyly, for a kind word and motherly care: but these are very evidently cultivated plants running away. Though one may guess, he seldom knows why youngsters leave home; but lots of plants have, one time and another, run away and remained out of bounds. Some, like stray kittens, when once captured and suitably fed, settle down contentedly; and sometimes, again like kittens, embarrass their self-appointed host by their prolific reproduction. This is as true of some wild plants whose ancestors were wholly crude and uncultivated. I once adopted a dozen wild violets of as many varieties. Did they stay in my nice orphanage, provided with supplies far better than those upon which they had been brought up? No, they crowded into the pantry, and apparently every violet brought all his family and friends; they were eating up all the food intended for my roses, and when I pitched them out every violet of the lot had his hands as full as he could clutch. No did they stay out; they kept coming back for more: but they did flourish, and their little faces were very appealing. As I think of them I recall a few words I overheard on a Maine wharf:--"They et up all Lem's beets, but they do look dretful cute, hoppin' 'round so." Though I removed those violets from the rose-bed, I had to ruck them into comfortable beds of their own. I would not have you think that I rob the fields and woods to fill my garden. If I rob Peter to pay Paul, I conscientiously rob Paul also and repay Peter. That is but simple barter and no real robbery at all, a "redistribution of wealth" free from taint of coin and free also from heart-arch. Therefore from the Shelburne spring at the westernmost end of the Nash pasture, over the hilltop and down on the eastern side into the green theatre, there grow clumps of mandrake. Nature had neglected, so Judge Aiken and I thought, to quite complete and perfect her work in that region; so, as his pine grove held a large subsidiary grove of mandrake, and as I was going to Shelburne Mountain, I took with me a big botany box filled with the consistently branching roots of that curious herb, and planted them in places I thought suitable, and which Nature approved. That was in 1920, for it was the last time my wife visited High Pine and before the cement highway crossed our mountain land. Rich woodlands are the plant's natural home. Each creeping root-stock has two buds just beyond the erect stalk which bears two leaves; and another year from each bud will grow a new root-stock with its stalk and buds. Between its leaves, which are like ragged umbrellas, grows recurved the white bloom; five-petalled like an apple blossom but of thicker stuff. The flower sheds its calyx, like a poppy or blood-root, and is fruit is at first a little green apple - hence is name "May apple"- which when it becomes ripe and yellow and about the size of a butternut has a pleasant odor. The pulp of this fruit may be eaten, if one is curious to know its flavor; but the root is said to be poisonous, although it is believed to bring luck to the house, yet people have been hanged for possessing it. A score of books upon the properties of this "earth-manikin" have been penned. One should be cautious in handling the plant, for if the root is pulled rudely from the ground it will shriek - and to him who hears it that shriek is death or madness! We of the present day have little realization of the wildness of some of our wild plants, and of the legends concerning them. I hope that we do appreciate the friendly herbs and shrubs, unchanged through the changing years, which our thoughts associate with simple home life. Often, instead of being escapes, they have been abandoned. Though left, by the receding tide of civilization out of bounds on some hillside once populated, they have kept their simplicity and their sweetness and await, with the patience of Mother Nature herself, the return of uneasy, wandering, Man, less deeply rooted than his more consistent bretheren. On either side of the stone fireplace-chimney at High Pine are very ancient twelve-paned windows; into one peep purple lilacs, and across the top of the other are wild grape vines and woodbine; while all about the south side of the cabin, from the west door around to the east and to the very roots of the old pine itself, grows the periwinkle - the old fashioned blue myrtle. South of the rough chimney the carpet of dark shining leaves is whole; but its fringe extends far into the grass, and in favorable spots has grown into sizeable rugs whose sheen contrasts well with the hepatica-strewn sod. This living floor-covering is the true magic carpet, lying upon which, in the sunshine and within sound of winds in the pine-top, one may be transported wherever the spirit desires. For five weeks in spring the dark leaves of the previous year are starred by blue blooms and new light green shoots renew the fabric of the carpet which gradually assumes its accustomed deep green and bright sheen. This myrtle is one of the old home plants which companion and survive the passing generations, and linger by the hoes site or follow man to his last long home. By a bridge across the brook in our Colrain gorge lies a mass of myrtle, and I have heard that here was once a house and that years ago someone, who lived here and had taught the brook trout to come to her hand for food, took some of the fish with her to "cattle-show" and exhibited the tamed trout as she fed them. Doubtless this is the only record of that incident; perhaps the only echo from the former human life in the now-deserted dell. I heard the tale from my father. A few years ago I had several beautiful rides about the Berkshire hills, searching for the grave of a grandfather of my daughter's Grandmother Blake. We never found it, though we discovered in an old burial ground at Windsor Jambs the marble slabs which mark the graves of an old couple, both in their nineties, who proved to be the parents of the missing ancestor; but the focal point in my mental picture of that ancient cemetery is a child's grave. It lingered in my mind until I sketched it on paper: Two small slate stones at Windsor Jambs Stand by the northern wall: The headstone shows a child's brief life, As does the little mound: The footstone, too, was carved with care- A graceful, quaint design. A dozen yards in all three ways The periwinkle trails: This friendly vine lies draped across The newer, longer graves: Its myrtle-blue awakes in me A thought of baby eyes. So many years the child has slept All kindred must have died; But know 'twas Love that, for a child, Transplanted here the flower Which so endured, embraced all mounds. Love knows not Time nor Space. To me, the periwinkle seems one of the most appealing of the stranded growths on abandoned or little-used roads. Our own Albany road, after leaving "the town street" of Deerfield, fording the river and wandering through meadows, becomes "the back road road to Ballou's" and follows closely the deep ravine which Sheldon Brook has created as it has carried its waters to Deerfield river. This old way leaves human life and death at a cluster of houses by a rural cemetery, and strolls upward and onward beneath trees and over ledges; and it passes a barway through which I used to go - climbing a slope adorned by pasture roses by a wall bounding dark woods - to visit a lovely little waterfall beside which arbutus grew in long grass beneath pines. Soon after crossing, by a plank bridge, this west branch of the brook, the old road reaches a more open country and, just we glimpse orchards ahead, we see - among bushes which are growing within the narrow way between two stone walls and threaten to overwhelm it completely - the little white fruits of a shrub known as "snowberry." This indication of an old homestead led me to look for others, and I found that among the shrubs were rosebushes, apparently cinnamon roses, that back of the wall is a depression, now nearly filled with stones removed from the fields, which had been a cellar; and that among the upper stones of the wall was one almost perfectly round and with a square hole in the middle. It was once a grindstone, though now but about ten inches across its face. Its present use, as it lies on my hearth at High Pine, is to receive and hold upright the tongs when I drop them into its square pocket, - a use which would probably astonish the generation of men who turned the once-heavy grindstone and wore it down by the pressure of their scythes and axes. Old rosebushes, seeming frail and transitory beside the stolid old wall and its grindstone, yet outlast those who turned the stone, laid the wall and planted the shrubs; and outlast their children's children. I recall that through the woods above Sandy Pond in Richmond, New Hampshire, there runs a foot-path' and on either hand, a little back among the trees, appear sections of stone wall, evidently long neglected. Frost says, you know, "Something there is that does not love a wall," but Abbie Farwell Brown exclaims "Not love a wall!" and tells us how the vine embraces it and how the squirrel makes it his treasure-house. Stone-lined cellar-holes there are, long intervals, beside that path which long ago was a wide highway; and in the hard dry soil, about one of these rosebushes were still growing. Their foliage was not that of the cinnamon, blush or Scotch roses, but resembled that of the "York and Lancaster," and I dug some and took them home. I planted them near my cultivated roses, but prosperity was to them abnormal and they appeared to become escapes through the ultimate and unfailing method. Perhaps as unfailingly, and perhaps as naturally, (and of course regardless of the fact that it had not entered into my calculations) there came resurrection; and the next summer the roses grew, better and more beautifully than ever before, in their new home. The buds were prettily pointed things, and when they bloomed they were a rich red; not dashed with white, as are the York and Lancaster, but semi-double and golden-stamened. They were simple and sweet; and their foliage was thrifty, rough and deep-veined; in short, the plants seemed to be of the ancient ancestry from which the gayer York and Lancaster roses were developed. Beside the red roses' wilderness cellar-hole there are also very old lilac bushes, their trunks twisted "round and round." Their growth has taken much longer than most popular songs of today will last, and the lilacs have deeper meaning. When men dug the cellars of their homes-to-be and each man laid his own walls of stone; selected, shaped, drew and placed the hearthstone; and after the house was builded laid the stone before the door through which he and his descendants were to go in and out; men had faith, hope and love; and we should not think it strange that the living things which for love they planted with hope about their homes have endured, to justify their faith. About thousands of such cellar-holes, beside country roads and by ways long discontinued, lilacs flourish and spread, year by year, throughout New England. To some it may mean "The lilac is not a gross feeder and likes a well drained situation." To me it means that these old purple lilacs decorate each Memorial Day the forgotten, sunken, graves of homes that were; and are the living memorials of the pioneers of our country side, men and women who had courage and who endowed us with possibilities. Their lilies, too, have survived too mark the sites of our ancestors' dwellings. Some time, when they were too prolific, surplus roots were dumped "over the bank" with rubbish from the house and stone from the fields; Nature in her own unhurried way utilized decay to nourish beauty and covered the stones with growth. We sometimes see a country graveyard a field of pink, light in one spot and dark in another, and know that the effect of an act of devotion is still spreading there; for the moss pink seems to have little need for material aid in performing its especial service. Other reminders of old days, graceful fountain-formed barberry bushes, decorate our upland pastures. Their stony fruit our grandmothers, by an alchemy transcending our modern chemistry, transmuted into appetizing food. the barberry of today is the much lower Japanese variety, approved for border hedges and useful to nesting birds when allowed to follow its natural bent. The Tall barberry of yesterday will be found where man once trod but seldom comes today; there are large scattered bushes near the former location of the road which more than a century ago led from Greenfield over Shelburne mountain to Shelburne. I have "viewed with alarm" these thorny masses when I was on a toboggan and rapidly approaching them; and Mother Nature may well "point with pride" to these thrifty shrubs when they bear bright yellow blooms on their bright yellow wood, and again when the gracefully curving branches are decked with pendent red fruits shining and swaying in sun and breeze. One such shrub stands at the head of a sunny intervale below that abandoned highway just after it has passed from Greenfied into Shelburne,; and on the rocky hillside above Blakely Hollow, near Checkerberry Hill and opposite the "back road to Ballou's." is "Barberry Pasture," whose many open places are sentinelled by these erect plants, strategically placed. Pennroyal, catnip and pokeweed contribute their oils and dye to man's real or fancied needs, but their home is on the hills and they companion with such robber outlaws as the thistles. Nowhere do I see catnip more comfortably at home than in the strip of open land between two woods in Potter's west pasture; and there the thistles are marching in hordes to seize the more fertile land whose trees were within a few winters cut for wood. Here beside a stump, and there near another, and over there by the ledge, the catnip is rankly sprouting forth early in the season, its square stems and downy new leaves a charming soft green and delightfully minty. The thrifty sturdy clumps of new growth are scattered over a large area. While the catnip colony is stirring betimes, as though it felt that the entire pussy population had refused to purr until shown this symbol of spring, the heavy pokeweed in a sheltered hollow is sleeping in its disorderly bed. Before the fall frosts cut it down, the rank herb flaunted great clusters of purple fruit, and its coarse red stems and long green leaves made a brave showing in the close cropped pasture. Its very shape, spreading as it rose from the central roots, was in contrast to the haycock forms of the little [next page] cropped and stunted wild apples and thorn apples that are scattered over the old pasture land. When ripe, the weed's dry stems could be split open to show within the faded stalks an endless series of circular disks, thick in rim but thin and almost transparent in the middle; and a three-inch length of this curious pith might be collapsed between thumb and finger to a half-inch or so. But winter snows have broken down those sturdy-seeming stalks and taken away all their color, and there is but a tangled wreckage above the sleepy roots from which will tardily rise the pokeweed of the coming summer. Just west of the laurels which border the eastern piece of woods, wheel track climb the hill; and, as they come from the south, melting snows of many winters have worn deep the ruts and exposed the rocks which are never far beneath this mountain soil. Time was when these old stumps supported large chestnut trees and this ground was for a season of each year laced with tan tassels that had earlier made the hillside beautiful with bloom; and in those days the frosts brought down the pointed nuts of russet brown from their prickly burs, and the wheel-track next the wood was the resting place of many of the toothsome nuts. But still melting snow, hastening down these leaf-filled channels, moistens the ground; and there spring up slender little green plants, which, as soon as we have passed, send after us aromatic odors. We heed their silent call, and a few sprays of the pennyroyal are carried on with us; and soon we find our thoughts wandering in our grandmother's attic and poking at dusty bunches of herbs hanging from rafters hewn on one side and braced by sturdy beams. Of all the "escapes," with their elusive charms, there are few shrubs so lovable as the eglantine, and none for which I have quite the same feeling. Its origin is our own; no one knows how many generations we lived together in England, where Shakespeare knew well both men and shrub and wrote of the sweetness of "The leaf of eglantine" and of the "rose on triumphant briar." The truly triumphant sweep of its long curved shoots and the sweetness of its foliage are marked characteristics of this thorny briar. We came together across the ocean - then so very wide - and our foremothers planted the shrub by the south door, the one most used, where the scent of sweetbriar on a warm, moist, summer evening came through the doorway and was a part of the twilight peace that lay between the long day's work and the early bed-time. For all its fragrant foliage, and its pink petals strewn so soon on the door-stone, it was a wayward child; its dainty leaves were as thorny as odorous: we could not caress the lovely creature. She somehow evaded us; and, when the maples grew great and their shade was dense all day on the door-stone, the English Eglantine. Yankee Sweetbriar, fled to the sunny hill pastures; and there dances airily beside the rude old ledges beloved by the contrary sprite. About her feet lies the sod of the barren hilltop whose proud poverty displays the fool's gold of the false strawberry and the less obtrusive purple of the halberd-leaved violet. From such surroundings the fresh green shoots of the briar rise in long thorny curves from a tangle of its own brown branches, some dead and some but old and partially benumbed. First upon the graceful new growth are the sweet-scented leaves, in early summer the dainty buds form and the little roses open, each of the five petals, prettily notched like a heart on a valentine, having color and texture more delicate than that of a child's cheek. Around the center of each tiny rose the stamens display their soldierly order, and reward with gold insect emissaries sent from other regal courts with pollen for the central queen of this pigmy realm of beauty. So it is that in autumn winds the swaying shoots bear orange fruits turning to ripened red; and Nature will select some few of the many seeds of the sweetbriar to carry on the race of these dainty entrancing creatures who will not conform nor be embraced. The perfect fruitage of all escapes is the memory of our days out of bounds. As I write of Nature's wandering children, I see, not the walls of my room, but rambling stone walls pastures and woods beyond, hills still beyond and clouds beyond the hills - perhaps something beyond the clouds; I feel, not the radiator beside me, but the warm sun on my body; and the odors are all those that lie between the fragrance from golden buttons of spring spicebush and the sweet evasive scent of the golden veil which Autumn flings over the witch hazel shrubs. All the glorious procession of the year; snow-white; green leaves and white blooms; green, gold and purple; autumnal tints; warm browns gradually losing color; and then the white again; - all that peaceful beauty I can see at will; and, because of that, the dreadful things that happen and might happen are somewhat less dreadful to bear or contemplate. And because these things spell life, growth, progress, fruitage, perpetuity; we, though we know so little of the immense meaning of it all, have a fellow feeling with the "escapes" and a greater faith in the freedom and beauty which we shall ever find "out of bounds." [next page] Though Nature be but the messenger, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings." MAPLE DAYS Though nights be cold, yet soon on sunny days Tree life shall stir, and farmers then will tap The maple trees, that there may flow sweet sap. From melting snow will come the soft spring haze, And pure white birch their lacey limbs shall raise Dark-tipped against blue sky. The brave "black-cap" Shall sing his phoebe-note, the "downy" rap Insistently his cheery reveilles. When autumn comes, dull purple turns the ash; Witch hazel makes herself a golden maze; The oak seems red against the sun's last flash; Pastille-like tints the sassafras displays: And on the pasture slope, with rainbow splash, Old Mother Maple vivid patchwork lays. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.