_The Pea-Fields_

These are the fields of light, and laughing air, And yellow butterflies, and foraging bees, And whitish, wayward blossoms winged as these, And pale green tangles like a seamaid’s hair. Pale, pale the blue, but pure beyond compare, And pale the sparkle of the far-off seas, A-shimmer like these fluttering slopes of peas, And pale the open landscape everywhere.

From fence to fence a perfumed breath exhales O’er the bright pallor of the well-loved fields,-- My fields of Tantramar in summer-time; And, scorning the poor feed their pasture yields, Up from the bushy lots the cattle climb, To gaze with longing through the grey, mossed rails.