Four Seasons: a Canadian Song Cycle

As in dreams 
Once and again
The eager heart repels
Fears and impalpable fantasies
So breathless 
Upon the wind blown,
Drifting trails, 
Buffetted wayfarers
We struggle we struggle with snow whirls
Of February gales

White-throat and thrush, 
Aerial pilgrims,
Chant in the orchard 
Plain-song of spring.
Is there in the South 
Altar more beautiful
Than apple branches
Twined in reredos
Of lilac and maroon?
And now the river,
Bursting its cerements of ice
Reverberates
Gospel of resurrection.
Here, here in 
April are the stairs of 
Heaven

I will to the mountain
Along cool trails amid the glaciers
And Alpine meadows framed wilarch
And the red Indian Paint Brush.
I will to the mountains
And to the lakes of melted jade
Where the forest broods in stained reflection
Under crystalline skies
There overhead steep jagged 
Cliffs
Rear their defiant shields,
Aeons of snow, against the shafts of July suns.

Grey, gaunt and sere
Is the old year.
Flake upon flake
Falls the heartache;
Only for a while
The Indian Summer
Comes with a smile
A latecomer, an after thought
So that naught of the old year
May lack good cheer,
And you remember a sweet November,
A sweet November.
Grey, gaunt and sere
Is the old year.