An Oaten Pipe

The summer’s surf against my feet

In leagues of foam-white daisies beat;

Along the bank-side where I lay

Poured down the golden tides of day,

A vine above me wove its screen

Of leafy shadows, cool and green,

While, faintly as a fairy bell,

Upon the murmurous silence fell

The babbling of a slender stream

In the sweet trouble of its dream.

Then as the poppied noon did steep

The breathing world in fumes of sleep

I shaped with fingers drowsed and slow

An oaten pipe whereon to blow,

And in the chequered light and shade

Its wild, untutored notes essayed;

But in the larger music ‘round

My slender pipings all were drowned.[1]

-       Kenyon[2]

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[1] This, minus the last four lines, is the introduction to Kenyon’s 1895 book An Oaten Pipe, a collection of his poems.

[2] James Benjamin Kenyon was born in Frankfort, Herkimer County, New York, in 1858. He was educated at Hungerford Collegiate Institute in Adams, New York, and entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1878. In 1887 he was pastor of the Arsenal Street M. E. church in Watertown, New York. By 1900 he was living in Syracuse and ministering at University Church. James was a prolific poet, especially admired for his sonnets. He contributed to periodicals and authored several books of poems. James also published at books in prose, such as 1901’s Loiterings in Old Fields, a volume of literary sketches of famous poets. In 1920 Kenyon published a complete collection of his poems entitled The Harvest Home. He died in 1924. His daughter Doris became a well-known actress; Doris Kappelhoff (Doris Day) was named for her.  (Source: Wikipedia)