Margaret Deland (1857-1945)
Deland is a fascinating figure: a novelist, short-story writer as well as poet. She was a part of the Literary Realism Movement, and she wrote articles on Women's Rights in the Atlantic Monthly. Born in PA, she lived at 76 Mt. Vernon Street on Beacon Hill in Boston and kept a summer home in Kennebunkport, ME, which she and her husband called "Greywood." There's much more about her life on Wikipedia.com.
"The Golden-Rod"
(From her collection, Old Garden, 1886)
O Rod of Gold!
O swaying sceptre of the year -
Now frost and cold
Show winter near,
And shivering leaves grow brown and sere.
The bleak hillside,
And marshy waste of yellow reeds,
And meadows wide
Where frosted weeds
Shake on the damp wind light-winged seeds,
Are decked with thee, -
The lingering Summer's latest grace,
And sovereignty.
Each wind-swept space
Waves thy red gold in Winter's face -
He strives each star,
In stormy pride to lay full low;
But when thy bar
Resists his blow,
Will crown thee with a puff of snow!
Rough-stemmed goldenrod