The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 3 (of 5) This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 3 (of 5) Author: Madison Julius Cawein Illustrator: Eric Pape Release date: June 30, 2017 [eBook #55011] Language: English Credits: Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF MADISON CAWEIN, VOLUME 3 (OF 5) *** Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE POEMS OF MADISON CAWEIN VOLUME III NATURE POEMS [Illustration: Undreamed of things that happened long ago Page 8 _A House in the Hills_] THE POEMS OF MADISON CAWEIN _Volume III_ NATURE POEMS _Illustrated_ WITH PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS BY ERIC PAPE INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1892, 1893, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1901, 1902 AND 1907, BY MADISON CAWEIN COPYRIGHT 1896, BY COPELAND AND DAY; 1898, BY R. H. RUSSELL PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. TO DOCTOR HENRY A. COTTELL WHOSE KIND WORDS OF FRIENDSHIP AND APPROVAL HAVE ENCOURAGED ME WHEN I MOST NEEDED ENCOURAGEMENT CONTENTS PAGE IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES ALONG THE OHIO 56 AMONG THE KNOBS 124 AUTUMN 53 BENEATH THE BEECHES 99 BLACK VESPER’S PAGEANTS 22 BOY COLUMBUS, THE 80 BRIDLE-PATH, THE 101 BROOK, THE 145 “BROKEN RAINBOW ON THE SKIES OF MAY, A” 71 COIGNE OF THE FOREST, A 6 DREAM, THE 63 DREAMS 143 FALL FANCIES 134 FALLEN BEECH, A 3 FALLS OF THE OHIO, THE 127 FARMSTEAD, THE 74 FOREST AND FIELD 29 GRASSHOPPER, THE 27 GRAY DAY, A 113 HAUNTED HOUSE, THE 49 HEART O’ SPRING, THE 69 HEAT 16 HOLLOW OF THE HILLS, A 97 HOUSE IN THE HILLS, A 8 IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES 1 IN THE WILDWOOD 96 INDIAN SUMMER 42 LATE OCTOBER 136 LOG-BRIDGE, THE 121 MILL-WATER, THE 60 MOOD O’ THE EARTH, THE 116 NIGHT 47 NOONING 119 NORTH BEACH, FLORIDA 82 NOVEMBER WALK, A 138 OLD FARM, THE 106 OLD INN, THE 58 OLD SWING, THE 146 ON THE JELLICO SPUR OF THE CUMBERLANDS 87 ORGIE 73 RAIN IN THE WOODS 13 SLEET-STORM IN MAY, A 67 SPRING TWILIGHT 65 STORM, THE 84 SUMMER 38 TO AUTUMN 148 TO SORROW 44 TO SUMMER 110 TWILIGHT MOTH, A 24 VINTAGER, THE 21 WHIPPOORWILL, THE 94 WHITE EVENING, THE 141 WIND, THE 10 WINTER DREAMS 149 YOUNG SEPTEMBER 19 TANSY AND SWEET-ALYSSUM ABANDONED 233 AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN 171 AIRY TONGUES 184 AMBITION 243 ARCANA 236 AUTUMN SORROW 212 BABY MARY 197 BARE BOUGHS 191 BEFORE THE END 226 BY THE TRYSTING-BEECH 170 CLEARING 210 “CLOUDS OF THE AUTUMN NIGHT” 167 COLD 228 COMRADERY 174 COMRADES 161 CREEK-ROAD, THE 232 COVERED BRIDGE, THE 231 DARK DAY OF SUMMER, A 213 DAYS AND DAYS 214 DESPAIR 245 DESPONDENCY 244 DROUTH IN AUTUMN 215 DUSK IN THE WOODS 159 FEN-FIRE, THE 199 FLOWER OF THE FIELDS, A 153 FULFILLMENT 237 HAUNTED WOODLAND, THE 172 HILLS OF THE WEST 204 HILLSIDE GRAVE, THE 230 HOAR-FROST 227 HOME 158 IMPERFECTION 235 IN SUMMER 216 IN WINTER 218 LAST WORD, A 249 MUSIC AND SLEEP 242 OCCULT 176 OLD SONG, AN 196 OMENS 234 ON STONY-RUN 156 ON THE FARM 219 OPIUM 241 PATHS 221 QUATRAINS 246 RAIN AND WIND 186 RED-BIRD, THE 209 ROCK, THE 163 SNOW 195 SOMNAMBULIST, THE 240 SONG IN SEASON, A 224 STANDING-STONE CREEK 165 SUNSET FANCY, A 198 THEN AND NOW 169 THRENODY, A 193 TOO LATE 238 UNDER ARCTURUS 188 WILLOW BOTTOM, THE 207 WIND AT NIGHT, THE 183 WIND OF SPRING, THE 206 WINTER MOON, THE 229 WITCH, THE 239 WOOD, THE 200 WOOD NOTES 202 WOOD WORDS 178 WEEDS BY THE WALL AFTER RAIN 308 AGE OF GOLD, THE 313 ALONG THE STREAM 275 ANTHEM OF DAWN 331 ARTIST, THE 347 AT THE LANE’S END 334 BEECH BLOOMS 294 BEFORE THE RAIN 306 BLUEBIRD, THE 363 BROKEN DROUTH, THE 286 CAN SUCH THINGS BE 345 CAVERNS 364 CHIPMUNK, THE 266 CRICKET, THE 259 DREAMER, THE 355 DROUTH 283 ENCHANTMENT 343 FEUD 288 FOREWORD 253 IMMORTELLES 320 IN THE FOREST 344 KNIGHT-ERRANT 346 LOVE OF LOVES, THE 316 LULLABY, A 321 MESSAGE OF THE LILIES, THE 329 MID-WINTER 357 MUSINGS 325 ON CHENOWETH’S RUN 300 PATH BY THE CREEK, THE 271 PESTILENCE 324 POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY 348 QUATRAINS 351 QUEST, THE 304 “QUO VADIS” 349 REINCARNATION 299 REQUIESCAT 302 RESPONSE 360 RICHES 312 ROAD HOME, THE 280 SCREECH-OWL, THE 264 SIMULACRA 362 SONG FOR LABOR, A 314 SPRING 358 SUNSET AND STORM 293 SUNSET CLOUDS 311 SWASHBUCKLER, THE 361 TREE TOAD, THE 262 THREE THINGS 318 TO A CRITIC 350 TRANSFORMATION 359 UNANOINTED 290 UNHEARD 298 VOICES 278 WILD IRIS, THE 268 WINTER 356 WORSHIP 297 A VOICE ON THE WIND A. D. NINETEEN HUNDRED 479 ADVENTURERS 457 AFTERWORD 483 ALLUREMENT 422 AUGUST 423 BUSH-SPARROW, THE 426 CONTENT 443 COMMUNICANTS 420 DEAD DAY, THE 421 DEATH OF LOVE, THE 462 DISCOVERY 447 DREAM SHAPE, A 432 DUSK 473 EARTH AND MOON 472 END OF SUMMER, THE 475 EPIPHANY 408 EVENING ON THE FARM 401 FALL 440 FOREST SPRING, THE 450 FROST 456 HILLS, THE 452 IN THE LANE 406 INVOCATION 458 JULY 398 LAND OF HEARTS MADE WHOLE, THE 372 LEAF-CRICKET, THE 384 LIFE 409 LIGHT AND WIND 469 LOVE DESPISED 465 LOVE, THE INTERPRETER 464 MAID WHO DIED OLD, A 418 MAY 438 MEETING IN THE WOODS 413 MUSIC 430 OCTOBER 445 OF THE SLUMS 468 OLD BARN, THE 434 OLD SPRING, THE 448 OWLET, THE 387 PASSING GLORY, THE 476 PEARLS 466 POET, THE 390 PROEM 367 PROTOTYPES 477 QUATRAINS 481 QUIET 429 RAIN 439 ROSE AND RUE 415 SEPTEMBER 474 SONG OF THE THRUSH, THE 454 SUMMER NOONTIDE 393 SUNSET IN AUTUMN 441 SUPERSTITION 478 TO THE LOCUST 396 TOUCHES 471 TRANSMUTATION 455 UNANSWERED 463 UNCALLED 480 UNDER THE HUNTER’S MOON 404 VOICE ON THE WIND, A 369 WIND OF SUMMER, THE 378 WIND OF WINTER, THE 382 WINDS, THE 470 WOMAN SPEAKS, THE 467 WOOD WITCH, THE 436 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS UNDREAMED OF THINGS THAT HAPPENED LONG AGO (See page 8) _Frontispiece_ PAGE GHOSTLY AND WINDY WHITE 168 MY SPIRIT SAW HER PASS 432 PROLOGUE _There is a poetry that speaks Through common things: the grasshopper, That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks, Says all of summer to my ear: And in the cricket’s cry I hear The fireside speak, and feel the frost Work mysteries of silver near On country casements, while, deep lost In snow, the gatepost seems a sheeted ghost._ _And other things give rare delight: The guttural harps the green-frogs tune, Those minstrels of the falling night, That hail the sickle of the moon From grassy pools that glass her lune: Or,--all of August in its loud Dry cry,--the locust’s call at noon, That emphasizes heat, no cloud Of lazy white makes less with its cool shroud._ _The rain,--whose cloud dark-lids the moon, That great white eyeball of the night,-- Makes music for me; to its tune I hear the flowers unfolding white, The mushroom growing, and the slight Green sound of grass that dances near; The melon ripening with delight; And in the orchard, soft and clear, The apple redly rounding out its sphere._ _The grigs make music as of old, To which the fairies whirl and shine Within the moonlight’s prodigal gold, On woodways wild with many a vine: When all the wilderness with wine Of stars is drunk, I hear it say-- “Is God restricted to confine His wonders only to the day, That yields the abstract tangible to clay?”_ _And to my ear the wind of Morn,-- When on her rubric forehead far One star burns big,--lifts a vast horn Of wonder where all murmurs are: In which I hear the waters war, The torrent and the blue abyss, And pines,--that terrace bar on bar The mountain side,--like lovers kiss, And whisper words where all of grandeur is._ _The jutting crags,--dark, iron-veined With ore,--the peaks, where eagles scream, That pour their cataracts, rainbow-stained, Like hair, in many a mountain stream, Can lift my soul beyond the dream Of all religions; make me scan No mere external or extreme, But inward pierce the outward plan And learn that rocks have souls as well as man._ IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES In the shadow of the beeches, Where the fragile wildflowers bloom; Where the pensive silence pleaches Green a roof of cool perfume, Have you felt an awe imperious As when, in a church, mysterious Windows paint with God the gloom? In the shadow of the beeches, Where the rock-ledged waters flow; Where the sun’s slant splendor bleaches Every wave to foaming snow, Have you felt a music solemn As when minster arch and column Echo organ worship low? In the shadow of the beeches, Where the light and shade are blent; Where the forest-bird beseeches, And the breeze is brimmed with scent,-- Is it joy or melancholy That o’erwhelms us partly, wholly, To our spirit’s betterment? In the shadow of the beeches Lay me where no eye perceives; Where,--like some great arm that reaches Gently as a love that grieves,-- One gnarled root may clasp me kindly While the long years, working blindly, Slowly change my dust to leaves. A FALLEN BEECH Nevermore at doorways that are barken Shall the madcap wind knock and the moonlight; Nor the circle which thou once didst darken, Shine with footsteps of the neighboring moonlight, Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken. Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces, Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter, Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places; Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor, Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces. And no more, between the savage wonder Of the sunset and the moon’s up-coming, Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder. Oft the Satyr-spirit, beauty-drunken, Of the Spring called; and the music measure Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken. And the germs, deep down in darkness rooted, Bubbled green from all thy million oilets, Where the spirits, rain and sunbeam suited, Of the April made their whispering toilets, Or within thy stately shadow footed. Oft the hours of blonde Summer tinkled At the windows of thy twigs, and found thee Bird-blithe; or, with shapely bodies, twinkled Lissom feet of naked flowers around thee, Where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam-sprinkled. And the Autumn with his gypsy-coated Troop of days beneath thy branches rested, Swarthy-faced and dark of eye; and throated Songs of hunting; or with red hand tested Every nut-burr that above him floated. Then the Winter, barren-browed, but rich in Shaggy followers of frost and freezing, Made the floor of thy broad boughs his kitchen, Trapper-like, to camp in; grimly easing Limbs snow-furred and moccasined with lichen. Now, alas! no more do these invest thee With the dignity of whilom gladness! They--unto whose hearts thou once confessed thee Of thy dreams--now know thee not! and sadness Sits beside thee where, forgot, dost rest thee. A COIGNE OF THE FOREST The hills hang woods around, where green, below Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss, Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year’s nuts; The water hums one bar there; and a glow Of gold lies steady where the trailers toss Red, bugled blossoms and a rock abuts; In spots the wild-phlox and oxalis grow Where beech-roots bulge the loam, and welt across The grass-grown road and roll it into ruts. And where the sumach brakes grow dusk and dense, Among the rocks, great yellow violets, Blue-bells and windflowers bloom; the agaric In dampness crowds; a fungus, thick, intense With gold and crimson and wax-white, that sets The May-apples along the terraced creek At bold defiance. Where the old rail-fence Divides the hollow, there the bee-bird whets His bill, and there the elder hedge is thick. No one can miss it; for two cat-birds nest, Calling all morning, in the trumpet-vine; And there at noon the pewee sits and floats A woodland welcome; and his very best At eve the red-bird sings, as if to sign The record of its loveliness with notes. At night the moon stoops over it to rest, And unreluctant stars, in whose faint shine There runs a whisper as of wind-swept oats. A HOUSE IN THE HILLS Old hearts that hold the saddest memories Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet Light, happy moods of younger natures which Their sadness contacts and so sanctifies. And such to me is an old gabled house, Deserted, and neglected, and unknown, Lost in the tangled hollow of its hills, Dark, cedared hills, and dreamy orchard-lands; With but its host of shrouded memories Haunting its ruined rooms and desolate halls,-- Pathetic with their fallen finery,-- And whispering through its cob-webbed crevices And roomy hearths, that sigh with ceaseless wind, Undreamed of things that happened long ago. Here in gray afternoons I love to sit, And hear the running rain along the roof; The creak and crack of noises that are born Of silence or mysterious agencies; The fitful footfalls of the wind adown Grand, winding stairways, massy banistered; A clapping door and then a sudden hush As if the old house held its breath to see,-- Invisible to me,--a presence pass, That brings a pleasant terror stiffening through The tingling veins and staring from the eyes. Then comes the rain again along the roof; And in rain-rotted room and rain-stained hall The drip and whisper of the wind and rain Seem viewless footsteps of the sometime lords And mistresses who lived here in the past. And could the state material but assume A state clairvoyant, then the dream-drugged eyes, Perhaps, might see, from room to dusty room, The ghosts of stately gentlemen glide by, And glimmering ladies, all beruffled, trail Long, haughty silks miraculously stiff. THE WIND “_Wind of the East, if thou pass by the land where my loved ones dwell, I pray, The fullest of greetings bear to them from me, their lover, and say That I am the pledge of passion still._”-- FROM THE ARABIC. The ways of the wind are eerie, And I love them all: The blithe, the mad, and the dreary, Spring, winter, and fall. When it tells to the waiting crocus Its beak to show; And hangs on the wayside locust Bloom-bunches of snow. When it comes like a balmy blessing From the musky wood, The half-grown roses caressing Till their cheeks burn blood. When it roars in the autumn season, And whines with rain, Or sleet, like a mind without reason, Or a soul in pain. When the woodways, once so spicy With bud and bloom, Are desolate, dead and icy As the icy tomb. When the puffed owl, crouched and frowsy, In the hollow tree, Sobs, dolorous, cold, and drowsy, Its shuddering melody. Then I love to sit in December Where the big hearth sings, And, dreaming, forget and remember A host of things. And the wind--I hear how it strangles, And wails and sighs On the roof’s sharp, shivering angles That front the skies. How it shouts and romps and tumbles In attics o’erhead; In the great-throated chimney rumbles, Then all at once falls dead; Then comes like the footsteps stealing Of a child on the stair, Or a bent, old gentleman feeling His slippered way with care. And my soul grows anxious-hearted For those once dear-- The long-lost loves, departed, In the wind draw near. And I seem to see their faces-- Not one estranged-- In their old accustomed places Round the wide hearth ranged. And the wind, that waits and poises Where the shadows sway, Seems their visionary voices Calling me far away. Then I wake in tears and hear it Wailing outside my door,-- Or is it some wandering spirit Weeping upon the moor? RAIN IN THE WOODS When on the leaves the rain persists, And every gust brings showers down; When copse and woodland smoke with mists, I take the old road out of town Into the hills through which it twists. I find the vale where catnip grows, Where boneset blooms, with moisture bowed; The vale through which the red creek flows, Turbid with hill-washed clay, and loud As some wild horn a huntsman blows. Around the root the beetle glides, A burnished beryl; and the ant, Large, agate-red, a garnet, slides Beneath the rock; and every plant Is roof for some frail thing that hides. Like knots against the trunks of trees The lichen-colored moths are pressed; And, wedged in hollow blooms, the bees Hang pollen-clotted; in its nest The wasp has crawled and lies at ease. The locust harsh, that sharply saws The silence of the summer noon; The katydid, that thinly draws Its fine file o’er the bars of moon; And grasshopper that drills each pause: The mantis, long-clawed, furtive, lean-- Fierce feline of the insect hordes-- And dragonfly, gauze-winged and green, Beneath the wild-grape’s leaves and gourd’s, Have housed themselves and rest unseen. The butterfly and forest-bird Are huddled on the same gnarled bough, From which, like some rain-voweled word That dampness hoarsely utters now, The tree-toad’s guttural voice is heard. I crouch and listen: and again The woods are filled with phantom forms-- With shapes, grotesque in cloudy train, That rise and reach to me cool arms Of mist: dim, wandering wraiths of rain. I see them come; fantastic, fair; Chill, mushroom-colored: sky and earth Grow ghostly with their floating hair And trailing limbs, that have their birth In wetness--fungi of the air. O wraiths of rain! O ghosts of mist! Still fold me, hold me, and pursue! Still let my lips by yours be kissed! Still draw me with your hands of dew Unto the tryst, the dripping tryst. HEAT I Now is it as if Spring had never been, And Winter but a memory and a dream, Here where the Summer stands, her lap of green Heaped high with bloom and beam, Among her blackberry-lilies, low that lean To kiss her feet; or, freckle-browed, that stare Upon the dragonfly which, slimly seen, Like a blue jewel flickering in her hair, Sparkles above them there. II Knee-deep among the tepid pools the cows Chew a slow cud or switch a slower tail, Half-sunk in sleep beneath the beechen boughs, Where thin the wood-gnats ail. From bloom to bloom the languid butterflies drowse; The sleepy bees make hardly any sound; The only things the sun-rays can arouse, It seems, are two black beetles rolling round Upon the dusty ground. III Within its channel glares the creek and shrinks, Beneath whose rocks the furtive crawfish hides In stagnant places, where the green frog blinks, And water-strider glides. Far hotter seems it for the bird that drinks, The startled kingfisher that screams and flies; Hotter and lonelier for the purples and pinks Of weeds that bloom, whose sultry perfumes rise Stifling the swooning skies. IV From ragweed fallows, rye-fields, heaped with sheaves, From blistering rocks, no moss or lichens crust, And from the road, where every hoof-stroke heaves A cloud of burning dust, The hotness quivers, making limp the leaves, That loll like panting tongues. The pulsing heat Seems a wan wimple that the Summer weaves, A veil, in which she wraps,--as in a sheet,-- The shriveling corn and wheat. V Furious, incessant in the weeds and briers The sawing weed bugs sing: and, heat-begot, The grasshoppers, so many strident wires, Staccato stinging hot: A lash of whirling sound that never tires, The locust flails the noon, where harnessed Thirst, Beside the road-spring, many a shod hoof mires, Into the trough thrusts his hot head; immersed, Round which cool bubbles burst. VI The sad, sweet voice of some wood-spirit who Laments while watching a loved oak-tree die, From the deep forest comes the wood-dove’s coo, A long, lost, lonely cry.-- Oh, for a breeze! a mighty wind to woo The woods to stormy laughter; sow like grain The world with freshness of invisible dew, And pile above far, fevered hill and plain Cloud-bastions, black with rain. YOUNG SEPTEMBER I With a look and a laugh where the stream was flowing, September led me along the land; Where the goldenrod and lobelia, glowing, Seemed burning torches within her hand. And faint as the thistle’s or milkweed’s feather I glimpsed her form in the sparkling weather. II Now ’twas her hand and now her hair That tossed me welcome everywhere; That lured me onward through the stately rooms Of forest, hung and carpeted with glooms, And windowed wide with azure, doored with green, Through which rich glimmers of her robe were seen-- Now, like some deep marsh-mallow, rosy-gold; Now, like the great Joe-Pye-weed, fold on fold Of heavy mauve; and now, like the intense Massed ironweed, a purple opulence. III Along the bank in a wild procession Of gold and sapphire the blossoms blew; And borne on the breeze came their soft confession In syllabled musk and honey-dew; In words unheard that their lips kept saying, Sweet as the lips of children praying. IV And so, meseemed, I heard them tell How here her loving glance once fell Upon this bank, and from its azure grew The ageratum mist-flower’s happy hue; How from her kiss, as crimson as the dawn, The cardinal-flow’r drew its vermilion; And from her hair’s blond touch th’ elecampane Evolved the glory of its golden rain; While from her starry footsteps, redolent, The aster pearled its flowery firmament. THE VINTAGER Among the fragrant grapes she bows; Long violet clusters heap her hands: And, with bright brows, on him bestows Sweet looks, like soft commands. And from her sunburnt throat, at times, As bubbles burst on new-made wine, A happy fit of merry rhymes Rings down the hills of vine. And in his heart, remorseless, sweet, Grew big the red-grape, passion, there; His heart, that, ever at her feet, Was filled with love’s despair. But she, who ne’er the honeyed must Of love had drained, a grown-up child, Saw in him--merely one to trust, And broke his heart, and smiled. BLACK VESPER’S PAGEANTS The day, all fierce with carmine, turns An Indian face towards Earth and dies; The west, like some gaunt vase, inurns Its ashes under smoldering skies; Athwart whose bowl one red cloud streams, Wild as some dream an Aztec dreams. Now shadows mass above the world, And night comes on with wind and rain; The mulberry-colored leaves are hurled Like frantic hands against the pane. And through the forests, bending low, Night stalks like some gigantic Woe. In hollows where the thistle shakes A hoar bloom like a witch’s light, From weed and flower the rain-wind rakes Dead sweetness--as a wildman might, From autumn leaves, the woods among, Dig some dead woman, fair and young. Now let me walk the woodland ways, Alone! except for thoughts, that are Akin to such wild nights and days-- A portion of the storm that far Fills Heaven and Earth tumultuously, And my own soul with ecstasy. A TWILIGHT MOTH Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state Of gold and purple in the marbled west, Thou comest forth like some embodied trait, Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed; Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white, Goes softly messengering through the night, Whom each expectant flower makes its guest. All day the primroses have thought of thee, Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat; All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly Veiled snowy faces,--that no bee might greet Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;-- Keeping Sultana-charms for thee, at last, Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet. Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day’s Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays Nocturnes of fragrance, thy wing’d shadow links In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith; O bearer of their order’s shibboleth, Like some pale symbol fluttering o’er these pinks. What dost thou whisper in the balsam’s ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock’s,-- A syllabled silence that no man may hear,-- As dreamily upon its stem it rocks? What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some spectre of some perished flower of phlox? O voyager of that universe which lies Between the four walls of this garden fair,-- Whose constellations are the fireflies That wheel their instant courses everywhere,-- ’Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades, Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air. Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.-- Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy, That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me! And all that world at which my soul hath guessed! THE GRASSHOPPER I What joy you take in making hotness hotter, In emphasizing dullness with your buzz, Making monotony more monotonous! When summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp Filing the stillness. Or,--as urchins beat A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,-- Your switch-like music whips the midday heat. O burr of sound caught in the Summer’s hair, We hear you everywhere. II We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles, Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds, Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds, And by the wood, round which the rail-fence rambles, Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw. Or,--like to tomboy truants, at their play With noisy mirth among the barn’s deep straw,-- You sing away the careless summer-day. O brier-like voice that clings in idleness To Summer’s drowsy dress. III You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding, Improvident, who of the summer make One long green meal-time, and for winter take No care, aye singing or just merely feeding! Happy-go-lucky vagabond,--though frost Shall pierce, ere long, your coat of green or brown, And pinch your body,--let no song be lost, But as you lived, into your grave go down-- Like some small poet with his little rhyme, Forgotten of all time. FOREST AND FIELD I Green, watery jets of light let through The rippling foliage drenched with dew; And golden glimmers, warm and dim, That in the vistaed distance swim; Where, round the wood-spring’s oozy urn, The limp, loose fronds of forest fern Trail like the tresses, green and wet, A wood-nymph binds with violet. O’er rocks that bulge and roots that knot The emerald-amber mosses clot; From matted walls of brier and brush The elder nods its plumes of plush; And, Argus-eyed with bloom on bloom, The wild-rose breathes its wild perfume; May-apples, ripening yellow, lean With oblong fruit, a lemon-green, Near Indian-turnips, long of stem, That bear an acorn-oval gem, As if some woodland Bacchus there,-- While braiding locks of hyacinth hair With ivy-tod,--had idly tossed His thyrsus down and so had lost: And blood-root, that from scarlet wombs Puts forth, in spring, its milk-white blooms, That then like starry footsteps shine Of April under beech and pine; At which the gnarléd eyes of trees Stare, big as Fauns’, at Dryadës, That bend above a fountain’s spar, As white and naked as a star. The stagnant stream flows sleepily Thick-paved with lily-pads; the bee,-- Brown, honey-drunk, a Bassarid,-- Booms past the mottled toad, that, hid In calamus and blue-eyed grass, Beside the water’s pooling glass, Silenus-like, eyes stolidly The Mænad-glittering dragonfly. And pennyroyal and peppermint Pour dry-hot odors without stint From fields and banks of many streams; And in their scent one almost seems To see Demeter pass, her breath Sweet with her triumph over death.-- A haze of floating saffron; sound Of shy, crisp creepings o’er the ground; The dip and stir of twig and leaf; Tempestuous gusts of spices brief Borne over bosks of sassafras By winds that foot it on the grass; Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings, That hint at untold, hidden things-- Pan and Sylvanus who of old Kept sacred each wild wood and wold. A wily light beneath the trees Quivers and dusks with every breeze-- A Hamadryad, haply, who,-- Culling her morning meal of dew From frail, accustomed cups of flowers,-- Now sees some Satyr in the bowers, Or hears his goat-hoof snapping press A brittle branch, and in distress Shrinks back; her dark, dishevelled hair Veiling her limbs one instant there. II Down precipices of the dawn The rivers of the day are drawn, The soundless torrents, free and far, Of gold that deluge every star. There is a sound of winds and wings That fills the woods with carollings; And, dashed on moss and flower and fern, And leaves, that quiver, breathe and burn, Rose-radiance smites the solitudes, The dew-drenched hills, the dripping woods That twitter as with canticles Of bird and brook; and air that smells Of flowers, and buds, and boisterous bees, Delirious honey and wet trees.-- Through briers that trip them, one by one, With swinging pails, that flash the sun, A troop of girls comes--berriers, Whose bare feet glitter where they pass Through dewdrop-trembling tufts of grass. And, oh! their laughter and their cheers Wake Echo on her shrubby rocks Who, answering, from her mountain mocks With rapid fairy horns--as if Each mossy vale and weedy cliff Had its imperial Oberon, Who, seeking his Titania, hid In coverts caverned from the sun, In kingly wrath had called and chid. Cloud-feathers, oozing orange light, Make rich the Indian locks of Night; Her dusky waist with sultry gold Girdled and buckled fold on fold. One star. A sound of bleating flocks. Great shadows stretched along the rocks, Like giant curses overthrown By some Arthurian champion. Soft-swimming sorceries of mist That streak blue glens with amethyst. And, tinkling in the clover dells, The twilight sound of cattle-bells. And where the marsh in reed and grass Burns, angry as a shattered glass, The flies blur sudden gold, and shine Like drops of amber-scattered wine Spun high by reeling Bacchanals, When Bacchus wreathes his curling hair With vine-leaves, and from every lair His worshippers around him calls. They come, they come, a happy throng, The berriers with lilt and song; Their pails brimmed black to tin-bright eaves With luscious fruit, kept cool with leaves Of aromatic sassafras; ’Twixt which a berry often slips, Like laughter, from the purple mass, Wine-swollen as Silenus’ lips. III The tanned and tired Noon climbs high Up burning reaches of the sky; Below the drowsy belts of pines The rock-ledged river leaps and shines; And over rainless hill and dell Is blown the harvest’s sultry smell: While, in the fields, one sees and hears The brawny-throated harvesters,-- Their red brows beaded with the heat,-- By twos and threes among the wheat Flash their hot scythes; behind them press The binders--men and maids who sing Like some mad troop of piping Pan;-- While all the hillsides, echoing, ring Such sounds of Ariel airiness As haunted freckled Caliban. “O ho! O ho! ’tis noon I say. The roses blow. Away, away, above the hay, To the song o’ the bees the roses sway; The love-lays that they hum all day, So low! so low! The roses’ Minnesingers they.” Up velvet lawns of lilac skies The tawny moon begins to rise Behind low, blue-black hills of trees,-- As rises up, in siren seas, To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid, A virgin-bosomed Oceanid.-- Gaunt shadows crouch by tree and scaur, Dusk’s shaggy Satyrs waiting for The Nymphs of moon, the Dryads white, Who take with loveliness the night, And glorify it with their love. The sweet, far notes I hear, I hear, Beyond dim pines and mellow ways; The song of some fair harvester, The lovely Limnad of the grove, Whose singing charms me while it slays. “O deep! O deep! the earth and air Are sunk in sleep. Adieu to care! Now everywhere Is rest; and by the old oak there The maiden with the nut-brown hair Doth keep, doth keep Tryst with her lover the young and fair.” IV Like Atalanta’s spheres of gold, Within the orchard, apples rolled From sudden hands of boughs that lay Their leaves, like palms, against the day; And near them pears of rusty brown Rolled bruised; and peaches, pink with down, And furry as the ears of Pan; Or, like Diana’s cheeks, a tan Beneath which burnt a tender fire; Or wan as Psyche’s with desire. And down the orchard vistas,--young, A hickory basket by him swung, A hat of straw against the sun Drawn shadowy o’er his face,--he strode; As if he looked to find some one, His eyes searched every bend of road. Before him, like a living burr, Rattled the noisy grasshopper. And where the cows’ melodious bells Trailed music up and down the dells, Beside the spring, that o’er the ground Went whimpering like a fretful hound, He saw her waiting, fair and slim, Her pail forgotten there, for him. Yellow as sunset skies and pale As fairy clouds that stay or sail Through azure vaults of summer, blue As summer heavens, the wildflowers grew; And blossoms on which spurts of light Fell laughing--like the lips one might Feign once were Hebe’s, or a girl’s That laughter lights with rows of pearls. Long ferns, in murmuring masses heaped; And mosses moist, in beryl steeped And musk aromas of the wood And silence of the solitude: And everything that near her blew The spring had showered thick with dew.-- Across the rambling fence she leaned, Her fresh, round arms all white and bare; Her artless beauty, bonnet-screened, Simplicity from feet to hair. A wood-thrush gurgled in a vine-- Ah! ’tis his step, ’tis he she hears; The wild-rose smelt like some rare wine-- He comes, ah, yes! ’tis he who nears. And her brown eyes and happy face Said welcome. And with rustic grace He leant beside her; and they had Some talk with youthful laughter glad: I know not what: I know but this-- Its final period was a kiss. SUMMER I Hang out your loveliest star, O Night! O Night! Your richest rose, O Dawn! To greet sweet Summer, her, who, clothed in light, Leads Earth’s best hours on. Hark! how the wild birds of the woods Throat it within the dewy solitudes! The brook sings low and soft, The trees make song, As, from her heaven aloft, Comes blue-eyed Summer like a girl along. II And as the Day, her lover, leads her in, How bright his beauty glows! How red his lips, that ever try to win Her mouth’s delicious rose! And from the beating of his heart Warm winds arise and sighing thence depart: And from his eyes and hair The light and dew Fall round her everywhere, And heaven above her is an arch of blue. III Come to the forest, or the treeless meadows Deep with their hay or grain; Come where the hills lift high their thrones of shadows, And tawny orchards reign. Come where the reapers whet the scythe; Where golden sheaves are heaped; where berriers blithe, With willow-basket and with pail, Swarm knoll and plain; Where flowers freckle every vale, And Beauty goes with hands of berry-stain. IV Come where the dragonflies, a brassy blue, Flit round the wildwood streams, And, sucking at some horn of honey-dew, The wild-bee hums and dreams. Come where the butterfly waves wings of sleep, Gold-disked and mottled, over blossoms deep: Come where beneath the rustic bridge The creek-frog cries; Or in the shade the rainbowed midge, Above the emerald pools, with murmurings flies. V Come where the cattle browse within the brake, As red as oak and strong; Where cattle-bells the echoes faintly wake, And milkmaids sing their song. Come where the vine-trailed rocks, with waters hoary, Tell to the sun some legend old or story; Or where the sunset to the land Speaks words of gold; Where Ripeness walks, a wheaten band About her brow, making the buds unfold. VI Come where the woods lift up their stalwart arms Unto the star-sown skies; Knotted and gnarled, that to the winds and storms Fling mighty rhapsodies: Or to the moon repeat what they have seen, When Night upon their shoulders vast doth lean. Come where the dew’s clear syllable Slips from the rose; And where the fireflies fill The dark with golden music of their glows. VII Now while the dingles and the vine-roofed glens Whisper their flowery tale Unto the silence; and the lakes and fens Unto the moonlight pale Murmur their rapture, let us seek her out, Her of the honey throat and peach-sweet pout, Summer! and at her feet, The love of old Lay like a sheaf of wheat, And of our hearts the purest gold of gold. INDIAN SUMMER The dawn is a warp of fever, The eve is a woof of fire; And the month is a singing weaver Weaving a red desire. With stars Dawn dices with Even For the rosy gold they heap On the blue of the day’s broad heaven, On the black of the night’s wide deep. It’s--“Reins to the blood!” and “Marry!” The Season’s a prince who burns With the teasing lusts that harry His heart for a wench who spurns. It’s--“Crown us a beaker with sherry, To drink to the doxy’s heels; A tankard of wine o’ the berry, To lips like a cloven peel’s. “’S death! if a king be saddened, Right so let a fool laugh lies: But wine! when a king is gladdened, And a woman’s waist and her eyes.” He hath shattered the loom of the weaver, And left but a leaf that flits, He hath seized heaven’s gold, and a fever Of mist and of frost is its. He hath tippled the buxom beauty, And gotten her hug and her kiss-- The wide world’s royal booty To pile at her feet for this. TO SORROW I O dark-eyed spirit of the marble brow, Whose look is silence and whose touch is night, Who walkest lonely through the world, O thou, Who sittest lonely with Life’s blown-out light; Who in the hollow hours of night’s noon Criest like some lost child; Whose anguish-fevered eyeballs seek the moon To cool their pulses wild. Thou who dost bend to kiss Joy’s sister cheek, Turning its rose to alabaster; yea, Thou who art terrible and mad and meek, Why in my heart art thou enshrined to-day? Sorrow, O say! O say! II Now Spring is here and all the world is white, I will go forth, and where the forest robes Itself in green, and every hill and height Crowns its fair head with blossoms,--spirit globes Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with dew,-- I will forget my grief, And thee, O Sorrow, gazing at the blue, Beneath a last year’s leaf, Of some brief violet the south-wind woos, Or bluet, whence the west-wind raked the snow; The baby eyes of love, the darling hues Of happiness, that thou canst never know, Mother of pain and woe. III On some hoar upland, hoar with clustered thorns, Hard by a river’s windy white of waves, I shall sit down with Spring,--whose eyes are morns Of light; whose cheeks the rose of health enslaves,-- And so forget thee, braiding in Spring’s hair The snowdrop, tipped with green, The cool-eyed primrose and the trillium fair, And moony celandine. Contented so to lie within her arms, Forgetting all the sere and sad and wan, Remembering Love alone, who, o’er earth’s storms, High on the mountains of perpetual dawn, Leads the glad Hours on. IV Or in the peace that follows storm, when Even, Within the west, stands dreaming, lone and far, Clad on with green and silver, and the Heaven Is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering star, I will lie down beside a mountain lake, Round which the tall pines sigh, And, breathing musk of rain from boughs that shake Storm balsam, blowing by, Make friends of Dream and Contemplation high, And Music, listening to the mocking-bird,-- Who through the hush sends its melodious cry,-- And so forget a while that other word, That all loved things must die. NIGHT Out of the East, as from an unknown shore, Thou comest with thy children in thine arms,-- Slumber and Dream,--whom mortals so adore,-- Their flowing raiment sculptured to their charms: Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest, Laid like two roses in one balmy nest. Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow. There is no other presence like to thine, When thou approachest with thy babes divine, Thy shadowy face above them bending low, Blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow. Oft have I taken Sleep from thy dark arms, And fondled her fair head, with poppies wreathed, Within my bosom’s depths, until its storms With her were hushed and I but faintly breathed: And then her sister, Dream, with frolic art Arose from rest, and in my sleeping heart Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost; Worlds where my stranger soul looked down at me, Or walked with spirits by a rainbowed sea, Or smiled, an unfamiliar shape of frost, Floating on gales of breathless melody. Day comes to us in garish glory garbed; But thou, thou bringest to the tired heart Rest and sweet silence, wherein are absorbed All the vain tumults of the mind and mart. Whether thou comest with hands full of stars, Or clothed in storm and cloud, the lightning bars, Rolling the thunder like a mighty dress, God moves with thee; we seem to hear His feet, Wind-like, along the floors of Heaven beat; To see His face, revealed in awfulness, Through thee, O Night, to ban us or to bless. THE HAUNTED HOUSE I The shadows sit and stand about its door Like uninvited guests and poor; And all the long, hot summer day The ceaseless locust dins its roundelay In one old sycamore. The squirrel leaves upon its rotting roof Its wandering tracks In empty hulls; and in its clapboard cracks The spider weaves a windy woof, And cells of clay the mud-wasp packs. The she-fox whelps upon its floor; And o’er its sun warped door The owlet roosts; and where the mosses run, The freckled snake basks in the sun. II The children of what fathers sleep Beneath those melancholy pines? The slow slugs slime their headstones there where creep The doddered poison-vines. The orchard, near the meadow deep, Lifts up decrepit arms, Black-lichened in a withering heap. No sap swells up to make it leap And shout against spring’s storms; No blossom lulls its age asleep; The winds bring sad alarms. Big, bell-round pears and pippins, russet-red, No maiden gathers now; The worm-bored trunks weep tears of gum instead, Oozing from each old bough. III The woodlands around it are solitary And fold it like gaunt hands; The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary, The hum of the country is lonesome and weary, And the bees go by in bands To gladder and lovelier lands. The grasses are rotting in walk and in bower; The loneliness,--dank and rank As a chamber where lies for a lonely hour An old-man’s corpse with many a flower,-- Is hushed and blank. And even the birds have passed it by, Gone with their songs to a happier sky, A happier sky and bank. IV In its desolate halls are lying, Gold, blood-red, and browned, Drifted leaves of autumn dying; And the winds, above them sighing, Turn them round and round, Make a ghostly sound As of footsteps falling, flying, Ghostly footsteps, faintly flying Through the haunted house. V Gazing down in her white shroud, Wov’n of windy cloud, Comes at night the phantom moon; Comes, and all the shadows soon, Crowding chambers of the house, Haunting whispering rooms, arouse;-- Shadows, ghosts, her rays lead on, Till beneath the cloud Like a ghost she’s gone, In her gusty shroud, O’er the haunted house. AUTUMN I oft have met her slowly wandering Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild, Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring, As if on her the scarlet copse had smiled: Or I have seen her sitting, dark and tall,-- Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,-- Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves She wound great drowsy wreaths and let them fall; The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim Far out behind, brown as the rustling sheaves. Or in the hill-lands I have often seen The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between, Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint. Or I have met her ’twixt two beechen hills, Within a dingled valley near a fall, Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower; Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills Went babbling through the wildwood’s arrased hall, Where burned the beech and maples glared their power. Or I have met her by a ruined mill, Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine, On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled, chill, And watched her swinging in the wildgrapevine. While Beauty, sad among the vales and mountains, More sad than death, or all that death can teach, Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms, Where splashed the murmur of the forest’s fountains: With all her loveliness did she beseech, And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms. Once only in a hollow, girt with trees, A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain, I glimpsed her cheeks, red-berried by the breeze, In her dark eyes the night’s sidereal stain. And once upon an orchard’s tangled path, Where all the goldenrod had turned to brown, Where russets rolled and leaves lay sweet of breath, I did behold her ’mid her aftermath Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown, Within her gaze the dreams of life and death. ALONG THE OHIO Athwart a sky of brass long welts of gold; A river of flame the wide Ohio lies; Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold, The dark-blue hill-tops rise. And, westering, dips the crescent of the moon Through great cloud-feathers, flushed with rosy ray, That close around the crystal of her lune The redbird wings of Day. A little skiff slips o’er the burnished stream; A wake of flame, that broadens far behind, Follows in ripples; and the paddles gleam Against the evening wind. Was it the boat, the solitude, and hush, That with dead Indians peopled all the glooms? That made each bank, meseemed, and every bush, Start into eagle-plumes? That made me seem to hear the breaking brush, And, as the stag’s great antlers swelled in view, To hear the arrow twang from cane and rush, That dipped to the canoe? To see the glimmering wigwams by the waves? And, wildly clad, around the camp-fires’ glow, The Shawnee chieftains with their painted braves, Each with his battle-bow?... But now the vision like the sunset fades, The clouds of ribbéd gold have oozed their light; And from the west, like sombre sachem shades, Gallop the shades of night. The broad Ohio glitters to the stars; And many murmurs wander through its woods-- Is it the mourning of dead warriors For their lost solitudes? The moon is set; but, like another moon, The crescent of the river shimmers there, Unchanged as when the eyes of Daniel Boone Beheld it flowing fair. THE OLD INN Red-winding from the sleepy town, One takes the lone, forgotten lane Straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown Bubbles in thorn-flowers sweet with rain, Where breezes bend the gleaming grain And cautious drip of higher leaves The lower dips that drip again, Above the tangled trees it heaves Its gables and its haunted eaves. One creeper, gnarled and blossomless, O’erforests all its eastern wall; The sighing cedars rake and press Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl; While, where the sun beats, drone and drawl The mud-wasps; and one bushy bee, Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall To crowd into a crack.--To me The shadows seem too scared to flee. Of ragged chimneys martins make Huge pipes of music; twittering, here They build and brood.--My footfalls wake Strange stealing echoes, till I fear I’ll see my pale self drawing near, My phantom self as in a glass; Or one, men murdered, buried--where?-- Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass With lips that seem to moan “Alas!” THE MILL-WATER The water-flag and wild cane grow Round banks whereon the sunbeams sow Ephemeral gold when, on its shores, The wind sighs through the sycamores. In one green angle, just in reach, Between a willow-tree and beech, Moss-grown and leaky lies a boat The thick-grown lilies keep afloat. And through its waters, half-awake, Slow swims the spotted water-snake; And near its edge, like some gray streak, Stands gaunt the still fly-up-the-creek. Between the lily-pads and blooms The water-spirits set their looms, And weave the lace-like light that dims The glimmering leaves of under limbs. Each lily is the hiding-place Of some dim wood-thing’s elvish face, That watches you with gold-green eyes Where bubbles of its breathing rise. I fancy, when the waxing moon Leans through the trees and dreams of June; And when the black bat slants its wing, And lonelier the green-frogs sing; I fancy, when the whippoorwill In some old tree sings wildly shrill, With glow-worm eyes that dot the dark,-- Each holding high a firefly spark, To torch its way,--the wood-imps come: And some float rocking here; and some Unmoor the lily-leaves and oar Around the old boat by the shore. They climb through oozy weeds and moss; They swarm its rotting sides and toss Their firefly torches o’er its edge Or hang them in the tangled sedge. The boat is loosed. The moon is pale. Around the dam they slowly sail. Upon its bow, to pilot it, A jack-o’-lantern flame doth sit. Yes; I have seen it all in dreams: Naught is forgotten--naught, it seems-- The strangled face, the matted hair, Drown’d, of the woman trailing there. THE DREAM Thus did I dream: It seemed the afternoon Of some deep, tropic day; and yet the moon Hung, round and bright with golden alchemy, High in a heaven sapphire as the sea. Long, lawny lengths of perishable cloud Templed the west, o’er rolling forests bowed; Clouds raining colors, gold and violet, That, opening, seemed from inner worlds to let Down hints of Parian beauty and lost charms Of old romance, peopled with fairy forms. And all about me fruited orchards grew, Pear, quince, and peach, and plums of dusty blue; Rose-apricots, and apples streaked with fire, Kissed into ripeness by some sun’s desire, And big with juice. And on far, fading hills, Down which it seemed a hundred torrent rills Flashed silent silver, vines and vines and vines Terraced the world with vintage, cooling wines, Pleasant and fragrant as the heart of June, Their delicate tang drawn from the wine-white moon. And from the clouds o’er this sweet world there dripped An odorous music, strange and feverish-lipped, That swung and swooned and panted as with sighs; Investing at each throb the air with eyes And forms of sensuous spirits, limpid white, Clad on with raiment as of starry night; Fair, frail embodiments of melody, From out whose hearts of crystal one could see The music stream like light through delicate hands Hollowing a lamp. And as on sounding sands The ocean murmur haunts the rosy shells,-- Within whose convolutions beauty dwells,-- My soul became a harp of vibrant love Reëchoing all the harmony above. SPRING TWILIGHT The sun set late; and left along the west A furious ruby; o’er which billowy snows Of clouds unrolled; each cloud a mighty breast Blooming with almond-rose. The sun set late; and wafts of wind beat down, And cuffed the blossoms from the blossoming quince; Scattered the petals of the poppy’s crown, And made the clover wince. By dusking forests, through whose fretful boughs In flying fragments shot the evening’s flame, Adown the tangled lane the quiet cows With dreamy tinklings came. The sun set late; but scarcely had he gone When o’er the moon’s gold-litten crescent there, Bright Phosphor, polished as a precious stone, Burned in fair deeps of air. As from faint stars the glory waned and waned, The crickets made the old-time garden shrill; Beyond the luminous pasture-lands complained The first far whippoorwill. A SLEET-STORM IN MAY On southern winds shot through with amber light, Breathing soft balm and clothed in cloudy white, The lily-fingered Spring came o’er the hills, Waking the crocus and the daffodils. O’er the cold Earth she breathed a tender sigh-- The maples sang and flung their banners high, Their crimson tasselled pennons, and the elm Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm. Beneath the musky rot of last year’s leaves, Under the forest’s myriad naked eaves, Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue, Robed in the starlight of the twinkling dew. With timid tread adown the barren wood Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood White-mantled Winter nodding his white head, Stormy his brow and stormily he said: “The God of Terror, and the King of Storm, Must I remind thee how my iron arm Raised rebel standards ’mid these conquered bowers, Turning their green to crimson?--Thou, with flowers, _Thou_ wouldst supplant me! nay! usurp my throne!-- Audacious one!”-- And at her breast he tossed A glittering spear of ice and piercing frost, And struck her down, dead on th’ unfeeling mold. The fragile blossoms, gathered in the fold Of her young bosom, fell in desolate rows About her beauty; and, like fragrant snows, Covered her lovely hands and beautiful feet, Or on her lips lay like last kisses sweet That died there. Lilacs, musky of the May, And bluer violets and snowdrops lay Entombed in crystal, icy faint and fair, Like teardrops scattered through her heavenly hair. Alas! sad heart, break not beneath the pain! Time changeth all; the Beautiful wakes again.-- We should not question such; a higher power Knows best what bud is ripest, or what flower, Silently plucks it at the fittest hour. THE HEART O’ SPRING Whiten, oh, whiten, O clouds of lawn! Lily-like clouds that whiten above, Now like a dove, and now like a swan, But never, oh, never--pass on! pass on!-- Never as white as the throat of my love. Blue-black night on the mountain peaks-- Oh, not so black as the locks o’ my love! Stars that shine through the evening’s streaks Over the torrent that flashes and breaks, Brighter the eyes of my love, my love! Moon in a cloud, as white as snow, Mist in the vale where the rivulet bounds, Dropping from ledge to ledge below, Turning to gold in the sunset’s glow, Softer and sweeter her footstep sounds. Sound o’ May winds in the blossoming trees, Oh, not so sweet as her laugh that rings; Song o’ wild birds on the morning breeze, Birds and brooks and murmur o’ bees, Sweeter her voice when she laughs or sings. The rose o’ my heart is she; my dawn! My star o’ the east, my moon above! My soul takes ship for the Avalon Of her heart of hearts, and shall sail on Till it anchors safe in its haven of love. “A BROKEN RAINBOW ON THE SKIES OF MAY” A broken rainbow on the skies of May, Touching the dripping roses and low clouds, And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:-- So in the sorrow of her soul the ghost Of one great love, of iridescent ray, Spanning the roses gray of memory, Against the tumult of life’s rushing crowds-- A broken rainbow on the skies of May. A flashing humming-bird among the flowers, Deep-colored blooms; its slender tongue and bill Sucking the calyxed and the honeyed myrrhs, Till, sick of sweets, to other flow’rs it whirrs:-- Such was his love that won her heart’s full bowers To yield to him their all, their sweets in showers, The flower from which he drank his body’s fill-- A flashing humming-bird among the flowers. A moon, moth-white, that through far mists, like fleece, Moves amber-girt into a bulk of black, And, lost to sight, rims all the black with froth:-- A love that swept its moon, like some great moth, Across the heaven of her soul’s young peace; And, smoothly passing, in the clouds did cease Of time, through which its burning light comes back-- A moon, moth-white, that moves through mists like fleece. A bolt of living thunder downward hurled, Momental blazing from the piled-up storm, That etches out the mountains and the ocean, The towering rocks, then blots the sight’s commotion:-- Love, love that swiftly coming bared the world, The deeps of life, round which fate’s clouds are curled, And, ceasing, left all night and black alarm-- A bolt of living thunder downward hurled. ORGIE On nights like this, when bayou and lagoon Swoon in the moonlight’s mystic radiance, I seem to walk like one deep in a trance With old-world myths born of the mist and moon. Lascivious eyes and mouths of sensual rose Smile into mine: and breasts of luring light, And tresses streaming golden to the night, Persuade me onward where the forest glows. And then it seems along the haunted hills There falls a flutter as of beautiful feet, As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills. And then I feel her limbs will be revealed Like some great snow-white moth among the trees; Her vampire beauty, waiting there to seize And drag me downward where my doom is sealed. THE FARMSTEAD Yes, I love the Farmstead. There In the spring the lilacs blew Plenteous perfume everywhere; There in summer gladioles drew Parallels of scarlet glare. And the moon-hued primrose cool, Satin-soft and redolent; Honeysuckles beautiful, Filling all the air with scent; Roses red or white as wool. Roses, glorious and lush, Rich in tender-tinted dyes, Like the gay tempestuous rush Of unnumbered butterflies, Clustering o’er each bending bush. Here japonica and box, And the wayward violets; Clumps of star-enameled phlox, And the myriad flowery jets Of the twilight four-o’-clocks. Ah, the beauty of the place! When the June made one great rose, Full of musk and mellow grace, In the garden’s humming close, Of her comely mother face! Bubble-like the hollyhocks Budded, burst, and flaunted wide Gypsy beauty from their stocks; Morning-glories, bubble-dyed, Swung in honey-hearted flocks. Tawny tiger-lilies flung Doublets slashed with crimson on; Graceful slave-girls, fair and young, Like Circassians, in the sun Alabaster lilies swung. Ah, the droning of the bee; In his dusty pantaloons Tumbling in the fleurs-de-lis; In the drowsy afternoons Dreaming in the pink sweet-pea. Ah, the moaning wildwood dove! With its throat of amethyst Rippled like a shining cove Which a wind to pearl hath kissed, Moaning, moaning of its love. And the insects’ gossip thin-- From the summer hotness hid-- In lone, leafy deeps of green; Then at eve the katydid With its hard, unvaried din. Often from the whispering hills, Borne from out the golden dusk,-- Gold with gold of daffodils,-- Thrilled into the garden’s musk The wild wail of whippoorwills. From the purple-tangled trees, Like the white, full heart of night, Solemn with majestic peace, Swam the big moon, veined with light, Like some gorgeous golden-fleece. She was there with me.--And who, In the magic of the hour, Had not sworn that they could view, Beading on each blade and flower Moony blisters of the dew? And each fairy of our home,-- Firefly,--its taper lit In the honey-scented gloam, Dashing down the dusk with it Like an instant-flaming foam. And we heard the calling, calling, Of the brown owl in the brake; Where the trumpet-vine hung, crawling Down the ledge, into the lake Heard the sighing streamlet falling. Then we wandered to the creek Where the water-lilies, growing Thick as stars, lay white and weak; Or against the brooklet’s flowing Stooped and bathed a bashful cheek. And the moonlight, rippling golden, Fell in virgin aureoles On their bosoms, half-unfolden, Where, it seemed, the fairies’ souls Dreamed as perfume,--unbeholden;-- Lying sleeping, pearly-tented, Baby-cribbed within each bud, While the night-wind, pinewood-scented, Swooning over field and flood, Rocked them on the waters dented. Then the low, melodious bell Of a sleeping heifer tinkled, In some berry-briered dell, As her satin dewlap wrinkled With the cud that made it swell. And, returning home, we heard, In a beech-tree at the gate, Some brown, dream-behaunted bird, Singing of its absent mate, Of the mate that never heard. And, you see, now I am gray, Why within the old, old place, With such memories, I stay: Fancy out her absent face Long since passed away. She was mine--yes! still is mine: And my frosty memory Reels about her, as with wine Warmed into young eyes that see All the past that was divine. Yes, I loved her, and have grown Melancholy in that love, And the memory alone Of her loveliness whereof She did sanctify each stone. And where’er her flowers swing, There she walks,--as if a bee Fanned them with its airy wing,-- Down her garden, shadowy In the hush the evenings bring. THE BOY COLUMBUS And he had mused on lands each bird,-- That winged from realms of Falerina, O’er seas of the Enchanted Sword,-- In romance sang him, till he heard Far foam on Islands of Alcina. For rich Levant and old Castile Let other seamen freight their galleys; With Polo he and Mandeville Through stranger seas a dreamy keel Sailed into wonder-peopled valleys. Far continents of flow’r and fruit, Of everlasting spring; where fountains ’Mid flow’rs, with human faces, shoot; Where races dwell, both man and brute, In cities under golden mountains. Where cataracts their thunders hurl From heights the tempest has at mercy; Vast peaks that touch the moon, and whirl Wild torrents down of gold and pearl; And forests strange as those of Circe. Let rapiered Love lute, in the shade Of royal gardens, to the Palace And Court, that haunt the balustrade Of terraces and still parade Their vanity and guile and malice. Him something calls, diviner yet Than Love, more mighty than a lover; Heroic Truth, that will not let Deed lag; a purpose, westward set, In eyes far-seeing to discover. NORTH BEACH, FLORIDA Surge upon surge, the miles of surf uncurl Volutes of murmur; and the far shore foams; The thundering billows, boiling into pearl, The sea-wind clouds and combs. Wave upon wave,--as when the Nereids pour, With streaming tresses, landward, when the arms Of Tritons reach them, racing towards the shore,-- Bursts on the beach that storms. Oh, thou primeval solitude! that rolled Out of creation when the world was young! That shall roll on when man is not, and old The ages yet unsung! Time shall not flaw thy music!--thou hast heard God’s spirit on thy waters, and no night Annuls the memory of that one Word Which blossomed into light. With such impression as upon thy face The soaring seagulls make, man comes and came; And countless myriads, race on warring race, Have found thee thus--the same. Thy part is--to destroy, and still remain Immutable ’midst mutability: The symbol of all change, that clothes again Mystery in mystery. THE STORM Thor, Thor is out on the hills! The frown of his fierce brow showing; His breath through his red beard blowing, With rain, through his beard that it fills. The forests are taken; The mightiest oaks Are twisted and shaken As by chariot-spokes, Where mountains awaken To th’ hoofs of his yokes, Reined sheer with the strength of his arm-- Ride forth, O Spirit of Storm! What hope for the sparrow, Or nest of the bird! Where fords were once narrow, What hope for the herd! When arrow on arrow He empties the third Of his quiver against their alarm-- Descend, O Spirit of Storm! You may measure the might that he brings By the welkin that echoes his felloes; By the fork of the lightning,--that yellows The darkness,--the hammer he swings. The cattle are scattered And low from the shore; The roses are shattered That grew at the door; The swallows look tattered, And twitter and soar, Made glad with the force of his form-- Rejoice, O Spirit of Storm! On levels that sunder The roar of the main He ploughs with the thunder, And sows with the rain: No sunbeam shall blunder Through black till the plain Is planted with storm as a farm-- Sweep on, O Spirit of Storm! His path is the abysm, which heaps The wild wind behind him, and hovers A whirlwind before, that uncovers The hurricane-lair where he sleeps. At night,--through the wrestle Of winds that contend,-- To guard the good vessel From rocks that would rend, Like a star let it nestle, The light, to defend The seaman and his from all harm-- From thee, O Spirit of Storm! ON THE JELLICO SPUR OF THE CUMBERLANDS _To ..._ You remember how the mist, When we climbed to Devil’s Den, Pearl-white in the mountain glen, And above us, amethyst, Throbbed and circled? then away, Through the wildwoods opposite, Torn and scattered, morning-lit, Vanished into dewy gray?-- Vague as in romance we saw, From the fog one riven trunk, Talon-like with branches shrunk, Thrust a monster dragon claw. And we climbed for hours through The dawn-dripping Jellicoes, To a wooded rock, whence those Undulating leagues of blue Summits,--mountain-chains that lie Dark with forest, bar on bar,-- Ranged their wild, irregular, Purple peaks beneath a sky Ocean-azure. Range on range Billowed their enormous spines, Where the rocks and priestly pines Sat eternal, without change. We were sons of Nature then: She had taken us to her, Drawn us, bound with brier and burr, Closer her than other men: Intimates of all her moods, From her bloom-anointed looks, Wisdom of no man-made books Learned we in those solitudes: How the seed contained the flower; How the acorn held the oak; How within the vine awoke The wild impulse still to tower: How in fantasy or mirth, Springing when she summoned there, Sponge-like fungi everywhere Bulged, exuded from the earth: Coral-vegetable things, That the underworld exhaled, Bulbous, fluted, ribbed, and scaled, Many colored and in rings, Like the Indian-Pipe that grew Pink and white in loamy cracks, Flowers of a natural wax, She had turned her fancy to.-- On that laureled precipice, Where the chestnuts dropped their burrs, Warm with balsam of the firs, First we felt her mother-kiss Full of heaven and the wind; While the forests, wood on wood, Murmured like a multitude Giving praise where none hath sinned.-- Freedom met us there; we saw Freedom giving audience; In her face the eloquence, Lightning-like, of love and law: Round her, on majestic hips, Lounged the giant mountains, where Streaming cataracts tossed their hair, God and thunder on their lips.-- Oft an eagle, or a hawk, Or a scavenger, we knew Winged above us through the blue By its shadow on the rock. Or a cloud of templed white Moved, a lazy berg of pearl, Through the sky’s pacific swirl, Shot with cool, cerulean light. So we dreamed an hour upon That high rock the lichens mossed, While around us, glimmering, tossed Golden mintings of the sun: Then arose; and a ravine, Which a torrent once had worn, Made our roadway to the corn In the valley, deep and green; And the farm-house with its bees, Where old-fashioned flowers spun Gay rag-carpets in the sun, Gray among the apple-trees. Here we watched the evening fall: O’er Wolf Mountain sunset made, Huge, a rhododendron, rayed Round the sun’s cloud-calyxed ball. Then through scents of herb and soil, To the mining-camp we turned, In the twinkling dusk discerned With its white-washed homes of toil. * * * * * Ah, those nights!--We wandered forth On some haunted mountain path, When the moon rose late; and rathe The large stars, sowed south and north, Splashed with gold the purple skies; And the milky zodiac, Rolled athwart the belted black, Seemed a path to Paradise. And we walked or tarried till, In the valley-land beneath, Like the vapor of a breath Breathed in frost, arose the still Architecture of the mist: And the moon-dawn’s necromance Touched the mist and made it glance Terraced pearl and amethyst. Then around us, sharp and brusque, Night’s shrill insects strident strung Fairy viols that buzzed and sung, Pixy music of the dusk. And we seemed to hear soft sighs, And hushed steps of ghostly things, Fluttered feet and rustled wings All around us. Fireflies, Gleaming in the tangled glade, Seemed the eyes of warriors, Stealing under watching stars To some phantom ambuscade; To the tepees there that gloomed, Wigwams of the mist, that slept By the woodland side, whence crept Shadowy Shawnees moonbeam-plumed. When the moon rose, like a cup Lay the valley, brimming shine Of mesmeric mist, like wine, To the sky’s dim face held up. As she rose from out the mines Of the nacreous darkness, Night Met her, clad in dewy light ’Mid Pine Mountain’s sachem pines. As through fragmentary fleece Of the clouds her circle broke, Orey-seamed, about us woke Myths of Italy and Greece. As, an orb of sparry quartz, Her serene circumference grew, Home we turned. And all night through Slept the sleep of happy hearts. THE WHIPPOORWILL I Above lone woodland ways that led To dells the stealthy twilights tread The west was hot geranium red; And still, and still, Along old lanes the locusts sow With clustered pearls the Maytimes blow, Deep in the crimson afterglow, We heard the homeward cattle low, And then, far off, like some far woe, The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill. II Beneath the idle beechen boughs We heard the slow bells of the cows Come softly, jangling towards the house; And still, and still, Beyond the light that would not die Out of the scarlet-haunted sky, Beyond the evening-star’s white eye Of glittering chalcedony, Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry Of “whippoorwill,” of “whippoorwill.” III And in the city oft, when swims The pale moon o’er the smoke that dims Its disc, I dream of wildwood limbs, And still, and still, I seem to hear, where shadows grope ’Midst ferns and flowers that dewdrops rope,-- Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope Above the clover-sweetened slope,-- Retreat, despairing, past all hope, The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill. IN THE WILDWOOD I lie where silence sleeps, And twilight dreams and sighs; Where all heaven’s azure peeps Blue from one wildflower’s eyes; Where, in reflecting deeps, A world, inverted, lies, Of dimmer woods and skies: Divining God from things Humble as weed and bee; From songs the wild bird sings Guessing at poetry; And from each flower that swings, Each star-familiar tree, Learning philosophy. A HOLLOW OF THE HILLS I How oft the swallow darted Above its deeps of blue, Where leaves close clung or parted To let the sunlight through! Where roses, honey-hearted, Hung full of living dew! II How oft, from out the heaven, Upon me blew the balm Of soft winds, summer-driven From continents of calm! With rustlings as of riven, Sea-sounding pine and palm! III Oft from its leafy cover I watched the red-bird slip; And marked, like some rude lover, The bee, with robber lip, Bend down the snowy clover, Or make the wild-rose dip. IV Still darts the soaring swallow Above it; and the rose Still blooms within its hollow Where still the runnel flows; The brook,--that I shall follow No more,--that seaward goes. V There still the white moon shineth At night through rifted trees; Upon the stream that twineth Through blooms that no one sees; And on,--as I divineth,-- My soul that sighs for these. BENEATH THE BEECHES I I long, oh, long to lie ’Neath beechen branches, twisted, Green ’twixt the summer sky; The woodland shadows nigh Like dryads sunbeam-wristed: The livelong day to dream Beside a wildwood stream. II I long, oh, long to hear The claustral forest breathing, Sound soothing to the ear; To see the wild-vine near Its scarlet blooms unsheathing: The livelong day to cross Slow o’er the nut-strewn moss. III I long, oh, long to see The nesting red-bird singing Glad on the wood-rose tree: To watch the breezy bee, Half in the wildflower, swinging: God’s livelong day to pass Deep in cool forest grass. IV Oh, soul, so builded in With mart and booth and steeple, Brick alley-ways of sin, What hope for you to win Ways free of pelf and people! Ways of the leaf and root And soft Mygdonian flute! THE BRIDLE-PATH I Through meadows of the ironweeds, Whose purple blooms hang, slipping The morning dew in twinkling beads, The thin path twists and, winding, leads Through woodland hollows dripping; Down to a creek of rocks and reeds; On to a lilied dam that feeds A mill, whose wheel through willow-bredes Winks, the white water whipping. II It wends through meads of mint and brush Where silvery seeds drift drowsy, Or swoon along the heatful hush; And where the bobwhite, in the bush, The elder, blooming frowsy, Keeps calling clear: then through a crush Of crowded saplings, low and lush; Then by a pool of flag and rush With brier-rose petaled blowsy. III Thence, o’er the ragweed fallow-lot, Whose low rail-fence encumbers The dense-packed berries ripening hot; Where, in the heaven, one far spot Of gray, the gray hawk slumbers; Then through the greenwood where the rot Of leaves and loam smells cool; and, shot With dotting dark, the touch-me-not Swings curling horns in numbers. IV It winds round rocks that bulge and lie Deep in damp ferns and mosses,-- Each like a giant on his thigh Watching some forest quarry die;-- And thence it frailly crosses A bramble-bridge; whence, whirring high, A partridge startles,--’thwart the sky A jarring light,--where, babbling by, The brook its diamonds tosses. V And here the cohosh swings its snow, Gaunt from the forest springing; There gold the sorrel blossoms blow; Here vari-colored toadstools sow, Or swell the soil; and, swinging, The trumpet-vine hangs red and low Near boughs,--on which the beech-burrs glow,-- The woodland wind sways to and fro, O’er waters wildly ringing. VI It leads us deep into the cane Through spice-bush belts, where “tinkle” One stray bell sounds, and then again, Lost in some lone and leafy lane Where smooth the clay ruts wrinkle ... A cloud looms up,--a grayish stain Against the blue;--and wet with rain The wind blows, denting down the grain And leaves, the first drops sprinkle. VII The dust is drilled with raindrops.--One, Then two quick gleams, then thunder; And, scurrying with the dust, we run Into a whiff of hay and sun, Of cribs and barns; and under Low martin-builded eaves,--where dun The sparrows shelter,--watch the spun Blue rain sweep down, that seems to stun The world with wind and wonder. VIII A crashing wedge of stormy light, Vibrating, blinds, and dashes A monster elm to splinters white: Then roaring rain: then, blinding bright, A bolt again that crashes.... The storm is over. Left and right The clouds break; and, with green delight, Fresh rain scents blow from wood and height Where each blade drips and flashes. IX A ghostly gold burns slowly through The chasm’d clouds; and blended With rainy rose and rainy blue, The heavens, pearled with many a hue, Die like a dolphin splendid.... High-buoyed in wrack, now one or two Slight stars peep out--the pirate clue To night’s rich hoard.--In dusk and dew Here is our pathway ended. THE OLD FARM Dormered and verandaed, cool, Locust-girdled on the hill, Stained with weather-wear; at Yule And Midsummer every sill Thresholding the beautiful, Still I see it standing there, Brown above the woodland deep, Wrapped in lights of lavender, And slow shadows, rocked asleep By the warm wind everywhere. I remember how the spring, Liberal-lapped, bewildered its Acred orchards, murmuring, With the blossoms’ budded bits, Where the wood-thrush came to sing. Barefoot Spring, at first who trod, Like a beggarmaid, adown The wet woodland, where the god, With the bright sun for a crown And the firmament for rod, Met her; clothed her; wedded her; Her Cophetua: when, lo! All the hill, one breathing blur, Burst in blossom, gleam and glow, Peach and pearl and lavender. Seckel, blackheart, palpitant, Rained their bleaching strays; and white Snowed the damson, bent aslant; Rambow-tree and romanite Seemed beneath deep drifts to pant. And it stood there, brown and gray, In the bee-boom and the bloom, In the shadow and the ray, In the passion and perfume, Grave as age among the gay. Sweet with laughter romped the clear Boyish voices round its walls; Rare wild-roses were the dear Girlish faces in its halls, Music-haunted all the year. Far before it meadows full Of green pennyroyal sank; Clover-dotted as with wool Here and there; and now a bank Of wild color: and the cool Dark blue shadows undefined Of the clouds rolled overhead; Clouds, from which the summer wind Blew with rain, and freshly shed Dew upon the flowerkind. Where, through mint and gypsy-lily, Runs the rocky brook away, Musical among the hilly Solitudes,--its flashing spray Sunbeam-dashed or shadow-stilly,-- Buried in thick sassafras, Memory follows up the hill Still some cowbell’s mellow brass, Where the ruined water-mill Looms, half-hid in cane and grass. Ah, the old farm! is it set On the hilltop still? ’mid musk Of the meads? where, violet, Deepens all the dreaming dusk, And the locust trees hang wet? While the sunset, far and low, On its westward windows dashes Primrose or pomegranate glow? And above, in lilac splashes, Faint, first stars the heavens sow? Sleeps it still among its roses, Yellow roses? while the choir Of the lonesome insects dozes? And the white moon, filled with fire, O’er its mossy roof reposes-- Sleeps it still among its roses? TO SUMMER I Thou sit’st among the sunny silences Of terraced hills and woodland galleries, Thou utterance of all calm melodies, Thou lutanist of Earth’s most fecund lute,-- Where no false note intrudes To mar the silent music,--branch and root, Playing the fields ripe, orchards and deep woods, To song similitudes Of flower and seed and fruit. II Oft have I felt thee, in some sensuous air, Bewitch the wide wheat-acres everywhere To imitated gold of thy rich hair: The peach, by thy red lips’ delicious trouble, Blown into gradual dyes Of crimson, have I seen: have watched thee double-- With interluded music of thine eyes-- The grapes’ rotundities, Bubble by purple bubble. III Deliberate uttered into life intense, Out of thy song’s melodious eloquence Beauty evolves its just preëminence: The lily, from some pensive-smitten chord Drawing significance Of purity, a visible hush stands: starred With splendor, from thy passionate utterance, The rose tells its romance In blushing word on word. IV As star by star day harps in evening, The inspiration of all things that sing Is in thy hands and from their touch takes wing: All brooks, all birds,--whom song can never sate,-- Even the wind and rain, And frogs and insects, singing soon and late, Thy sympathies inspire, thy heart’s refrain, Whose sounds invigorate With rest life’s weary brain. V And as the night, like some mysterious rune, Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon, Thou lutest us no immaterial tune: But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn, By thy still strain made strong, Earth’s awful avatar,--in whom is born Thy own deep music,--labors all night long With growth, assuring morn Assumes like onward song. A GRAY DAY I Long volleys of wind and of rain, And the rain on the drizzled pane, And the day ends chill and murk; But on yesterday’s eve, I trow, The new-moon’s thorn-thin bow Stabbed rosy through gold and through glow, Like a rich, barbaric dirk. II The throats of the snapdragons,-- Cool-colored with gold like the dawns That come with spring o’er the hills,-- Are filled with a sweet rain, fine, Of starry, scintillant shine, A faery vat of thin wine, That the rain for the elfins fills. III Dabbled the poppies shrink, And the coxcomb and the pink; And the candytuft’s damp crown Droops, dribbled, low bowed i’ the wet; And rows of the mignonette Little musk-sacks open set, Which the weight o’ the dew drags down. IV Stretched taunt ’twixt the blades of grass, A gossamer-fibered glass, That the garden-spider spun, The web, where the round rain clings In the sag o’ its middle, swings-- A hammock for elfin things When the stars succeed the sun. V And, mark, where the pale gourd grows As high as the climbing rose, How the tiger-moth is pressed To that wide leaf’s under side.-- And I know where the red wasps hide, And the brown bees,--that defied The first strong gusts,--distressed. VI Yet I feel that the gray will blow Aside for an afterglow; And the wind, on a sudden, toss Drenched boughs; a pattering shower Athwart the red dusk in a glower, Big drops heard hard on each flower, The grass and the flowering moss. VII And then for a minute, may be,-- A pearl, hollow-worn, of the sea,-- A glimmer of moon will smile, And a star, rinsed clean, through the dusk: And a freshness of moonlit musk O’er the showery lawns blow brusque As spice from an Indian Isle. THE MOOD O’ THE EARTH My heart is high as the day is clear, As the wind in the wood that blows; My heart is high with a mood that’s cheer, And glows like a sun-blown rose. My heart is high, and up and away Like a bird in the skies’ deep blue; My heart goes singing through the day, As glad as a bee i’ the dew. My heart, my heart is high; its beat Is wild as the scent o’ the wood, The wild sweet wind, with its pulse of heat, And its musk of blossom and bud. My heart is high; and it leads my feet Where the sense of summer is full, To woods and waters where lovers meet To hills where the creeks run cool. My heart is one, is one with the heart, With the joy o’ the bee that comes And sucks i’ the flowers, that dip apart For his dusty body that hums. My heart is glad as the glad redstart, The flame-flecked bird, the spotted bird, Whose lilt my soul has got by heart, Fitting each note with a word. God’s love! I tread the wind and air! Am one with the hoiden wind; And the stars that swim in the blue, I swear, Right soon in my hair I’ll find. To live high up, a life o’ the mist, With the cloud-things in white skies,-- With their limbs of pearl and of amethyst,-- That laugh cerulean eyes! To creep and to suck, like an elfin thing, In the aching heart of a rose; In the bluebell’s ear to cling and swing, And whisper what no one knows! To live on wild-honey, as fresh, as thin As the rain that’s left in a flower! And roll forth, golden from feet to chin, In the pollen’s Danaë-shower! Or free, bird-hearted, bend back the throat, With a vigorous look at the blue, And launch from my soul one wild, true note, Is the thing that my heart would do! God’s life! the blood o’ the earth is mine! And the mood o’ the earth I’ll take, And brim my soul with her wonderful wine, And sing till my heart doth break! NOONING I Weak winds that make the waters wink; White clouds that sail from lands of Fable To white Utopias, vague, that brink Sky-gulfs of blue unfathomable: Their rolling shadows, drifting O’er hills of forest, lifting Wild peaks of purple range, that loom and sink. II Warm knolls, whereon the Summer dreams; And droning dells, where all her brightness Lies, lulled with hymns of mountain-streams’ Far-foaming falls of windy whiteness: Where, from the glooming hollow, With cawing crows that follow, The hunted hawk wings wearily and screams. III Dry-buzzing heat and drought that shrills With one harsh locust’s lonesome whirring; No voice amid the answering hills Recedes in echoes far-recurring; As when, with twilight wimpled, The Morning, rosy dimpled, From dewy tops called o’er responding rills. IV Wan with sweet summer hangs the deep Hot heaven with the high sun hearted-- A great, wide bluebell bloom asleep With golden-pistiled petals parted.-- So lone, one would not startle If from yon wood should dartle Some wildwood Dream, some Myth the wildwoods keep. THE LOG-BRIDGE I Last month, where the old log-bridge is laid O’er the woodland creek, in the belts o’ the shade, To the right and the left, pink-packed, was made A gloaming glory of scented tangle By the bramble roses there--that wade, High-heaped, from the banks--with many a braid That, wilting, powdered the ruts, and swayed, To the waters beneath, loose loops of spangle; Where the breeze that blew and the beam that rayed Were murmurous-soft with the bees awrangle. II This month--’tis August--the lane that leads To the bramble-bridge runs waste with weeds, That bloom bright saffron, or satin seeds Of thistle-fleece blow at you, hazy: Starry the lane with the thousand bredes Of the yellow daisy, and bud-like beads Of marigold eyes, around which speeds The butterfly, sumptuous with mottle and lazy; Whereunder the pewee picks and pleads, On the sumach’s tassel that dips to the daisy. III All golden the spot in the noon’s gold shine, Where the yellow-bird sits with eyes like wine And swings and whistles; where, line on line, In coils of warmth the sunbeams nestle; Where cool by the pool (where the crawfish, fine As a shadow’s shadow, darts dim) to mine The wet creek-clay with their peevish whine, Come mason-hornets; and roll and wrestle With balls of clay they carry, and twine In hollow nests on the joists o’ the trestle. IV Where the horsemint shoots through the grasses,--high On the root-thick rivage that roofs,--a dry Gray knob that bristles with pink, the sigh Of crickets is heard; and the leaves’ deep bosoms Are pierced, at dusk, with a bird’s quick cry, A passing bird that twitters by: And the frogs’ grave antiphons rise and die; And here, to drink, come the wild opossums: And here, to-night, will you and I Linger and lean while the great moon blossoms. AMONG THE KNOBS There is a place embanked with brush Three wooded knobs beyond, Lost, in a valley, where the lush Wild eglantine blows blond. Where light the dogwoods earliest Their torches of white fires, And, bee-bewildered, east and west The red haws build their spires. The wild crab-apples’ flowery sprays Blur through the pensive gloom A fragrant pink; and by lone ways The close blackberries bloom. I love the spot: a shallow brook Slips from the forest, near A cane-brake and a violet nook; Its rustling depths so clear The minnows glimmer where they glide Above its rocky bed: A boyhood-haunted brook, not wide, That has its sparkling head Among the rainy hills; and drops By five low waterfalls-- Wild music of a hundred stops-- Between the forests’ walls: Down to a water-gate, that hangs Across the stream; a dull Portcullis rude, whose wooden fangs The moss makes beautiful. The brass-bright dragonflies about Its seeding grasses swim; The streaked wasps, worrying in and out, Dart sleepily and slim. Here in the moon-gold moss, that glows Like pools of moonlight, dies The pale anemone; and blows The bluet, blue as skies. And, where in April tenderly The wild geranium made A thin, peculiar fragrance, we, Cool in pellucid shade, Found wild strawberries just a-bud; Wild berries, tart and fresh,-- Pale scarlet as a wood-bird’s blood,-- That May’s low vines would mesh. Once from that hill a farm-house ’mid Deep orchards--cozy brown,-- In lilacs and old roses hid,-- With picket-fence looked down. O’er ruins now the roses guard; The plum and seckel-pear And apricot rot on the sward Their wasted ripeness there. Again when huckleberries blow Their waxen bells I’ll tread That dear accustomed way; and go Adown that orchard; led To that avoided spot, which seems The haunt of vanished springs; Lost as the hills in drowsy dreams Of visionary things. THE FALLS OF THE OHIO Here on this jutting headland, where the trees Spread a dusk carpet for the sun to cast And count his golden guineas on, we’ll rest. Behold th’ Ohio Falls: see how it seethes! Though hardly heard from this high, wooded point, Yet how it still confuses tongue and ear With its subdued and low monotonous roar! Not as it did, however, when we stood And marked it from the spanning of the bridge Rushing beneath, impetuous as a herd,-- A tameless herd, with manes of flying spray,-- Between the pillars towering above. No more does it confound us and confuse; Its clamor here is softened to a sound, Incessant and subdued, like that which haunts The groves of spring, when, like some dim surprise, A wind, precursor of the rain, rides down From a gray cloud and sets the leafy tongues Cool-gossiping of the approaching shower. There runs the dam; and where its dark line cuts The river’s sheen, already you may see The ripples glancing to the summer sun, As if a host had couched a thousand spears And tossed a thousand plumes of fleecy foam, In answer to the challenge of the Falls, Blown from his limestone battlements, and cried From his wave-builded city’s roaring walls. And there, you see, the waves like champions charge; Crowding, wild form on form, their foam-hoofs beat The ragged rocks that roll them on their way: Billowing they come; knight-like, to ringing lists, With shout on shout, tossing a thousand plumes, A thousand spears in sparkling tournament; Lifting, opposing each, a silvery shield Or shining pennon, now that sinks or soars, And many a glittering sword of twinkling foam, And many a helmet, shattered in flakes of froth, That, to the trumpeting wind, hisses away: While, o’er it all, swell out the rush and roar Of onset, as of battle borne afar.-- On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop! On, on, along the sandy banks that fling Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay Their ruinous rush, the knightly strife of waves, Warring, and winding wild their watery horns. Look, where a thousand oily eddies whirl, And turn and turn like wheels of liquid steel Below this headland! ’Tis a place that none Has bottomed yet with sounding lead and line. Like some huge kraken, coiling vast its length, The Eddy sleeps; and, bending from the shores, The spotted sycamores have gazed and gazed, Watching its slumber as gray giants might A dragon in the hollow of gaunt hills, Its serpent bulk wound round some magic hoard. So long they’ve watched, their ancient backs have grown Humped, gnarled, and bent, but still they gaze and gaze, Leaning above; and from the glassy waves Their images stare back their wonderment. Haply they see the guardian Genius lie At the dark bottom in an oozy cave Of coral; webbed, recumbent on his mace Of mineral; his locks of dripping green Circling a crown of ore; his fishy eyes Dull with the aqueous dullness of his realms. But when the storm’s abroad and whips the waves With stinging lashes of the myriad rain, Or scars with thunder some ancestral oak, Sire of a forest, then he wakes in wrath, And on the dark foundation of the stream Rises, a monarch, crowned with iron crown, And hurls his challenge upward at the storm, And rages through the waters; heaves and breaks Through the wild waves, whose round and murky bulks, Ribbed white with foam, wallow their monster way, Like giant herds, along yon edge of rock O’erstrewn with petrifactions of far time; Mollusk and trilobite and honeycomb Of whitest coral; and with mass on mass Of root-like reptiles; writhings turned to rock; Huge saurian bulks that, haply, sported there, Convolved; and, in a moment, when the change,-- Which made and unmade continents and seas, That teemed and groaned with mammoth and plesiosaur,-- Came, with upheaval of the universe, Thro’ all their monster spines were struck to stone. There where uprises a wild knoll, o’erstrewn With wrecks of ancient forest, in mid-stream Once rose an island, green and beautiful With willow and beech, poplar and sycamore; A river-island where the woodman built,-- Stream-guarded from the savage-haunted shore,-- His rude log cabin. Here he sowed his maize; Here saw it tassel in the summer heat, And glance like ranks of feathered Indians through The glimmering vistas of the broken wood; Here reaped and sheaved its stalks, all ivory-eared, In shocks like wigwam rows, when like a maid, An Indian maid, ruddy in dogwood beads, The autumn came, soft o’er the sunset hills, That blushed for love, and underneath her feet Cast untold gold in leaves and yellow fruit. Here dwelt the pioneer and here he died, And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth And loam of what was once an island; now A bed of limestone rock and water pools,-- Where, in the quarry, you may see the blast Spout heavenward the dust and dirt and stone, And flap and pound its echoes round the hills In giant strokes as of some Titan hammer;-- A mound of stump-pierced soil where once an isle,-- As rich and fair in forest and in field As any isle that rises to a sail In tropic seas,--arose to kiss the sun. There lies the other half of what was once Corn Island: broad the channel beats between. Lower it lies, and mantled with dwarf brakes Of willow and of cottonwood and beech, Degenerate offsprings of the mighty boles That once o’erbrowed the stream in majesty Of tall primeval beauty. In the morn, Ere yet the east assumes its faintest blush, Here you may hear the melancholy snipe Piping, or see her paddling in the pools That splash the low bed of the rocky soil. Here once the Indian stole in natural craft From wahoo-bush to bush, from tree to tree, His head plumes like a bird, below, above, Fluttering and nodding ’mid the undergrowth; In his brown hand the pliant, polished bow, And at his back his gaudy quiver filled With tufted arrows headed blue with flint. And while the deep flamingo-colored west Flamed on his ruddy cheek, and airy fire Struck rosy ’thwart the stream, he, swift as thought, Strung his quick bow and through the gray wild goose, That rose with clamor from the rushy pool, Sent a fleet arrow; crested with the quills Which yesterday, perhaps, its mate’s gray wing Made beautiful; and plucked to decorate The painted shaft that should to-day speed home And redden all their white with kindred blood: It falling, gasping at his moccasined feet, Breathed out its wild life, while the lonely brave Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills Answered his exultation with a whoop. 1885. FALL FANCIES Far off a wind blew, and I heard Wild echoes of the woods reply-- The herald of some royal word, With bannered trumpet, blown on high, Meseemed, then passed me by: Who summoned marvels there to meet, In pomp, upon a cloth of gold; Where berries of the bitter-sweet, That, splitting, showed the coals they hold, Sowed garnets through the wold: Where, under tents of maples, seeds Of smooth carnelian, oval red, The spice-bush spangled: where, like beads, The dogwood’s rounded rubies--fed With fire--blazed and bled. And there I saw amid the rout Of months, in richness cavalier, A minnesinger--lips apout; A gypsy face; straight as a spear; A rose stuck in his ear: Eyes, sparkling like old German wine, All mirth and moonlight; naught to spare Of slender beard, that lent a line Unto his lip; October there, With chestnut curling hair. His blue baretta swept its plume White through the leaves; his purple hose, Puffed at the thighs, made gleam of gloom; His tawny doublet, slashed with rose, And laced with crimson bows, Outshone the wahoo’s scarlet pride, The haw, in rich vermilion dressed: A dagger dangling at his side, A slim lute, banded to his breast, Whereon his hands did rest, I saw him come.... And, lo, to hear The lilt of his approaching lute, No wonder that the regnant Year Bent down her beauty, blushing mute, Her heart beneath his foot. LATE OCTOBER Bulged from its cup the dark brown acorn falls, And by its gnarly saucer, in the stream’s Clear puddles, swells; the sweet-gum’s spike-crowned balls Beside them lie; and, opening all their seams, Beneath the chestnut-tree the hurry hulls Split, and, within, each nut like copper gleams. Burst silver white, nods,--an exploded husk Of snowy, woolly smoke,--the milk-weed’s puff Along the orchard’s fence; where in the dusk And ashen weeds,--as some grim Satyr’s rough Red, breezy cheeks burn through his beard,--the brusque Crab-apples glow, wind-tumbled from above. And under withered leaves the crickets’ clicks Seem some dim dirge sighed into memory’s ears; One bird sits in the sumach, flits and picks Its sour seeds. Thro’ all the wood one hears The dropping hickories. Round the hay’s railed ricks, Among the fields, gather the lowing steers. Some slim, bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked, Like birds, the flowers, herding from their homes To warmer woods and skies. Where once were rocked Unnumbered bees within unnumbered blooms, One feeble bee clings to one bloom, or, locked Within it, dreams of summer’s oozing combs. Winds shake the maples, and all suddenly A storm of leafy stars around you freaks,-- Some Dryad’s tattered raiment. To her knee Wading, the Naiad haunts her stream that streaks Through woodland waifs. Hark! Pan for Helike Flutes in the forest, while he seeks and seeks. A NOVEMBER WALK I _Morning_ The hoar frost crisps beneath the feet; And, sparkling in the morning’s strength, The fence, along its straggling length, Gleams as if wrought of virgin sleet. On broom-sedge fields and sassafras Neglectfully the dim wind lifts The dead leaves; and around me drifts The milkweed, shaken from the grass. Reluctantly and one by one The useless leaves drift slowly down; And, seen through woodland vistas, brown The nut-tree patters in the sun. Where pools the brook beneath its fall With scales of ice its edge is bound; And on the pebbles scattered round The ooze is frozen; each a ball, It seems, of crystal fallen there. And now the wind sweeps through the wood With sighings, and the solitude Seems shaken with a mighty care. Decay and melancholy drape The near-by hills in mysteries Of mist, through which the rocks and trees Loom, hazy, each a phantom shape. To sullenness the surly crow All his derisive being yields, And o’er the barren stubble-fields Flaps, cawless, wrapped in hungry woe. II _Evening_ As eve comes on the teasel stoops Its spike-crowned cone before the blast: The tattered leaves drive whirling past In frantic and fantastic troops. The matted elder-copses sigh; Their broad, blue combs, with berries weighed, Like heavy pendulums are swayed With every gust that wanders by. Through broken walls of tangled brier, That hedge the lane, the sumachs thrust Their scarlet torches, red as rust, Lit with the sunset’s stolid fire. The eve is here: Cold, hard, and drear The cloudless west with livid white Of flaming silver walls the night Far as one star’s thin rays appear. Wedged ’thwart the west’s white luridness The wild geese wing; from roseless domes The far “honk” of the leader comes Lonely and harsh and colorless. The west dies down; and in its cup, Shadow on shadow, pours the night; The east glows with a mystic light; The stars are keen; the moon comes up. THE WHITE EVENING On hills, beneath the steely skies, The wind-tossed forests rock and roar: Along the river’s ringing shore Homeward the skimming skater flies. On windy meads of icy brakes, Where, sheathed in sleet, the haw-tree stands, The moon looks down on glistening lands, Where with the cold each bramble shakes. Last night the sleet made white the world: All day the wind moaned in the pines: Now like a wolf, that whines and whines, Like some wild wolf its hate is hurled Against the hut upon the wold, And the one willow by the stream: Where, huddled, in the moon’s chill gleam, The houseless hare leaps through the cold. The moon sinks low, the thin new-moon, And with it, like a bit of spar, Sinks down the large white evening-star, Beneath which earth seems crystal-hewn. Slim o’er the tree-tops, weighed with white, The country church’s spire doth swell, A scintillating icicle; While fitfully the village light Stabs, stains with sallow stars the dark: Homeward the creaking wagons strain: The smithy glares: the tavern’s vane Points northward in its ghostly sark. And from the north, with stinging lash, Driving his herds of snow and sleet, Upon his steed of wind, whose feet Hurl through the iron woods and crash Along the hills, with blow on blow, The tempest sweeps; before his shout The moon and stars are blotted out, And fold on fold rolls down the snow. DREAMS My thoughts have borne me far away To beauties of an older day, Where, crowned with roses, stands the Dawn, Striking her seven-stringed barbiton Of flame, whose chords give being to The seven colors, hue for hue; The music of the color-dream She builds the day from, beam by beam. My thoughts have borne me far away To myths of a diviner day, Where, sitting on the mountain, Noon Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune Of rest and shade and clouds and skies, Wherein her calm dreams idealize Light as a presence, heavenly fair, Sleeping with all her beauty bare. My thoughts have borne me far away To visions of a wiser day, Where, stealing through the wilderness, Night walks, a sad-eyed votaress, And prays with mystic words she hears Behind the thunder of the spheres, The starry utterance that is hers With which she fills the universe. THE BROOK To it the forest tells The mystery that haunts its heart and folds Its form in cogitation deep, that holds The shadow of each myth that dwells In nature--be it Nymph or Fay or Faun-- And whispering of them to the dales and dells, It wanders on and on. To it the heaven shows The secret of its soul; true images Of dreams that form its aspect; and with these Reflected in its countenance it goes, With pictures of the skies, the dusk and dawn, Within its breast, as every blossom knows, For them to gaze upon. Through it the world-soul sends Its heart’s creating pulse that beats and sings The music of maternity whence springs All life; and shaping earthly ends,-- From the deep sources of the heavens drawn,-- Planting its ways with beauty, on it wends, On and for ever on. THE OLD SWING Under the boughs of spring She swung in the old rope-swing. Her cheeks, with their happy blood, Glowed pink as the apple-bud. Her eyes, with their deep delight, Shone glad as the stars of night. Her curls, with their romp and fun, Tossed hoiden to wind and sun. Her lips, with their laughter shrill, Rippled like some wild rill. Under the boughs of spring She swung in the old rope-swing. And I,--who leaned on the fence, Watching her innocence, As, under the boughs that bent, Now high, now low, she went, In her soul the ecstasies Of the stars, the brooks, the breeze,-- Had given the rest of my years, With their, blessings, and hopes, and fears, To have been as she was then; And, just for a moment, again A boy in the old rope-swing Under the boughs of spring. TO AUTUMN I feel thee as one feels a flower’s, A dead flower’s fragrance in a room,-- A dim, gray grief that haunts the hours With sad perfume. Thou charm’st me as a ghostly lily Might charm a garden’s withered space, With the pale pathos and the chilly Hush of thy face. I hearken in thy fogs; I hearken When, like the phantom of dead Night, With immaterial limbs they darken The day with white. With wrecks of rain and mad winds, heaping Red ruins of riven rose and leaf, Make sad my heart, O Autumn! sweeping The world with grief. WINTER DREAMS How does it come that now I go Down ways made blue with bluets’ eyes? Along the creek-road as the crow With mocking laughter flies? A wild bird beats a crippled wing To lure me from its brush-built nest; Then, like a brook, I hear it sing Its wildwood happiest. Beyond the orchard hills are dells Of knee-deep huckleberries, white With little bell-blooms, May-time swells With sweetness and delight. The faun wakes in me, wild and keen, And, with the joy the rathe months hold, Kicks happy heels in deeps of green And rolls in deeper gold. My Shakespeare falls: I wake: and frost And ice seam every flower-bed: Where once each stalk, an Edgar, tossed, Poor Tom now shakes instead. Where once th’ gladiole, gleaming, shook A wand of folly at the sun, The humped stock hath a withered look-- The poor, pale Fool is done. A great, gray beard the rose-bush hath,-- An old king’s,--where hangs many a tear, Near the dead lily by the path-- Cordelia and Lear. TANSY AND SWEET-ALYSSUM A FLOWER OF THE FIELDS Bee-bitten in the orchard hung The peach; or, fallen in the weeds, Lay rotting, where still sucked and sung The gray bee, boring to the seed’s Pink pulp and honey blackly stung. The orchard-path, which wound around The garden,--with its heat one twinge Of dinning locusts,--picket-bound And ragged, brought me where one hinge Held up the gate that scraped the ground. All seemed the same: the martin-box-- Sun-warped, with pygmy balconies-- Still stood, with all its twittering flocks, Perched on its pole above the peas And silvery-seeded onion-stocks. The clove-pink and the rose; the clump Of coppery sunflowers, with the heat Sick to the heart: the garden stump, Red with geranium-pots, and sweet With moss and ferns, this side the pump. I rested with one hesitant hand Upon the gate. The lonesome day, Droning with insects, made the land One dry stagnation. Soaked with hay And scents of weeds the hot wind fanned. I breathed the sultry scents, my eyes Parched as my lips. And yet I felt My limbs were ice.--As one who flies To some wild woe.--How sleepy smelt The hay-hot heat that soaked the skies! Noon nodded; dreamier, lonesomer For one long, plaintive, forest-side Bird-quaver.--And I knew me near Some heartbreak anguish.... She had died. I felt it, and no need to hear. I passed the quince-and pear-tree; where, All up the porch, a grape-vine trails.-- How strange that fruit, whatever air Or earth it grows in, never fails To find its native flavor there! And she was as a flower, too, That grows its proper bloom and scent No matter what the soil: she, who, Born better than her place, still lent Grace to the lowliness she knew.... They met me at the porch and were Gaunt-eyed with weeping.--Then the room Shut out the country’s heat and purr, And left light stricken into gloom-- So love and I might look on her. ON STONY-RUN O cheerly, cheerly by the road, And merrily down the hillet, And where the bottom-lands are sowed With bristle-bearded millet; Then o’er a pebbled path it goes Through woodland dale and dingle, Unto a farmstead’s windowed rose, And roof of moss and shingle. Then darkly, darkly through the brush, And dimly round the boulder, Where cane and water-weeds grow lush, Its current clear flows colder. Then by the cedared way that leads, Through burr and bramble-thickets, Unto a burial-ground of weeds Fenced in with broken pickets. Then slowly, slowly down the vale, And wearily through the rushes, Where sunlight of the noon is pale, Its shadowy water hushes. For oft her young face smiled upon Its deeps here, willow-shaded; And oft with bare feet in the sun Its shallows there she waded. No more beneath the twinkling leaves Shall stand the farmer’s daughter!-- softly past the cottage eaves, O memory-haunted water! No more shall bend her laughing face Above it where the rose is!-- Sigh softly past the burial-place Where all her youth reposes. HOME Among the fields the camomile Seems blown mist in the lightning’s glare: Cool, rainy odors drench the air; Night speaks above; the angry smile Of storm within her stare. The way that I shall take to-night Is through the wood whose branches fill The road with double darkness, till, Between the boughs, a window’s light Shines out upon the hill. The fence; and then the path that goes Around a trailer-tangled rock, Through puckered pink and hollyhock, Unto a latch-gate’s unkempt rose, And door whereat I knock. Bright on the old-time flower-place The lamp streams through the foggy pane The door is opened to the rain: And in the door--her happy face And outstretched hands again. DUSK IN THE WOODS Three miles of trees it is: and I Came through the woods that waited, dumb, For the cool summer dusk to come; And lingered there to watch the sky Up which the gradual sunset clomb. A tree-toad quavered in a tree; And then a sudden whippoorwill Called overhead, so wildly shrill The sleeping wood, it seemed to me, Cried out and then again was still. Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight An owl took; and, at drowsy strife, The cricket tuned its fairy fife; And like a ghostflower, silent white, The wood-moth glimmered into life. And in the punk-wood everywhere The insects ticked, or bored below The rotted bark; and, glow on glow, The lambent fireflies here and there Lit up their jack-o’-lantern show. I heard a vesper-sparrow sing, Withdrawn, it seemed, into the far Slow sunset’s tranquil cinnabar; The crimson, softly smouldering Behind gaunt trunks, with its one star. A dog barked: and down ways that gleamed, Through dew and clover, faint the noise Of cow-bells moved. And then a voice, That sang a-milking, so it seemed, Made glad my heart as some glad boy’s. And then the lane: and, full in view, A farm-house with a rose-grown gate, And honeysuckle paths, await For night, the moon, and love and you-- These are the things that made me late. COMRADES Down through the woods, along the way That fords the stream; by rock and tree, Where in the bramble-bell the bee Swings; and through twilights green and gray The red-bird flashes suddenly, My thoughts went wandering to-day. I found the fields where, row on row, The blackberries hang black their fruit; Where, nesting at the elder’s root, The partridge whistles soft and low; The fields, that billow to the foot Of those old hills we used to know. There lay the pond, still willow-bound, On whose bright surface, when the hot Noon burnt above, we chased the knot Of water-striders; while around Our heads, like bits of rainbow, shot The dragon-flies without a sound. The pond, above which evening bent To gaze upon her gypsy face; Wherein the twinkling night would trace A vague, inverted firmament; In which the green frogs tuned their bass, And firefly sparkles came and went. The old-time woods we often ranged, When we were playmates, you and I; The old-time fields, with boyhood’s sky Still blue above them!--Naught was changed! Nothing!--Alas! then tell me why Should we be? whom the years estranged. THE ROCK Here, at its base, in dingled deeps Of spice-bush, where the ivy creeps, The cold spring scoops its hollow; And there, three mossy stepping-stones Make ripple murmurs; undertones Of foam, whose low falls follow A voice far in the wood that drones. The quail pipes here when noons are hot; And here, in coolness sunlight-shot, Beneath a roof of briers, The red fox skulks at close of day; And here, at night, the shadows gray Stand like Franciscan friars, With moonbeam beads whereon they pray. Here yawns the woodchuck’s dark-dug hole; And there the tunnel of the mole Heaves under weed and flower; A sandy pit-fall here and there The ant-lion digs and lies a-lair And here, for sun and shower, The spider weaves a silvery snare. The poison-oak’s rank tendrils twine The rock’s south side; the trumpet-vine, With crimson bugles sprinkled, Makes green its eastern side; the west Is rough with lichens; and, gray-pressed Into an angle wrinkled, The hornets hang an oblong nest. The north is hid from sun and star, And here,--like an Inquisitor Of Faëry Inquisition, Who roots out Elfland heresy,-- Deep in the rock, cowled shadowy And grave as his commission, The owl sits magisterially. STANDING-STONE CREEK A weed-grown slope, whereon the rain Has washed the brown rocks bare, Leads tangled from a lonely lane Down to a creek’s broad stair Of stone, that, through the solitude, Winds onward to a quiet wood. An intermittent roof of shade The beech above it throws; Along its steps a balustrade Of beauty builds the rose; In which, a stately lamp of green, At intervals, the cedar’s seen. The water, carpeting each ledge Of rock that runs across, Glints ’twixt a flow’r-embroidered edge Of ferns and grass and moss; And in its deeps the wood and sky Seem patterns of the softest dye. Long corridors of pleasant dusk Within the house of leaves It reaches; where, on looms of musk, The ceaseless locust weaves A web of summer; and perfume Trails a sweet gown from room to room. Green windows of the boughs, that swing, It passes, where the notes Of birds are glad thoughts entering, And butterflies are motes; And now a vista where the day Opens a door of wind and ray. It is a stairway for all sounds That haunt the woodland sides; On which, boy-like, the Southwind bounds, Girl-like, the sunbeam glides; And, like fond parents, following these, The old-time dreams of rest and peace. “CLOUDS OF THE AUTUMN NIGHT” Clouds of the autumn night, Under the hunter’s-moon,-- Ghostly and windy white,-- Whither, like leaves wild strewn, Take ye your stormy flight? Out of the west, where dusk, From her red window-sill, Leaned with a wand of tusk, Witch-like, and wood and hill Phantomed with mist and musk Into the east, where morn Sleeps in a shadowy close, Shut with a gate of horn, Round which the dreams she knows Flutter with rose and thorn. Blow from the west! oh, blow, Clouds that the tempest steers! And with your rain and snow Bear of my heart the tears, And of my soul the woe. Into the east then pass, Clouds that the night-winds sweep! And on her grave’s sere grass, There where she lies asleep, There let them fall, alas! [Illustration: Ghostly and windy white Page 168 _Clouds of the Autumn Night_] THEN AND NOW When my old heart was young, my dear, The earth and heaven were so near That in my dreams I oft could hear The steps of airy races; In woodlands, where bright waters ran, On hills, God’s rainbows used to span, I followed voices not of man, And smiled in spirit faces. Now my old heart is old, my sweet, No longer earth and heaven meet; All life is grown to one dull street Where fact with fancy clashes; The voices now that speak to me Are prose instead of poetry; And in the faces now I see Is less of flame than ashes. BY THE TRYSTING-BEECH Deep in the west a berry-colored bar Of sunset gleams; against which one tall fir Stands outlined dark; above which--courier Of dew and dreams--burns dusk’s appointed star. And flash on flash, as when the elves wage war In Goblinland, the fireflies bombard The silence; and, like spirits, o’er the sward The twilight winds bring fragrance from afar. And now, withdrawn into the hill-wood belts, A whippoorwill; while, with attendant states Of pearl and silver, slow the great moon melts Into the night--to show me where _she_ waits,-- Like some slim moonbeam,--by the old beech-tree, Who keeps her lips, fresh as a flower, for me. AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN There is a place hung o’er of summer boughs And dreamy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps; Where waters flow, within whose lazy deeps, Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drowse, The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows Tinkle the stillness; and the bob-white keeps Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps, And children’s laughter haunts an old-time house: A place where life wears ever an honest smell Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom-- Like some sweet, modest girl--within her hair; Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell Far from the city’s strife, whose cares consume-- Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there. THE HAUNTED WOODLAND Here in the golden darkness And green night of the woods, A flitting form I follow, A shadow that eludes-- Or is it but the phantom Of former forest moods? The phantom of some fancy I knew when I was young, And in my dreaming boyhood, The wildwood flow’rs among, Young face to face with Faëry Spoke in no unknown tongue. Blue were her eyes, and golden The nimbus of her hair; And scarlet as a flower Her mouth that kissed me there; That kissed and bade me follow, And smiled away my care. A magic and a marvel Lived in her word and look, As down among the blossoms She sate me by the brook, And read me wonder-legends In Nature’s Story Book. Loved fairy-tales forgotten, She never reads again, Of beautiful enchantments That haunt the sun and rain, And, in the wind and water, Chant a mysterious strain. And so I search the forest, Wherein my spirit feels, In stream, or tree, or flower Herself she still conceals-- But now she flies who followed, Whom Earth no more reveals. COMRADERY With eyes hand-arched he looks into The morning’s face, then turns away With school-boy feet, all wet with dew, Out for a holiday. The hill brook sings; incessant stars, Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast; And where he wades its water-bars Its song is happiest. A comrade of the chinquapin, He looks into its knotty eyes And sees its heart; and, deep within, Its soul that makes him wise. The wood-thrush knows and follows him, Who whistles up the birds and bees; And round him all the perfumes swim Of woodland loam and trees. Where’er he pass the supple springs’ Foam-people sing the flowers awake; And sappy lips of bark-clad things Laugh ripe each fruited brake. His touch is a companionship; His word, an old authority: He comes, a lyric on his lip, Unstudied Poesy. OCCULT Unto the soul’s companionship Of things that only seem to be, Earth points with magic finger-tip And bids thee see How Fancy keeps thee company. For oft at dawn hast not beheld A spirit of prismatic hue Blow wide the buds, which night hath swelled? And stain them through With heav’n’s ethereal gold and blue? While at her side another went With gleams of enigmatic white? A spirit who distributes scent, To vale and height, In footsteps of the rosy light? And oft at dusk hast thou not seen The star-fays bring their caravans Of dew, and glitter all the green, Night’s shadow tans, With drops the rain-hung cobweb spans? Nor watched with these the elfins go Who tune faint instruments--that sound Like that moon-music insects blow?-- Then haunted ground Thou hast not trodden, never found! WOOD-WORDS I The spirits of the forest, That to the winds give voice-- I lie the livelong April day And wonder what it is they say That makes the leaves rejoice. The spirits of the forest, That breathe in bud and bloom-- I walk within the haw-tree brake And wonder how it is they make The bubbles of perfume. The spirits of the forest, That dwell in every spring-- I lean above the brook’s bright blue And wonder what it is they do That makes the water sing. The spirits of the forest, That haunt the sun’s green glow-- Down fungus ways of fern I steal And would surprise what they conceal, In dew, that twinkles so. O spirits of the forest, Here are my heart and hand!-- Oh, send a gleam or glow-worm ray To guide my soul the firefly way That leads to Fairyland. II The time when dog-tooth violets Hold up inverted horns of gold,-- The elvish cups that Spring upsets With dripping feet, when April wets The sun-and-shadow-marbled wold,-- Is come. And by each leafing way The sorrel drops pale blots of pink; And, like an angled star a fay Sets on her forehead’s pallid day, The blossoms of the trillium wink. Within the vale, by rock and stream,-- A fragile, fairy porcelain,-- Blue as a baby’s eyes a-dream, The bluets blow; and gleam in gleam The sun-shot dogwoods flash with rain. It is the time to cast off care; To make glad intimates of these:-- The frank-faced sunbeam laughing there: The great-heart wind, that bids us share The optimism of the trees. III The white ghosts of the flowers, The gray ghosts of the trees, Rise when the April showers, And haunt the wildwood bowers, And trail along the breeze: The white ghosts of the flowers, The gray ghosts of the trees. Oft in the woodless places I feel their dim control; The wildflowers’ perished faces, The great trees’ vanished races, That meet me soul to soul: Oft in the woodless places I feel their dim control. IV Crab-apple buds, whose bells The mouth of April kissed; That hang,--like rosy shells Around a Naiad’s wrist,-- Pink as dawn-tinted mist. And paw-paw buds, whose dark Deep auburn blossoms shake On boughs,--as ’neath the bark A dryad’s eyes awake,-- Brown as a midnight lake. These, with symbolic blooms Of wind-flower and wild-phlox, I found among the glooms Of hill-lost woods and rocks, Lairs of the hare and fox. The beetle in the brush, The bird about the creek, The bee within the hush, And I, whose love was meek, Stood still to hear these speak The language that records, In flower-syllables, The hieroglyphic words Of beauty, who enspells The world and aye compels. THE WIND AT NIGHT I Not till the wildman wind is shrill, Howling upon the hill In every wolfish tree, whose boisterous boughs, Like desperate arms, gesture and beat the night, And down huge clouds, in chasms of stormy white, The frightened moon hurries above the house, Shall I lie down; and, deep,-- Letting the mad wind keep Its shouting revel round me,--fall asleep. II Not till its dark halloo is hushed, And where wild waters rushed,-- Like some hoof’d terror underneath its whip And spur of foam,--remains A ghostly glass, hill-framed; whereover stains Of moony mists and rains, And stealthy starbeams, still as spectres, slip; Shall I--with thoughts that take Unto themselves the ache Of silence as a sound--from sleep awake. AIRY TONGUES I There is a song the wet leaves lisp When Morn comes down the woodland way; And misty as a thistle-wisp Her gown gleams, windy gray: A song that seems to say, “Awake! ’tis day!” There is a sigh when Day sits down Beside the sunlight-lulled lagoon; While on her glistening hair and gown The rose of rest is strew: A sigh, that seems to croon, “Come rest! ’tis noon!” There is a whisper when the stars, Above an evening-purpled height, Crown the dead Day with nenuphars Of fire, gold and white: A voice, that seems t’ invite, “Come love! ’tis night!” II Before the rathe song-sparrow sings Among the haw-trees in the lane, And to the wind the locust flings Its early clusters fresh with rain; Beyond the morning-star, that swings Its rose of fire above the spire, Between the morning’s watchet wings, A wild voice rings o’er brooks and boughs-- “Arouse! arouse!” Before the first brown owlet cries Among the grape-vines on the hill, And in the dam with half-shut eyes The lilies rock above the mill; Beyond the oblong moon, that flies, A pearly flower, above the tower, Between the twilight’s primrose skies, A soft voice sighs, from east to west-- “To rest! to rest!” RAIN AND WIND I hear the hoofs of horses Galloping over the hill, Galloping on and galloping on, When all the night is shrill With wind and rain that beats the pane-- And my soul with awe is still. For every dripping window Their headlong rush makes bound, Galloping up, and galloping by, Then back again and around, Till the gusty roofs ring with their hoofs, And the draughty cellars sound. And then I hear black horsemen Hallooing in the night; Hallooing and hallooing, They ride o’er vale and height, And the branches snap and the shutters clap With the fury of their flight. Then at each door a horseman,-- With burly bearded lip Hallooing through the keyhole,-- Pauses with cloak a-drip; And the door-knob shakes and the panel quakes ’Neath the anger of his whip. All night I hear their gallop, And their wild halloo’s alarm; The tree-tops sound and the vanes go round In forest and on farm; But never a hair of a thing is there-- Only the wind and storm. UNDER ARCTURUS I “I belt the morn with ribboned mist; With baldricked blue I gird the noon, And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed, White-buckled with the hunter’s-moon. “These follow me,” the Season says: “Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways, With gipsy gold that weighs their backs.” II A daybreak horn the Autumn blows, As with a sun-tanned hand he parts Wet boughs whereon the berry glows; And at his feet the red fox starts. The leafy leash that holds his hounds Is loosed; and all the noonday hush Is startled; and the hillside sounds Behind the fox’s bounding brush. When red dusk makes the western sky A fire-lit window through the firs, He stoops to see the red fox die Among the chestnut’s broken burrs. Then fanfaree and fanfaree, His bugle sounds; the world below Grows hushed to hear; and two or three Soft stars dream through the afterglow. III Like some black host the shadows fall, And blackness camps among the trees; Each wildwood road, a Goblin Hall, Grows populous with mysteries. Night comes with brows of ragged storm, And limbs of writhen cloud and mist; The rain-wind hangs upon his arm Like some wild girl who cries unkissed. By his gaunt hands the leaves are shed In headlong troops and nightmare herds; And, like a witch who calls the dead, The hill-stream whirls with foaming words. Then all is sudden silence and Dark fear--like his who can not see, Yet hears, lost in a haunted land, Death rattling on a gallow’s-tree. IV The days approach again; the days Whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag When in the haze by puddled ways The gnarled thorn seems a crookéd hag. When rotting orchards reek with rain; And woodlands crumble, leaf and log; And in the drizzling yard again The gourd is tagged with points of fog. Now let me seat my soul among The woods’ dim dreams, and come in touch With melancholy, sad of tongue And sweet, who says so much, so much. BARE BOUGHS O heart,--that beat the bird’s blithe blood, The blithe bird’s strain, and understood The song it sang to leaf and bud,-- What dost thou in the wood? O soul,--that kept the brook’s glad flow, The glad brook’s word to sun and moon,-- What dost thou here where song lies low, Dead as the dreams of June? Where once was heard a voice of song, The hautboys of the mad winds sing; Where once a music flowed along, The rain’s wild bugles ring. The weedy water frets and ails, And moans in many a sunless fall; And, o’er the melancholy, trails The black crow’s eldritch call. Unhappy brook! O withered wood! O days, whom death makes comrades of! Where are the birds that thrilled the blood When Life struck hands with Love? A song, one soared against the blue; A song, one bubbled in the leaves: A song, one threw where orchards grew Red-appled to the eaves. The birds are flown; the flowers are dead; And sky and earth are bleak and gray; The wild winds hang i’ the boughs instead, And wild leaves strew the way. A THRENODY I The rainy smell of a ferny dell, Whose shadow no sun-ray flaws, When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds Telling her beads Of haws. II The phantom mist, that is moonbeam-kissed, On hills where the trees are thinned, When Autumn leans at the oak-root’s scarp, Touching a harp Of wind. III The cricket’s chirr ’neath brier and burr, By leaf-strewn pools and streams, When Autumn stands ’mid the dropping nuts, With the book, she shuts, Of dreams. IV The gray “Alas” of the days that pass, And the hope that says “Adieu,” A parting sorrow, a shriveled flower, And one ghost’s hour With you. SNOW The moon, like a round device On a shadowy shield of war, Hangs white in a heaven of ice With a solitary star. The wind is sunk to a sigh, And the waters are steeled with frost; And gray in the eastern sky The last snow-cloud is lost. White fields, that are winter-starved; Black woods, that are winter-fraught; And Earth like a face death-carved With the iron of some black thought. AN OLD SONG I It’s, Oh, for the hills, where the wind’s some one With a vagabond foot that follows! And a cheer-up hand that he claps upon Your arm with the hearty words, “Come on! We’ll soon be out of the hollows, My heart! We’ll soon be out of the hollows!” II It’s, Oh, for the songs, where the hope’s some one With a renegade foot that doubles! And a kindly look that he turns upon Your face with the friendly laugh, “Come on! We’ll soon be out of the troubles, My heart! We’ll soon be out of the troubles!” BABY MARY Deep in baby Mary’s eyes, Baby Mary’s sweet blue eyes, Dwell the golden memories Of the music once her ears Heard in far-off Paradise: So she has no time for tears,-- Baby Mary,-- Listening to the songs she hears. Soft in baby Mary’s face, Baby Mary’s lovely face, If you watch, you, too, may trace Dreams her spirit-self hath seen In some far-off Eden-place, Whence her soul she can not wean,-- Baby Mary,-- Dreaming in a world between. A SUNSET FANCY Wide in the west a lake Of flame that seems to shake As if the Midgard snake Deep down did breathe: An isle of purple glow, Where rosy rivers flow Down peaks of cloudy snow With fire beneath. And there the Tower-of-Night, With windows all a-light, Frowns on a burning height, Wherein she sleeps,-- Young through the years of doom,-- Veiled with her hair’s gold gloom, She, the Valkyrie, whom Enchantment keeps. THE FEN-FIRE The misty rain makes dim my face, The night’s black cloak is o’er me; I tread the dripping cypress-place, A flickering light before me. Out of the death of leaves that rot And ooze and weedy water, My form was breathed to haunt this spot, Death’s immaterial daughter. The owl that whoops upon the yew, The snake that lairs within it, Have seen my wild face flashing blue For one fantastic minute. But should you follow where my eyes Like some pale lamp decoy you, Beware! lest suddenly I rise With love that shall destroy you. THE WOOD Witch-hazel, dogwood, and the maple here; And there the oak and hickory; Linn, poplar, and the beech-tree, far and near As the eased eye can see. Wild-ginger; wahoo, with its flat balloons; And brakes of briers of a twilight green; And fox-grapes plumed with summer; and strung moons Of mandrake flowers between. Deep gold-green ferns, and mosses green and gray,-- Mats for what naked myth’s white feet?-- And, cool and calm, a cascade far away With ever-even beat. Old logs, made sweet with death; rough bits of bark; And tangled twig and knotted root; And sunshine splashes and great pools of dark; And many a wild-bird’s flute. Here let me sit until the Indian, Dusk, With copper-colored face, comes down; Sowing the wildwood with star-fire and musk, And shadows blue and brown. Then side by side with some magician Dream, I’ll take the owlet-haunted lane,-- Half-roofed with vines,--led by a firefly gleam, That brings me home again. WOOD NOTES I There is a flute that follows me From tree to tree: A water flute a spirit sets To silver lips in waterfalls, And through the breath of violets A sparkling music calls:-- “Hither! halloo! Oh, follow! Down leafy hill and hollow, Where, through clear swirls, With feet like pearls, Wade down the blue-eyed country girls. Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!” II There is a pipe that plays to me From tree to tree: A bramble pipe an elfin holds To golden lips in berry brakes, And, swinging o’er the elder wolds, A flickering music makes:-- “Come over! Come over The new-mown clover! Come over the fresh-cut hay! Where, there by the berries, With cheeks like cherries, And locks with which the warm wind merries, Brown girls are hilling the hay, All day! Come over the fields and away!-- Come over! Come over!” HILLS OF THE WEST Hills of the west, that gird Forest and farm, Home of the nesting bird, Housing from harm, When, on your tops, is heard Storm. Hills of the west, that bar Belts of the gloam, Under the twilight’s star, Where the mists roam, Take ye the wanderer Home. Hills of the west, that dream Under the moon, Making of wind and stream, Late heard and soon, Parts of your lives that seem Tune. Hills of the west, that take Silence to ye, Be it for sorrow’s sake Or memory, Part of such silence make Me. THE WIND OF SPRING The wind that breathes of columbines And celandines that crowd the rocks; That shakes the balsam of the pines With music from his airy locks, Stops at my city door and knocks. He calls me far a-forest, where The twin-leaf and the blood-root bloom; And, circled by the amber air, Life sits with beauty and perfume Weaving the new web of her loom. He calls me where the waters run Through fronding fern where wades the hern; And, sparkling in the equal sun, Song leans beside her brimming urn, And dreams the dreams that love shall learn. The wind has summoned, and I go: To con God’s meaning in each line The wildflow’rs write; and, walking slow, God’s purpose, of which song is sign,-- The wind’s great, gusty hand in mine. THE WILLOW BOTTOM Lush green the grass that grows between The willows of the bottom-land; Edged by the careless water, tall and green The brown-topped cat-tails stand. The cows come gently here to browse, Slow through the great-leafed sycamores: You hear a dog bark from a low-roofed house With cedars round its doors. Then all is quiet as the wings Of the one buzzard floating there: Anon a woman’s high-pitched voice that sings An old camp-meeting air. A cock that flaps and crows; and then-- Heard drowsy through the rustling corn-- A flutter, and the cackling of a hen Within a hay-sweet barn. How still again! no water stirs: No wind is heard: although the weeds Are waved a little: and from silk-filled burrs Drift by a few soft seeds. So drugged with dreams the place, that you Expect to see her gliding by,-- Hummed round of bees, through blossoms spilling dew,-- The Spirit of July. THE RED-BIRD Red clouds and reddest flowers, And now two redder wings Swim through the rosy hours; Red wings among the flowers; And now the red-bird sings. God makes the red clouds ripples Of flame that seem to split In rubies and in dripples Of rose where rills and ripples The singing flame that lit. Red clouds of sundered splendor; God whispered one small word, Rich, sweet, and wild and tender-- Straight, in the vibrant splendor, The word became a bird. He flies beneath the garnet Of clouds that flame and float,-- When summer hears the hornet Hum round the plum, turned garnet,-- Heaven’s music in his throat. CLEARING Before the wind, with rain-drowned stocks, The pleated, crimson hollyhocks Are bending; And, smouldering in the breaking brown, Above the hills that rim the town, The day is ending. The air is heavy with the damp; And, one by one, each cottage lamp Is lighted; Infrequent passers of the street Stroll on or stop to talk or greet, Benighted. I look beyond my city yard, And watch the white moon struggling hard, Cloud-buried; The wind is driving toward the east, A wreck of pearl, all cracked and creased And serried. At times the moon, erupting, streaks Some long cloud, raised in mountain peaks Of shadow,-- That, seamed with silver, vein on vein, Grows to a far volcano chain Of Eldorado. The wind, that blows from out the hills, Is like a woman’s touch that stills A sorrow: The moon sits high with many a star In the deep calm: and fair and far Abides to-morrow. AUTUMN SORROW Ah me! too soon the Autumn comes Among these purple-plaintive hills! Too soon among the forest gums Premonitory flame she spills, Bleak, melancholy flame that kills. Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims With wet the moon-flow’r’s elfin moons; And, like exhausted starlight, dims The last slim lily-disk; and swoons With scents of hazy afternoons. Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies, And build the west’s cadaverous fire, Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes, And hands that wake her ancient lyre, Beside the ghost of dead Desire. A DARK DAY OF SUMMER Though Summer walks the world to-day With corn-crowned hours for her guard, Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray, And wait in Autumn’s weedy yard. And where the larkspur and the phlox Spread carpets for her feet to pass, She stands with sombre, dripping locks Bound bleak with fog-washed zinnias. Sad terra-cotta-colored flowers, Whose disks the trickling wet has tinged With dingy lustre, like the bowers, Flame-flecked with leaves, the frost has singed. She, with slow feet,--’mid gaunt gold blooms Of marigolds her fingers twist,-- Passes, dim-swathed in Fall’s perfumes And dreams of sullen rain and mist. DAYS AND DAYS The days that clothed white limbs with heat, And rocked the red rose on their breast, Have passed with amber-sandaled feet, Into the ruby-gated west. These were the days that filled the heart With overflowing riches of Life; in whose soul no dream shall start But hath its origin in love. Now come the days gray-huddled in The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip; Who pin beneath a gypsy chin The frosty marigold and hip.-- The days, whose forms fall shadowy Athwart the heart; whose misty breath Shapes saddest sweets of memory Out of the bitterness of death. DROUTH IN AUTUMN Gnarled acorn-oaks against a west Of copper, cavernous with fire; A wind of frost that gives no rest To such lean leaves as haunt the brier, And hide the cricket’s vibrant wire. Sere, shivering shocks, and stubble blurred With bramble-blots of dull maroon; And creekless hills whereon no herd Finds pasture, and whereo’er the loon Flies, haggard as the rainless moon. IN SUMMER When in dry hollows, hilled with hay, The vesper-sparrow sings afar; And golden gray dusk dies away Beneath the amber evening-star: There, where a warm and shadowy arm The woodland lays around the farm, I’ll meet you at the tryst, the tryst! And kiss your lips no man hath kissed! I’ll meet you at the twilight tryst,-- With a hey and a ho!-- Sweetheart! I’ll kiss you at the tryst! When clover fields smell cool with dew, And crickets cry, and roads are still; And faint and few the fireflies strew The dark where calls the whippoorwill; There, in the lane, where sweet again The petals of the wild-rose rain, I’ll take in mine your hand, your hand! And say the words you’ll understand! Your soft hand nestling in my hand,-- With a hey and a ho!-- Sweetheart! All loving hand in hand! IN WINTER I When black frosts pluck the acorns down, And in the lane the waters freeze; And ’thwart red skies the wild-fowl flies, And death sits grimly in the trees; When home-lights glitter through the brown Of dusk like shaggy eyes,-- Before the door his feet, sweetheart, And two white arms that greet, sweetheart, And two white arms that greet. II When ways are drifted with the leaves, And winds make music in the thorns; And lone and lost above the frost The new-moon shows its silver horns; When underneath the lamplit eaves The opened door is crossed,-- A happy heart and light, sweetheart, And lips that kiss good night, sweetheart, And lips that kiss good night. ON THE FARM I He sang a song as he sowed the field, Sowed the field at break of day: “When the pursed-up leaves are as lips that yield Balm and balsam, and Spring,--concealed In the odorous green,--is so revealed, Halloo and oh! Hallo for the woods and the far away!” II He trilled a song as he mowed the mead, Mowed the mead as noon begun: “When the hills are gold with the ripened seed, As the sunset stairs of the clouds that lead To the sky where Summer knows naught of need, Halloo and oh! Hallo for the hills and the harvest sun!” III He hummed a song as he swung the flail, Swung the flail in the afternoon: “When the idle fields are a wrecker’s tale, That the Autumn tells to the twilight pale, As the Year turns seaward a crimson sail, Halloo and oh! Hallo for the fields and the hunter’s-moon!” IV He whistled a song as he shouldered his axe, Shouldered his axe in the evening storm: “When the snow of the road shows the rabbit’s tracks, And the wind is a whip that the Winter cracks, With a herdsman’s cry, o’er the clouds black backs, Halloo and oh! Hallo for home and a fire to warm!” PATHS I What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- The path that takes me, in the spring, Past quince-trees where the bluebirds sing, Where peonies are blossoming, Unto a porch, wistaria-hung, Around whose steps May-lilies blow, A fair girl reaches down among, Her arm more white than their sweet snow. II What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- Another path that leads me, when The summer-time is here again, Past hollyhocks that shame the west When the red sun has sunk to rest; To roses bowering a nest, A lattice, ’neath which mignonette And deep geraniums surge and sough, Where, in the twilight, starless yet, A fair girl’s eyes are stars enough. III What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- A path that takes me, when the days Of autumn wrap the hills in haze, Beneath the pippin-pelting tree, ’Mid flitting butterfly and bee; Unto a door where, fiery, The creeper climbs; and, garnet-hued, The cock’s-comb and the dahlia flare, And in the door, where shades intrude, Gleams bright a fair girl’s sunbeam hair. IV What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- A path that brings me through the frost Of winter, when the moon is tossed In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak The tattered ice, whereunder is A fire-flickering window-space; And in the light, with lips to kiss, A fair girl’s welcome-giving face. A SONG IN SEASON I When in the wind the vane turns round, And round, and round; And in his kennel whines the hound: When all the gable eaves are bound With icicles of ragged gray, A tattered gray; There is little to do, and much to say, And you hug your fire and pass the day With a thought of the springtime, dearie. II When late at night the owlet hoots, And hoots, and hoots; And wild winds make of keyholes flutes: When to the door the goodman’s boots Stamp through the snow the light strains red, The firelight’s red; There is nothing to do, and all is said, And you quaff your cider and go to bed And dream of the summer, dearie. III When, nearing dawn, the black cock crows, And crows, and crows; And from the barn the milch-cow lows: And the milkmaid’s cheeks have each a rose, And the still skies show a star or two, Or one or two; There is little to say, and much to do, And the heartier done the happier you, With a song of the winter, dearie. BEFORE THE END How does the Autumn in her mind conclude The tragic masque her frosty pencil writes, Broad on the pages of the days and nights, In burning lines of orchard, wold, and wood? What lonelier forms--that at the year’s door stood At spectral wait--with wildly wasted lights Shall enter? and with melancholy rites Inaugurate their sadder sisterhood?-- Sorrow, who lifts a signal hand, and slow The green leaf fevers, falling ere it dies; Regret, whose pale lips summon: and gaunt Woe Wakes the wild wind-harps with sonorous sighs; And Sleep, who sits with poppied eyes and sees The earth and sky grow dream-accessories. HOAR-FROST The frail eidolons of all blossoms Spring, Year after year, about the forest tossed, The magic touch of the enchanter, Frost, Back from the Heaven of the Flow’rs doth bring; Each branch and bush in silence visiting With phantom beauty of its blooms long lost: Each dead weed bends, white-haunted of its ghost, Each dead flower stands ghostly with blossoming. This is the wonder-legend Nature tells To the gray moon and mist a winter’s night; The fairy-tale which from her fancy wells With all the glamour of her soul’s delight: Before the summoning sorcery of her eyes Rising, as might a dream materialize. COLD A mist that froze beneath the moon and shook Minutest frosty crystals in the air. All night the wind was still as lonely Care Who sighs before her shivering inglenook. The face of Winter wore a cruder look Than when he shakes the icicles from his hair, And, in the boisterous pauses, lets his stare Freeze through the forest, fettering bough and brook. He is the despot now who sits and dreams Of desolation and despair, and smiles At poverty, who hath no place to rest, Who wanders o’er Life’s snow-made-pathless miles, And sees the Home-of-Comfort’s window gleams, Hugging her rag-wrapped baby to her breast. THE WINTER MOON Deep in the dell I watched her as she rose, A face of icy fire, o’er the hills; With snow-sad eyes that froze the forest rills, And snow-sad feet that bleached the meadow snows: Pale as some young witch who, a-listening, goes To her first meeting with the Fiend; whose fears Fix demon eyes behind each bush she nears; Stops, yet must on, fearful of following foes. And so I chased her, startled in the wood Like a discovered oread, who flies The faun who found her sleeping, each nude limb Glittering betrayal through the solitude; Till in a frosty cloud I saw her swim Like a drowned face, a blur beneath the ice. THE HILLSIDE GRAVE Ten-thousand deep the drifted daisies break Here at the hill’s foot; on its top, the wheat Hangs meagre-bearded; and, in vague retreat, The wisp-like blooms of the moth-mulleins shake. And where the wild-pink drops a crimson flake, And morning-glories, like young lips, make sweet The shadowed hush, low in the honeyed heat, The wild-bees hum--as if afraid to wake One sleeping here, with no white stone to tell If it be youth or maiden. Just the stem Of one wild rose, towering o’er brier and weed, Where all the day the wild-birds requiem; Within whose shade the timid violets spell An epitaph, the stars alone can read. THE COVERED BRIDGE There, from its entrance, lost in matted vines,-- Where in the valley foams a waterfall,-- Is glimpsed a ruined mill’s remaining wall; Here, by the road, the black-eyed Susan mines Hot brass and bronze; the trumpet-trailer shines Red as the plumage of the cardinal. Faint from the forest comes the rain-crow’s call Where dusty Summer dreams among the pines. This is the spot where Spring writes wildflower verses In primrose pink, while, drowsing o’er his reins, The ploughman, all unnoticing, plods along: And where the Autumn opens weedy purses Of sleepy silver, while the corn-piled wains Rumble the bridge like some deep throat of song. THE CREEK-ROAD Calling, the heron flies athwart the blue That sleeps above it; reach on rocky reach Of water sings by sycamore and beech, In whose warm shade bloom lilies not a few. It is a page whereon the sun and dew Scrawl sparkling words in dawn’s delicious speech; A laboratory where the wood-winds teach, Dissect each scent and analyze each hue. Not otherwise than beautiful, doth it Record the happenings of each summer day; Where we may read, as in a catalogue, When passed a thresher; when a load of hay; Or when a rabbit; or a bird, that lit; And now a barefoot truant and his dog. ABANDONED The hornets build in plaster dropping rooms, And on its mossy porch the lizard lies; Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies, And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms. Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs With ghostly lips among the attic glooms. And now a heron, now a kingfisher, Flits in the willows where the riffle seems At each faint fall to hesitate to leap, Fluttering the silence with a little stir. Here Summer seems a placid face asleep, And the near world a figment of her dreams. OMENS Sad on the hills the poppied sunset died. Slow as a fungus breaking through the crusts Of forest leaves, the waning half-moon thrusts Through gray-brown clouds one milky silver side; In her vague light the dogwoods, dim-descried, Seem dying torches flourished by the gusts; The apple-orchards seem the restless dusts Of wind-thinned mists upon the hills they hide. It is a night of omens whom late May Meets, like a wraith, among her train of hours; An apparition with appealing eye And hesitant foot, that walks a willowed way, And, speaking through the fading moon and flowers, Bids her prepare her gentle soul to die. IMPERFECTION Not as the eye hath seen shall we behold Romance and beauty when we’ve passed away; That robed the dull facts of the intimate day In life’s wild raiment of unusual gold: Not as the ear hath heard shall we be told, Hereafter, myth and legend once that lay Warm at the heart of Nature, clothing clay In attributes of no material mold. These were imperfect of necessity, That wrought through imperfection for far ends Of perfectness--as calm philosophy, Teaching a child, from his high heaven descends To earth’s familiar things; informingly Vesting his thoughts in that it comprehends. ARCANA Earth hath her images of utterance, Her hieroglyphic meanings which elude; A symbol language of similitude, Into whose secrets science may not glance; In which the Mind-in-Nature doth romance In miracles that baffle if pursued-- No guess shall search them and no thought intrude Beyond the limits of her sufferance. So doth the great Intelligence above Hide His own thought’s creations; and attire Forms in the dream’s ideal, which He dowers With immaterial loveliness and love-- As essences of fragrance and of fire-- Preaching th’ evangels of the stars and flowers. FULFILLMENT There are some souls who may look in on these Essential peoples of the earth and air-- That have the stars and flowers in their care-- And read their soul-suggestive secrecies: Heart-intimates and comrades of the trees, Who from them learn, what no known schools declare, God’s knowledge; and from winds, that, singing, fare, God’s gospel, filled with mighty harmonies. Souls, unto whom the waves impart a word Of fuller faith; the sunset and the dawn Preach sermons more inspired even than The tongues of Pentecost; as, distant heard In forms of change, through Nature upward drawn, God doth address th’ immortal part of Man. TOO LATE I looked upon a dead girl’s face and heard What seemed the voice of Death cry out to me, Deep in her heart, all of the agony Of her lost dreams, complaining word on word:-- How on her soul no soul had touched, or stirred Her life’s sad depths to rippling melody, Or made the imaged longing, there, to be The realization of a hope deferred. So in her life had Love behaved to her. Between the lonely chapters of her years And her young eyes making no golden blur With god-bright face and hair; who led me to Her side at last, and bade me, through my tears, With Death’s dumb lips, too late, to see and know. THE WITCH She gropes and hobbles, where the dropsied rocks Are hairy with the lichens and the twist Of knotted wolf’s-bane, mumbling in the mist, Hawk-nosed and wrinkle-eyed with scrawny locks. At her bent back the moon, slow-sinking, mocks, Like some lewd evil whom the Fiend hath kissed; Once at her feet the slipping serpent hissed, And once the owl called to the forest fox.-- What Sabboth brew does she intend? What root Now seek for, seal for what satanic spell Of incantations and demonic fire?-- From her rude hut, hill-huddled in the brier, What dark Familiar points her sure pursuit, There, with gaunt eyes, red with the glow of Hell? THE SOMNAMBULIST Oaks and a water. By the water--eyes, Ice-green and steadfast as still stars; and hair Yellow as eyes deep in a she-wolf’s lair; And limbs--like mist the lightning’s flicker dyes. The humped oaks huddle under iron skies; The dry wind whirls the dead leaves everywhere; White on the water falls a vulture-glare Of moon, and black the circling raven flies. Again the power of this thing hath laid Compulsion on me: and I seem to hear A sweet voice calling me beyond the gates To longed-for love: I come: each forest glade Seems reaching out white arms to draw me near-- Nearer and nearer to the death that waits. OPIUM _On reading De Quincey’s “Confessions of an Opium Eater.”_ I seemed to stand before a temple walled From shadows and night’s unrealities; Filled with dark music of dead memories, And voices,--lost in darkness,--deep that called. I entered. And beneath the dome’s high-halled Immensity one forced me to my knees Before a blackness--throned ’mid semblances And spectres--crowned with flames of emerald. Then, lo! two shapes that thundered at mine ears The names of Horror and Oblivion,-- Priests of this god,--and bade me die and dream. Then, in the heart of Hell, a thousand years Meseemed I lay--dead! while the iron stream Of Time beat out the seconds, one by one. MUSIC AND SLEEP These have a life that hath no part in death: These circumscribe the soul and make it strong: Between the breathing of a dream and song, Building a world of beauty in a breath. Unto the heart the voice of this one saith Ideals, its emotions live among; Unto the mind the other speaks a tongue Of visions, where the guess,--men christen Faith,-- May face the fact of immortality-- As may a rose its unembodied scent, Or star its own reflected radiance. We do not know these save subconsciously, To whose mysterious shadows God hath lent No certain shape, no certain countenance. AMBITION Now to my lips lift thou some opiate Of dull forgetfulness! while in thy gaze Still lures the loveless beauty that betrays, And in thy mouth the music that is hate. No promise more hast thou to make me wait; No smile to cozen my sick heart with praise! Far, far behind thee stretch laborious days, And far before thee, labors soon and late. Thine is the fen-fire that we deem a star, Flying before us, ever fugitive, Thy mocking policy still holds afar: And thine the voice to which our longings give Hope’s siren face, that speaks us sweet and fair, Only at last to whelm us with despair. DESPONDENCY Not all the bravery that day puts on Of gold and azure, ardent or austere, Shall ease my soul of sorrow; grief, more dear Than all the joy that heavenly hope may don. Far up the skies the rumor of the dawn May run, and eve like some wild torch appear; These shall not change the darkness, gathered here, Of thought that rusts like an old sword undrawn. Oh, for a place far-sunken from the sun! A wildwood cave of primitive rocks and moss! Where Sleep and Silence--breast to married breast-- Lie with their child, night-eyed Oblivion; Where, freed from all the burden of my cross, I might forget, I might forget--and rest! DESPAIR Shut in with phantoms of life’s hollow hopes, And shadows of old sins satiety slew, And the young ghosts of the dead dreams love knew, Out of the day into the night she gropes. Behind her, high the silvered summit slopes Of hope and faith, she will not turn to view; But towards the cave of heartbreak, harsh of hue, She goes, where all the dropsied horror ropes. There is a voice of waters in her ears, And on her brow a wind that never dies: One is the anguish of desired tears; One is the sorrow of unuttered sighs; And, burdened with the immemorial years, Downward she goes with never lifted eyes. QUATRAINS I _Penury_ Above his misered embers, gaunt and gray, With toil-gnarled limbs he stoops: around his hut, Want, like a hobbling hag, goes, night and day, Trying the windows and the doors tight-shut. II _Strategy_ Craft’s silent sister and the daughter deep Of Contemplation, she, who spreads below A hostile tent soft comfort for her foe, With eyes of Jael watching till he sleep. III _Tempest_ With helms of lightning, glittering in the skies, On steeds of thunder, form on cloudy form, Terrific beauty in their hair and eyes, Sweep down the wild Valkyries of the storm. IV _The Locust Blossom_ The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour: Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet, Was born the fragrant beauty of this flower. V _Melancholy_ With shadowy immortelles of memory About her brow, she sits with eyes that look Upon the stream of Lethe wearily, In hesitant hands Death’s partly-opened book. VI _Content_ Among the meadows of Life’s sad unease-- In labor still renewing her soul’s youth-- With trust, for patience, and with love, for peace, Singing she goes with the calm face of Ruth. VII _Life and Death_ Of our own selves God makes a glass, wherein Two shades are imaged, passing like a breath: And one is Life, whose other name is Sin; And one is Love, whose other name is Death. VIII _Sorrow_ Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice Of lost Love’s tears, and, famishing, can but taste The dead-sea fruit of Life’s remembered joys. A LAST WORD _Not for myself, but for the sake of Song, Would I succeed as others have who gave Their lives unto her, shaping sure and strong Her lovely limbs that made them god and slave._ _Not for myself, but for the sake of Art, Would I advance beyond the others’ best, Winning a deeper secret from her heart To hang it moonlike ’mid the starry rest._ NATURE POEMS (SECOND SERIES) FOREWORD _In the first rare Spring of song, In my heart’s young hours, In my youth ’twas thus I sang, Choosing ’mid the flowers_:-- “_Fair the Dandelion is, But for me too lowly; And the winsome Violet Is, forsooth, too holy. ‘But the Touch-me-not?’--Go to! What! a face that’s speckled Like a common milking-maid’s, Whom the sun hath freckled. Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt; And the Trillium-Lily, In her spotless gown, ’s a prude, Sanctified and silly. By her cap the Columbine, To my mind, ’s too merry-- Gossips, I would sooner woo Some plebeian Berry. And the shy Anemone-- Well, her face shows sorrow; Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day, Dead and gone to-morrow. Then that hold-eyed, buxom wench, Big and blond and lazy,-- She’s been chosen over oft!-- Sirs, I mean the Daisy. Pleasant persons are they all, And their virtues many; Faith! I know but good of each, And naught ill of any. But I choose a May-Apple; She shall be my Lady; Blooming, hidden and refined, Sweet in places shady.”_ _In my youth ’twas thus I sang, In my heart’s young hours, In the first rare Spring of song, Choosing ’mid the flowers. So I hesitated when Time alone was reckoned By the hours that Fancy smiled, Love and Beauty beckoned. Hard it was for me to choose From the flowers that flattered;_ _And the blossom that I chose Soon lay dead and scattered. Hard I found it then, ah me! Hard I found the choosing; Harder, harder since I’ve found, All too hard, the losing. Haply had I chosen then From the weeds that tangle Wayside, woodland, and the wall Of my garden’s angle, I had chosen better, yea, For these later hours-- Longer live the weeds, and oft Sweeter are than flowers._ WEEDS BY THE WALL THE CRICKET I First of the insect choir, in the spring We hear his faint voice fluttering in the grass, Beneath some blossom’s rosy covering, Or frond of fern, upon a wildwood pass. When in the marsh, in clamorous orchestras, The shrill hylodes pipe; when, in the haw’s Bee-swarming blooms, or tasseling sassafras, Sweet threads of silvery song the sparrow draws, Bow-like, athwart the vibrant atmosphere,-- Like some dim dream low-breathed in slumber’s ear,-- We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_. II All summer long the mellowing meadows thrill To his blithe music. Be it day or night, Close gossip of the grass, on field and hill He serenades the silence with delight: Silence, that hears the melon slowly split With ripeness; and the plump peach, hornet-bit, Loosen and fall; and everywhere the white, Warm, silk-like stir of leafy lights that flit As breezes blow; above which, loudly clear,-- Like joy who sings of life and has no fear,-- We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_. III Then in the autumn, by the waterside, Leaf-huddled; or along the weed-grown walks, He dirges low the flowers that have died, Or with their ghosts holds solitary talks. Lover of warmth, all day above the click And crunching of the sorghum-press, through thick Sweet steam of juice; all night when, white as chalk, The hunter’s-moon hangs o’er the rustling rick, Within the barn ’mid munching cow and steer,-- Soft as a memory the heart holds dear,-- We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_. IV Kinsman and cousin of the Faëry Race, All winter long he sets his sober mirth,-- That brings good-luck to many a fireplace,-- To folk-lore song and saga of the hearth. Between the back-log’s bluster and the slim High twittering of the kettle,--sounds that hymn Home-comforts,--when, outside, the starless earth Is icicled in every laden limb,-- Defying frost and all the sad and sere,-- Like love that dies not and is always near,-- We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_. THE TREE TOAD I Secluded, solitary on some underbough Or cradled in a leaf, ’mid glimmering light, Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how The slow toadstool comes bulging, moony white, Through loosening loam; or how, against the night, The glow-worm gathers silver to endow The darkness with; or how the dew conspires To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires Each blade that shrivels now. II O vague confederate of the whippoorwill, Of owl and cricket and the katydid! Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill Vibrating note and send’st it where, half hid In cedars, twilight sleeps--each azure lid Drooping a line of golden eyeball still.-- Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice Within the Garden of the Hours apoise On dusk’s deep daffodil. III Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over. Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight’s hush, and little intimate Of eve’s first fluttering star and delicate Round rim of rainy moon! IV Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour When they may gambol under haw and thorn, Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower? Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower The liriodendron is? from whence is borne The elfin music of thy bell’s deep bass, To summon Fairies to their starlit maze, To summon them or warn. THE SCREECH-OWL I When, one by one, the stars have trembled through Eve’s shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire-- As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew Orbs its bright beads;--and, one by one, the choir Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier: Then through the woods--where wandering winds pursue A ceaseless whisper--like an eery lyre Struck in the Erl-king’s halls, where ghosts and dreams Hold revelry, your goblin music screams, Shivering and strange as some strange thought come true. II Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees, Or those fantastic fungi of the woods That crowd the dampness--are you kin to these In some mysterious way that still eludes My fancy? you, who haunt the solitudes With hag-like wailings? voice, that seems to freeze Out of the darkness,--like the scent which broods, Rank and rain-sodden, over autumn nooks,-- That, to the mind, might well suggest such looks, Ghastly and gray, as pale clairvoyance sees. III You people night with weirdness: lone and drear, Beneath the stars, you cry your wizard runes; And in the haggard silence, filled with fear, Your shuddering hoot seems some wild grief that croons Mockery and terror; or,--beneath the moon’s Cloud-hurrying glimmer,--to the startled ear, Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes, The witless wit of outcast Edgar there In the wild night; or, wan with all despair, The mirthless laughter of the Fool in Lear. THE CHIPMUNK I He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence, Or on the fallen tree,--brown as a leaf Fall stripes with russet,--gambols down the dense Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence He comes, nor whither--’tis a time too brief!-- He vanishes;--swift carrier of some Fay, Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief-- A goblin glimpse from woodland way to way. II What harlequin mood of nature qualified Him so with happiness? and limbed him with Such young activity as winds, that ride The ripples, have, that dance on every side? As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight, Gnome-like, in darkness,--like a moonlight myth,-- Lairing in labyrinths of the under night. III Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps; Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole Tunnelling its mine--like some ungainly Troll --Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute; Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps, And trees unrolling mighty root on root. IV Such is the music of his sleeping hours. Day hath another--’tis a melody He trips to, made by the assembled flowers, And light and fragrance laughing ’mid the bowers, And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree. Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze-- The silent music of Earth’s ecstasy-- The Satyr’s soul, the Faun of classic days. THE WILD IRIS That day we wandered ’mid the hills,--so lone Clouds are not lonelier,--the forest lay In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way: And many a bird the glimmering light along Showered the golden bubbles of its song. Then in the valley, where the brook went by, Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,-- An isolated slip of fallen sky, Epitomizing heaven in its sum,-- An iris bloomed--blue, as if, flower-disguised, The gaze of Spring had there materialized. I have forgotten many things since then-- Much beauty and much happiness and grief; And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men, Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief. “’Tis winter now,” so says each barren bough; And face and hair proclaim ’tis winter now. I would forget the gladness of that spring! I would forget that day when she and I, Between the bird-song and the blossoming, Went hand in hand beneath the soft spring sky!-- Much is forgotten, yea--and yet, and yet, The things we would we never can forget.-- Nor I how May then minted treasuries Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light The sorrel’s cups, whose elfin chalices Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white. Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort, And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt. But most of all, yea, it were well for me, Me and my heart, that I forget that flower, The blue wild-iris, azure fleur-de-lis, That she and I together found that hour. Its recollection can but emphasize The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes. THE PATH BY THE CREEK There is a path that leads Through purple ironweeds, By button-bush and mallow Along a creek; A path that wildflowers hallow, That wild-birds seek; Roofed thick with eglantine And grape and trumpet-vine. This side, the blackberries sweet Glow cobalt in the heat; That side, a creamy yellow, In summer-time The pawpaws slowly mellow: And autumn’s prime Strews red the Chickasaw, Persimmon brown and haw. The glittering dragon-fly, A wingéd gem, goes by; And tawny wasp and hornet Make drowsy drone; The beetle, like a garnet, Basks on the stone; And butterflies float there, Spangling with gold the air. Here the brown thrashers hide, And chat and cat-bird chide; The blue kingfisher houses Above the stream, And here the heron drowses, Lost in his dream; The vireo’s flitting note Makes woodlands more remote. And now a cow’s slow bell Tinkles from dale to dell; Where breeze-dropped petals winnow From blossomy limbs On waters, where the minnow, Faint-twinkling, swims; Where, in the root-arched shade, Slim prisms of light are laid. When in the tangled thorn The new-moon hangs a horn, Or, ’mid the sunset’s islands, Guides her canoe, The brown owl in the silence Calls, and the dew Beads glimmering orbs of damp, Each one a glow-worm lamp. Then when the night is still Here sings the whippoorwill; And stealthy sounds of crickets, And winds that pass, Whispering, through bramble thickets Along the grass, Faint with warm scents of hay, Seem feet of dreams astray. And where the water shines Dark through tree-twisted vines, Some water-spirit, dreaming, Braids in her hair A star’s reflection; seeming A jewel there; While all the sweet night long Ripples her quiet song.... Would I could imitate, O path, thy happy state! Making my life all beauty, All bloom and beam; Knowing no other duty But just to dream, And far from pain and woe Lead feet that come and go. Leading to calm content, O’er ways the Master went, Through lowly things and humble, To peace and love; Teaching the lives that stumble To look above, Forget the world of toil And all its mad turmoil. ALONG THE STREAM Where the violet shadows brood Under cottonwoods and beeches, Through whose leaves the restless reaches Of the river glance, I’ve stood, While the red-bird and the thrush Set to song the morning hush. There,--when wakening woods encroach On the shadowy winding waters, And the bluets, April’s daughters, At the darling Spring’s approach, Star their myriads through the trees,-- All the land is one with peace. Under some imposing cliff, That, with bush and tree and boulder, Thrusts a gray, gigantic shoulder O’er the stream, I’ve oared a skiff, While great clouds of iceberg hue Lounged along the noonday blue. There,--when harvest heights impend Over shores of rippling summer, And to greet the fair new-comer,-- June,--the wildrose thickets bend In a million blossoms dressed,-- All the land is one with rest. On some rock, where gaunt the oak Reddens and the sombre cedar Darkens, like a sachem leader, I have lain and watched the smoke Of the steamboat, far-away, Trailed along the dying day. There,--when margin waves reflect Autumn colors, gay and sober, And the Indian-girl, October, Wampum-like in berries decked, Leans above the leaf-strewn streams,-- All the land is one with dreams. Through the bottoms where,--out-tossed By the wind’s wild hands,--ashiver Bend the willows o’er the river, I have walked in sleet and frost, While beneath the cold round moon, Frozen, gleamed the long lagoon. There,--when leafless woods uplift Spectral arms the storm-blasts splinter, And the hoary trapper, Winter, Builds his camp of ice and drift, With his snow-pelts furred and shod,-- All the land is one with God. VOICES When blood-root blooms and trillium flowers Unclasp their stars to sun and rain, My heart strikes hands with winds and showers And wanders in the woods again. O urging impulse, born of spring! That makes glad April of my soul, No bird, however wild of wing, Is more impatient of control. Impetuous of pulse it beats Within my blood and bears me hence; Above the housetops and the streets I hear its happy eloquence. It tells me all that I would know, Of birds and buds, of blooms and bees; I seem to hear the blossoms blow, And leaves unfolding on the trees. I seem to hear the bluebells ring Faint purple peals of perfume; and The honey-throated poppies fling Their golden laughter o’er the land. It calls to me; it sings to me; I hear its far voice night and day; I can not choose but go when tree And flower clamor, “Come away!” THE ROAD HOME Over the hills as the pewee flies, Under the blue of the southern skies; Over the hills where the red-bird wings, Like a scarlet blossom, or sits and sings; Under the shadow of rock and tree, Where the warm wind drones with the honeybee; And the tall wild-carrots around you sway Their lace-like flowers of cloudy gray: By the black-cohosh and its pearl-white plume A-nod in the woodland’s odorous gloom; By the old rail-fence, in the elder’s shade, That the myriad hosts of the weeds invade: Where the butterfly-weed, like a coal of fire, Blurs orange-red through brush and brier; Where the pennyroyal and mint smell sweet, And blackberries tangle the humming heat, The old road leads; then crosses the creek, Where the minnow dartles, a silvery streak; Where the cows wade deep through the blue-eyed grass, And the flickering dragon-flies gleaming pass. That road is easy, however long, Which wends with beauty as toil with song; And the road we follow shall lead us straight Past creek and wood to a farm-house gate. Past hill and hollow, whence scents are blown Of dew-wet clover that scythes have mown; To a house that stands with porches wide And gray low roof on the green hill-side. Colonial, stately; ’mid shade and shine Of the locust tree and the southern pine; With its orchard acres and meadowlands Stretched out before it like welcoming hands. And gardens, where, in the myrrh-sweet June, Magnolias blossom with many a moon Of fragrance; and, in the feldspar light Of August, roses bloom red and white. In a woodbine arbor, a perfumed place, A slim girl sits with listening face; Her bonnet by her, a sunbeam lies On her lovely hair, in her earnest eyes. Her eyes, as blue as the distant deeps Of the heavens above where the high hawk sleeps; A book beside her, wherein she read Till she saw _him_ coming, she heard _his_ tread. Come home at last; come back from the war; In his eyes a smile, on his brow a scar: To the South come back--who wakes from her dream To the love and the peace of a new regime. DROUTH I The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops, Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,-- Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,-- An empty wagon rattles through the heat. II Where now the blue, blue flags? the flow’rs whose mouths Are moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint, That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South’s Wild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hint At coming showers that the rainbows tint? Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows? The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves; The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves; The freckled touch-me-not and forest rose. III Dead! dead! all dead beside the drouth-burnt brook, Shrouded in moss or in the shriveled grass. Where waved their bells,--from which the wild-bee shook The dew-drop once,--gaunt, in a nightmare mass, The rank weeds crowd; through which the cattle pass, Thirsty and lean, seeking some meagre spring, Closed in with thorns, on which stray bits of wool The panting sheep have left, that sought the cool, From morn till evening wearily wandering. IV No bird is heard; no throat to whistle awake The sleepy hush; to let its music leak Fresh, bubble-like, through bloom-roofs of the brake: Only the green-blue heron, famine-weak,-- Searching the stale pools of the minnowless creek,-- Utters its call; and then the rain-crow, too, False prophet now, croaks to the stagnant air; While overhead,--still as if painted there,-- A buzzard hangs, black on the burning blue. THE BROKEN DROUTH It seemed the listening forest held its breath Before some vague and unapparent form Of fear, approaching with the wings of death, On the impending storm. Above the hills, big, bellying clouds loomed, black And ominous; yet silent as the blue That pools calm heights of heaven, deepening back ’Twixt clouds of snowdrift hue. Then instantly, as when a multitude Shout riot and war through some tumultous town, Innumerable voices swept the wood As wild the wind rushed down. And fierce and few, as when a strong man weeps, Great rain-drops dashed the dust; and, overhead, Ponderous and vast down the prodigious deeps, Went slow the thunder’s tread. And swift and furious, as when giants fence, The lightning foils of tempest went insane; Then far and near sonorous Earth grew dense With long sweet sweep of rain. FEUD A mile of lane,--hedged high with ironweeds And dying daisies,--white with sun, that leads Downward into a wood; through which a stream Steals like a shadow; over which is laid A bridge of logs, worn deep with many a team, Sunk in the tangled shade. Far off a wood-dove lifts its lonely cry; And in the sleepy silver of the sky A gray hawk wheels scarce larger than a hand.-- From point to point the road grows worse and worse, Until that place is reached where all the land Seems burdened with some curse. A ragged fence of pickets, warped and sprung,-- On which the fragments of a gate are hung,-- Divides a hill, the fox and ground-hog haunt, A wilderness of briers; o’er whose tops A battered barn is seen, low-roofed and gaunt, ’Mid fields that know no crops. Fields over which a path, o’erwhelmed with burrs And ragweeds, noisy with the grasshoppers, Leads,--lost, irresolute as paths the cows Wear through the woods,--unto a woodshed; then, With wrecks of windows, to a huddled house, Where men have murdered men. A house, whose tottering chimney, clay and rock, Is seamed and crannied; whose lame door and lock Are bullet-bored; around which, there and here, Are sinister stains.--One dreads to look around.-- The place seems thinking of that time of fear And dares not breathe a sound. Within, is emptiness: the sunlight falls On faded journals papering its walls; On advertisement chromos, torn with time Around a hearth where wasps and spiders build.-- The house is dead: meseems that night of crime It, too, was shot and killed. UNANOINTED I Upon the Siren-haunted seas, between Fate’s mythic shores, Within a world of moon and mist, where dusk and daylight wed, I see a phantom galley and its hull is banked with oars, With ghostly oars that move to song, a song of dreams long dead:-- “Oh, we are sick of rowing here! With toil our arms are numb; With smiting year on weary year Salt-furrows of the foam: Our journey’s end is never near, And will no nearer come-- Beyond our reach the shores appear Of far Elysium.” II Within a land of cataracts and mountains old, and sand, Beneath whose heavens ruins rise, o’er which the stars burn red, I see a spectral cavalcade with crucifix in hand And shadowy armor march and sing, a song of dreams long dead:-- “Oh, we are weary marching on! Our limbs are travel-worn; With cross and sword from dawn to dawn We wend with raiment torn: The leagues to go, the leagues we’ve gone Are sand and rock and thorn-- The way is long to Avalon Beyond the deeps of morn.” III They are the curs’d! the souls who yearn and evermore pursue The vision of a vain desire, a splendor far ahead; To whom God gives the poet’s dream without the grasp to do, The artist’s hope without the scope between the quick and dead:-- I, too, am weary toiling where The winds and waters beat; When shall I ease the oar I bear And rest my tired feet? When will the white moons cease to glare, The red suns veil their heat? And from the heights blow sweet the air Of Love’s divine retreat? SUNSET AND STORM Deep with divine tautology, The sunset’s mighty mystery Again has traced the scroll-like west With hieroglyphs of burning gold: Forever new, forever old, Its miracle is manifest. Time lays the scroll away. And now Above the hills a giant brow Night lifts of cloud; and from her arm, Barbaric black, upon the world, With thunder, wind and fire, is hurled Her awful argument of storm. What part, O man, is yours in such? Whose awe and wonder are in touch With Nature,--speaking rapture to Your soul,--yet leaving in your reach No human word of thought or speech Expressive of the thing you view. BEECH BLOOMS Among the valleys The wild oxalis Lifts up its chalice Of pink and pearl; And, balsam-breathing From out their sheathing, The myriad wreathing Green leaves uncurl. The whole world brightens With spring, that lightens The foot that frightens The building thrush; Where water tosses On ferns and mosses The squirrel crosses The beechen hush. And vision on vision,-- Like ships elysian On some white mission,-- Sails cloud on cloud; With scents of clover The winds brim over, And in the cover The stream is loud. ’Twixt bloom that blanches The orchard branches Old farms and ranches Gleam in the gloam: Through fields for sowing, ’Mid blossoms blowing, The cows come lowing, The cows come home. Where ways are narrow, A vesper-sparrow Flits like an arrow Of living rhyme; The red sun poises, And farm-yard noises Mix with glad voices Of milking-time. When dusk disposes Of all its roses, And darkness closes, And work is done, A moon’s white feather In starry weather And two together Whose hearts are one. WORSHIP I The mornings raise Voices of gold in the Almighty’s praise; The sunsets soar In choral crimson from far shore to shore: Each is a blast, Reverberant, of color,--seen as vast Concussions,--that the vocal firmament In worship sounds o’er every continent. II Not for our ears The cosmic music of the rolling spheres, That sweeps the skies! Music we hear, but only with our eyes. For all too weak Our mortal frames to bear the words these speak, Those detonations that we name the dawn And sunset--hues Earth’s harmony puts on. UNHEARD All things are wrought of melody, Unheard, yet full of speaking spells; Within the rock, within the tree, A soul of music dwells. A mute symphonic sense that thrills The silent frame of mortal things; Its heart beats in the ancient hills, And in each flow’r sings. To harmony all growth is set-- Each seed is but a music mote, From which each plant, each violet, Evolves its purple note. Compact of melody, the rose Woos the soft wind with strain on strain Of crimson; and the lily blows Its white bars to the rain. The trees are pæans; and the grass One long green fugue beneath the sun-- Song is their life; and all shall pass, Shall end, when song is done. REINCARNATION High in the place of outraged Liberty, He ruled the world, an emperor and god: His iron armies swept the land and sea, And conquered nations trembled at his nod. By him the love that fills man’s soul with light, And makes a heaven of earth, was crucified; Lust-crowned he lived, yea, lived in God’s despite, And old in infamies, a king he died. Justice begins now.--Many centuries In some vile body must his soul atone As slave, as beggar, loathsome with disease, Less than the dog at which we fling a stone. ON CHENOWETH’S RUN I thought of the road through the glen, With its hawk’s nest high in the pine; With its rock, where the fox had his den, ’Mid tangles of sumach and vine, Where she swore to be mine. I thought of the creek and its banks, Now glooming, now gleaming with sun; The rustic bridge builded of planks, The bridge over Chenoweth’s Run, Where I wooed her and won. I thought of the house in the lane, With its pinks and its sweet mignonette; Its fence, and the gate with its chain, Its porch where the roses hung wet, Where I kissed her and met. Then I thought of the family graves, Walled rudely with stone, in the West, Where the sorrowful cedar-tree waves, And the wind is a spirit distressed, Where they laid her to rest. And my soul, overwhelmed with despair, Cried out on the city and mart!-- How I longed, how I longed to be there, Away from the struggle and smart, By her and my heart. By her and my heart in the West,-- Laid sadly together as one;-- On her grave for a moment to rest, Far away from the noise and the sun, On Chenoweth’s Run. REQUIESCAT The roses mourn for her who sleeps Within the tomb; For her each lily-flower weeps Dew and perfume. In each neglected flower-bed Each blossom droops its lovely head,-- They miss her touch, they miss her tread, Her face of bloom, Of happy bloom. The very breezes grieve for her, A lonely grief; For her each tree is sorrower, Each blade and leaf. The foliage rocks itself and sighs, And to its woe the wind replies,-- They miss her girlish laugh and cries, Whose life was brief, Was all too brief. The sunlight, too, seems pale with care, Or sick with woe; The memory haunts it of her hair, Its golden glow. No more within the bramble-brake The sleepy bloom is kissed awake-- The sun is sad for her dear sake, Whose head lies low, Lies dim and low. The bird, that sang so sweet, is still At dusk and dawn; No more it makes the silence thrill Of wood and lawn. In vain the buds, when it is near, Open each pink and perfumed ear,-- The song it sings she will not hear Who now is gone, Is dead and gone. Ah, well she sleeps who loved them well, The birds and bowers; The fair, the young, the lovable, Who once was ours. Alas! that loveliness must pass! Must come to lie beneath the grass! That youth and joy must fade, alas! And die like flowers, Earth’s sweetest flowers! THE QUEST I First I asked the honey-bee, Busy in the balmy bowers; Saying, “Sweetheart, tell it me: Have you seen her, honey-bee? She is cousin to the flowers-- All the sweetness of the south In her wild-rose face and mouth.”-- But the bee passed silently. II Then I asked the forest-bird, Warbling by the woodland waters; Saying, “Dearest, have you heard, Have you heard her, forest-bird? She is one of Music’s daughters-- Never song so sweet by half As the music of her laugh.”-- But the bird said not a word. III Next I asked the evening-sky, Hanging out its lamps of fire; Saying, “Loved one, passed she by? Tell me, tell me, evening-sky! She, the star of my desire-- Sister whom the Pleiads lost, And my soul’s high pentecost.”-- But the sky made no reply. IV Where is she? ah, where is she? She to whom both love and duty Bind me, yea, immortally.-- Where is she? ah, where is she? Symbol of the Earth-soul’s beauty. I have lost her. Help my heart Find her! her, who is a part Of the pagan soul of me! BEFORE THE RAIN Before the rain, low in the obscure east, Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray; Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased, Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay Like some white spider hungry for its prey. Vindictive looked the scowling firmament, In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray, Seemed filled with malice of some dark intent. The marsh-frog croaked; and underneath the stone The peevish cricket raised a creaking cry. Within the world these sounds were heard alone, Save when the ruffian wind swept from the sky, Making each tree like some sad spirit sigh; Or shook the clumsy beetle from its weed, That, in the drowsy darkness, bungling by, Sharded the silence with its feverish speed. Slowly the tempest gathered. Hours passed Before was heard the thunder’s sullen drum Rumbling night’s hollow; and the Earth at last, Restless with waiting,--like a woman, dumb With doubting of the love that should have clomb Her casement hours ago,--avowed again, ’Mid protestations, joy that he had come. And all night long I heard the Heavens explain. AFTER RAIN Behold the blossom-bosomed Day again, With all the star-white Hours in her train, Laughs out of pearl-lights through a golden ray, That, leaning on the woodland wildness, blends A sprinkled amber with the showers that lay Their oblong emeralds on the leafy ends. Behold her bend with maiden-braided brows Above the wildflower, sidewise with its strain Of dewy happiness, to kiss again Each drop to death; or, under rainy boughs, With fingers, fragrant as the woodland rain, Gather the sparkles from the sycamore, To set within the core Of crimson roses girdling her hips, Where each bud dreams and drips. Smoothing her blue-black hair,--where many a tusk Of iris flashes,--like the falchions keen Of Faery round blue banners of their Queen,-- Is it a Naiad singing in the dusk, That haunts the spring, where all the moss is musk With footsteps of the flowers on the banks? Or but a wild-bird voluble with thanks? Balm for each blade of grass: the Hours prepare A festival each weed’s invited to. Each bee is drunken with the honied air: And all the heaven is eloquent with blue. The wet hay glitters, and the harvester Tinkles his scythe,--as twinkling as the dew,-- That shall not spare Blossom or brier in its sweeping path; And, ere it cut one swath, Rings them they die, and tells them to prepare. What is the spice that haunts each glen and glade? A Dryad’s lips, who slumbers in the shade? A Faun, who lets the heavy ivy-wreath Slip to his thigh as, reaching up, he pulls The chestnut blossoms in whole bosomfuls? A sylvan Spirit, whose sweet mouth doth breathe Her viewless presence near us, unafraid? Or troops of ghosts of blooms, that whitely wade The brook? whose wisdom knows no other song But that the bird sings where it builds beneath The wild-rose and sits singing all day long. Oh, let me sit with silence for a space, A little while forgetting that fierce part Of man that struggles in the toiling mart; Where God can look into my heart’s own heart From unsoiled heights made amiable with grace; And where the sermons that the old oaks keep Can steal into me.--And what better then Than, turning to the moss a quiet face, To fall asleep? a little while to sleep And dream of wiser worlds and wiser men. SUNSET CLOUDS Low clouds, the lightning veins and cleaves, Torn from the wilderness of storm, Sweep westward like enormous leaves O’er field and farm. And in the west, on burning skies, Their wrath is quenched, their hate is hushed, And deep their drifted thunder lies With splendor flushed. The black turns gray, the gray turns gold; And sea’d in deeps of radiant rose, Summits of fire, manifold, They now repose. What dreams they bring! what thoughts reveal! That have their source in loveliness, Through which the doubts I often feel Grow less and less. Through which I see that other night, That cloud called Death, transformed of Love To flame, and pointing with its light To life above. RICHES What mines the morning heavens unfold! What far Alaskas of the skies! That, veined with elemental gold, Sierra on Sierra rise. Heap up the gold of all the world, The ore that makes men fools and slaves: What is it to the gold, cloud-curled, That rivers through the sunset’s caves. Search Earth for riches all who will, The gold that soils, that turns to dust-- Mine be the wealth no thief can steal, The gold of Beauty naught can rust. THE AGE OF GOLD The clouds that tower in storm, that beat Arterial thunder in their veins; The wildflowers lifting, shyly sweet, Their perfect faces from the plains,-- All high, all lowly things of Earth For no vague end have had their birth. Low strips of mist, that mesh the moon Above the foaming waterfall; And mountains that God’s hand hath hewn, And forests where the great winds call,-- Within the grasp of such as see Are parts of a conspiracy; To seize the soul with beauty; hold The heart with love: and thus fulfill Within ourselves the Age of Gold, That never died, and never will,-- As long as one true nature feels The wonders that the world reveals. A SONG FOR LABOR I Oh, the morning meads, the dewy meads, Where he ploughs and harrows and sows the seeds, Singing a song of manly deeds, In the blossoming springtime weather: The heart in his bosom as high as the word Said to the sky by the mating bird, While the beat of an answering heart is heard, His heart and hers together. II Oh, the noonday heights, the sunlit heights, Where he stoops to the harvest his keen scythe smites, Singing a song of the work that requites, In the ripening summer weather: The soul in his body as light as the sigh Of the little cloud-breeze that cools the sky, While he hears an answering soul reply, His soul and hers together. III Oh, the evening vales, the twilight vales, Where he labors and sweats to the thud of flails, Singing a song of the toil that he hails, In the fruitful autumn weather: In heart and in soul as free from fears As the first white star in the sky that appears, While the music of life and of love he hears, Her life and his together. THE LOVE OF LOVES I have not seen her face, and yet She is more sweet than anything Of earth--than rose or violet That winds of May and sunbeams bring. Of all we know, past or to come, That beauty holds within its net, She is the high compendium: And yet-- I have not touched her robe, and still She is more dear than lyric words And music; or than strains that fill The throbbing throats of forest birds. Of all we mean by poetry, That rules the soul and charms the will, She is the deep epitome: And still-- She is my world: ah, pity me! A dream that flies whom I pursue: Whom all pursue, whoe’er they be, Who toil for Art and dare and do. The shadow-love for whom they sigh, The far ideal affinity, For whom they live and gladly die-- Ah me! THREE THINGS There are three things of Earth That help us more Than those of heavenly birth That all implore-- Than Love or Faith or Hope, For which we strive and grope. The first one is Desire,-- Who takes our hand And fills our hearts with fire None may withstand;-- Through whom we’re lifted far Above both moon and star. The second one is Dream,-- Who leads our feet By an immortal gleam To visions sweet;-- Through whom our forms put on Dim attributes of dawn. The last of these is Toil,-- Who maketh true, Within the world’s turmoil The other two;-- Through whom we may behold Ourselves with kings enrolled. IMMORTELLES I As some warm moment of repose In one rich rose Sums all the summer’s lovely bloom And pure perfume-- So did her soul epitomize All hopes that make life wise, Who lies before us now with lidded eyes, Faith’s amaranth of truth Crowning her youth. II As some melodious note or strain May so contain All of sweet music in one chord, Or lyric word-- So did her loving heart suggest All dreams that make life blessed, Who lies before us now with pulseless breast, Love’s asphodel of duty Crowning her beauty. A LULLABY I In her wimple of wind and her slippers of sleep The twilight comes like a little goose-girl, Herding her owls with many “Tu-whoos,” Her little brown owls in the forest deep, Where dimly she walks in her whispering shoes, And gown of glimmering pearl. Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep: This is the road to Rockaby Town. Rockaby, lullaby, where dreams are cheap; Here you can buy any dream for a crown. Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep; The cradle you lie in is soft and is deep, The wagon that takes you to Rockaby Town. Now you go up, sweet, now you go down, Rockaby, lullaby, now you go down. II And after the twilight comes midnight, who wears A mantle of purple so old, so old! Who stables the lily-white moon, it is said, In a wonderful chamber with violet stairs, Up which you can see her come, silent of tread, On hoofs of pale silver and gold. Dream, dream, little one, dream: This is the way to Lullaby Land. Lullaby, rockaby, where, white as cream, Sugar-plum bowers drop sweets in your hand. Dream, dream, little one, dream; The cradle you lie in is tight at each seam, The boat that goes sailing to Lullaby Land. Over the sea, sweet, over the sand, Lullaby, rockaby, over the sand. III The twilight and midnight are lovers, you know, And each to the other is true, is true! And there on the moon through the heavens they ride, With the little brown owls all huddled a-row, Through meadows of heaven where, every side, Blossom the stars and the dew. Rest, rest, little one, rest: Rockaby Town is in Lullaby Isle. Rockaby, lullaby, set like a nest Deep in the heart of a song and a smile. Rest, rest, little one, rest; The cradle you lie in is warm as my breast, The white bird that bears you to Lullaby Isle. Out of the East, sweet, into the West, Rockaby, lullaby, into the West. PESTILENCE High on a throne of noisome ooze and heat, ’Mid rotting trees of bayou and lagoon, Ghastly she sits beneath the skeleton moon, A tawny horror coiling at her feet-- Fever, whose eyes keep watching, serpent-like, Until her eyes shall bid him rise and strike. MUSINGS I _Inspiration_ All who have toiled for Art, who’ve won or lost, Sat equal priests at her high Pentecost; Only the chrism and sacrament of flame, Anointing all, inspired not all the same. II _Apportionment_ How often in our search for joy below Hoping for happiness we chance on woe. III _Victory_ They who take courage from their own defeat Are victors too, no matter how much beat. IV _Preparation_ How often hope’s fair flower blooms richest where The soul was fertilized with black despair. V _Disillusion_ Those unrequited in their love who die Have never drained life’s chief illusion dry. VI _Success_ Success allures us in the earth and skies: We seek to win her, but, too amorous, Mocking, she flees us.--Haply, were we wise, We should not strive and she would come to us. VII _Science_ Miranda-like, above the world she waves The wand of Prospero; and, beautiful, Ariel the airy, Caliban the dull,-- Lightning and Steam,--are her unwilling slaves. VIII _The Universal Wind_ Wild son of Heav’n, with laughter and alarm, Now east, now west, now north, now south he goes, Bearing in one harsh hand dark death and storm, And in the other, sunshine and a rose. IX _Compensation_ Yea, whom He loves the Lord God chasteneth With disappointments, so that this side death, Through suffering and failure, they know Hell To make them worthy in that Heaven to dwell Of Love’s attainment, where they come to be Parts of its beauty and divinity. X _Poppies_ Summer met Sleep at sunset, Dreaming within the south,-- Drugged with his soul’s deep slumber, Red with her heart’s hot drouth, These are the drowsy kisses She pressed upon his mouth. XI _Her Eyes and Mouth_ There is no Paradise like that which lies Deep in the heavens of her azure eyes: There is no Eden here on Earth that glows Like that which smiles rich in her mouth’s red rose. XII _Her Soul_ To me not only does her soul suggest Palms and the peace of tropic shore and wood, But, oceaned far beyond the golden West, The Fortunate Islands of true Womanhood. XIII _Her Face_ The gladness of our Southern spring; the grace Of summer; and the dreaminess of fall Are parts of her sweet nature.--Such a face Was Ruth’s, methinks, divinely spiritual. THE MESSAGE OF THE LILIES My soul and I went walking Beneath the moon of spring; The lilies pale were talking, We heard them murmuring. From dimly moonlit places They thrust long throats of white, And lifted fairy faces Of fragrant snow and light. Their language was an essence, Yet clear as any bird’s; And from it grew a presence, As music grows from words. A spirit born of silence And chastity and dew Among Elysian islands Were not more white to view. A spirit born of fire And holiness and snow, Within the Heaven’s desire, Were not more pure to know. He smiled among them, lifting Pale hands of prayer and peace-- And through the moonlight, drifting, Came words to me like these:-- “We are His lilies, lilies, Whose praises here we sing! We are the lilies, lilies Of Christ our Lord and King!” ANTHEM OF DAWN I Then up the orient heights to the zenith that balanced the crescent,-- Up and far up and over,--the heaven grew erubescent, Vibrant with rose and with ruby from hands of the harpist Dawn, Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament’s barbiton; And the East was a priest who adored with offerings of gold and of gems, And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible hems Of the glittering robes of her limbs; that, lily and amethyst, Swept glorying on and on through temples of cloud and mist. II Then out of the splendor and richness, that burned like a magic stone, The torrent suffusion that deepened and dazzled and broadened and shone, The pomp and the pageant of color, triumphal procession of glare, The sun, like a king in armor, breathing splendor from feet to hair, Stood forth with majesty girdled, as a hero who towers afar Where the bannered gates are bristling hells and the walls are roaring war: And broad on the back of the world, like a Cherubin’s fiery blade, The effulgent gaze of his aspect fell in glittering accolade. III Then billowing blue, like an ocean, rolled from the shores of dawn to even: And the stars like rafts went down; and the moon, like a ghost-ship driven, A feather of foam, from port to port of the cloud-built isles that dotted, With pearl and cameo, bays of the day,--her canvas webbed and rotted,-- Lay lost in the gulf of heaven; while over her mixed and melted The beautiful children of Morn, whose bodies are opal-belted; The beautiful daughters of Dawn, who, over and under and after The rivered radiance wrestled; and rainbowed heaven with laughter Of halcyon sapphire.--O Dawn! thou visible mirth, Thou hallelujah of heaven! hosanna of Earth! AT THE LANE’S END I No more to strip the roses from The rose-sprays of her porch’s place!-- I dreamed last night that I was home Kissing a rose--her face. I must have smiled in sleep--who knows?-- The rose-aroma filled the lane; I saw her white hand’s lifted rose That welcomed home again. And yet when I awoke--so wan, My old face wet with icy tears-- Somehow, it seems, she was not gone, Though dead now thirty years. II The clouds roll up and the clouds roll down Over the roofs of the little town; Out in the hills, where the pike winds by Fields of clover and bottoms of rye, You will hear no sound but the barking cough Of the striped chipmunk where the lane leads off; You will hear no bird but the sapsuckér Far off in the forest,--that seems to purr, As the warm wind fondles its top, grown hot, Like the docile back of an ocelot: You will see no thing but the shine and shade Of briers that climb and of weeds that wade The glittering creeks of the heat, that fills The dusty road and the red-keel hills.-- And all day long in the pennyroyal The grasshoppers at their anvils toil; Thick click of their tireless hammers thrum, And the wheezy belts of their bellows hum; Tinkers who solder the silence and heat To make the loneliness more complete. Around old rails where the blackberries Are reddening ripe, and the bumblebees Are a drowsy rustle of Summer’s skirts, And the bob-white’s wing is the fan she flirts; Under the hill, through the ironweeds And ox-eyed daisies and milkweeds, leads The path forgotten of all but one. Where elder-bushes are sick with sun, And wild raspberries branch big, blue veins O’er the face of the rock where the old spring rains Its sparkling splinters of molten spar On the gravel bed where the tadpoles are,-- You will find the pales of a fallen fence, And the tangled orchard and vineyard, dense With the weedy neglect of thirty years. The garden there,--where the soft sky clears Like an old sweet face that has dried its tears;-- The garden-plot where the cabbage grew And the pompous pumpkin; and beans that blew Balloons of white by the melon patch; Maize; and tomatoes that seemed to catch Oblong amber and agate balls Globed of the sun in the frosty falls: Long rows of currants and gooseberries, And the balsam-gourd with its honey-bees. And here was a nook for the princess-plumes, The snapdragons and the poppy-blooms, Quaint sweet-williams and pansy-flowers, And the morning-glories’ bewildered bowers, Tipping their cornucopias up For the humming-birds that came to sup. And over it all was the Sabbath peace Of the land whose lap was the love of these; And the old log-house where my innocence died, With my boyhood buried side by side. Shall a man with a face as withered and gray As the wasp-nest stowed in a loft away,-- Where the hornets haunt and the mortar drops From the loosened logs of the clapboard tops;-- Whom vice has aged as the rotting rooms The rain where memories haunt the glooms; A hitch in his joints like the rheum that gnars In the rasping hinge of the door that jars; A harsh, cracked throat like the old stone flue Where the swallows build the summer through;-- Shall a man, I say, with the spider sins That the long years spin in the outs and ins Of his soul, returning to see once more His boyhood’s home, where his life was poor With toil and tears and their fretfulness, But rich with health and the hopes that bless The unsoiled wealth of a vigorous youth; Shall he not take comfort and know the truth In its threadbare raiment of falsehood?--Yea! In his crumbled past he shall kneel and pray, Like a pilgrim come to the shrine again Of the homely saints that shall soothe his pain, And arise and depart made clean again! III Years of care can not efface Visions of the hills and trees Closing in its dam and race; Nor the mile-long memories Of the mill-stream’s lovely place. How the sunsets used to stain Mirrors of the waters lying Under eaves made dark with rain! Where the red-bird, westward flying, Lit to try its song again. Dingles, hills and woods, and springs, Where we came in calm and storm, Swinging in the grapevine swings, Wading where the rocks were warm, With our fishing-nets and strings. Here the road plunged down the hill, Under ash and chinquapin,-- Where the grasshoppers would drill Ears of silence with their din,-- To the willow-girdled mill. There the path beyond the ford Takes the woodside; just below Shallows that the lilies sword, Where the scarlet blossoms blow Of the trumpet-vine and gourd. Summer winds, that sink with heat, On the pelted waters winnow Moony petals that repeat Crescents, where the startled minnow Beats a glittering retreat. Summer winds that bear the scent Of the ironweed and mint, Weary with sweet freight and spent, On the deeper pools imprint Stumbling steps, whose ripples dent. Summer winds, that split the husk Of the peach and nectarine, Trail along the amber dusk Hazy skirts of gold and green, Spilling balms of dew and musk. Where with balls of bursting juice Summer sees the red wild-plum Strew the gravel; ripened loose, Autumn hears the pawpaw drum Plumpness on the rocks that bruise: There we found the water-beech, One forgotten August noon, With a hornet-nest in reach,-- Like a fairyland balloon, Full of bustling fairy speech. Some invasion, sure, it was; For we heard the captains scold; Waspish cavalry a-buzz,-- Troopers uniformed in gold, Sable-slashed,--to charge on us. Could I find the sedgy angle, Where the dragon-flies would turn Slender flittings into spangle On the sunlight? or would burn-- Where the berries made a tangle-- Sparkling green and brassy blue; Rendezvousing, by the stream, Bands of elf-banditti, who, Brigands of the bloom and beam, Drunken were with honey-dew. Could I find the pond that lay Where vermilion blossoms showered Fragrance down the daisied way? That the sassafras embowered With the spice of early May? Could I find it--should I seek-- The old mill? Its weather-beaten Wheel and gable by the creek? With its warping roof; worm-eaten, Dusty rafters worn and weak. Where old shadows haunt old places, Loft and hopper, stair and bin; Ghostly with the dust that laces Webs that usher phantoms in, Wistful with remembered faces. While the frogs’ grave litanies Drowse in far-off antiphone, Supplicating, till the eyes Of dead friendships, long alone In the dusky corners,--rise. Moonbeams? or the twinkling tip Of a star? or, in the darkling Twilight, fireflies? there that dip-- As if Night a myriad sparkling Jewels from her hands let slip. Where, I dream, my youth still crosses, With a corn-sack for the meal, Through the sprinkled ferns and mosses, To the gray mill’s lichened wheel, Where the water drips and tosses. ENCHANTMENT The deep seclusion of this forest path,-- O’er which the green boughs weave a canopy; Along which bluet and anemone Spread a dim carpet; where the Twilight hath Her dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath, Wood-fragrance roams,--has so enchanted me, That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be Some Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath: Has so enspelled me with tradition’s dreams, That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows, And every bird that flutters wings of tan, Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan. IN THE FOREST One well might deem, among these miles of woods, Such were the Forests of the Holy Grail,-- Brocéliand and Dean: where, clothed in mail, The Knights of Arthur rode, and all the broods Of legend laired.--And, where no sound intrudes Upon the ear, except the glimmering wail Of some far bird; or, in some flowery swale, A brook that murmurs to the solitudes, Might think he hears the laugh of Vivien Blent with the moan of Merlin, muttering bound By his own magic to one stony spot: And, in the cloud that looms above the glen,-- In which the sun burns like the Table Round,-- Might dream he sees the towers of Camelot. CAN SUCH THINGS BE Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yet Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom, I listened--dead within a mighty room Of some old palace where great casements let Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom, The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret. And then, it seemed, along a corridor, A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came, Hurrying, yet slow.... I thought long centuries Passed ere she entered--she, I loved of yore, For whom I died, who wildly wailed my name And bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes. KNIGHT-ERRANT Onward he gallops through enchanted gloom.-- The phantoms of the forest, dark and dim, And shadows of vast death environ him-- Onward he spurs victorious over doom. Before his eyes that love’s far fires illume-- Where courage sits, impregnable and grim-- The form and features of _her_ beauty swim, Beckoning him on with looks that fears consume. The thought of her distress, her lips to kiss, Mails him in triple might; and so at last To Lust’s huge keep he comes; its giant wall, Wild-towering, frowning from the precipice: And through its gate, borne like a bugle-blast, O’er night and hell he thunders to his all. THE ARTIST In story books, when I was very young, I knew her first, one of the Fairy Race; And then it was her picture took its place, Framed round with love’s deep gold, and draped and hung High in my heart’s red room: no song was sung, No tale of passion told, I did not grace With her associated form and face, And intimated charm of touch and tongue. As years went on she grew to more and more, Until each thing, symbolic to my heart Of beauty,--such as honor, truth, and fame,-- Within the studio of my soul’s thought wore Her lineaments, whom I, with all my art, Strove to embody and to give a name. POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY Out of the past the dim leaves spake to me The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet Hyblæan bees seemed swarming my retreat Around the reedy well of Poesy. I closed the book. Then, knee to neighbor knee, Sat with the soul of Plato, to repeat Doctrines, till mine seemed some Socratic seat High on the summit of Philosophy. Around the wave of one Religion taught Her first rude children. From the stars that burned Above the mountained ether, Science learned The first vague lessons of the work she wrought. Daughters of God, in whom we still behold The Age of Iron and the Age of Gold. “QUO VADIS” It is as if imperial trumpets broke Again the silence on War’s iron height; And Cæsar’s armored legions marched to fight, While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke, Blazed like an awful sunset. At a stroke, Again I see the living torches light The horrible revels, and the bloated, white, Bayed brow of Nero smiling through the smoke: And here and there a little band of slaves Among dark ruins; and the form of Paul, Bearded and gaunt, expounding still the Word: And towards the North the tottering architraves Of empire; and, wild-waving over all, The flaming figure of a Gothic sword. TO A CRITIC R. H. S. Song hath a catalogue of lovely things Thy kind hath oft defiled,--whose spite misleads The world too often!--where the poet reads, As in a fable, of old envyings, Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings, Or kill it with their cawings: thorns and weeds, Such as thyself, ’midst which the wind sows seeds Of flow’rs, these crush before one blossom swings. But here and there the wisdom of a School Unknown to these hath often written down “Fame” in white ink the future hath turned brown; When every beauty, heaped with ridicule, In their ignoble prose, proved their renown, Making each famous--as an ass or fool. QUATRAINS I _Poetry_ Who hath beheld the goddess face to face, Blind with her beauty, all his days shall go Climbing lone mountains towards her temple’s place, Weighed with Song’s sweet, inexorable woe. II _The Unimaginative_ Each form of beauty’s but the new disguise Of thoughts more beautiful than forms can be; Sceptics, who search with unanointed eyes, Never the Earth’s wild Fairy-dance shall see. III _Music_ God-born before the Sons of God, she hurled, With awful symphonies of flood and fire, God’s name on rocking chaos--world by world Flamed as the universe rolled from her lyre. IV _The Three Elements_ They come as couriers of Heaven: their feet Sonorous-sandaled with majestic awe; In raiment of swift foam and wind and heat, Blowing the trumpets of God’s wrath and law. V _Rome_ Above the Circus of the World she sat, Beautiful and base, a harlot crowned with pride: Fierce Nations, upon whom she sneered and spat, Shrieked at her feet and for her pastime died. VI _On Reading the Life of Haroun er Reshid_ Down all the lanterned Bagdad of our youth He steals, with golden justice for the poor: Within his palace--you shall know the truth!-- A blood-smeared headsman hides behind each door. VII _Mnemosyne_ In classic beauty, cold, immaculate, A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands, Upon her brow deep-chiselled love and hate, That sorrow o’er dead roses in her hands. VIII _Beauty_ High as a star, yet lowly as a flower, Unknown she takes her unassuming place At Earth’s proud masquerade--the appointed hour Strikes, and, behold! the marvel of her face. IX _The Stars_ These--the bright symbols of man’s hope and fame, In which he reads his blessing or his curse-- Are syllables with which God speaks His name In the vast utterance of the universe. X _Echo_ Dweller in hollow places, hills and rocks, Daughter of Silence and old Solitude, Tip-toe she stands within her cave or wood, Her only life the noises that she mocks. THE DREAMER Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers, And mark the loafing sunlight’s lazy laugh; Or, on each season, spell the epitaph Of its dead months repeated in their flowers; Or list the music of the strolling showers, Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff, Or read the day’s delivered monograph Through all the chapters of its dædal hours. Still with the same child-faith and child regard He looks on Nature, hearing, at her heart, The Beautiful beat out the time and place, Through which no lesson of this life is hard, No struggle vain of science or of art, That dies with failure written on its face. WINTER The flute, whence Summer’s dreamy finger-tips Drew music,--ripening the cramped kernels in The burly chestnut and the chinquapin, Red-rounding-out the oval haws and hips,-- Now Winter crushes to his stormy lips, And surly songs whistle around his chin; Now the wild days and wilder nights begin When, at the eaves, the lengthening icicle drips. Thy songs, O Summer, are not lost so soon! Still dwells a memory in thy hollow flute, Which unto Winter’s masculine airs doth give Thy own creative qualities of tune, Through which we see each bough bend white with fruit, Each branch with bloom, in snow commemorative. MID-WINTER All day the clouds hung ashen with the cold; And through the snow the muffled waters fell; The day seemed drowned in grief too deep to tell, Like some old hermit whose last bead is told. At eve the wind woke, and the snow clouds rolled Aside to leave the fierce sky visible; Harsh as an iron landscape of wan Hell The dark hills hung framed in with gloomy gold. And then, towards night, the wind seemed some one at My window, wailing: now a little child Crying outside my door; and now the long Howl of some starved beast down the flue.--I sat And knew ’twas Winter with his madman song Of miseries on which he stared and smiled. SPRING First came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips; A pursuivant who heralded a prince: And dawn put on her livery of tints, And dusk bound gold about her hair and hips: And, all in silver mail, the sunlight came, A knight, who bade the winter let him pass; And freed imprisoned beauty, naked as The Court of Love, in all her wildflower shame. And so she came, in breeze-borne loveliness, Across the hills; and heav’n bent down to bless: Above her head the birds were as a choir; And at her feet, like some strong worshiper, The shouting water pæan’d praise of her, Who, with blue eyes, set the wild world on fire. TRANSFORMATION It is the time when, by the forest falls, The touch-me-nots hang faery folly-caps; When ferns and flowers fill the lichened laps Of rocks with color, rich as orient shawls: And in my heart I hear a voice that calls Me woodward, where the hamadryad wraps Her limbs in bark, and, bubbling in the saps, Sings the sweet Greek of Pan’s old madrigals: There is a gleam that lures me up the stream-- A Naiad swimming with wet limbs of light? Perfume that leads me on from dream to dream-- An oread’s footprints flowering into flight? And, lo! meseems I am a Faun again, One with the myths that I pursue in vain. RESPONSE There is a music of immaculate love, That beats within the virginal veins of Spring,-- And trillium blossoms, (like the stars that cling To fairies’ wands;) and, strung on sprays above, White-hearts and mandrake blooms, (that look enough Like the elves’ washing--white with laundering Of May-moon dews;) and all pale-opening Wildflowers of the woods are born thereof. There is no sod Spring’s white foot brushes but Must feel the music that vibrates within, And thrill to the communicated touch Responsive harmonies, that must unshut The heart of Beauty for Song’s concrete kin, Emotions--that are flowers--born of such. THE SWASHBUCKLER Squat-nosed and broad, of big and pompous port; A tavern visage, apoplexy haunts, All pimple-puffed: the Falstaff-like resort Of fat debauchery, whose veined cheek flaunts A flabby purple: rusty-spurred he stands In rakehell boots and belt, and hanger that Claps when, with greasy gauntlets on his hands, He swaggers past in cloak and slouch-plumed hat. Aggression marches armies in his words; And in his oaths great deeds ride cap-à-pie; His looks, his gestures breathe the breath of swords; And in his carriage camp all wars to be:-- With him, of battles there shall be no lack While buxom wenches are and stoops of sack. SIMULACRA Dark in the west the sunset’s sombre wrack Unrolled vast walls the rams of war had split, Along whose battlements the battle lit Tempestuous beacons; and, with gates hurled back, A mighty city, red with ruin and sack, Through burning breaches, crumbling bit by bit, Showed where the God of Slaughter seemed to sit With Conflagration glaring at each crack.-- Who knows? perhaps as sleep unto us makes Our dreams as real as our waking seems With recollections time can not destroy, So in the mind of Nature now awakes, Haply, some wilder memory, and she dreams The stormy story of the fall of Troy. THE BLUEBIRD From morn till noon upon the window-pane The tempest tapped with rainy finger-nails, And all the afternoon the blustering gales Beat at the door with furious feet of rain. The rose, near which the lily’s bloom lay slain, Like some red wound dripped by the garden rails, On which the sullen slug left silvery trails-- It seemed the sun would never shine again. Then in the drench, long, loud, and clarion-clear,-- A skyey herald tabarded in blue,-- A bluebird warbled ... and at once a bow Was bent in heaven, and I seemed to hear God’s sapphire spaces crystallizing through The strata’d clouds in azure tremolo. CAVERNS _Written of Colossal Cave, Kentucky._ Aisles and abysses; leagues, no man explores, Of rock that labyrinths and night that drips; Where everlasting silence broods, with lips Of adamant, o’er earthquake-builded floors. Where forms, such as the Dæmon-World adores, Laborious water carves; whence echo slips Wild-tongued o’er pools where petrifaction strips Her breasts of crystal from which crystal pours.-- Here where primordial fear, the Gorgon, sits, Staring all life to stone in ghastly mirth, I seem to tread, with awe no tongue can tell,-- Beneath vast domes, by torrent-tortured pits, ’Mid wrecks terrific of the ruined Earth,-- An ancient causeway of forgotten Hell. A VOICE ON THE WIND PROEM _Oh, for a soul that fulfills Music like that of a bird! Thrilling with rapture the hills, Heedless if any one heard._ _Or, like the flower that blooms Lone in the midst of the trees, Filling the woods with perfumes, Careless if any one sees._ _Or, like the wandering wind, Over the meadows that swings, Bringing wild sweets to mankind, Knowing not that which it brings._ _Oh, for a way to impart Beauty, no matter how hard! Like unto Nature, whose art Never once dreams of reward._ A VOICE ON THE WIND I She walks with the wind on the windy height When the rocks are loud and the waves are white, And all night long she calls through the night, “O my children, come home!” Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud, Tosses around her like a shroud, While over the deep her voice rings loud,-- “O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!” II Who is she who wanders alone, When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown? Who walks all night and makes her moan, “O my children, come home!” Whose face is raised to the blinding gale; Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale, While over the world goes by her wail,-- “O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!” III She walks with the wind in the windy wood; The dark rain drips from her hair and hood, And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued, “O my children, come home!” Where the trees loom gaunt and the rocks stretch drear, The owl and the fox crouch back in fear, As wild through the wood her voice they hear,-- “O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!” IV Who is she who shudders by When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly? Who walks all night with her wailing cry, “O my children, come home!” Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue, With wan feet wounded and hands wild-wrung, Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung,-- “O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!” V ’Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees, The mother of Death and of Mysteries, Who cries on the wind all night to these, “O my children, come home!” The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain, Calling her children home again, Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain,-- “O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!” THE LAND OF HEARTS MADE WHOLE Do you know the way that goes Over fields of rue and rose,-- Warm of scent and hot of hue, Roofed with heaven’s bluest blue,-- To the Vale of Dreams Come True? Do you know the path that twines, Banked with elder bosks and vines, Under boughs that shade a stream, Hurrying, crystal as a gleam, To the Hills of Love a-Dream? Tell me, tell me, have you gone Through the fields and woods of dawn, Meadowlands and trees that roll, Great of grass and huge of bole, To the Land of Hearts Made Whole? On the way, among the fields, Poppies lift vermilion shields, In whose hearts the golden Noon, Murmuring her drowsy tune, Rocks the sleepy bees that croon. On the way, amid the woods, Mandrakes muster multitudes, ’Mid whose blossoms, white as tusk, Glides the glimmering Forest-Dusk, With her moths of fluttering musk. Here you hear the stealthy stir Of shy lives of hoof and fur; Harmless things that hide and peer, Hearts that sucked the milk of fear-- Fox and rabbit, squirrel and deer. Here you see the mossy flight Of faint forms that love the night-- Whippoorwill and owlet-things, Whose weird call before you brings Wonder-worlds of happenings. Now in sunlight, now in shade, Water, like a brandished blade, Foaming forward, wild of flight, Startles, then arrests the sight, Whirling steely loops of light. Through the tree-tops, down the vale, Breezes roam, and leave a trail Of cool music that the birds,-- Following in happy herds,-- Gather up in twittering words. Blossoms, frail and manifold, Shower the way with pearl and gold; Blurs, that seem the darling print Of the Springtime’s feet, or glint Of her twinkling gown’s torn tint. There the Myths of old endure: Dreams that are the world-soul’s cure; Things that have no place or play In the facts of Everyday Round your presence smile and sway. Suddenly your eyes may see, Stepping softly from a tree,-- Slim of form and wet with dew,-- The brown Dryad; lips the hue Of a berry bit into. You may mark the Naiad rise From her pool’s reflected skies; In her gaze the heaven that dreams, Starred, in twilight-haunted streams, Mixed with water’s grayer gleams. You may see the laurel’s girth, Big with bloom, give fragrant birth To the Oread whose hair,-- Musk and darkness, light and air,-- Fills the hush with wonder there. You may mark the rocks divide, And the Faun before you glide, Piping on a magic reed, Sowing many a music-seed, From which bloom and mushroom bead. Of the rain and sunlight born, Young of beard and young of horn, You may see the Satyr lie, With a very knowing eye, Teaching fledgeling birds to fly. These shall cheer and follow you Through the Vale of Dreams Come True: Wind-like voices, leaf-like feet; Forms of mist and hazy heat, In whose pulses sunbeams beat. Lo! you tread enchanted ground! From the hollows all around Elf and spirit, gnome and fay, Guide your feet along the way Till the dewy close of day. Then beside you, jet on jet, Emerald-hued and violet, Flickering, floats a firefly light, Aye to guide your steps aright From the valley to the height. Steep the way is; when at last, Vale and wood and stream are passed, From the heights you shall behold Panther heavens of spotted gold Tiger-tawny deeps unfold. You shall see on stocks and stones Sunset’s bell-deep color tones Fallen; and the valleys filled With dusk’s purple music, spilled On the silence, rapture-thrilled. Then, as answering bell greets bell, Night ring in her miracle Of the doméd dark, o’er-rolled, Note on note, with starlight cold, ’Twixt the moon’s broad peal of gold. On the hill-top Love-a-Dream Shows you then her window-gleam; Brings you home and folds your soul In the peace of vale and knoll, In the Land of Hearts Made Whole. THE WIND OF SUMMER From the hills and far away All the long, warm summer day Comes the Wind and seems to say: “Come, oh, come! and let us go Where the meadows bend and blow, Waving with the white-tops’ snow. “’Neath the hyssop-colored sky ’Mid the meadows we will lie Watching the white clouds roll by; “While your hair my hands shall press With a cooling tenderness Till your grief grows less and less: “Come, oh, come! and let us roam Where the rock-cut waters comb Flowing crystal into foam. “Under trees whose trunks are brown, On the banks that violets crown, We will watch the fish flash down; “While my voice your ear shall soothe With a whisper soft and smooth Till your care shall wax uncouth. “Come! where forests, line on line,-- Armies of the oak and pine,-- Scale the hills and shout and shine. “We will wander, hand in hand, Ways where tall the toadstools stand, Mile-stones white of Fairyland. “While your eyes my lips shall kiss, Dewy as a wild-rose is, Till they gaze on naught but bliss. “On the meadows you will hear, Leaning low your spirit ear, Cautious footsteps drawing near. “You will deem it but a bee, Murmuring soft and sleepily, Till your inner sight shall see “’Tis a presence passing slow, All its shining hair ablow, Through the white-tops’ tossing snow. “By the waters, if you will, And your inmost soul is still, Melody your ears shall fill. “You will deem it but the stream Rippling onward in a dream, Till upon your gaze shall gleam “Arm of spray and throat of foam-- ’Tis a spirit there a-roam Where the radiant waters comb. “In the forest, if you heed, You shall hear a magic reed Sow sweet notes like silver seed. “You will deem your ears have heard Stir of tree or song of bird, Till your startled eyes are blurred “By a vision, instant seen, Naked gold and naked green, Glimmering the boughs between. “Follow me! and you shall see Wonder-worlds of mystery That are only known to me!” Thus outside my city door Speaks the Wind its wildwood lore, Speaks, and lo! I go once more. THE WIND OF WINTER The Winter Wind, the wind of death, Who knocked upon my door, Now through the key-hole entereth, Invisible and hoar: He breathes around his icy breath And treads the flickering floor. I heard him, wandering in the night, Tap at my window pane, With ghostly fingers, snowy white, I heard him tug in vain, Until the shuddering candle-light Did cringe with fear and strain. The fire, awakened by his voice, Leapt up with frantic arms, Like some wild babe that greets, with noise, Its father home who storms, With rosy gestures that rejoice And crimson kiss that warms. Now in the hearth he sits and, drowned Among the ashes, blows; Or through the room goes stealing round On cautious-stepping toes, Deep-mantled in the drowsy sound Of night that sleets and snows. And oft, like some thin fairy-thing, The stormy hush amid, I hear his captive trebles ring Beneath the kettle’s lid; Or now a harp of elfland string In some dark cranny hid. Again I hear him, imp-like, whine, Cramped in the gusty flue; Or knotted in the resinous pine Raise goblin cry and hue, While through the smoke his eyeballs shine, A sooty red and blue. At last I hear him, nearing dawn, Take up his roaring broom, And sweep wild leaves from wood and lawn, And from the heavens the gloom, To show the gaunt world lying wan, And morn’s cold rose a-bloom. THE LEAF-CRICKET I Small twilight singer Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger Of dusk’s dim glimmer, How cool thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer Vibrate, soft-sighing, Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying. I stand and listen, And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten With rose and lily, Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly, Breathing around its cold and colorless breath, Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death. II I see thee quaintly Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly-- As thin as spangle Of cobwebbed rain--held up at airy angle; I hear thy tinkle, Thy fairy notes, the silvery stillness sprinkle; Investing wholly The moonlight with divinest melancholy: Until, in seeming, I see the Spirit of the Summer dreaming Amid her ripened orchards, apple-strewn, Her great, grave eyes fixed on the harvest-moon. III As dewdrops beady, As mist minute, thy notes ring low and reedy: The vaguest vapor Of melody, now near; now, like some taper Of sound, far fading-- Thou will-o’-wisp of music aye evading. Among the bowers, The fog-washed stalks of Autumn’s weeds and flowers, By hill and hollow, I hear thy murmur and in vain I follow-- Thou jack-o’-lantern voice, thou elfin cry, Thou dirge, that tellest Beauty she must die. IV And when the frantic Wild winds of Autumn with the dead leaves antic; And walnuts scatter The mire of lanes; and dropping acorns patter In grove and forest, Like some frail grief, with the rude blast thou warrest, Sending thy slender Far cry against the gale, that, rough, untender, Untouched of sorrow, Sweeps thee aside, where, haply, I to-morrow Shall find thee lying, tiny, cold and crushed, Thy weak wings folded and thy music hushed. THE OWLET I When dusk is drowned in drowsy dreams, And slow the hues of sunset die; When firefly and moth go by, And in still streams the new-moon gleams, A sickle in the sky: Then from the hills there comes a cry, The owlet’s cry: A shivering voice that sobs and screams, That, frightened, screams:-- “Who is it, who is it, who? Who rides through the dusk and dew, With a pair of horns, As thin as thorns, And face a bubble-blue? Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who?” II When night has dulled the lily’s white, And opened wide the moonflower’s eyes, When pale mists rise and veil the skies, And round the height in whispering flight The night wind sounds and sighs: Then in the woods again it cries, The owlet cries: A shivering voice that calls in fright, In maundering fright:-- “Who is it, who is it, who? Who walks with a shuffling shoe, ’Mid the gusty trees, With a face none sees, And a form as ghostly too? Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who?” III When midnight leans a listening ear And tinkles on her insect lutes; When ’mid the roots the cricket flutes, And marsh and mere, now far, now near, A jack-o’-lantern foots: Then o’er the pool again it hoots, The owlet hoots: A voice that shivers as with fear, That cries in fear:-- “Who is it, who is it, who? Who creeps with his glow-worm crew Above the mire With a corpse-light fire, As only dead men do? Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who?” THE POET He stands above all worldly schism, And, gazing over life’s abysm, Beholds, within the starry range Of heaven, laws of death and change, That, through his soul’s prophetic prism, Are turned to rainbows wild and strange. Through nature is his hope made surer Of that ideal, his allurer, By whom his life is upward drawn To mount pale pinnacles of dawn, ’Mid which all that is fairer, purer Of love and lore it comes upon. An alkahest, that makes gold metal Of dross, his mind is--where one petal Of one wild-rose will well outweigh The piled-up facts of every-day-- Where commonplaces, there that settle, Are changed to things of heavenly ray. He climbs by steps of stars and flowers, Companioned of the spirit Hours, And sets his feet in pastures where No merely mortal feet may fare; And higher than the stars he towers Though lowly as the flowers there. His comrades are his own high fancies And thoughts in which his soul romances; And every part of heaven or earth He visits, lo, assumes new worth; And touched with loftier traits and trances Reshines as with a lovelier birth. He is the play, also the player; The word that’s said, likewise the sayer; And in the books of heart and head There is no thing he has not read; Of time and tears he is the weigher, And mouthpiece ’twixt the quick and dead. He dies: but, mounting ever higher, Wings Phœnix-like from out his pyre Above our mortal day and night, Clothed on with sempiternal light; And raimented in thought’s fine fire Flames on in everlasting flight. Unseen, yet seen, on heights of visions, Above all praise and world derisions, His spirit and his deathless brood Of dreams fare on, a multitude, While on the pillar of great missions His name and place are granite-hewed. SUMMER NOONTIDE The slender snail clings to the leaf Gray on its silvered underside; And slowly, slowlier than the snail, with brief Bright steps, whose ripening touch foretells the sheaf, Her warm hands berry-dyed, Comes down the tanned Noontide. The pungent fragrance of the mint And pennyroyal drench her gown, That leaves long shreds of trumpet-blossom tint Among the thorns, and everywhere the glint Of gold and white and brown Her flowery steps waft down. The leaves, like hands with emerald veined, Along her way try their wild best To reach the jewel--whose hot hue was drained From some rich rose that all the June contained-- The butterfly, soft pressed Upon her sunny breast. Her shawl, the lace-like elder bloom, She hangs upon the hillside brake, Smelling of warmth and of her breast’s perfume, And, lying in the citron-colored gloom Beside the lilied lake, She stares the buds awake. Or, with a smile, through watery deeps She leads the oaring turtle’s legs; Or guides the crimson fin, that swims and sleeps, From pad to pad, from which the young frog leaps; And to its nest’s green eggs The reed-bird there that begs. Then ’mid the fields of unmown hay She shows the bees where sweets are found; And points the butterflies, at airy play, And dragon-flies, along the water-way, Where honeyed flowers abound For them to flicker round. Or where ripe apples pelt with gold Some barn--around which, coned with snow, The wild-potato blooms--she mounts its old Mossed roof, and through warped sides, the knots have holed, Lets her long glances glow Into the loft below. To show the mud-wasp at its cell Slenderly busy: swallows, too, Packing against a beam their nest’s clay shell; And crouching in the dark the owl as well With all her downy crew Of owlets gray of hue. These are her joys; and until dusk Lounging she walks where reapers reap, From sultry raiment shaking scents of musk, Rustling the corn within its silken husk, And driving down heav’n’s deep White herds of clouds like sheep. TO THE LOCUST Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reed-like breast, Makest meridian music, long and loud, Accentuating summer!--dost thy best To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon-- When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady-browed, Upon his sultry scythe--thou tangible tune Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies. Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes; Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills The land with death as sullenly he takes Downward his dusty way: ’midst woods and fields At every pool his burning thirst he slakes; No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields A spring from him; no creek evades his eye; He needs but look and they are withered dry. Thou singest, and thy song is as a spell Of somnolence to charm the land with sleep; A thorn of sound that pierces dale and dell, Diffusing slumber over vale and steep. Sleepy the forest, nodding sleepy boughs; Sleepy the pastures with their sleepy sheep; Sleepy the creek where sleepily the cows Stand knee-deep, and the very heaven seems Sleepy and lost in undetermined dreams. Art thou a rattle that Monotony, Summer’s dull nurse, old sister of slow Time, Shakes for Day’s peevish pleasure, who in glee Takes its discordant music for sweet rhyme? Or oboe that the Summer Noontide plays, Sitting with Ripeness ’neath the orchard-tree, Trying repeatedly the same shrill phrase, Until the musky peach with weariness Drops, and the hum of murmuring bees grows less? JULY Now ’tis the time when, tall, The long blue torches of the bellflower gleam Among the trees; and, by the wooded stream, In many a fragrant ball, Blooms of the button-bush fall. Let us go forth and seek Woods where the wild plums redden and the beech Plumps its stout burrs; and, swelling, just in reach, The pawpaw, emerald-sleek, Ripens along the creek. Now ’tis the time when ways Of glimmering green flaunt white the giant plumes Of the black-cohosh; and through bramble glooms,-- A blur of orange rays,-- The butterfly-blossoms blaze. Let us go forth and hear The spiral music that the locusts beat, And that small spray of sound, so grassy sweet, Dear to a country ear, The cricket’s summer cheer. Now golden celandine Is hairy hung with silvery sacs of seeds, And bugled o’er with freckled gold, like beads, Beneath the fox-grape vine, The jewel-weed’s blossoms shine. Let us go forth and see The dragon-and the butterfly, like gems, Spangling the sunbeams; and the clover stems, Weighed down with many a bee, Nodding mellifluously. Now morns are full of song; The cat-bird and the red-bird and the jay Upon the hilltops rouse the ruddy day, Who, dewy, blithe, and strong, Lures their wild wings along. Now noons are full of dreams; The clouds of heaven and the wandering breeze Follow a vision; and the flowers and trees, The hills and fields and streams, Are lapped in mystic gleams. The nights are full of love; The stars and moon take up the golden tale Of the sunk sun, and passionate and pale, Mixing their fires above, Grow eloquent thereof. Such days are like a sigh That beauty heaves from a full heart of bliss: Such nights are like the sweetness of a kiss On lips that half deny-- The warm lips of July. EVENING ON THE FARM From out the hills where twilight stands, Above the shadowy pasture-lands, With strained and strident cry, Beneath pale skies that sunset bands, The bull-bats fly. A cloud hangs over, strange of shape, And, colored like the half-ripe grape, Seems some uneven stain On heaven’s azure, thin as crape, And blue as rain. By ways, that sunset’s sardonyx O’erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks, Through which the cattle came, The mullein stalks seem giant wicks Of downy flame. From woods no glimmer enters in, Above the streams that, wandering, win From out the violet hills, Those haunters of the dusk begin, The whippoorwills. Adown the dark the firefly marks Its flight in golden-emerald sparks; And, loosened from his chain, The shaggy watch-dog bounds and barks, And barks again. Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay; And now an owlet, far away, Cries twice or thrice, “T-o-o-w-h-o-o”; And cool dim moths of mottled gray Flit through the dew. The silence sounds its frog-bassoon, Where, on the woodland creek’s lagoon, Pale as a ghostly girl Lost ’mid the trees, looks down the moon With face of pearl. Within the shed where logs, late hewed, Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood Make blurs of white and brown, The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood Of teetering down. The clattering guineas in the tree Din for a time; and quietly The hen-house, near the fence, Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry Of cocks and hens. A cow-bell tinkles by the rails, Where, streaming white in foaming pails, Milk makes an uddery sound; While overhead the black bat trails Around and round. The night is still. The slow cows chew A drowsy cud. The bird that flew And sang is in its nest. It is the time of falling dew, Of dreams and rest. The brown bees sleep; and round the walk, The garden path, from stalk to stalk The bungling beetle booms, Where two soft shadows stand and talk Among the blooms. The stars are thick: the light is dead That dyed the west: and Drowsyhead, Tuning his cricket-pipe, Nods, and some apple, round and red, Drops over-ripe. Now down the road, that shambles by, A window, shining like an eye Through climbing rose and gourd, Shows where Toil sups and these things lie-- His heart and hoard. UNDER THE HUNTER’S MOON White from her chrysalis of cloud, The moth-like moon swings upward through the night; And all the bee-like stars that crowd Heav’n’s hollow hive wane in her silvery light. Along the distance folds of mist Hang frost-pale, ridging all the dark with gray; Tinting the trees with amethyst, Touching with pearl and purple every spray. All night the stealthy frost and fog Conspire to slay the rich-robed weeds and flowers; To strip the woods of wealth, and clog With piled-up gold of leaves the creek that cowers. I seem to see their Spirits stand, Molded of moonlight, faint of form and face, Now reaching high a chilly hand To pluck some walnut from its spicy place: Now with fine fingers, phantom-cold, Splitting the wahoo’s pods of rose, and thin The bittersweet’s globes of gold, To show the coal-red berries packed within: Now on frail threads of gossamer Stringing slim pearls of moisture; necklacing The flow’rs; and spreading cobweb fur, Crystalled with stardew, over everything; While ’neath the moon, with moon-white feet, They wander and a moon-chill music draw From thin leaf-cricket flutes--the sweet, Dim dirge of Autumn dying in the shaw. IN THE LANE When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock, And the brown bee drones i’ the rose, And the west is a red-streaked four-o’-clock, And summer is near its close-- It’s--Oh, for the gate and the locust lane And dusk and dew and home again! When the katydid sings and the cricket cries, And ghosts of the mists ascend, And the evening-star is a lamp i’ the skies, And summer is near its end-- It’s--Oh, for the fence and the leafy lane, And the twilight peace and the tryst again! When the owlet hoots in the dogwood-tree, That leans to the rippling Run, And the wind is a wildwood melody, And summer is almost done-- It’s--Oh, for the bridge and the bramble lane, And the fragrant hush and her hands again! When fields smell moist with the dewy hay, And woods are cool and wan, And a path for dreams is the Milky-way, And summer is nearly gone-- It’s--Oh, for the rock and the woodland lane, And the silence and stars and her lips again! When the weight of the apples breaks down the limbs, And musk-melons split with sweet, And the moon’s broad boat in the heaven swims, And summer has spent its heat-- It’s--Oh, for the lane, the trysting lane, And the deep-mooned night and her love again! EPIPHANY There is nothing that eases my heart so much As the wind that blows from the great green hills; ’Tis a hand of balsam whose healing touch Unburdens my bosom of ills. There is nothing that maketh my soul to rejoice Like the sunset flaming without a flaw: ’Tis a burning bush whence God’s own voice Addresses my spirit with awe. There is nothing that hallows my mind, meseems, Like the night with its moon and its starry slope: ’Tis a mystical lily whose golden gleams Fulfill my being with hope. There is nothing, no, nothing, we see and feel, That speaks to our souls some beautiful thought, That was not created to help us and heal Our lives that are overwrought. LIFE I _Pessimist_ There is never a thing we dream or do But was dreamed and done in the ages gone; Everything’s old; there is nothing that’s new, And so it will be while the world goes on. The thoughts we think have been thought before; The deeds we do have long been done; We pride ourselves on our love and lore And both are as old as the moon and sun. We strive and struggle and swink and sweat, And the end for each is one and the same; Time and the sun and the frost and wet Will wear from its pillar the greatest name. No answer comes for our prayer or curse, No word replies though we shriek in air; Ever the taciturn universe Stretches unchanged for our curse or prayer. With our mind’s small light in the dark we crawl,-- Glow-worm glimmers that creep about,-- Till the Power that made us, over us all Poises His foot and treads us out. Unasked He fashions us out of clay, A little water, a little dust, And then in our holes He thrusts us away, With never a word, to rot and rust. ’Tis a sorry play with a sorry plot, This life of hate and of lust and pain, Where we play our parts and are soon forgot, And all that we do is done in vain. II _Optimist_ There is never a dream but it shall come true, And never a deed but was wrought by plan; And life is filled with the strange and new, And ever has been since the world began. As mind develops and soul matures These two shall parent Earth’s mightier acts; Love is a fact, and ’tis love endures ‘Though the world make wreck of all other facts. Through thought alone shall our age obtain Above all ages gone before; The tribes of sloth, of brawn, not brain, Are the tribes that perish, are known no more. Within ourselves is a voice of Awe, And a hand that points to balanced Scales; The one is Love, and the other, Law, And their presence alone it is avails. For every shadow about our way There is a glory of moon and sun; But the hope within us hath more of ray Than the light of the sun and the moon made one. Behind all being a purpose lies, Undeviating as God hath willed; And he alone it is who dies, Who leaves that purpose unfulfilled. Life is an epic the Master sings, Whose theme is Man, and whose music, Soul, Where each is a word in the Song of Things, That shall roll on while the ages roll. MEETING IN THE WOODS Through ferns and moss the path wound to A hollow where the touch-me-nots Swung horns of honey filled with dew; And where--like footprints--violets blue And bluets made sweet sapphire blots, ’Twas there that she had passed I knew. The grass, the very wilderness On either side, breathed rapture of Her passage: ’twas her hand or dress That touched some tree--a slight caress-- That made the wood-birds sing above; Her step that woke the flowers, I guess. I hurried, till across my way, Foam-footed, bounding through the wood, A brook, like some wild child at play, Went laughing loud its roundelay; And there upon its bank she stood, A sunbeam clad in forest gray. And when she saw me, all her face Bloomed like a wild-rose by the stream; And to my breast a moment’s space I gathered her; and all the place Seemed conscious of some happy dream Come true to add to Earth its grace: Some union, that was Heav’n’s intent-- For which God made the world--the bliss, The love, that raised her innocent Young face to mine that, smiling, bent And sealed her first words with a kiss-- As Love might close his testament. ROSE AND RUE Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean, Do you remember where The willows used to screen The water flowing fair? The mill-stream’s banks of green Where first our love begun, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one? Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean, Do you remember how From th’ old bridge we would lean-- The bridge that’s broken now-- To watch the minnows sheen Through ripples of the Run, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one? Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean, Do you remember, too, The old beech-tree, between Whose roots the windflowers grew? Where oft we sat at E’en, When stars were few or none, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one? Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean, The bark is grown around The names I cut therein, And the true-love knot that bound; The love-knot, clear and clean, I carved when our love begun, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one. Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean, The roof of the farm-house gray Is fallen and mossy green; Its rafters rot away: The old path scarce is seen Where oft our feet would run, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one. Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean, Through each old tree and bough The lone winds cry and keen-- The place is haunted now With ghosts of what-has-been, And dreams of love-long-done, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one. Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean, There, in your world of wealth, There, where you move a queen, Broken in heart and health, Does there ever rise a scene Of days, your thought would shun, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one? Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean, Here, ’mid the rose and rue, Would God that your grave were green, And I were lying, too! Here on the hill, I mean, Where oft we laughed in the sun, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one. A MAID WHO DIED OLD Frail, shrunken face, so pinched and worn, That life has carved with care and doubt! So weary waiting, night and morn, For that which never came about! Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn, In which God’s light at last is out. Gray hair, that lies so thin and prim On either side the sunken brows! And soldered eyes, so deep and dim, No word of man could now arouse! And hollow hands, so virgin slim, Forever clasped in silent vows! Poor breasts! that God designed for love, For baby lips to kiss and press! That never felt, yet dreamed thereof, The human touch, the child caress-- That lie like shriveled blooms above The heart’s long-perished happiness. O withered body, Nature gave For purposes of death and birth, That never knew, and could but crave Those things perhaps that make life worth-- Rest now, alas! within the grave, Sad shell that served no end of Earth. COMMUNICANTS Who knows the things they dream, alas! Or feel, who lie beneath the ground? Perhaps the flowers, the leaves and grass That close them round. In spring the violets may spell The moods of them we know not of; Or lilies sweetly syllable Their thoughts of love. Haply, in summer, dew and scent Of all they feel may be a part; Each red rose be the testament Of some rich heart. The winds of fall be utterance, Perhaps, of saddest things they say; Wild leaves may word some dead romance In some dim way. In winter all their sleep profound Through frost may speak to grass and stream, Stilling them with the silent sound Of all they dream. THE DEAD DAY The west builds high a sepulchre Of cloudy granite and of gold, Where twilight’s priestly hours inter The day like some great king of old. A censer, rimmed with silver fire, The new moon swings above his tomb; While, organ-stops of God’s own choir, Star after star throbs in the gloom. And night draws near, the sadly sweet-- A nun whose face is calm and fair-- And kneeling at the dead day’s feet Her soul goes up in silent prayer. In prayer, we feel through dewy gleam And flowery fragrance, and--above All Earth--the ecstasy and dream That haunt the mystic heart of love. ALLUREMENT Across the world she sends me word, From gardens fair as Falerina’s, Now by a blossom, now a bird, To come to her, who long has lured With magic sweeter than Alcina’s. I know not what her word may mean, I know not what may mean the voices She sends as messengers unseen, That through the hush around me lean, And whisper till my heart rejoices. Soon must I go. I must away. Must take the path that is appointed. God grant I reach her realm some day, Where by her love, as by a ray, My soul shall be anointed. AUGUST I Clad on with glowing beauty and the peace, Benign, of calm maturity, she stands Among her meadows and her orchard-lands, And on her mellowing gardens and her trees, Out of the ripe abundance of her hands Bestows increase And fruitfulness, as, wrapped in sunny ease, Blue-eyed and blonde she goes, Upon her bosom Summer’s richest rose. II And he who follows where her footsteps lead, By hill and rock, by forest-side and stream, May glimpse the glory of her visible dream, In flower and fruit, in rounded nut and seed: She, in whose path the very shadows gleam; Whose humblest weed Seems lovelier than June’s loveliest flower, indeed, And sweeter to the smell Than April’s self within a rainy dell. III Hers is a sumptuous simplicity Within the fair Republic of her flowers, Where you may see her standing hours on hours, Breast-deep in gold, soft-holding up a bee To her hushed ear; or sitting under bowers Of greenery, A butterfly a-tilt upon her knee; Or lounging on her hip, Dancing a cricket on her finger-tip. IV Ay, let me breathe hot scents that tell of you: The hoary catnip and the meadow-mint, On which the honor of your touch doth print Itself as odor. Let me drink the hue Of ironweed and mist-flower here that hint With purple and blue, The rapture that your presence doth imbue Their inmost essence with, Immortal, though as transient as a myth. V Yea, let me feed on sounds that still assure Me where you hide: the brooks’, whose happy din Tells where, the deep, retired woods within, Disrobed, you bathe; the birds’, whose drowsy lure Tells where you slumber, your warm, nestling chin Soft on the pure, Pink cushion of your palm.... What better cure For care and memory’s ache Than to behold you thus, and watch you wake. THE BUSH-SPARROW I Ere wild-haws, looming in the glooms, Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms; And in the whistling hollow there The red-bud bends, as brown and bare As buxom Roxy’s up-stripped arm; From some gray hickory or larch, Sighed o’er the sodden meads of March, The sad heart thrills and reddens warm To hear you braving the rough storm, Frail courier of green-gathering powers; Rebelling sap in trees and flowers; Love’s minister come heralding-- O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers! O brown-red pursuivant of Spring! II “Moan,” sob the woodland waters still Down bloomless ledges of the hill; And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang Sharp beaks and talons of the wind: Black scowl the forests, and unkind The far fields as the near: while song Seems murdered and all beauty wrong. One weak frog only in the thaw Of spawny pools wakes cold and raw, Expires a melancholy bass And stops as if bewildered: then Along the frowning wood again, Flung in the thin wind’s vulture face, From woolly tassels of the proud, Red-bannered maples, long and loud, “The Spring is come! is here! her Grace! her Grace! III “Her Grace, the Spring! her Grace! her Grace! Climbs, beautiful and sunny browed, Up, up the kindling hills and wakes Blue berries in the berry brakes: With fragrant flakes, that blow and bleach, Deep-powders smothered quince and peach: Eyes dogwoods with a thousand eyes: Teaches each sod how to be wise With twenty wildflowers to one weed, And kisses germs that they may seed. In purest purple and sweet white Treads up the happier hills of light, Bloom-, cloudy-borne, song in her hair And balm and beam of odorous air. Winds, her retainers; and the rains Her yeomen strong who sweep the plains: Her scarlet knights of dawn, and gold Of eve, her panoply unfold: Her herald tabarded behold! Awake to greet! prepare to sing! She comes, the darling Duchess, Spring!” QUIET A log-hut in the solitude, A clapboard roof to rest beneath! This side, the shadow-haunted wood; That side, the sunlight-haunted heath. At daybreak Morn will come to me In raiment of the white winds spun; Slim in her rosy hand the key That opes the gateway of the sun. Her smile will help my heart enough With love to labor all the day, And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough, With her smooth footprints, each a ray. At dusk a voice will call afar, A lone voice like the whippoorwill’s; And, on her shimmering brow one star, Night will descend the western hills. She at my door till dawn will stand, With gothic eyes, that, dark and deep, Are mirrors of a mystic land, Fantastic with the towns of sleep. MUSIC Thou, oh, thou! Thou of the chorded shell and golden plectrum, thou Of the dark eyes and pale pacific brow! Music, who by the plangent waves, Or in the echoing night of labyrinthine caves, Or on God’s mountains, lonely as the stars, Touchest reverberant bars Of immemorial sorrow and amaze;-- Keeping regret and memory awake, And all the immortal ache Of love that leans upon the past’s sweet days In retrospection!--now, oh, now, Interpreter and heart-physician, thou Who gazest on the heaven and the hell Of life, and singest each as well, Touch with thy all-mellifluous finger-tips Or thy melodious lips, This sickness named my soul, Making it whole As is an echo of a chord, Or some symphonic word, Or sweet vibrating sigh, That deep, resurgent, still doth rise and die On thy voluminous roll; Part of the beauty and the mystery That axles Earth with music; as a slave, Swinging it round and round on each sonorous pole, ’Mid spheric harmony, And choral majesty, And diapasoning of wind and wave; Speeding it on its far elliptic way ’Mid vasty anthemings of night and day.-- O cosmic cry Of two eternities, wherein we see The phantasms, Death and Life, At endless strife Above the silence of a monster grave. A DREAM SHAPE With moon-white hearts that held a gleam I gathered wildflowers in a dream, And shaped a woman, whose sweet blood Was odor of the wildwood bud. From dew, the starlight arrowed through, I wrought a woman’s eyes of blue; The lids that on her eyeballs lay Were rose-pale petals of the May. Out of a rosebud’s veins I drew The fragrant crimson beating through The languid lips of her, whose kiss Was as a poppy’s drowsiness. Out of the moonlight and the air I wrought the glory of her hair, That o’er her eyes’ blue heaven lay Like some gold cloud o’er dawn of day. [Illustration: My spirit saw her pass Page 432 _A Dream Shape_] I took the music of the breeze And water, whispering in the trees, And shaped the soul that breathed below A woman’s blossom breasts of snow. A shadow’s shadow in the glass Of sleep, my spirit saw her pass: And thinking of it now, meseems We only live within our dreams. For in that time she was to me More real than our reality; More real than Earth, more real than I-- The unreal things that pass and die. THE OLD BARN Low, swallow-swept and gray, Between the orchard and the spring, All its wide windows overflowing hay, And crannied doors a-swing, The old barn stands to-day. Deep in its hay the Leghorn hides A round white nest; and, humming soft On roof and rafter, or its log-rude sides, Black in the sun-shot loft, The building hornet glides. Along its corn-crib, cautiously As thieving fingers, skulks the rat; Or in warped stalls of fragrant timothy, Gnaws at some loosened slat, Or passes shadowy. A dream of drouth made audible Before its door, hot, harsh, and shrill All day the locust sings.... What other spell Shall hold it, lazier still Than the long day’s, now tell:-- Dusk and the cricket and the strain Of tree-toad and of frog; and stars That burn above the rich west’s ribbéd stain; And dropping pasture bars, And cowbells up the lane. Night and the moon and katydid, And leaf-lisp of the wind-touched boughs; And mazy shadows that the fireflies thrid; And sweet breath of the cows, And the lone owl here hid. THE WOOD WITCH There is a woodland witch who lies With bloom-bright limbs and beam-bright eyes, Among the water-flags that rank The slow brook’s heron-haunted bank. The dragonflies, in brass and blue, Are signs she works her sorcery through; Weird, wizard characters she weaves Her spells with under forest leaves,-- These wait her word, like imps, upon The gray flag-pods; their wings, of lawn And gauze; their bodies, gleaming green. While o’er the wet sand,--left between The running water and the still,-- In pansy hues and daffodil, The fancies that she doth devise Assume the forms of butterflies, Rich-colored.--And ’tis she you hear, Whose sleepy rune, hummed in the ear Of silence, bees and beetles purr, And the dry-droning locusts whirr; Till, where the wood is very lone, Vague monotone meets monotone, And Slumber is begot and born, A faery child beneath the thorn. There is no mortal who may scorn The witchery she spreads around Her dim demesne, wherein is bound The beauty of abandoned time, As some sweet thought ’twixt rhyme and rhyme. And through her spells you shall behold The blue turn gray, the gray turn gold Of hollow heaven; and the brown Of twilight vistas twinkled down With fireflies; and in the gloom Feel the cool vowels of perfume Slow-syllabled of weed and bloom. But, in the night, at languid rest,-- When like a spirit’s naked breast The moon slips from a silver mist,-- With star-bound brow, and star-wreathed wrist, If you should see her rise and wave You welcome--ah! what thing could save You then? forevermore her slave! MAY The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed, That spangle the woods and dance-- No gleam of gold that the twilights hold Is strong as their necromance: For, under the oaks where the woodpaths lead, The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed Are the May’s own utterance. The azure stars of the bluet bloom, That sprinkle the woodland’s trance-- No blink of blue that a cloud lets through Is sweet as their countenance: For, over the knolls that the woods perfume, The azure stars of the bluet bloom Are the light of the May’s own glance. With her wondering words and her looks she comes, In a sunbeam of a gown; She needs but think and the blossoms wink, But look, and they shower down. By orchard ways, where the wild bee hums, With her wondering words and her looks she comes Like a little maid to town. RAIN I Around, the stillness deepened; then the grain Went wild with wind; and every briery lane Was swept with dust; and then, tempestuous black, Hillward the tempest heaved a monster back, That on the thunder leaned as on a cane; And on huge shoulders bore a cloudy pack, That gullied gold from many a lightning crack: One great drop splashed and wrinkled down the pane, And then field, hill, and wood were lost in rain. II At last, through clouds,--as from a cavern hewn Into night’s heart,--the sun burst, angry roon; And every cedar, with its weight of wet, Against the sunset’s fiery splendor set, Startled to beauty, seemed with rubies strewn: Then in drenched gardens, like sweet phantoms met, Dim odors rose of pink and mignonette; And in the east a confidence, that soon Grew to the calm assurance of the moon. FALL Sad-hearted Spirit of the solitudes, Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods! Gray-gowned in fog, gold-girdled with the gloom Of tawny sunsets; burdened with perfume Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist; And all the beauty of the fire-kissed Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way, Odorous of death and drowsy with decay. I think of thee as seated ’mid the showers Of languid leaves that cover up the flowers,-- The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune A singer gives her soul’s wild melody,-- Watching the squirrel store his granary. Or, ’mid old orchards, I have pictured thee: Thy hair’s profusion blown about thy back; One lovely shoulder bathed with gypsy black; Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweet The rosy russets tumbled at thy feet. Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers? Or heart-sick bird that sang of happier hours? A cricket dirging days that soon must die? Or did the ghost of Summer wander by? SUNSET IN AUTUMN Blood-colored oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass; Gaunt slopes, on which the bleak leaves glow of brier and sassafras, And broom-sedge strips of smoky pink and pearl-gray clumps of grass In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain pools gleam like glass. From west to east, from wood to wood, along the forest-side, The winds,--the sowers of the Lord,--with thunderous footsteps stride; Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed, Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide. The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds sounds its far fairy-bell; And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed’s windy shell Glimmers; while, wrapped in withered dreams, the wet, autumnal smell Of loam and leaf, like Fall’s own ghost, steals over field and dell. The oaks, against a copper sky--o’er which, like some black lake Of Dis, bronze clouds, (like surges fringed with sullen fire) break-- Loom sombre as Doom’s citadel above the vales that make A pathway to a land of mist the moon’s pale feet shall take. Now, dyed with burning carbuncle, a limbo-litten pane, Red in wild walls of storm, the west opens to hill and plain, On which the wild-geese ink themselves, a far triangled train; And then the shuttering clouds close down--and night it comes again. CONTENT When I behold how some pursue Fame that is Care’s embodiment, Or fortune, whose false face looks true,-- An humble home with sweet content Is all I ask for me and you. An humble home, where pigeons coo, Whose path leads under breezy lines Of frosty-berried cedars to A gate, one mass of trumpet-vines, Is all I ask for me and you. A garden, which, all summer through, The roses old make redolent, And morning-glories, gay of hue, And tansy with its homely scent, Is all I ask for me and you. An orchard, that the pippins strew, From whose bruised gold the juices spring; A vineyard, where the grapes hang blue, Wine-big and ripe for vintaging, Is all I ask for me and you. A lane, that leads to some far view Of forest or of fallow-land, Bloomed o’er of rose and meadow-rue, Each with a bee in its hot hand, Is all I ask for me and you. At morn, a pathway deep with dew, And birds that vary time and tune; At eve, a sunset avenue, And whippoorwills that haunt the moon, Is all I ask for me and you. Dear heart, with wants so small and few, And faith, that’s better far than gold, A lowly friend; a child or two, To care for us when we are old, Is all I ask for me and you. OCTOBER Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows A tourney-trumpet on the listed hill; Past is the splendor of the royal rose And duchess daffodil. Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden’s space, Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold, A ragged beggar with a lovely face, Reigns the sad marigold. And I, who sought June’s butterfly for days, Now find it--like a coreopsis bloom-- Amber and seal, rain-murdered ’neath the blaze Of this sunflower’s plume. Here drones the bee; and there, sky-voyaging wings Dare the blue gulfs of heaven: the last song The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings Upon that pear-tree’s prong. No angry sunset brims with rubier red The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed, Pour in the blossoms of this salvia-bed Where each leaf seems to bleed. And where the wood-gnats dance, a little mist, Above the efforts of the weedy stream, The girl, October, tired of the tryst, Dreams a diviner dream. One foot just dipping the caressing wave, One knee at languid angle; locks that drown Hands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave, Watching the leaves drift down. DISCOVERY What is it now that I shall seek Where woods dip downward, in the hills?-- A mossy nook, a ferny creek, And May among the daffodils. Or in the valley’s vistaed glow, Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines, Shall I behold her coming slow, Sweet May, among the columbines? With red-bud cheeks and bluet eyes, Big eyes, the homes of happiness, To meet me with the old surprise, Her hoiden hair all bonnetless. Who waits for me, where, note for note, The birds make glad the forest trees? A dogwood blossom at her throat, My May among th’ anemones. As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms, And dewdrops drink the moon’s bright beams, My soul shall kiss her lips’ perfumes, And drain the magic of her dreams. THE OLD SPRING I Under rocks whereon the rose Like a strip of morning glows; Where the azure-throated newt Drowses on the twisted root; And the brown bees, humming homeward, Stop to suck the honeydew; Fern and leaf-hid gleaming gloamward, Drips the wildwood spring I knew, Drips the spring my boyhood knew. II Myrrh and music everywhere Haunt its cascades--like the hair That a Naiad tosses cool, Swimming strangely beautiful, With white fragrance for her bosom, And her mouth a breath of song:-- Under leaf and branch and blossom Flows the woodland spring along, Sparkling, singing flows along. III Still the wet wan mornings touch Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such Slender stars as dusk may have Pierce the rose that roofs its wave; Still the thrush may call at noontide And the whippoorwill at night; Nevermore, by sun or moontide, Shall I see it gliding white, Falling, flowing, wild and white. THE FOREST SPRING Push back the brambles, berry-blue; The hollowed spring is full in view: Deep-tangled with luxuriant fern Ripples its rock-embedded urn. Not for the loneliness that keeps The coigne wherein its crystal sleeps; Not for wild butterflies that sway Their pansy pinions all the day Above its mirror; nor the bee, Nor dragon-fly, that, passing, see Themselves reflected in its spar; Not for the one white liquid star That twinkles in its firmament; Nor moon-shot clouds, so slowly sent Athwart it when the kindly night Beads its long grasses with the light Small jewels of the dimpled dew: Not for the day’s inverted blue, Nor the quaint, dimly colored stones That dance within it where it moans; Not for all these I love to sit In silence and to gaze in it. But, lo! a nymph with merry eyes Greets mine within its laughing skies; A glimmering, shimmering nymph who plays All the long fragrant summer days With instant sights of bees and birds, And talks with them in water-words; And for whose nakedness the air Weaves moony mists; and on whose hair, Unfilleted, the night will set That lone star as a coronet. THE HILLS There is no joy of earth that thrills My bosom like the far-off hills! Th’ unchanging hills, that, shadowy, Beckon our mutability To follow and to gaze upon Foundations of the dusk and dawn. Meseems the very heavens are massed Upon their shoulders, vague and vast With all the skyey burden of The winds and clouds and stars above. Lo, how they sit before us, seeing The laws that give all Beauty being! Behold! to them, when dawn draws near, The nomads of the air appear, Unfolding crimson camps of day In brilliant bands; then march away; And under burning battlements Of evening plant their tinted tents. The truth of olden myths, that brood By haunted stream and haunted wood, They see; and feel the happiness Of old at which we only guess: The dreams, the ancients loved and knew, Still as their rocks and trees are true: Not otherwise than presences The tempest and the calm to these: One, shouting on them all the night, Black-limbed and veined with lambent light: The other, with the ministry Of all soft things that company With music--whose embodied form Fills all the solitude with charm Of leaves and waters and the peace Of bird-begotten melodies-- And who at night doth still confer With the mild moon, that telleth her Pale tale of lonely love, until Wan shadows of her passion fill The heights with shapes that glimmer by Clad on with sleep and memory. THE SONG OF THE THRUSH Overhead, overhead a wood thrush flutes, And it seems to me All the sweet words in the world, Married to melody, could not express What its few, wild notes, Inspired, and simple, and free, express, Say to me Of expectation and woodland mystery, Dreams, and wonder-visions never appearing, Remote and unattainably beautiful-- O indescribable song! Song of the wild brown thrush! O June! O love! O youth! Of you, of you it speaks to me! Of the lost, the irremediable, The indescribably fair and far and yet to be found; The mysteriously hidden, too: The lure of the undiscoverable calling, calling, Bidding me on and on, In the voice of all my longings, Down the dim, the deep, the cadenced aisles of the forest. TRANSMUTATION To me all beauty that I see Is melody made visible: An earth-translated state, may be, Of music heard in Heaven or Hell. Out of some love-impassioned strain Of saints, the rose evolved its bloom; And, dreaming of it here again, Perhaps relives it as perfume. Out of some chant, that demons sing Of hate and pain, the sunset grew; And, haply, still remembering, Relives it here as some wild hue. FROST Magician he, who, autumn nights, Down from the starry darkness whirls; Heav’n’s harlequin, whose spangled tights And wand are powdered thick with pearls. Through him each pane presents a scene, A Lilliputian landscape, where The world is white instead of green, And trees and houses hang in air. Where Elfins gambol and delight, And bow the jewelled bells of flowers; Where upside-down we see the night With many moons and meteor showers. And surely in his wand and hand Lies Midas magic, for, behold, Some morn we wake and find the land, Both field and forest, turned to gold. ADVENTURERS Seemingly over the hilltops, Possibly under the hills, A tireless wing that never drops, And a song that never stills. Epics heard on the stars’ lips? Lyrics read in the dew?-- To sing the song at our finger-tips, And live the world anew! Cavaliers of the Cortés kind, Bold and free and strong,-- And, oh, for a fine and muscular mind To sing a New-World’s song! Sailing seas of the silver morn, Blown of its balm and spice, To put the Old-World art to scorn At the price of any price! Danger, death, but the hope high! God’s, though the purpose fail!-- Into the deeds of a vaster sky Sailing a dauntless sail. INVOCATION I O Life! O Death; O God! Have we not striven? Have we not known Thee, God, As Thy stars know Heaven? Have we not held Thee true, True as Thy deepest, Sweet and immaculate blue Heaven whence rains Thy dew! Have we not _known_ Thee true, O God who keepest! II O God, our Father, God!-- Who gav’st us fire, To rise above the sod, To soar, aspire-- What though we strive and strive, And all our soul says “live”? Will not the scorn of men, Like some wild bird, again Falcon it down with sneers, As often in past years? And, O sun-centered high, Thou, too, who ’rt Poet, Beneath Thy seeing sky Each day new Keatses die, Crying, “Why should we try! That which we seek ’s a lie!”-- Why is this so?--O why?-- Thou who dost know it! III We know Thee beautiful, We know Thee bitter! Help Thou!--Men’s eyes are dull, O God most beautiful! Make Thou their souls less full Of things mere glitter. Dost Thou not see our tears? Dost Thou not hear the years Treading our hearts to shards, O Lord of all the Lords?-- Give heed, O God of Hosts, There ’mid Thy glorious ghosts, Most high and holy! Have mercy on our tears! Have mercy on our years! Our strivings and our fears, O Lord of lordly peers, On us, so lowly! IV On us, so fondly fain To tell what mother-pain Of Nature haunts the rain. On us, so glad to show What sorrow wings the snow, And her wild winds that blow. Us, who interpret right Her mystic rose of light, Her moony rune of night. Us, who have utterance for Each warm, flame-hearted star That stammers from afar. Who hear the tears and sighs Of every bud that dies While heav’n’s dew on it lies. Who see the power that dowers The wildwood bosks and bowers With musk and sap of flowers. Who see what no man sees In water, earth and breeze, And in the hearts of trees. Turn not away Thy light, O God!--Our strength is slight! Help us who breast the height! Have mercy, Infinite! Have mercy! THE DEATH OF LOVE So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old! And in the sorrow of our heart’s hushed halls A lute lies broken and a rose-flower falls; Love’s house stands empty and his hearth lies cold. Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told, In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls Beauty decays; and on their pedestals Dreams crumble, and th’ immortal gods are mold. Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone, One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past-- The voice of Memory, that stills to stone The soul that hears; the mind, that, utterly lost, Before its beautiful presence stands aghast. UNANSWERED How long ago it is since we went Maying! Since she and I went Maying long ago! The years have left my forehead lined, I know, Have thinned my hair around the temples graying. Ah, time will change us: yea, I hear it saying-- “She, too, grows old: the face of rose and snow Has lost its freshness: in the hair’s brown glow Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying. The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled, Has lost the litheness of its loveliness: And all the gladness that her blue eyes held Tears and the world have hardened with distress.”-- “True! true!” I answer, “O ye years that part! These things are changed--but is her heart, her heart?” LOVE, THE INTERPRETER Thou art the music that I hear in sleep, The poetry that lures me on in dreams; The magic, thou, that holds my thought with themes Of young romance in revery’s mystic keep.-- The lily’s aura, and the damask deep That clothes the rose; the whispering soul that seems To haunt the wind; the rainbow light that streams, Like some wild spirit, ’thwart the cataract’s leap-- Are glimmerings of thee and thy loveliness, Pervading all my world; interpreting The marvel and the wonder these disclose: For, lacking thee, to me were meaningless Life, love, and hope, the joy of everything, And all the beauty that the wide world knows. LOVE DESPISED Why not resolve and hunt it from one’s heart? This love, this god and fiend, that makes a hell Of all one’s life, in ways no tongue can tell, No mind divine, nor any word impart. Would not one think the slights that make hearts smart, The ice of love’s disdain, the wintry well Of love’s disfavor, otherwise would quell? Or school one’s nature, too, to its own art? Why will men cringe and cry forever here For that which, once obtained, may prove a curse? Why not remember that, however fair, Decay is wed to Beauty? that each year Robs somewhat from the riches of her purse, Until at last her house of pride stands bare? PEARLS Baroque, but beautiful, between the lunes, The valves of nacre of a mussel-shell, Behold, a pearl! shaped like the burnished bell Of some strange blossom that long afternoons Of summer coax to open: all the moon’s Chaste lustre in it; hues that only dwell With purity.... It takes me, like a spell, Back to a day when, whistling truant tunes, A barefoot boy I waded ’mid the rocks, Searching for shells strewn in the creek’s slow swirl, Unconscious of the pearls that round me lay: While, ’mid wild-roses,--all her tomboy locks Blond-blowing,--stood, unnoticed then, a girl, My sweetheart once, the pearl I flung away. THE WOMAN SPEAKS Why have you come?--To see me in my shame? A thing to spit upon, despise and scorn?-- You, you who ask me! You, by whom was torn, Then cast aside, like some vile rag, my name! What shelter could you give me, now, that blame And loathing would not share? that wolves of vice Would not besiege with eyes of glaring ice? Wherein Sin sat not with her face of flame? “You love me”?--God!--If yours be love, for lust Hell must invent another synonym! If yours be love, then whoredom is the way To Heaven and God! and not with soul but dust Must burn the faces of the Cherubim,-- O beast of beasts, if yours be love, I say! OF THE SLUMS Red-faced as old carousal, and with eyes A hard, hot blue; her hair a frowsy flame, Bold, dowdy bosomed, from her window-frame She leans, her mouth all insult and all lies. Or slattern-slippered and in sluttish gown, With ribald mirth and words too vile to name, A new Doll Tearsheet, glorying in her shame, Armed with her Falstaff now she takes the town. The flaring lights of alley-way saloons, The reek of hideous gutters and black oaths Of drunkenness from vice-infested dens, Are to her senses what the silvery moon’s Chaste splendor is, and what the blossoming growths Of Earth and bird-song are to Innocence. LIGHT AND WIND Where, through the myriad leaves of many trees, The daylight falls, beryl and chrysoprase, The glamour and the glimmer of its rays Seem visible music, tangible melodies: Light that is music; music that one sees-- Wagnerian music--where forever sways The spirit of romance, and gods and fays Take form, clad on with dreams and mysteries. And now the wind’s transmuting necromance Touches the light and makes it fall and rise, Vocal, a harp of multitudinous waves That speaks as ocean speaks--an utterance Of far-off whispers, mermaid-murmuring sighs-- Pelagian, vast, deep down in coral caves. THE WINDS Those hewers of the clouds, the Winds,--that lair At the four compass-points,--are out to-night; I hear their sandals trample on the height, I hear their voices trumpet through the air: Builders of Storm, God’s workmen, now they bear, Up the steep stair of sky, on backs of might, Huge tempest bulks, while,--sweat that blinds their sight,-- The rain is shaken from tumultuous hair: Now, sweepers of the firmament, they broom, Like gathered dust, the rolling mists along Heaven’s floors of sapphire; all the beautiful blue Of skyey corridor and aëry room Preparing, with large laughter and loud song, For the white moon and stars to wander through. TOUCHES In heavens of rivered blue, that sunset dyes With glaucous flame, deep in the west the day Stands Midas-like; or, wading on his way, Touches with splendor all the twilight skies. Each cloud that, like a stepping-stone, he tries With rosy foot, transforms its sober gray To blazing gold; while, ray on crystal ray, Within his wake the stars like bubbles rise. So should the artist in his work accord All things with beauty, and communicate His soul’s high magic and divinity To all he does; and, hoping no reward, Toil onward, making darkness aureate With light of worlds that be and are to be. EARTH AND MOON I saw the day like some great monarch die, Gold-couched, behind the clouds’ rich tapestries. Then, purple-sandaled, clothed in silences Of sleep, through halls of skyey lazuli, The twilight, like a mourning queen, trailed by, Dim-paged of dreams and shadowy mysteries; And now the night, the star-robed child of these, In meditative loveliness draws nigh. Earth,--like to Romeo,--deep in dew and scent, Beneath Heaven’s window, watching till a light, Like some white blossom, in its square be set,-- Lifts a faint face unto the firmament, That, with the moon, grows gradually bright, Bidding him climb and clasp his Juliet. DUSK Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold, And ’mid their sheaves,--where, like a daisy-bloom Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom, The star of twilight flames,--as Ruth, ’tis told, Dreamed homesick ’mid the harvest fields of old, The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled. Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily Stumbling the stone with one foam-fluttering foot: Save for the note of one far whippoorwill, And in my heart _her_ name,--like some sweet bee Within a rose,--blowing a fairy flute. SEPTEMBER The bubbled blue of morning-glory spires, Balloon-blown foam of moonflowers, and sweet snows Of clematis, through which September goes, Song-hearted, rich in realized desires, Are flanked with hotter hues: with tawny fires Of acrid marigolds,--that light long rows Of lamps,--and salvias, red as day’s red close,-- That torches seem,--by which the Month attires Barbaric beauty; like some Asian queen, Towering imperial in her two-fold crown Of harvest and of vintage; all her form Gold and majestic purple: in her mien The might of motherhood; her baby brown, Abundance, high on one exultant arm. THE END OF SUMMER Pods are the poppies, and slim spires of pods The hollyhocks; the balsam’s pearly bredes Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds Collapsing at a touch; the lote, that sods The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds, Around the sleepy water and its reeds, Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods. Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer’s dead! The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre, Through which, e’en now, runs subterranean fire: While from the East, as from a garden-bed, Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon--like some Great golden melon--saying, “Fall has come.” THE PASSING GLORY Slow sinks the sun,--a great carbuncle ball Red in the cavern of a sombre cloud,-- And in her garden, where the dense weeds crowd, Among her dying asters stands the Fall, Like some lone woman in a ruined hall, Dreaming of desolation and the shroud; Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed, Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl. The gaunt wind rises, like an angry hand, And sweeps the sprawling spider from its web, Smites frantic music in the twilight’s ear; And all around, like melancholy sand, Rains dead leaves down--wild leaves, that mark the ebb, In Earth’s dark hour-glass, of another year. PROTOTYPES Whether it be that we in letters trace The pure exactness of a woodbird’s strain, And name it song; or with the brush attain The high perfection of a wildflower’s face; Or mold in difficult marble all the grace We know as man; or from the wind and rain Catch elemental rapture of refrain And mark in music to due time and place: The aim of art is Nature; to unfold Her truth and beauty to the souls of men In close suggestions; in whose forms is cast Nothing so new but ’tis long eons old; Nothing so old but ’tis as young as when The mind conceived it in the ages past. SUPERSTITION In the waste places, in the sinister night, When the wood whispers like a wandering mind, And silence sits and listens to the wind, Or, ’mid the rocks, to some wild torrent’s flight; Bat-browed thou wadest with thy wisp of light Among black pools the moon can never find; Or, owlet-eyed, thou hootest to the blind Deep darkness from some cave or haunted height. He who beholds but once thy fearsome face, Never again shall walk alone! but wan And terrible attendants shall be his-- Unutterable things that have no place In God or Beauty--that compel him on, Against all hope, where endless horror is. A. D. NINETEEN HUNDRED War and Disaster, Famine and Pestilence, Vaunt-couriers of the Century that comes, Behold them shaking their tremendous plumes Above the world! Lo, all the air grows dense With rumors of destruction and a sense, Cadaverous, of corpses and of tombs Predestined; while,--like monsters in the glooms,-- Bristling with battle, shadowy and immense, The Nations rise in dread apocalypse.-- Where now the boast Earth makes of civilization? Its brag of Christianity?--In vain We seek to see them in the wild eclipse Of hell and horror and the devastation Of Death triumphant on his hills of slain. UNCALLED As one, who, journeying westward with the sun, Beholds at length from the up-towering hills, Far-off, a land unspeakable beauty fills, Circeän peaks and vales of Avalon: And, sinking weary, watches, one by one, The big seas beat between; and knows it skills No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills, This is the helpless end, that all is done: So ’tis with him, whom long a vision led In quest of Beauty--and who finds at last, She lies beyond his effort; all the waves Of all the world between them: while the dead, The myriad dead, who populate the Past With failure, hail him from forgotten graves. QUATRAINS I _Moths and Fireflies_ Since Fancy taught me in her school of spells I know her tricks: These are not moths at all, Nor fireflies; but masking Elfland belles Whose link-boys torch them to Titania’s ball. II _Autumn Wildflowers_ Like colored lanterns swung in Elfin towers, Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways, And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays, Burns the sloped crimson of the cardinal-flowers. III _The Wind in the Pines_ When winds go organing through the pines On hill and headland, darkly gleaming, Meseems I hear sonorous lines Of Iliads that the woods are dreaming. IV _Opportunity_ Behold a hag whom Life denies a kiss As he rides questward in knighterrant-wise; Only when he hath passed her is it his To know, too late, the Fairy in disguise. V _Dreams_ They mock the present and they haunt the past, And in the future there is naught agleam With hope, the soul desires, that at last The heart, pursuing, does not find a dream. AFTERWORD _What vague traditions do the golden eves, What legends do the dawns Inscribe in fire on Heaven’s azure leaves, The red sun colophons?_ _What ancient stories do the waters verse? What tales of war and love Do winds within the Earth’s vast house rehearse, God’s stars stand guard above?_ _Would I could know them as they are expressed In hue and melody! And say, in words, the beauties they suggest, Language their mystery!_ _And in one song magnificently rise, The music of the spheres, That more than marble should immortalize My name in after years._ *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF MADISON CAWEIN, VOLUME 3 (OF 5) *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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