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                             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- 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-: 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- 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- 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  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 <DW72>,--
    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- 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- 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- 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 <DW72>, 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- 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-<DW52> 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- 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 <DW72>s
    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 <DW29>-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 <DW29>-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- 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- 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,  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 <DW72>:
    ’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 <DW29> hues and daffodil,
    The fancies that she doth devise
    Assume the forms of butterflies,
    Rich-.--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- oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass;
    Gaunt <DW72>s, 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 <DW29> 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  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- 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 <DW72>s 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  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 of The Poems of Madison Cawein, vol. 3, by 
Madison Cawein

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