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diff --git a/old/54902-0.txt b/old/54902-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 06ae165..0000000 --- a/old/54902-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,13731 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Poems of Madison Cawein, vol. 2, by Madison Cawein - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Poems of Madison Cawein, vol. 2 - -Author: Madison Cawein - -Illustrator: Eric Pape - -Release Date: June 13, 2017 [EBook #54902] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF MADISON CAWEIN, VOL. 2 *** - - - - -Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE POEMS OF - MADISON CAWEIN - - - VOLUME II - - - NEW WORLD IDYLLS AND - POEMS OF LOVE - - [Illustration] - - Ah, girlhood, through the rosy haze - Come like a moonbeam slipping. Page 3 - _One Day and Another_ - - - - - THE POEMS OF - MADISON CAWEIN - - - _Volume II_ - - - NEW WORLD - IDYLLS AND POEMS - OF LOVE - - - _Illustrated_ - WITH PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS - BY ERIC PAPE - - - INDIANAPOLIS - THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1896, - 1898, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1905 and 1907, BY MADISON CAWEIN - - COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY COPELAND AND DAY; 1898, BY R. H RUSSELL; 1901, - BY RICHARD G. BADGER AND COMPANY - - - PRESS OF - BRAUNWORTH & CO. - BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS - BROOKLYN, N. Y. - - WITH ENDURING FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND LOYALTY - TO - JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY - - - - -CONTENTS - - -NEW WORLD IDYLLS - - PAGE - - BROTHERS, THE 246 - - DEAD MAN’S RUN 241 - - DEEP IN THE FOREST 196 - - EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK, AN 180 - - FEUD, THE 237 - - IDYLL OF THE STANDING-STONE, THE 161 - - LYNCHERS 239 - - MOSBY AT HAMILTON 235 - - NIELLO, A 192 - - ONE DAY AND ANOTHER 1 - - RAID, THE 244 - - RED LEAVES AND ROSES 116 - - SIREN SANDS 217 - - SOME SUMMER DAYS 171 - - WAR-TIME SILHOUETTES 224 - - WILD THORN AND LILY 122 - - WRECKAGE 209 - - -POEMS OF LOVE - - AFTER DEATH 482 - - AMONG THE ACRES OF THE WOOD 343 - - AN AUTUMN NIGHT 519 - - ANDALIA AND THE SPRINGTIME 304 - - APART 356 - - APOCALYPSE 327 - - AT HER GRAVE 386 - - AT NINEVEH 476 - - AT PARTING 509 - - AT SUNSET 405 - - AT THE STILE 288 - - AT TWENTY-ONE 351 - - AT TWILIGHT 391 - - BLIND GOD, THE 357 - - BURDEN OF DESIRE, THE 274 - - CAN I FORGET? 328 - - CARA MIA 358 - - CARISSIMA MEA 517 - - CARMEN 473 - - CASTLE OF LOVE, THE 295 - - CAVERNS OF KAF, THE 431 - - CHORDS 382 - - CHRISTMAS CATCH, A 378 - - “COME TO THE HILLS” 512 - - CONCLUSION 529 - - CONFESSION, A 388 - - CONSECRATION 298 - - CONSTANCE 362 - - CONTRASTS 516 - - CREOLE SERENADE 321 - - DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW, THE 414 - - DAUGHTER OF THE STATES, A 521 - - DAY AND NIGHT 392 - - DEAD AND GONE 406 - - EPILOGUE 261 - - EVASION 513 - - FERN-SEED 290 - - FINALE 527 - - FLORIDIAN 374 - - FOREST POOL, THE 403 - - GERTRUDE 267 - - GLORY AND THE DREAM, THE 501 - - GHOST WEATHER 402 - - GYPSYING 278 - - HEART’S DESIRE, THE 395 - - HEART OF MY HEART 269 - - HELEN 365 - - HER EYES 354 - - HER VESPER SONG 499 - - HER VIOLIN 492 - - HER VIVIEN EYES 496 - - IDEAL DIVINATION 324 - - “IF I WERE HER LOVER” 337 - - IN A GARDEN 335 - - IN AUTUMN 488 - - INDIFFERENCE 401 - - IN MAY 503 - - IN JUNE 331 - - IN THE GARDEN OF GIRLS 511 - - KINSHIP 352 - - LAST DAYS 390 - - LORA OF THE VALES 313 - - LOST LOVE 283 - - LOVE 268 - - LOVE AND A DAY 369 - - LOVE IN A GARDEN 372 - - LYANNA 447 - - LYDIA 364 - - MARCH AND MAY 486 - - MARGERY 360 - - MASKS 469 - - MEETING IN SUMMER 494 - - MEMORIES 485 - - MESSENGERS 355 - - METAMORPHOSIS 350 - - MIGNON 367 - - MIRIAM 524 - - MY ROSE 329 - - NOCTURNE 348 - - NOËRA 340 - - OLD MAN DREAMS, THE 483 - - OLIVIA IN THE AUTUMN 306 - - ONE NIGHT 407 - - ORIENTAL ROMANCE 317 - - OUT OF THE DEPTHS 397 - - OVERSEAS 285 - - PASTORAL LOVE 302 - - PLEDGES 315 - - PORPHYROGENITA 292 - - PUPIL OF PAN, A 312 - - QUARREL, THE 522 - - REASONS 497 - - REED CALL FOR APRIL 490 - - RESTRAINT 330 - - ROMANTIC LOVE 300 - - SALAMANDER, THE 438 - - SENORITA 479 - - “SHE IS SO MUCH” 353 - - SINCE THEN 481 - - SIRENS, THE 346 - - SNOW AND FIRE 502 - - SONG FOR YULE, A 380 - - SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS, THE 454 - - SPIRIT OF THE STAR, THE 417 - - SPIRIT OF THE VAN, THE 423 - - STROLLERS 271 - - SUCCUBA, THE 464 - - SUMMER SEA, THE 525 - - SYLVIA OF THE WOODLAND 308 - - THE PARTING 412 - - THE RIDE 507 - - THE TRYST 276 - - “THIS IS THE FACE OF HER” 399 - - THREE BIRDS 393 - - TOLLMAN’S DAUGHTER, THE 319 - - TRANSUBSTANTIATION 368 - - UNCERTAINTY 280 - - UNREQUITED 394 - - WATER WITCH, THE 459 - - “WERE I AN ARTIST” 505 - - “WHEN SHE DRAWS NEAR” 489 - - WHEN SHIPS PUT OUT TO SEA 376 - - WHY? 347 - - WILL O’ THE WISPS 333 - - WILL YOU FORGET? 515 - - WITNESSES 310 - - WORDS 345 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - -AH, GIRLHOOD, THROUGH THE ROSY HAZE -COME LIKE A MOONBEAM SLIPPING. (See page 3) _Frontispiece_ - - PAGE - -WHERE THE WOODCOCK CALL. (See page 161) 160 - -SOMETHING DREW ME, UNRETURNING, -FILLED ME WITH A FINER FLAME. (See page 419) 350 - -I LOOK INTO THY HEART AND THEN I KNOW -THE WONDROUS POETRY OF THE LONG-AGO. - (See page 497) 490 - - - - - NEW WORLD IDYLLS - - _O lyrist of the lowly and the true, - The song I sought for you - Still bides unsung. What hope for me to find, - Lost in the dædal mind, - The living utterance with lovely tongue, - To sing,--as once he sung, - Rare Ariosto, of Knight-Errantry,-- - How you in Poesy, - Song’s Paladin, Knight of the Dream and Day, - The shield of magic sway! - Of that Atlantes’ power, sweet and terse, - The skyey-builded verse! - The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise, - Our unanointed eyes.-- - Oh, could I write as it were worthy you, - Each word, a spark of dew,-- - As once Ferdusi wrote in Persia,-- - Would string each rosy spray - Of each unfolding flower of my song; - And Iran’s bulbul tongue - Would sob its heart out o’er the fountain’s slab - In gardens of Afrasiab._ - - - - - ONE DAY AND ANOTHER - - _A Lyrical Eclogue_ - - - - - PART I - - LATE SPRING - - - The mottled moth at eventide - Beats glimmering wings against the pane; - The slow, sweet lily opens wide, - White in the dusk like some dim stain; - The garden dreams on every side - And breathes faint scents of rain: - Among the flowering stocks they stand; - A crimson rose is in her hand. - - - I - - _Outside her garden. He waits musing_: - - Herein the dearness of her is; - The thirty perfect days of June - Made one, in maiden loveliness - Were not more sweet to clasp and kiss, - With love not more in tune. - - Ah me! I think she is too true, - Too spiritual for life’s rough way: - So say her eyes,--her soul looks through,-- - Two bluet blossoms, watchet-blue, - Are not more pure than they. - - So kind, so beautiful is she, - So soft and white, so fond and fair, - Sometimes my heart fears she may be - Not long for Earth, and secretly - Sweet sister to the air. - - - II - - _Dusk deepens. A whippoorwill calls._ - - The whippoorwills are calling where - The golden west is graying; - “’Tis time,” they say, “to meet him there-- - Why are you still delaying? - - “He waits you where the old beech throws - Its gnarly shadow over - Wood violet and the bramble rose, - Frail lady-fern and clover. - - “Where elder and the sumac peep - Above your garden’s paling, - Whereon, at noon, the lizards sleep, - Like lichen on the railing. - - “Come! ere the early rising moon’s - Gold floods the violet valleys; - Where mists, like phantom picaroons - Anchor their stealthy galleys. - - “Come! while the deepening amethyst - Of dusk above is falling-- - ’Tis time to tryst! ’tis time to tryst!” - The whippoorwills are calling. - - They call you to these twilight ways - With dewy odor dripping-- - Ah, girlhood, through the rosy haze - Come like a moonbeam slipping. - - - III - - _He enters the garden, speaking dreamily_: - - There is a fading inward of the day, - And all the pansy sunset clasps one star; - The twilight acres, eastward, glimmer gray, - While all the world to westward smoulders far. - - Now to your glass will you pass for the last time? - Pass! humming some ballad, I know. - Here where I wait it is late and is past time-- - Late! and the moments are slow, are slow. - - There is a drawing downward of the night; - The bridegroom Heaven bends down to kiss the moon: - Above, the heights hang silver in her light; - Below, the vales stretch purple, deep with June. - - There in the dew is it you hiding lawny? - You? or a moth in the vines?-- - You!--by your hand! where the band twinkles tawny! - You!--by your ring, like a glow-worm that shines! - - - IV - - _She approaches, laughing. She speaks_: - - You’d given up hope? - - _He_ - - - Believe me! - - _She_ - - Why! is your love so poor? - - _He_ - - No. Yet you _might_ deceive me! - - _She_ - - As many a girl before.-- - Ah, dear, you will forgive me? - - _He_ - - Say no more, sweet, say no more! - - _She_ - - Love trusts; and that’s enough, my dear. - Trust wins through love; whereof, my dear, - Love holds through trust: and love, my dear, - Is--all my life and lore. - - _He_ - - Come, pay me or I’ll scold you.-- - Give me the kiss you owe.-- - You run when I would hold you? - - _She_ - - No! no! I say! now, no!-- - How often have I told you, - You must not use me so? - - _He_ - - More sweet the dusk for this is, - For lips that meet in kisses.-- - Come! come! why run from blisses - As from a dreadful foe? - - - V - - _She stands smiling at him, shyly, then speaks_: - - How many words in the asking! - How easily I can grieve you!-- - My “yes” in a “no” was a-masking, - Nor thought, dear, to deceive you.-- - A kiss?--the humming-bird happiness here - In my heart consents.... But what are words, - When the thought of two souls in speech accords? - Affirmative, negative--what are they, dear? - I wished to say “yes,” but somehow said “no.” - The woman within me knew you would know, - Knew that your heart would hear. - - _He speaks_: - - So many words in the doing!-- - Therein you could not deceive me; - Some things are sweeter for the pursuing: - I knew what you meant, believe me.-- - Bunched bells of the blush pomegranate, to fix - At your throat.... Six drops of fire they are.... - Will you look--where the moon and its following star - Rise silvery over yon meadow ricks? - While I hold--while I bend your head back, so.... - For I know it is “yes” though you whisper “no,” - And my kisses, sweet, are six. - - - VI - - _Moths flutter around them. She speaks_: - - Look!--where the fiery - Glow-worm in briery - Banks of the moon-mellowed bowers - Sparkles--how hazily - Pinioned and airily - Delicate, warily, - Drowsily, lazily, - Flutter the moths to the flowers. - - White as the dreamiest - Bud of the creamiest - Rose in the garden that dozes, - See how they cling to them! - Held in the heart of their - Hearts, like a part of their - Perfume, they swing to them - Wings that are soft as a rose is. - - Dim as the forming of - Dew in the warming of - Moonlight, they light on the petals; - All is revealed to them; - All!--from the sunniest - Tips to the honiest - Heart, whence they yield to them - Spice, through the darkness that settles. - - So to our tremulous - Souls come the emulous - Agents of love; through whose power - All that is best in us, - All that is beautiful, - Selfless and dutiful, - Is manifest in us, - Even as the scent of a flower. - - - VII - - - _Taking her hand he says_: - - What makes you beautiful? - Answer, now, answer!-- - Is it that dutiful - Souls are all beautiful? - Is it romance or - Beauty of spirit, - Which souls, that merit, - Of heaven inherit?-- - Have you an answer? - - _She, roguishly_: - - What makes you lovable? - Answer, now, answer!-- - Is it not provable - That man is lovable - Just because chance, or - Nature, makes woman - Love him?--Her human - Part’s to illumine.-- - Have you an answer? - - - VIII - - _Then, regarding him seriously, she continues_: - - Could I recall every joy that befell me - There in the past with its anguish and bliss, - Here in my heart it hath whispered to tell me,-- - They were no joys like this. - - Were it not well if our love could forget them, - Veiling the _Was_ with the dawn of the _Is_? - Dead with the past we should never regret them, - Being no joys like this. - - Now they are gone and the Present stands speechful, - Ardent of word and of look and of kiss,-- - What though we know that their eyes are beseechful!-- - They were no joys like this. - - Were it not well to have more of the spirit, - Living high Futures this earthly must miss? - Less of the flesh, with the Past pining near it? - Knowing no joys like this! - - - IX - - _Leaving the garden for the lane. He, with lightness of heart_: - - We will leave reason, - Sweet, for a season: - Reason were treason - Now that the nether - Spaces are clad, oh, - In silvery shadow-- - We will be glad, oh, - Glad as this weather! - - _She, responding to his mood_: - - Heart unto heart! where the moonlight is slanted, - Let us believe that our souls are enchanted:-- - I in the castle-keep; you are the airy - Prince who comes seeking me; love is the fairy - Bringing us two together. - - _He_ - - Starlight in masses - Over us passes; - And in the grass is - Many a flower.-- - - Now will you tell me - How ’d you enspell me? - What once befell me - There in your bower? - - _She_ - - Soul unto soul!--in the moon’s wizard glory, - Let us believe we are parts in a story:-- - I am a poem; a poet you hear it - Whispered in star and in flower; a spirit, - Love, puts my soul in your power. - - - X - - _He, suddenly and very earnestly_: - - Perhaps we lived in the days - Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid; - And loved, as the story says - Did the Sultan’s favorite one - And the Persian Emperor’s son, - Ali ben Bekkar, he - Of the Kisra dynasty. - - Do you know the story?--Well, - _You_ were Haroun’s Sultana. - When night on the palace fell, - A slave, through a secret door,-- - Low-arched on the Tigris’ shore,-- - By a hidden winding stair - Brought me to your bower there. - - Then there was laughter and mirth, - And feasting and singing together, - In a chamber of wonderful worth; - In a chamber vaulted high - On columns of ivory; - Its dome, like the irised skies, - Mooned over with peacock eyes; - Its curtains and furniture, - Damask and juniper. - - Ten slave girls--so many blooms-- - Stand, holding tamarisk torches, - Silk-clad from the Irak looms; - Ten handmaidens serve the feast, - Each maid like a star in the east; - Ten lutanists, lutes a-tune, - Wait, each like the Ramadan moon. - - For you, in a stuff of Merv - Blue-clad, unveiled and jeweled, - No metaphor made may serve: - Scarved deep with your raven hair, - The jewels like fireflies there-- - Blossom and moon and star, - The Lady Shemsennehar. - - The zone that girdles your waist - Would ransom a Prince and Emeer; - In your coronet’s gold enchased, - And your bracelet’s twisted bar, - Burn rubies of Istakhar; - And pearls of the Jamshid race - Hang looped on your bosom’s lace. - - You stand like the letter I; - Dawn-faced, with eyes that sparkle - Black stars in a rosy sky; - Mouth, like a cloven peach, - Sweet with your smiling speech; - Cheeks, that the blood presumes - To make pomegranate blooms. - - With roses of Rocknabad, - Hyacinths of Bokhara,-- - Creamily cool and clad - In gauze,--girls scatter the floor - From pillar to cedarn door. - Then, a pomegranate bloom in each ear, - Come the dancing-girls of Kashmeer. - - Kohl in their eyes, down the room,-- - That opaline casting-bottles - Have showered with rose-perfume,-- - They glitter and drift and swoon - To the dulcimer’s languishing tune; - In the liquid light like stars - And moons and nenuphars. - - Carbuncles, tragacanth-red, - Smoulder in armlet and anklet: - Gleaming on breast and on head, - Bangles of coins, that are angled, - Tinkle: and veils, that are spangled, - Flutter from coiffure and wrist - Like a star-bewildered mist. - - Each dancing-girl is a flower - Of the Tuba from vales of El Liwa.-- - How the bronzen censers glower! - And scents of ambergris pour, - And of myrrh, brought out of Lahore, - And of musk of Khoten! how good - Is the scent of the sandalwood! - - A lutanist smites her lute, - Sings loves of Mejnoon and Leila:-- - Her voice is an Houri flute;-- - While the fragrant flambeaux wave, - Barbaric, o’er free and slave, - O’er fabrics and bezels of gems - And roses in anadems. - - Sherbets in ewers of gold, - Fruits in salvers carnelian; - Flagons of grotesque mold, - Made of a sapphire glass, - Brimmed with wine of Shirâz; - Shaddock and melon and grape - On plate of an antique shape. - - Vases of frosted rose, - Of alabaster graven, - Filled with the mountain snows; - Goblets of mother-of-pearl, - One filigree silver-swirl; - Vessels of gold foamed up - With spray of spar on the cup. - - Then a slave bursts in with a cry: - “The eunuchs! the Khalif’s eunuchs!-- - With scimitars bared draw nigh! - Wesif and Afif and he, - Chief of the hideous three, - Mesrour!--the Sultan ’s seen - ’Mid a hundred weapons’ sheen!” - - Did we part when we heard this?--No! - It seems that my soul remembers - How I clasped and kissed you, so.... - When they came they found us--dead, - On the flowers our blood dyed red; - Our lips together, and - The dagger in my hand. - - - XI - - _She, musingly_: - - How it was I can not tell, - For I know not where nor why; - But I know we loved too well - In some world that does not lie - East or west of where we dwell, - And beneath no earthly sky. - - Was it in the golden ages?-- - Or the iron?--that I heard,-- - In the prophecy of sages,-- - Haply, how had come a bird, - Underneath whose wing were pages - Of an unknown lover’s word. - - I forget. You may remember - How the earthquake shook our ships; - How our city, one huge ember, - Blazed within the thick eclipse: - When you found me--deep December - Sealed my icy eyes and lips. - - I forget. No one may say - That such things can not be true:-- - Here a flower dies to-day, - There, to-morrow, blooms anew.... - Death is silent.--Tell me, pray, - Why men doubt what God can do? - - - XII - - _He, with conviction_: - - As to that, nothing to tell! - You being all my belief, - Doubt can not enter or dwell - Here where your image is chief; - Here where your name is a spell, - Potent in joy and in grief. - - Is it the glamour of spring - Working in us so we seem - Aye to have loved? that we cling - Even to some fancy or dream, - Rainbowing everything, - Here in our souls, with its gleam? - - See! how the synod is met - There of the planets to preach us:-- - Freed from the earth’s oubliette, - See how the blossoms beseech us!-- - Were it not well to forget - Winter and death as they teach us? - - Dew and a bud and a star, - All,--like a beautiful thought, - Over man’s wisdom how far!-- - God for some purpose hath wrought.-- - Could we but know why they are, - And that they end not in naught! - - Stars and the moon; and they roll - Over our way that is white.-- - Here shall we end the long stroll? - Here shall I kiss you good night? - Or, for a while, soul to soul, - Linger and dream of delight? - - - XIII - - _They reënter the garden. She speaks somewhat pensively_: - - Myths tell of walls and cities, lyred of love, - That rose to music.--Were that power my own, - Had I that harp, that magic barbiton, - What had I builded for our lives thereof?-- - - In docile shadows under bluebell skies, - A home upon the poppied edge of eve, - Beneath pale peaks the splendors never leave, - ’Mid lemon orchards whence the egret flies. - - Where, pitiless, the ruined hand of death - Should never reach. No bud, no flower fade: - Where all were perfect, pure and unafraid: - And life serener than an angel’s breath. - - The days should move to music: song should tame - The nights, attentive with their listening stars: - And morn outrival eve in opal bars, - Each preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame. - - O home! O life! desired and to be! - How shall we reach you?--Far the way and dim.-- - Give me your hand, sweet! let us follow him, - Love with the madness and the melody. - - - XIV - - _He, observing the various dowers around them_: - - Violets and anemones - The surrendered Hours - Pour, as handsels, round the knees - Of the Spring, who to the breeze - Flings her myriad flowers. - - Like to coins, the sumptuous day - Strews with blossoms golden - Every furlong of his way,-- - Like a Sultan gone to pray - At a Kaaba olden. - - Warlock Night, with spark on spark, - Clad in dim attire, - Dots with stars the haloed dark,-- - As a priest around the Ark - Lights his lamps of fire. - - These are but the cosmic strings - Of the harp of Beauty, - Of that instrument which sings, - In our souls, of love, that brings - Peace and faith and duty. - - - XV - - _She, seriously_: - - Duty?--Comfort of the sinner - And the saint!--When grief and trial - Weigh us, and within our inner - Selves,--responsive to love’s viol,-- - Hope’s soft voice grows thin and thinner. - It is kin to self-denial. - - Self-denial! Through whose feeling - We are gainer though we ’re loser; - All the finer force revealing - Of our natures. No accuser - Is the conscience then, but healing - Of the wound of which we ’re chooser. - - Who the loser, who the winner, - If the ardor fail as preacher?-- - None who loved was yet beginner, - Though another’s love-beseecher: - Love’s revealment ’s of the inner - Life and God Himself is teacher. - - Heine said “no flower knoweth - Of the fragrance it revealeth; - Song, its heart that overfloweth, - Never nightingale’s heart feeleth”-- - Such is love the spirit groweth, - Love unconscious if it healeth. - - - XVI - - _He, looking smilingly into her eyes, after a pause, lightly_: - - An elf there is who stables the hot - Red wasp that sucks on the apricot; - An elf, who rowels his spiteful bay, - Like a mote on a ray, away, away; - An elf, who saddles the hornet lean - And dins i’ the ear o’ the swinging bean; - Who straddles, with cap cocked, all awry, - The bottle-green back o’ the dragon-fly. - - And this is the elf who sips and sips - From clover-horns whence the perfume drips; - And, drunk with dew, in the glimmering gloam - Awaits the wild-bee’s coming home; - In ambush lies where none may see, - And robs the caravan bumblebee: - Gold bags of honey the bees must pay - To the bandit elf of the fairy-way. - - Another ouphen the butterflies know, - Who paints their wings with the hues that glow - On blossoms: squeezing from tubes of dew - Pansy colors of every hue - On his bloom’s pied pallet, he paints the wings - Of the butterflies, moths, and other things. - This is the elf that the hollyhocks hear, - Who dangles a brilliant in each one’s ear; - Teases at noon the pane’s green fly, - And lights at night the glow-worm’s eye. - - But the dearest elf, so the poets say, - Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray; - Who curls in a dimple or slips along - The strings of a lute to a lover’s song; - Who smiles in her smile and frowns in her frown, - And dreams in the scent of her glove or gown; - Hides and beckons, as all may note, - In the bloom or the bow of a maiden’s throat. - - - XVII - - _She, pensively, standing among the flowers_: - - Soft through the trees the night wind sighs, - And swoons and dies. - Above, the stars hang wanly white; - Here, through the dark, - A drizzled gold, the fireflies - Rain mimic stars in spark on spark.-- - ’Tis time to part, to say good night. - Good night. - - From fern to flower the night-moths cross - At drowsy loss. - The moon drifts, veiled, through clouds of white; - And pearly pale, - In silvery blurs, through beds of moss, - Their tiny moons the glow-worms trail.-- - ’Tis time to part, to say good night. - Good night. - - - XVIII - - _He, at parting, as they proceed down the garden_: - - You say we can not marry, now - That roses and the June are here? - To your decision I must bow.-- - Ah, well!--perhaps ’t is best, my dear. - Let’s swear again each old love vow - And love another year. - - Another year of love with you! - Of dreams and days, of sun and rain! - When field and forest bloom anew, - And locust clusters pelt the lane, - When all the song-birds wed and woo, - I’ll not take “no” again. - - Oft shall I lie awake and mark - The hours by no clanging clock, - But, in the dim and dewy dark, - Far crowing of some punctual cock; - Then up, as early as the lark - To meet you by our rock. - - The rock, where first we met at tryst; - Where first I wooed and won your love.-- - Remember how the moon and mist - Made mystery of the heaven above - As now to-night?--Where first I kissed - Your lips, you trembling like a dove. - - So, then, we will not marry now - That roses and the June are here, - That warmth and fragrance weigh each bough? - And, yet, your reason is not clear ... - Ah, well! We ’ll swear anew each vow - And wait another year. - - - - - PART II - - EARLY SUMMER - - - The cricket in the rose-bush hedge - Sings by the vine-entangled gate; - The slim moon slants a timid edge - Of pearl through one low cloud of slate; - Around dark door and window-ledge - Like dreams the shadows wait. - And through the summer dusk she goes, - On her white breast a crimson rose. - - - I - - _She delays, meditating. A rainy afternoon._ - - Gray skies and a foggy rain - Dripping from streaming eaves; - Over and over again - Dull drop of the trickling leaves: - And the woodward-winding lane, - And the hill with its shocks of sheaves - One scarce perceives. - - Shall I go in such wet weather - By the lane or over the hill?-- - Where the blossoming milkweed’s feather - The diamonded rain-drops fill; - Where, draggled and drenched together, - The ox-eyes rank the rill - By the old corn-mill. - - The creek by now is swollen, - And its foaming cascades sound; - And the lilies, smeared with pollen, - In the dam look dull and drowned. - ’Tis the path I oft have stolen - To the bridge; that rambles round - With willows bound. - - Through a bottom wild with berry, - And packed with the ironweeds - And elder,--washed and very - Fragrant,--the fenced path leads - Past oak and wilding cherry, - Where the tall wild-lettuce seeds, - To a place of reeds. - - The sun through the sad sky bleaches-- - Is that a thrush that calls?-- - A bird in the rain beseeches: - And see! on the balsam’s balls, - And leaves of the water-beeches-- - One blister of wart-like galls-- - No rain-drop falls. - - My shawl instead of a bonnet!... - ’Though the woods be dripping yet, - Through the wet to the rock I’ll run it!-- - How sweet to meet in the wet!-- - Our rock with the vine upon it,-- - Each flower a fiery jet,-- - Where oft we ’ve met. - - - II - - _They meet. He speaks_: - - How fresh the purple clover - Smells in its veil of rain! - And where the leaves brim over - How musky wild the lane! - See, how the sodden acres, - Forlorn of all their rakers, - Their hay and harvest makers, - Look green as spring again. - - Drops from the trumpet-flowers - Rain on us as we pass; - And every zephyr showers, - From tilted leaf or grass, - Clear beads of moisture, seeming - Pale, pointed emeralds gleaming; - Where, through the green boughs streaming, - The daylight strikes like glass. - - - _She speaks_: - - How dewy, clean and fragrant - Look now the green and gold!-- - And breezes, trailing vagrant, - Spill all the spice they hold. - The west begins to glimmer; - And shadows, stretching slimmer, - Make gray the ways; and dimmer - Grow field and forest old. - - Beyond those rainy reaches - Of woodland, far and lone, - A whippoorwill beseeches; - And now an owlet’s moan - Drifts faint upon the hearing.-- - These say the dusk is nearing. - And, see, the heavens, clearing, - Take on a tender tone. - - How feebly chirps the cricket! - How thin the tree-toads cry! - Blurred in the wild-rose thicket - Gleams wet the firefly.-- - This way toward home is nearest; - Of weeds and briers clearest.... - We ’ll meet to-morrow, dearest; - Till then, dear heart, good-by. - - - III - - _They meet again under the greenwood tree. He speaks_: - - Here at last! And do you know - That again you ’ve kept me waiting? - Wondering, anticipating - That your “yes” meant “no.” - - Now you ’re here we ’ll have our day.... - Let us take this daisied hollow, - And beneath these beeches follow - This wild strip of way - - To the stream; wherein are seen - Stealing gar and darting minnow; - Over which snake-feeders winnow - Wings of black and green. - - Like a cactus flames the sun; - And the mighty weaver, Even, - Tenuous colored, there in heaven, - His rich weft ’s begun.... - - How I love you! from the time-- - You remember, do you not?-- - When, within your orchard-plot, - I was reading rhyme, - - As I told you. And ’t was thus:-- - “By the blue Trinacrian sea, - Far in pastoral Sicily - With Theocritus”-- - - That I answered you who asked. - But the curious part was this:-- - That the whole thing was amiss; - That the Greek but masked - - Tales of old Boccaccio: - Tall Decameronian maids - Strolled for me among the glades, - Smiling, sweet and slow. - - And when you approached,--my book - Dropped in wonder,--seemingly - To myself I said, “’Tis she!” - And arose to look - - In Lauretta’s eyes and--true! - Found them yours.--You shook your head, - Laughing at me, as you said, - “Did I frighten you?” - - You had come for cherries; these - Coatless then I climbed for while - You still questioned with a smile, - And still tried to tease. - - Ah, love, just two years have gone - Since then.... I remember, you - Wore a dress of billowy blue - Muslin.--_Was_ it “lawn”?-- - - And your apron still I see-- - All its whiteness cherry-stained-- - Which you held; wherein I rained - Ripeness from the tree. - - And I asked you--for, you know, - To my eyes your serious eyes - Said such deep philosophies-- - If you ’d read Rousseau. - - You remember how a chance, - Somewhat like to mine, one June - Happened him at castle Toune, - Over there in France? - - And a cherry dropping fair - On your cheek, I, envying it, - Cried--remembering Rousseau’s wit-- - “Would my lips were there!” ... - - Here we are at last. We ’ll row - Down the stream.--The west has narrowed - To one streak of rose, deep-arrowed.-- - There ’s our skiff below. - - - IV - - _Entering the skiff, she speaks_: - - Waters flowing dark and bright - In the sunlight or the moon, - Fill my soul with such delight - As some visible music might; - As some slow, majestic tune - Made material to the sight. - - Blossoms colored like the skies, - Sunset-hued and tame or wild, - Fill my soul with such surmise - As the mind might realize - If one’s thoughts, all undefiled, - Should take form before the eyes. - - So to me do these appeal; - So they sway me every hour: - Letting all their beauty steal - On my soul to make it feel - Through a rivulet or flower, - More than any words reveal. - - - V - - _He speaks, rowing_: - - See, sweetheart, how the lilies lay - Their lambent leaves about our way; - Or, pollen-dusty, bob and float - Their nenuphars around our boat.-- - The middle of the stream is reached - Three strokes from where our boat was beached. - - Look up. You scarce can see the sky, - Through trees that lean, dark, dense and high; - That, coiled with grape and trailing vine, - Build vast a roof of shade and shine; - A house of leaves, where shadows walk, - And whispering winds and waters talk. - - There is no path. The saplings choke - The trunks they spring from. There an oak, - Floods from the Alleghanies bore, - Lies rotting; and that sycamore, - Which lays its bulk from shore to shore,-- - Uprooted by the rain,--perchance - May be the bridge to some romance: - Its heart of punk, a spongy white, - Glows, ghostly foxfire, in the night. - - Now opening through a willow fringe - The waters creep, one tawny tinge - Of sunset; and on either marge - The cottonwoods make walls of shade, - With breezy balsam pungent: large, - The gradual hills loom; darkly fade - The waters wherein herons wade, - Or wing, like Faëry birds, from grass - That mats the shore by which we pass. - - - _She speaks_: - - On we pass; we rippling pass, - On sunset waters still as glass. - A vesper-sparrow flies above, - Soft twittering, to its woodland love. - A tufted-titmouse calls afar; - And from the west, like some swift star, - A glittering jay flies screaming. Slim - The sand-snipes and kingfishers skim - Before us; and some twilight thrush-- - Who may discover where such sing?-- - The silence rinses with a gush - Of limpid music bubbling. - - - _He speaks_: - - On we pass.--Now let us oar - To yonder strip of ragged shore, - Where, from a rock with lichens hoar, - A ferny spring falls, babbling frore - Through woodland mosses. Gliding by - The sulphur-colored firefly - Lights its pale lamp where mallows gloom, - And wild-bean and wild-mustard bloom.-- - Some hunter there within the woods - Last fall encamped, those ashes say - And campfire boughs.--The solitudes - Grow dreamy with the death of day. - - - VI - - _She sings_: - - Over the fields of millet - A young bird tries its wings; - And wild as a woodland rillet, - Its first mad music rings rings-- - Soul of my soul, where the meadows roll - What is the song it sings? - - “Love, and a glad good-morrow, - Heart where the rapture is! - Good-morrow, good-morrow! - Adieu to sorrow! - Here is the road to bliss: - Where all day long you may hearken my song, - And kiss, kiss, kiss;” - - Over the fields of clover, - Where the wild bee drones and sways, - The wind, like a shepherd lover, - Flutes on the fragrant ways-- - Heart of my heart, where the blossoms part, - What is the air he plays? - - “Love, and a song to follow, - Soul with the face a-gleam! - Come follow, come follow, - O’er hill and through hollow, - To the land o’ the bloom and beam: - Where, under the flowers, you may listen for hours, - And dream, dream, dream!” - - - VII - - _He speaks, letting the boat drift_: - - Here the shores are irised; grasses - Clump the water gray, that glasses - Broken wood and deepened distance. - Far the musical persistence - Of a field-lark lingers low - In the west’s rich tulip-glow. - - White before us flames one pointed - Star; and Day hath Night anointed - King; from out her azure ewer - Pouring starry fire, truer - Than pure gold. Star-crowned he stands - With the starlight in his hands. - - Will the moon bleach through the ragged - Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged - Rock that rises gradually, - Pharos of our homeward valley?-- - All the west is smouldering red; - Embers are the stars o’erhead. - - At my soul some Protean elf is: - You ’re Simætha; I am Delphis, - You are Sappho and your Phaon, - I.--We love.--There lies our way, on,-- - Let us say,--Æolian seas, - To the violet Lesbian leas. - - On we drift. I love you. Nearer - Looms our Island. Rosier, clearer, - The Leucadian cliff we follow, - Where the temple of Apollo - Shines--a pale and pillared fire.... - Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre!-- - Out of Hellas blows the breeze - Singing to the Sapphic seas. - - - VIII - - _Landing, he sings_: - - Night, night, ’t is night. The moon drifts low above us, - And all its gold is tangled in the stream: - Love, love, my love, and all the stars, that love us, - The stars smile down and every star ’s a dream. - - In odorous purple, where the falling warble - Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows, - A columned ruin lifts its sculptured marble - Friezed with the chiselled rebeck and the rose. - - - _She sings_: - - Sleep, sleep, sweet sleep sleeps at the drifting tiller, - And in our sail the Spirit of the Rain-- - Love, love, my love, ah, bid thy heart be stiller, - And, hark! the music of the singing main. - - What flowers are those that blow their balm unto us, - From mouths of wild aroma, each a flame?-- - Or is it Love that breathes? sweet Love who drew us, - Who kissed our eyes and made us see the same? - - - _He speaks_: - - Dreams; dreams we dream! no dream that we would banish! - The temple and the nightingale _are_ there! - Our love hath made them, nevermore to vanish, - Real as yon moon, this wild-rose in your hair. - - Night, night, ’tis night!--and Love’s own star ’s before us, - Its starred reflection in the starry stream.-- - Yes, yes, ah yes! his presence shall watch o’er us, - To-night, to-night, and every night we dream. - - - IX - - _Homeward through flowers; she speaks_: - - Behold the offerings of the common hills! - Whose lowly names have made them three times dear: - One evening-primrose and an apron-full - Of violets; and there, in multitudes, - Dim-seen in moonlight, sweet cerulean wan, - The bluet, making heaven of every dell - With morn’s ambrosial blue: dew-dropping plumes - Of the mauve beard’s-tongue; and the red-freaked cups - Of blackberry-lilies all along the creek, - Where, lulled, the freckled silence sleeps, and vague - The water flows, when, at high noon, the cows - Wade knee-deep, and the heat is honied with - The drone of drowsy bees and dizzy flies. - How bright the moon is on that fleur-de-lis; - Blue, streaked with crystal like a summer day: - And is it moonlight there? or is it flowers? - White violets? lilies? or a daisy bed? - And now the wind, with softest lullaby, - Swings all their cradled heads and rocks-to-sleep - Their fragrant faces and their golden eyes, - Curtained, and frailly wimpled with the dew. - - Simple suggestions of a life most fair! - Flowers, you speak of love and untaught faith, - Whose habitation is within the soul, - Not of the Earth, yet for the Earth indeed.... - - What is it halcyons my heart? makes calm, - With calmness not of knowledge, all my soul - This night of nights?--Is ’t love? or faith? or both?-- - The lore of all the world is less than these - Simple suggestions of a life most fair, - And love most sweet that I have learned to know! - - - X - - _He speaks, musingly_: - - Yes, I have known its being so; - Long ago was I seeing so-- - Beckoning on to a fairer land, - Out of the flowers it waved its hand; - Bidding me on to life and love, - Life with the hope of the love thereof. - - What is the value of knowing it, - If you are shy in showing it?-- - Need of the earth unfolds the flower, - Dewy sweet, at the proper hour; - And, in the world of the human heart, - Love is the flower’s counterpart. - - So when the soul is heedable, - Then is the heart made readable.-- - I in the book of your heart have read - Words that are truer than truth hath said: - Measures of love, the spirit’s song, - Writ of your soul to haunt me long. - - Love can hear each laudable - Thought of the loved made audible, - Spoken in wonder, or joy, or pain, - And reëcho it back again: - Ever responsive, ever awake, - Ever replying with ache for ache. - - - XI - - _She speaks, dreamily_: - - Earth gives its flowers to us - And heaven its stars. Indeed, - _These_ are as lips that woo us, - _Those_ are as lights that lead, - With love that doth pursue us, - With hope that still doth speed. - - Yet shall the flowers lie riven, - And lips forget to kiss; - The stars fade out of heaven, - And lights lead us amiss-- - As love for which we ’ve striven; - As hope that promises. - - - XII - - _He laughs, wishing to dispel her seriousness_: - - If love I have had of you, you had of me, - Then doubtless our loving were over; - One would be less than the other, you see; - Since what you returned to your lover - Were only his own; and-- - - - XIII - - _She interrupts him, speaking impetuously_: - - But if I lose you, if you part with me, - I will not love you less - Loving so much now. If there is to be - A parting and distress,-- - What will avail to comfort or relieve - The soul that’s anguished most?-- - The knowledge that it once possessed, perceive, - The love that it has lost. - You must acknowledge, under sun and moon - All that we feel is old; - Let morning flutter from night’s brown cocoon - Wide wings of flaxen gold; - The moon burst through the darkness, soaring o’er, - Like some great moth and white, - These have been seen a myriad times before - And with renewed delight.-- - So ’tis with love;--how old yet new it is!-- - This only should we heed,-- - To once have known, to once have felt love’s bliss, - Is to be rich indeed.-- - Whether we win or lose, we lose or win, - Within our gain or loss - Some purpose lies, some end unseen of sin, - Beyond our crown or cross. - - - XIV - - _Nearing her home, he speaks_: - - True, true!--Perhaps it would be best - To be that lone star in the west; - Above the earth, within the skies, - Yet shining here in your blue eyes. - - Or, haply, better here to blow - A flower beneath your window low; - That, brief of life and frail and fair, - Finds yet a heaven in your hair. - - Or well, perhaps, to be the breeze - That sighs its soul out to the trees; - A voice, a breath of rain or drouth, - That has its wild will with your mouth. - - These things I long to be. I long - To be the burthen of some song - You love to sing; a melody, - Sure of sweet immortality. - - - XV - - _At the gate. She speaks_: - - Sunday shall we ride together? - Not the root-rough, rambling way - Through the wood we went that day, - In last summer’s sultry weather. - - Past the Methodist camp-meeting, - Where religion helped the hymn - Gather volume; and a slim - Minister, with textful greeting, - - Welcomed us and still expounded.-- - From the service on the hill - We had passed three hills and still - Loud, though far, the singing sounded. - - Nor that road through weed and berry - Drowsy days led me and you - To the old-time barbecue, - Where the country-side made merry. - - Dusty vehicles together; - Darkies with the horses near - Tied to trees; the atmosphere - Redolent of bark and leather, - - And of burgoo and of beef; there - Roasting whole within the trench; - Near which spread the long pine bench - Under shading limb and leaf there. - - As we went the homeward journey - You exclaimed, “They intermix - Pleasure there and politics, - Love and war: our modern tourney.” - - And the fiddles!--through the thickets, - How they thumped the old quadrille! - Scraping, droning on the hill, - It was like a swarm of crickets.... - - Neither road! The shady quiet - Of that path by beech and birch, - Winding to the ruined church - Near the stream that sparkles by it. - - Where the silent Sundays listen - For the preacher--Love--we bring - In our hearts to preach and sing - Week-day shade to Sabbath glisten. - - - XVI - - _He, at parting_: - - Yes, to-morrow. Early morn.-- - When the House of Day uncloses - Portals that the stars adorn,-- - Whence Light’s golden presence throws his - Flaming lilies, burning roses, - At the wide wood’s world of wall, - Spears of sparkle at each fall: - - Then together we will ride - To the wood’s cathedral places; - Where, like prayers, the wildflowers hide, - Sabbath in their fairy faces; - Where, in truest, untaught phrases, - Worship in each rhythmic word, - God is praised by many a bird. - - Look above you.--Pearly white, - Star on star now crystallizes - Out of darkness: Afric night - Hangs them round her like devices - Of strange jewels. Vapor rises, - Glimmering, from each wood and dell.-- - Till to-morrow, then, farewell. - - - XVII - -_She tarries at the gate a moment, watching him disappear down the lane. -He sings, and the sound of his singing grows fainter and fainter and at -last dies away in the distance_: - - Say, my heart, O my heart, - These be the eves for speaking! - There is no wight will work us spite - Beneath the sunset’s streaking. - - Yes, my sweet, O my sweet, - Now is the time for telling! - To walk together in starry weather - Down lanes with elder smelling. - - O my heart, yes, my heart, - Now is the time for saying! - When lost in dreams each wildflower seems - And every blossom praying. - - Lean, my sweet, listen, sweet,-- - No sweeter time than this is,-- - So says the rose, the moth that knows,-- - To take sweet toll in kisses. - - - - - PART III - - LATE SUMMER - - - Heat lightning flickers in one cloud, - As in a flower a firefly; - Some rain-drops, that the rose-bush bowed, - Jar through the leaves and dimly lie: - Among the trees, now low, now loud, - The whispering breezes sigh. - The place is lone; the night is hushed; - Upon the path a rose lies crushed. - - - I - - _Musing, he strolls among the quiet lanes by farm and field_: - - Now rests the season in forgetfulness, - Careless in beauty of maturity; - The ripened roses round brown temples, she - Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess. - Now Time grants night the more and day the less: - The gray decides; and brown, - Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express - Themselves and redden as the year goes down. - Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high - Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die, - And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.-- - Deeper to tenderness, - Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along - The lonesome west; sadder the song - Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow.-- - Deeper and dreamier, ay! - Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky - Above lone orchards where the cider-press - Drips and the russets mellow. - - Nature grows liberal: from the beechen leaves - The beech-nuts’ burrs their little pockets thrust, - Bulged with the copper of the nuts that rust; - Above the grass the spendthrift spider weaves - A web of silver for which dawn designs - Thrice twenty rows of pearls: beneath the oak, - That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,-- - The polished acorns, from their saucers broke, - Strew oval agates.--On sonorous pines - The far wind organs; but the forest near - Is silent; and the blue-white smoke - Of burning brush, beyond that field of hay, - Hangs like a pillar in the atmosphere; - But now it shakes--it breaks and all the - vines And tree-tops tremble;--see! the wind is here! - Billowing and boisterous; and the smiling day - Rejoices in its clamor. Earth and sky - Resound with glory of its majesty, - Impetuous splendor of its rushing by.-- - But on those heights the forest still is still, - Expectant of its coming.... Far away - Each anxious tree upon each waiting hill - Tingles anticipation, as in gray - Surmise of rapture. Now the first gusts play, - Like laughter low, about their rippling spines; - And now the wildwood, one exultant sway, - Shouts--and the light at each tumultuous pause, - The light that glooms and shines, - Seems hands in wild applause. - - How glows that garden! though the white mists keep - The vagabonding flowers reminded of - Decay that comes to slay in open love, - When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep; - Unheeding still, their cardinal colors leap - And laugh encircled of the scythe of death,-- - Like lovely children he prepares to reap,-- - Staying his blade a breath - To mark their beauty ere, with one last sweep, - He lays them dead and turns away to weep.-- - Let me admire,-- - Before the sickle of the coming cold - Shall mow them down,--their beauties manifold: - How like to spurts of fire - That scarlet salvia lifts its blooms, which heap - Yon square of sunlight. And, as sparkles creep - Through charring parchment, up that window’s screen - The cypress dots with crimson all its green, - The haunt of many bees. - Cascading dark those porch-built lattices, - The nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood, - Hanging in clusters, ’mid the blue monk’s-hood. - - There, in that garden old, - The bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold - Their formal flowers; and the marigold - Lifts its pinched shred of orange sunset caught - And elfed in petals. The nasturtium, - All pungent leaved and acrid of perfume, - Hangs up its goblin bonnet, fairy-brought - From Gnomeland. There, predominant red, - And arrogant, the dahlia lifts its head, - Beside the balsam’s rose-stained horns of honey, - Deep in the murmuring, sunny, - Dry wildness of the weedy flower-bed; - Where crickets and the weed-bugs, noon and night, - Shrill dirges for the flowers that soon will die, - And flowers already dead.-- - I seem to hear the passing Summer sigh: - A voice, that seems to weep, - “Too soon, too soon the Beautiful passes by! - And soon, amid her bowers, - Will dripping Autumn mourn with all her flowers.”-- - If I, perchance, might peep - Beneath those leaves of podded hollyhocks, - That the bland wind with odorous whispers rocks, - I might behold her,--white - And weary,--Summer, ’mid her flowers asleep, - Her drowsy flowers asleep, - The withered poppies knotted in her locks. - - - II - - _He is reminded of another day with her_: - - The hips were reddening on this rose, - Those haws were hung with fire, - That day we went this way that goes - Up hills of bough and brier. - This hooked thorn caught her gown and seemed - Imploring her to linger; - Upon her hair a sun-ray streamed - Like some baptizing finger. - - This false-foxglove, so golden now - With yellow blooms, like bangles, - Was bloomless then. But yonder bough,-- - The sumac’s plume entangles,-- - Was like an Indian’s painted face; - And, like a squaw, attended - That bush, in vague vermilion grace, - With beads of berries splendid. - - And here we turned to mount that hill, - Down which the wild brook tumbles; - And, like to-day, that day was still, - And mild winds swayed the umbels - Of these wild-carrots, lawny gray: - And there, deep-dappled o’er us, - An orchard stretched; and in our way - Dropped ripened fruit before us. - - With muffled thud the pippin fell, - And at our feet rolled dusty; - A hornet clinging to its bell, - The pear lay bruised and rusty: - The smell of pulpy peach and plum, - From which the juice oozed yellow,-- - Around which bees made sleepy hum,-- - Made warm the air and mellow. - - And then we came where, many-hued, - The wet wild morning-glory - Hung its balloons in shadows dewed - For dawning’s offertory: - With bush and bramble, far away, - Beneath us stretched the valley, - Cleft of one creek, as clear as day, - That rippled musically. - - The brown, the bronze, the green, the red - Of weed and brier ran riot - To walls of woods, whose pathways led - To nooks of whispering quiet: - Long waves of feathering goldenrod - Ran through the gray in patches, - As in a cloud the gold of God - Burns, that the sunset catches. - - And there, above the blue hills rolled, - Like some far conflagration, - The sunset, flaming marigold, - We watched in exultation: - Then, turning homeward, she and I - Went in love’s sweet derangement-- - How different now seem earth and sky, - Since this undreamed estrangement. - - - III - - _He enters the woods. He sits down despondently_: - - Here where the day is dimmest, - And silence company, - Some might find sympathy - For loss, or grief the grimmest, - In each great-hearted tree-- - Here where the day is dimmest-- - But, ah, there ’s none for me! - - In leaves might find communion, - Returning sigh for sigh, - For love the heavens deny; - The love that yearns for union, - Yet parts and knows not why.-- - In leaves might find communion-- - But, ah, not I, not I! - - My eyes with tears are aching.-- - Why has she written me? - And will no longer see?-- - My heart with grief is breaking, - With grief that this should be.-- - My eyes with tears are aching-- - Why has she written me? - - - IV - - _He proceeds in the direction of a stream_: - - Better is death than sleep, - Better for tired eyes.-- - Why do we weep and weep - When near us the solace lies? - There, in that stream, that, deep,-- - Reflecting woods and skies,-- - Could comfort all our sighs. - The mystery of things, - Of dreams, philosophies, - To which the mortal clings, - _That_ can unriddle these.-- - What is ’t the water sings? - What is ’t it promises?-- - End to my miseries! - - - V - - _He seats himself on a rock and gazes steadily into the stream_: - - And here alone I sit and it is so!-- - O vales and hills! O valley-lands and knobs! - What cure have you for woe? - What balm that robs - The brain of thought, the knowledge of its woe? - None! none! ah me! that my sick heart may know!-- - The wearying sameness!--yet this thing is so! - This thing is so, and still the waters flow, - The leaves drop slowly down; the daylight throbs - With sun and wind, and yet this thing is so! - There is no sympathy in heaven or earth - For human sorrow! all we see is mirth, - Or madness; cruelty or lust; - Nature is heedless of her children’s grief; - Man is to her no more than is a leaf, - That buds and has its summer, that is brief, - Then falls, and mixes with the common dust. - Here, at this culvert’s mouth, - The shadowy water, flowing toward the south, - Seems deepest, stagnant-stayed.-- - What is it yonder that makes me afraid? - Of my own self afraid?--I do not know!-- - What power draws me to the striate stream? - What evil? or what dream? - Me! dropping pebbles in the quiet wave, - That echoes, strange as music in a cave, - Hollow and thin; vibrating in the shade, - As if ’t were tears that fell, and, falling, made - A crystal sound, a shadow wail of woe, - Wrung from the rocks and waters there below; - An ailing phantom that will not be laid; - Complaining ghosts of sobs that fill my breast,-- - That will not forth,--and give my heart no rest. - - There, in the water, how the lank sword-grass - Mats its long blades, each blade a crooked kris, - Making a marsh; ’mid which the currents miss - Their rock-born melodies. - But there and there, one sees - The wide-belled mallow, as within a glass, - Long-pistiled, leaning o’er - The root-contorted shore, - As if its own pink image it would kiss. - And there the tangled wild-potato vine - Lifts beakered blossoms, each a cup of wine, - As pale as moonlight is:-- - No mandrake, curling convolutions up, - Loops heavier blossoms, each a conical cup - That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent’s hiss.-- - And there tall gipsy lilies, all a-sway, - Of coppery hue - Streaked as with crimson dew, - Mirror fierce faces in the deeps, - O’er which they lean, bent in inverted view.-- - And where the stream around those rushes creeps, - The dragon-fly, in endless error, keeps - Sewing the pale-gold gown of day - With tangled stitches of a burning blue: - Its brilliant body is a needle fine, - A thread of azure ray, - Black-pinioned, shuttling the shade and shine. - But here before me where my pensive shade - Looks up at me, the stale stream, stagnant, lies, - Deep, dark, but clear and silent; streaked with hues - Of ragweed pollen, and of spawny ooze, - Through which the seeping bubbles, bursting, rise.-- - All flowers here refuse - To grow or blossom; beauties, too, are few, - That haunt its depths: no glittering minnows braid - Its sleepy crystal; and no gravels strew - With colored orbs its bottom. Half afraid - I shrink from my own eyes - There in its cairngorm of reflected skies.-- - I know not why, and yet it seems I see-- - What is ’t I see there moving stealthily? - - I know not what!--But where the kildees wade, - Slim in the foamy scum, - From that direction hither doth it come, - Whate’er it is, that makes my soul afraid. - Nearer it draws to where those low rocks ail, - Warm rocks, on which some water-snake hath clomb, - Basking its spotted body, coiling numb, - Brown in the brindled shade.-- - At first it seemed a prism on the grail, - A bubble’s prism, like the shadow made - Of water-striders; then a trail, - An angled sparkle in a webby veil - Of duckweed, green as verdigris, it swayed - Frog-like through deeps, to crouch, a flaccid, pale, - Squat bulk below.... - I gaze, and though I would, I can not go. - Reflected trees and skies, - And breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss, - Seem in its stolid eyes, - Its fishy gaze, that holds me in strange wise. - Ghoul-like it seems to rise, - And now to sink; its eldritch features fail, - Then come again in rhythmic waviness, - With arms like tentacles that seem to press - Thro’ weed and water: limbs that writhe and fade, - And clench, and twist, and toss, - Root-like and gnarled, and cross and inter-cross - Through flabby hair of smoky moss. - - How horrible to see this thing at night! - Or when the sunset slants its brimstone light - Above the pool! when, blue, in phantom flight, - The will-o’-the-wisps, perhaps, above it reel. - Then, haply, would it rise, a rotting green, - Up, up, and gather me with arms of steel, - Soft steel, and drag me where the wave is white, - Beneath that boulder brown, that plants a keel - Against the ripple there, a shoulder lean.-- - No, no! I must away before ’tis night! - Before the fireflies dot - The dark with sulphur blurrings bright! - Before, upon that height, - The white wild-carrots vanish from the sight; - And boneset blossoms, tossing there in clusters, - Fade to a ridge, a streak of ghostly lustres: - And, in that sunlit spot, - Yon cedar tree is not! - But a huge cap instead, that, half-asleep, - Some giant dropped while driving home his sheep: - And ’mid those fallow browns - And russet grays, the fragrant peak - Of yonder timothy stack, - Is not a stack, but something hideous, black, - That threatens and, grotesquely demon, frowns. - - I must away from here.-- - Already dusk draws near. - The owlet’s dolorous hoot - Sounds quavering as a gnome’s wild flute; - The toad, within the wet, - Begins to tune its goblin flageolet: - The slow sun sinks behind - Those hills; and, like a withered cheek - Of Quaker quiet, sorrow-burdened, there - The spectral moon ’s defined - Above those trees,--as in a wild-beast’s lair - A golden woman, dead, with golden hair,-- - Above that mass of fox-grape vines - That, like a wrecked appentice, roofs those pines.-- - Oh, I am faint and weak.-- - I must away, away! - Before the close of day!-- - Already at my back - I feel the woods grow black; - And sense the evening wind, - Guttural and gaunt and blind, - Whining behind me like an unseen wolf. - Deeper now seems the gulf - Into whose deeps I gaze; - From which, with madness and amaze, - _That_ seems to rise, the horror there, - With webby hands and mossy eyes and hair.-- - Oh, will it pierce, - With all its feelers fierce, - Beyond the pool’s unhallowed water-streak?-- - - Yes; I must go, must go! - Must leave this ghastly creek, - This place of hideous fear! - For everywhere I hear - A dripping footstep near, - A voice, like water, gurgling at my ear, - Saying, “Come to me! come and rest below! - Sleep and forget her and with her thy woe!”-- - I try to fly.--I can not.--Yes, and no!-- - What madness holds me!--God! that obscene, slow, - Sure mastering chimera there, - Perhaps, has fastened round my neck, - Or in my matted hair, - Some horrible feeler, dire, invisible!-- - Off, off! thou hoop of Hell! - Thou devil’s coil!... - Back, back into thy cesspool! Off of me!-- - See, how the waters thrash and boil! - At last! at last! thank God! my soul is free! - My mind is freed of that vile mesmerism - That drew me to--what end? my God! what end? - Haply ’twas merely fancy, that strange fiend: - My fancy, and a prism - Of sunset in the stream, a firefly fleck, - That now, a lamp of golden fairy oil, - Lights me my homeward way, the way I flee. - No more I stare, magnetic-fixed; nor reck, - Nor little care to foil - The madness there! the murder there! that slips - Back to its lair of slime, that seeps and drips, - That sought in vain to fasten on my lips. - - - VI - - _Taking a letter from his pocket, he hurries away_: - - What can it mean for me? what have I done to her? - I, in our season of love as a sun to her: - She, all my heaven of silvery, numberless - Stars and its moon, shining golden and slumberless; - Who on my life, that was thorny and lowery, - Came--and made beautiful; smiled--and made flowery. - She, to my heart and my soul a divinity! - She, who--I dreamed!--seemed my spirit-affinity!-- - What have I done to her? what have I done? - - What can she mean by this?--what have I said to her? - I, who have idolized, worshiped, and pled to her; - Sung with her, laughed with her, sorrowed and sighed for her; - Lived for her only; and gladly had died for her! - See! she has written me thus! she has written me-- - Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me!-- - Would you had shriveled ere ever you’d read of it, - Eyes, that are wide to the grief and the dread of it!-- - What have I said to her? what have I said? - What shall I make of it? I who am trembling, - Fearful of losing.--A moth, the dissembling - Flame of a taper attracts with its guttering, - Flattering on till its body lies fluttering, - Scorched in the summer night.--Foolish, importunate, - Why didst thou quit the cool flowers, unfortunate!-- - Such has she been to me, making me such to her!-- - Slaying me, saying I never was much to her!-- - What shall I make of it? what can I make? - - Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless, - Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless: - I, with no thought but the day that did lock us in, - Set naked feet ’mid the cottonmouth-moccasin, - Under the roses, the Cherokee, eying me:-- - I,--in the heav’n with the egrets that, flying me, - Winging like blooms from magnolias, rose slenderly, - Pearl and pale pink: where the mocking-bird tenderly - Sang, making vistas of mosses melodious, - Wandered,--unheeding my steps,--in the odious - Ooze and the venom. I followed the wiry - Violet curve of thy star falling fiery-- - So was I lost in night! thus am undone! - - Have I not told to her--living alone for her-- - Purposed unfoldments of deeds I had sown for her - Here in the soil of my soul? their variety - Endless--and ever she answered with piety. - See! it has come to this--all the tale’s suavity - At the ninth chapter grows hateful with gravity; - Cruel as death all our beautiful history-- - Close it!--the final is more than a mystery.-- - Yes; I will go to her; yes; and will speak. - - - VII - - _After the final meeting; the day following_: - - I seem to see her still; to see - That blue-hung room. Her perfume comes - From lavender folds, draped dreamily,-- - A-blossom with brocaded blooms,-- - Some stuff of orient looms. - - I seem to hear her speak; and back, - Where sleeps the sun on books and piles - Of porcelain and bric-à-brac, - A tall clock ticks above the tiles, - Where Love’s framed profile smiles. - - I hear her say, “Ah, had I known!-- - I suffer too for what has been-- - For what must be.”--A wild ache shone - In her sad gaze that seemed to lean - On something far, unseen. - - And as in sleep my own self seems - Outside my suffering self.--I flush - ’Twixt facts and undetermined dreams, - And stand, as silent as that hush - Of lilac light and plush. - - Smiling, but suffering, I feel, - Beneath that face, so sweet and sad, - In those pale temples, thoughts, like steel, - Pierce burningly.... I had gone mad - Had I once thought her glad.-- - - Unconsciously, with eyes that yearn - To look beyond the present far, - For one faint future hope, I turn-- - There, in her garden, one fierce star, - A cactus, red as war, - - Vermilion as a storm-sunk sun, - Flames torrid splendor,--brings to life - A sunset; memory of one - Rich eve she said she ’d be my wife; - An eve with beauty rife. - - Again amid the heavy hues, - Soft crimson, seal, and satiny gold - Of flowers there, I stood ’mid dews - With her; deep in her garden old, - While sunset’s flame unrolled. - - And now!... It can not be! and yet - To see ’tis so!--In heart and brain - To know ’tis so!--While, warm and wet, - I seem to smell those scents again, - Verbena scents and rain. - - I turn, in hope she ’ll bid me stay. - Again her cameo beauty mark - Set in that smile.--She turns away. - No farewell! no regret! no spark - Of hope to cheer the dark! - - That sepia sketch--conceive it so-- - A jaunty head with mouth and eyes - Tragic beneath a rose-chapeau, - Silk-masked, unmasking--it denies - The look we half surmise, - - We know is there. ’Tis thus we read - The true beneath the false; perceive - The ache beneath the smile.--Indeed! - Whose soul unmasks?... Not mine!--I grieve,-- - Oh God!--but laugh and leave.... - - - VIII - - _He walks aimlessly on_: - - Beyond those knotted apple-trees, - That partly hide the old brick barn, - Its tattered arms and tattered knees - A scarecrow tosses to the breeze - Among the shocks of corn. - - My heart is gray as is the day, - In which the rain-wind drearily - Makes all the rusty branches sway, - And in the hollows, by each way, - The dead leaves rustle wearily. - - And soon we ’ll hear the far wild-geese - Honk in frost-bitten heavens under - Arcturus; when my walks must cease, - And by the fireside’s log-heaped peace - I ’ll sit and nod and ponder.-- - - When every fall of this loud creek - Is silent with the frost; and tented - Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak - And shaggy with the snows, that streak - The hillsides, hollow-dented; - - I ’ll sit and dream of that glad morn - We met by banks with elder snowing; - That dusk we strolled through flower and thorn, - By tasseled meads of cane and corn, - To where the stream was flowing. - - Again I ’ll oar our boat among - The dripping lilies of the river, - To reach her hat, the grape-vine long - Struck in the stream; we ’ll row to song; - And then ... I ’ll wake and shiver. - - Why is it that my mind reverts - To that sweet past? while full of parting - The present is: so full of hurts - And heartache, that what it asserts - Adds only to the smarting. - - How often shall I sit and think - Of that sweet past! through lowered lashes - What-might-have-been trace link by link; - Then watch it gradually sink - And crumble into ashes. - - Outside I ’ll hear the sad wind weep - Like some lone spirit, grieved, forsaken; - Then, shuddering, to bed will creep, - To lie awake, or, haply, sleep - A sleep by visions shaken. - - By visions of the past, that draw - The present in a hue that’s wanting; - A scarecrow thing of sticks and straw,-- - Like that just now I, passing, saw,-- - Its empty tatters flaunting. - - - IX - - _He compares the present day with a past one_: - - The sun a splintered splendor was - In trees, whose waving branches blurred - Its disc, that day we went together, - ’Mid wild-bee hum and whirring buzz - Of locusts, through the fields that purred - With summer in the perfect weather. - - So sweet it was to look, and lean - To her young face and feel the light - Of eyes that met my own unsaddened! - Her laugh that left lips more serene; - Her speech that blossomed like the white - Life-everlasting there and gladdened. - - Maturing summer, you were fraught - With more of beauty then than now - Parades the pageant of September: - Where What-is-now contrasts in thought - With What-was-once, that bloom and bough - Can only help me to remember. - - - X - - _He pauses before a deserted house by the wayside_: - - Through ironweeds and roses - And scraggy beech and oak, - Old porches it discloses - Above the weeds and roses - The drizzling raindrops soak. - - Neglected walks a-tangle - With dodder-strangled grass; - And every mildewed angle - Heaped with dead leaves that spangle - The paths that round it pass. - - The creatures there that bury - Or hide within its rooms - And spidered closets--very - Dim with old webs--will hurry - Out when the evening glooms. - - Owls roost on beam and basement; - Bats haunt its hearth and porch; - And, by each ruined casement, - Flits, in the moon’s enlacement, - The wisp, like some wild torch. - - There is a sense of frost here, - And winds that sigh alway - Of something that was lost here, - Long, long ago was lost here, - But what, they can not say. - - My foot, perhaps, would startle - Some owl that mopes within; - Some bat above its portal, - That frights the daring mortal, - And guards its cellared sin. - - The creaking road winds by it - This side the dusty toll.-- - Why do I stop to eye it? - My heart can not deny it-- - The house is like my soul. - - - XI - - _He proceeds on his way_: - - I bear a burden--look not therein! - Naught will you find save sorrow and sin; - Sorrow and sin that wend with me - Wherever I go. And misery, - A gaunt companion, my wretched bride, - Goes ever with me, side by side. - - Sick of myself and all the earth, - I ask my soul now: Is life worth - The little pleasure that we gain - For all our sorrow and our pain? - The love, to which we gave our best, - That turns a mockery and a jest? - - - XII - - _Among the twilight fields_: - - The things we love, the loveliest things we cherish, - Pass from us soonest, vanish utterly. - Dust are our deeds, and dust our dreams that perish - Ere we can say _They be_! - - I have loved man and learned we are not brothers-- - Within myself, perhaps, may lie the cause;-- - Then set one woman high above all others, - And found her full of flaws. - - Made unseen stars my keblahs of devotion; - Aspired to knowledge, and remained a clod: - With heart and soul, led on by blind emotion, - The way to failure trod. - - Chance, say, or fate, that works through good and evil; - Or destiny, that nothing may retard, - That to some end, above life’s empty level, - Perhaps withholds reward. - - - - - PART IV - - LATE AUTUMN - - They who die young are blest.-- - Should we not envy such?-- - They are Earth’s happiest, - God-loved and favored much!-- - They who die young are blest. - - - I - - _Sick and sad, propped with pillows, she sits at her window_: - - When the dog’s-tooth violet comes - With April showers, - And the wild-bee haunts and hums - About the flowers, - We shall never wend as when - Love laughed leading us from men - Over violet vale and glen, - Where the red-bird sang for hours, - And we heard the flicker drum. - - Now November heavens are gray: - Autumn kills - Every joy--like leaves of May - In the rills.-- - Here I sit and lean and listen - To a voice that has arisen - In my heart; with eyes that glisten - Gazing at the happy hills, - Fading dark blue, far away. - - - II - - _She looks down upon the dying garden_: - - There rank death clutches at the flowers - And drags them down and stamps in earth. - At morn the thin, malignant hours, - Shrill-voiced, among the wind-torn bowers, - Clamor a bitter mirth-- - Or is it heartbreak that, forlorn, - Would so conceal itself in scorn. - - At noon the weak, white sunlight crawls, - Like feeble age, once beautiful, - From mildewed walks to mildewed walls, - Down which the oozing moisture falls - Upon the cold toadstool:-- - Faint on the leaves it drips and creeps-- - Or is it tears of love who weeps? - - At night a misty blur of moon - Slips through the trees,--pale as a face - Of melancholy marble hewn;-- - And, like the phantom of some tune, - Winds whisper in the place-- - Or is it love come back again, - Seeking its perished joy in vain? - - - III - - _She muses upon the past_: - - When, in her cloudy chiton, - Spring freed the frozen rills, - And walked in rainbowed light on - The blossom-blowing hills; - Beyond the world’s horizon, - That no such glory lies on, - And no such hues bedizen, - Love led us far from ills. - - When Summer came, a sickle - Stuck in her sheaf of beams, - And let the honey trickle - From out her bee-hives’ seams; - Within the violet-blotted - Sweet book to us allotted,-- - Whose lines are flower-dotted,-- - Love read us many dreams. - - Then Autumn came,--a liar, - A fair-faced heretic;-- - In gypsy garb of fire, - Throned on a harvest rick.-- - Our lives, that fate had thwarted, - Stood pale and broken-hearted,-- - Though smiling when we parted,-- - Where love to death lay sick. - - Now is the Winter waited, - The tyrant hoar and old, - With death and hunger mated, - Who counts his crimes like gold.-- - Once more, before forever - We part--once more, then never!-- - Once more before we sever, - Must I his face behold! - - - IV - - _She takes up a book and reads_: - - What little things are those - That hold our happiness! - A smile, a glance; a rose - Dropped from her hair or dress; - A word, a look, a touch,-- - These are so much, so much. - - An air we can’t forget; - A sunset’s gold that gleams; - A spray of mignonette, - Will fill the soul with dreams, - More than all history says, - Or romance of old days. - - For, of the human heart, - Not brain, is memory; - These things it makes a part - Of its own entity; - The joys, the pains whereof - Are the very food of love. - - - V - - _She lays down the book, and sits musing_: - - How true! how true!--but words are weak, - In sympathy they give the soul, - To music--music, that can speak - All the heart’s pain and dole; - All that the sad heart treasures most - Of love that ’s lost, of love that ’s lost.-- - I would not hear sweet music now. - My heart would break to hear it now. - - So weary am I, and so fain - To see his face, to feel his kiss - Thrill rapture through my soul again!-- - There is no hell like this!-- - Ah, God! my God, were it not best - To give me rest, to give me rest!-- - Come, death, and breathe upon my brow. - Sweet death, come kiss my mouth and brow. - - - VI - - _She writes to her lover to come to her_: - - Dead lie the dreams we cherished, - The dreams we loved so well; - Like forest leaves they perished, - Like autumn leaves they fell. - Alas! that dreams so soon should pass! - Alas! alas! - - The stream lies bleak and arid, - That once went singing on; - The flowers once that varied - Its banks are dead and gone: - Where these were once are thorns and thirst-- - The place is curst. - - Come to me. I am lonely. - Forget all that occurred. - Come to me; if for only - One last, sad, parting word: - For one last word. Then let the pall - Fall over all. - - The day and hour are suited - For what I ’d say to you - Of love that I uprooted.-- - But I have suffered, too!-- - Come to me; I would say good-by - Before I die. - - - VII - - _The wind rises; the trees are agitated_: - - Woods that beat the wind with frantic - Gestures and sow darkly round - Acorns gnarled and leaves that antic - Wildly on the rustling ground, - - Is it tragic grief that saddens - Through your souls this autumn day? - Or the joy of death that gladdens - In exultance of decay? - - Arrogant you lift defiant - Boughs against the moaning blast, - That, like some invisible giant, - Wrapped in tumult, thunders past. - - Is it that in such insurgent - Fury, tossed from tree to tree, - You would quench the fiercely urgent - Pangs of some old memory? - - As in toil and violent action, - That still help them to forget, - Mortals drown the dark distraction - And insistence of regret. - - - VIII - - _She sits musing in the gathering twilight_: - - Last night I slept till midnight; then woke, and, far away, - A cock crowed; lonely and distant I heard a watch-dog bay: - But lonelier yet the tedious old clock ticked on to’ards day. - - And what a day!--remember those morns of summer and spring, - That bound our lives together! each morn a wedding-ring - Of dew, aroma, and sparkle, and buds and birds a-wing. - - Clear morns, when I strolled my garden, awaiting him, the rose - Expected too, with blushes,--the Giant-of-battle that grows - A bank of radiance and fragrance, and the Maréchal-Niel that glows. - - Not in vain did I wait, departed summer, amid your phlox! - ’Mid the powdery crystal and crimson of your hollow hollyhocks; - Your fairy-bells and poppies, and the bee that in them rocks. - - Cool-clad ’mid the pendulous purple of the morning-glory vine, - By the jewel-mine of the pansies and the snapdragons in line, - I waited, and there he met me whose heart was one with mine. - - Around us bloomed my mealy-white dusty-millers gay, - My lady-slippers, bashful of butterfly and ray; - My gillyflowers, spicy, each one, as a day of May. - - Ah me! when I think of the handfuls of little gold coins, amass, - My bachelor’s-buttons scattered over the garden grass, - The marigolds that boasted their bits of burning brass; - - More bitter I feel the autumn tighten on spirit and heart; - And regret those days, remembered as lost, that stand apart, - A chapter holy and sacred, I read with eyes that smart. - - How warm was the breath of the garden when he met me there that day! - How the burnished beetle and humming-bird flew past us, each a ray!-- - The memory of those meetings still bears me far away: - - Again to the woods a-trysting by the water-mill I steal, - Where the lilies tumble together, the madcap wind at heel; - And meet him among the flowers, the rocks and the moss conceal: - - Or the wild-cat gray of the meadows that the black-eyed Susans dot, - Fawn-eyed and leopard-yellow, that tangle a tawny spot - Of languid panther beauty that dozes, summer-hot.... - - Ah! back again in the present! with the winds that pinch and twist - The leaves in their peevish passion, and whirl wherever they list; - With the autumn, hoary and nipping, whose mausolean mist - - Entombs the sun and the daylight: each morning shaggy with fog, - That fits gray wigs on the cedars, and furs with frost each log; - That velvets white the meadows, and marbles brook and bog.-- - - Alone at dawn--indifferent: alone at eve--I sigh: - And wait, like the wind complaining: complain and know not why: - But ailing and longing and pining because I can not die. - - How dull is that sunset! dreary and cold, and hard and dead! - The ghost of those last August that, mulberry-rich and red, - The wine of God’s own vintage, poured purple overhead. - - But now I sit with the sighing dead dreams of a dying year; - Like the fallen leaves and the acorns, am worthless and feel as sere, - With a soul that ’s sick of the body, whose heart is one big tear. - - As I stare from my window the daylight, like a bravo, its cloak puts on. - The moon, like a cautious lanthorn, glitters, and then is gone.-- - Will he come to-night? will he answer?--Ah, God! would it were dawn! - - - IX - - _He enters. Taking her in his arms he speaks_: - - They said you were dying.-- - You shall not die!... - Why are you crying? - Why do you sigh?-- - Cease that sad sighing!-- - Love, it is I. - - All is forgiven!-- - Love is not poor; - Though he was driven - Once from your door, - Back he has striven, - To part nevermore! - - Will you remember - When I forget - Words, each an ember, - That you regret, - Now in November, - Now we have met? - - What if love wept once! - What though you knew! - What if he crept once - Pleading to you!-- - _He_ never slept once, - Nor was untrue. - - Often forgetful, - Love may forget; - Froward and fretful, - Dear, he will fret; - Ever regretful, - He will regret. - - Life is completer - Through his control; - Lifted, made sweeter, - Filled and made whole, - Hearing love’s metre - Sing in the soul. - - Flesh may not hear it, - Being impure; - But in the spirit, - There we are sure; - There we come near it, - There we endure. - - So when to-morrow - Ceases and we - Quit this we borrow, - Mortality, - What chastens sorrow - So it may see?-- - - (When friends are sighing; - Round one, and one - Nearer is lying, - Nearer the sun, - When one is dying - And all is done? - - When there is weeping, - Weary and deep,-- - God’s be the keeping - Of those who weep!-- - When our loved, sleeping, - Sleep their long sleep?--) - - Love! that is dearer - Than we’re aware; - Bringing us nearer, - Nearer than prayer; - Being the mirror - That our souls share. - - Still you are weeping! - Why do you weep?-- - Are tears in keeping - With joy so deep? - Gladness so sweeping? - Hearts so in keep? - - Speak to me, dearest! - Say it is true! - That I am nearest, - Dearest to you.-- - Smile, with those clearest - Eyes of gray blue. - - - X - - _She smiles on him through her tears; holding his hand she speaks_: - - They did not say I could not live beyond this weary night, - But now I know that I shall die before the morning’s light. - How weak I am!--but you ’ll forgive me when I tell you how - I loved you--love you; and the pain it is to leave you now? - - We could not wed!--Alas! the flesh, that clothes the soul of me, - Ordained at birth a sacrifice to this heredity, - Denied, forbade.--Ah, you have seen the bright spots in my cheeks - Glow hectic, as before comes night the west burns blood-red streaks? - - Consumption.--“But I promised you my hand?”--a thing forlorn - Of life; diseased!--O God!--and so, far better so, forsworn!-- - Oh, I was jealous of your love. But think: if I had died - Ere babe of mine had come to be a solace at your side! - - Had it been little then--your grief, when Heaven had made us one - In everything that’s good on earth and then the good undone? - No! no! and had I had a child--what grief and agony - To know _that_ blight born in him, too, against all help of me! - - Just when we cherished him the most, and youthful, sunny pride - Sat on his curly front, to see him die ere we had died.-- - Whose fault?--Ah, God!--not mine! but his, that ancestor who gave - Escutcheon to our sorrowful house, a Death’s-head and a Grave. - - Beneath the pomp of those grim arms we live and may not move; - Nor faith, nor truth, nor wealth avail to hurl them down, nor love! - How could I tell you this?--not then! when all the world was spun - Of morning colors for our love to walk and dance upon. - - I could not tell you how disease hid here a viper germ, - Precedence slowly claiming and so slowly fixing firm. - And when I broke my plighted troth and would not tell you why, - I loved you, thinking, “time enough when I have come to die.” - - Draw off my rings and let my hands rest so ... the wretched cough - Will interrupt my feeble speech and will not be put off ... - Ah, anyhow, my anodyne is this: to know that you - Are near and love me!--Kiss me now, as you were wont to do. - - And tell me you forgive me all; and say you will forget - The sorrow of that breaking-off, the fever and the fret.-- - Now set those roses near me here, and tell me death’s a lie-- - Once it was hard for me to live ... now it is hard to die. - - - - - PART V - - WINTER - - We, whom God sets a task, - Striving, who ne’er attain, - We are the curst!--who ask - Death, and still ask in vain. - We, whom God sets a task. - - - I - - _In the silence of his room. After many days_: - - All, all are shadows. All must pass - As writing in the sand or sea: - Reflections in a looking-glass - Are not less permanent than we. - - The days that mold us--what are they? - That break us on their whirling wheel? - What but the potters! we the clay - They fashion and yet leave unreal. - - Linked through the ages, one and all, - In long anthropomorphous chain, - The human and the animal - Inseparably must remain. - - Within us still the monstrous shape - That shrieked in air and howled in slime, - What are we?--partly man and ape-- - The tools of fate, the toys of time! - - - II - - _The bitterness of his bereavement speaks in him_: - - Vased in her bedroom window, white - As her glad girlhood, never lost, - I smelt the roses--and the night - Outside was fog and frost. - - What though I claimed her dying there! - God nor one angel understood - Nor cared, who from sweet feet to hair - Had changed to snow her blood. - - She had been mine so long, so long! - Our harp of life was one in word-- - Why did death thrust his hand among - The chords and break one chord! - - What lily lilier than her face! - More virgin than her lips I kissed! - When morn, like God, with gold and grace, - Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist! - - - III - - _Her dead face seems to rise up before him_: - - The face that I said farewell to, - Pillowed a flower on flowers, - Comes back, with its eyes to tell to - My soul what my heart should quell to - Calm, that is mine at hours. - - Dear, is your soul still daggered - There by something amiss? - Love--is _he_ ever laggard? - Hope--is _her_ face still haggard? - Tell me what it is! - - You, who are done with to-morrow! - Done with these worldly skies! - Done with our pain and sorrow! - Done with the griefs we borrow! - Joys that are born of sighs! - - Must we say “gone forever?” - Or will it all come true? - Does mine touch your thought ever? - And, over the doubts that sever, - Rise to the fact that ’s you? - - Love, in my flesh so fearful, - Medicine me this pain!-- - Love, with the eyes so tearful, - How can my soul be cheerful, - Seeing its joy is slain!... - - Gone!--’t was only a vision!-- - Gone! like a thought, a gleam!-- - Such to our indecision - Utter no empty mission;-- - Truth is in all we dream! - - - IV - - _He sinks into deep thought_: - - There are shadows that compel us, - There are powers that control: - More than substance these can tell us, - Speaking to the human soul. - - In the moonlight, when it glistened - On my window, white of glow, - Once I woke and, leaning, listened - To a voice that sang below. - - Full of gladness, full of yearning, - Strange with dreamy melody, - Like a bird whose heart was burning, - Wildly sweet it sang to me. - - I arose; and by the starlight, - Pale beneath the summer sky, - There I saw it, full of far light,-- - My dead joy go singing by. - - In the darkness, when the glimmer - Of the storm was on the pane, - Once I sat and heard a dimmer - Voice lamenting in the rain. - - Full of parting and unspoken - Heartbreak, faint with agony, - Like a bird whose heart was broken, - Moaning low it cried to me. - - I arose; and in the darkness, - Wan beneath the winter sky, - There I saw it, cold to starkness,-- - My dead love go wailing by. - - - V - - _He arouses from his abstraction, buries his face in his hands and - thinks_: - - So long it seems since last I saw her face, - So long ago it seems, - Like some sad soul in unconjectured space, - Still seeking happiness through perished grace - And unrealities, a little while - Illusions lead me, ending in the smile - Of Death, triumphant in a thorny place, - Among Love’s ruined roses and dead dreams. - - Since she is gone, no more I feel the light,-- - Since she has left all dark,-- - Cleave, with its revelation, all the night. - I wander blindly, on a crumbling height, - Among the fragments and the wrecks and stones - Of Life, where Hope, amid Life’s skulls and bones, - With weary face, disheartened, wild and white, - Trims her pale lamp with its expiring spark. - - Now she is dead, the Soul, naught can o’erawe,-- - Now she is gone from me,-- - Questions God’s justice that seems full of flaw, - As is His world, where misery is law, - And all men fools, too willing to be slaves.-- - My House of Faith, built up on dust of graves, - The wind of doubt sweeps down as made of straw, - And all is night and I no longer see. - - - VI - - _He looks from his window toward the sombre west_: - - Ridged and bleak the gray, forsaken - Twilight at the night has guessed; - And no star of dusk has taken - Flame unshaken in the west. - - All day long the woodlands, dying, - Moaned, and drippings as of grief - Rained from barren boughs with sighing - Death of flying twig and leaf. - - Ah, to live a life unbroken - Of the flings and scorns of fate! - Like that tree, with branches oaken, - Strength’s unspoken intimate.-- - - Who can say that we have never - Lived the life of plants and trees?-- - Not so wide the lines that sever - Us forever here from these. - - Colors, odors, that are cherished, - Haply hint we once were flowers: - Memory alone has perished - In this garnished world that’s ours. - - Music,--that all things expresses, - All for which we’ve sought and sinned,-- - Haply in our treey tresses - Once was guesses of the wind. - - But I dream!--The dusk, dark braiding - Locks that lack both moon and star, - Deepens; and, the darkness aiding, - Earth seems fading, faint and far. - - And within me doubt keeps saying-- - “What is wrong, and what is right? - Hear the cursing! hear the praying! - All are straying on in night.” - - - VII - - _He turns from the window, takes up a book, and reads_: - - The soul, like Earth, hath silences - Which speak not, yet are heard: - The voices mute of memories - Are louder than a word. - - Theirs is a speech which is not speech; - A language that is bound - To soul-vibrations, vague, that reach - Deeper than any sound. - - No words are theirs. They speak through things, - A visible utterance - Of thoughts--like those some sunset brings, - Or withered rose, perchance. - - The heavens that once, in purple and flame, - Spake to two hearts as one, - In after years may speak the same - To one sad heart alone. - - Through it the vanished face and eyes - Of her, the sweet and fair, - Of her the lost, again shall rise - To comfort his despair. - - And so the love that led him long - From golden scene to scene, - Within the sunset is a tongue - That speaks of what has been.-- - - How loud it speaks of that dead day, - The rose whose bloom is fled! - Of her who died; who, clasped in clay, - Lies numbered with the dead. - - The dead are dead; with them ’tis well - Within their narrow room;-- - No memories haunt their hearts who dwell - Within the grave and tomb. - - But what of those--the dead who live! - The living dead, whose lot - Is still to love--ah, God forgive!-- - To live and love, forgot! - - - VIII - - _The storm is heard sounding wildly outside with wind and hail_: - - The night is wild with rain and sleet; - Each loose-warped casement claps or groans: - I hear the plangent woodland beat - The tempest with long blatant moans, - Like one who fears defeat. - - And sitting here beyond the storm, - Alone within the lonely house, - It seems that some mesmeric charm - Holds all things--even the gnawing mouse - Has ceased its faint alarm. - - And in the silence, stolen o’er - Familiar objects, lo, I fear-- - I fear--that, opening yon door, - I ’ll find my dead self standing near, - With face that once I wore. - - The stairway creaks with ghostly gusts: - The flue moans; all its gorgon throat - One wail of winds: ancestral dusts,-- - Which yonder Indian war-gear coat - With gray, whose quiver rusts,-- - - Are shaken down.--Or, can it be, - That he who wore it in the dance, - Or battle, now fills shadowy - Its wampumed skins? and shakes his lance - And spectral plume at me?-- - - Mere fancy!--Yet those curtains toss - Mysteriously as if some dark - Hand moved them.--And I would not cross - The shadow there, that hearthstone’s spark, - A glow-worm sunk in moss. - - Outside ’t were better!--Yes, I yearn - To walk the waste where sway and dip - Deep, dark December boughs--where burn - Some late last leaves, that drip and drip - No matter where you turn. - - Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod, - Fills oozy footprints--but the blind - Night there, though like the frown of God, - Presents no fancies to the mind, - Like those that have o’erawed.-- - - The months I count: how long it seems - Since summer! summer, when with her, - When on her porch, in rainy gleams - We watched the flickering lightning stir - In heavens gray as dreams. - - When all the west, a sheet of gold, - Flared,--like some Titan’s opened forge,-- - With storm; revealing, manifold, - Vast peaks of clouds with crag and gorge, - Where thunder-torrents rolled. - - Then came the wind: again, again - Storm lit the instant earth--and how - The forest rang with roaring rain!-- - We could not read--where is it now?-- - That tale of Charlemagne: - - That old romance! that tale, which we - Were reading; till we heard the plunge - Of distant thunder sullenly, - And left to watch the lightning lunge, - And storm-winds toss each tree. - - That summer!--How it built us there, - Of sorcery and necromance, - A mental-world, where all was fair; - A land like one great pearl, a-trance - With lilied light and air. - - Where every flower was a thought; - And every bird, a melody; - And every fragrance, zephyr brought, - Was but the rainbowed drapery - Of some sweet dream long sought. - - ’Mid which we reared our heart’s high home, - Fair on the hills; with terraces, - Vine-hung and wooded, o’er the foam - Of undiscovered fairy seas, - All violet in the gloam. - - O land of shadows! shadow-home, - Within my world of memories! - Around whose ruins sweeps the foam - Of sorrow’s immemorial seas, - To whose dark shores I come! - - How long in your wrecked halls, alone - With ghosts of joys must I remain? - Between the unknown and the known, - Still hearing through the wind and rain - My lost love moan and moan. - - - IX - - _He sits by the slowly dying fire. The storm is heard with increased - violence_: - - Wild weather. The lash of the sleet - On the gusty casement, clapping-- - The sound of the storm like a sheet - My soul and senses wrapping. - - Wild weather. And how is she, - Now the rush of the rain falls serried - There on the turf and the tree - Of the place where she is buried? - - Wild weather. How black and deep - Is the night where the mad winds scurry!-- - Do I sleep? do I dream in my sleep - That I hear her footsteps hurry? - - Hither they come like flowers-- - And I see her raiment glisten, - Like the robes of one of the hours - Where the stars to the angels listen. - - Before me, behold, how she stands! - With lips high thoughts have weighted, - With testifying hands, - And eyes with glory sated. - - I have spoken and I have kneeled: - I have kissed her feet in wonder-- - But, lo! her lips--they are sealed, - God-sealed, and will not sunder. - - Though I sob, “Your stay was long! - You are come,--but your feet were laggard!-- - With mansuetude and song - For the heart your death has daggered.” - - Never a word replies, - Never, to all my weeping-- - Only a sound of sighs, - And of raiment past me sweeping.... - - I wake; and a clock tolls three-- - And the night and the storm beat serried - There on the turf and the tree - Of the place where she is buried. - - - - - RED LEAVES AND ROSES - - - I - - And he had lived such loveless years - That suffering had made him wise; - And she had known no graver tears - Than those of girlhood’s eyes. - - And he, perhaps, had loved before-- - One, who had wedded, or had died;-- - So life to him had been but poor - In love for which he sighed. - - In years and heart she was so young - Love paused and beckoned at the gate, - And bade her hear his songs, unsung; - She laughed that “love must wait.” - - He understood. She only knew - Love’s hair was faded, face was gray-- - Nor saw the rose his autumn blew - There in her heedless way. - - - II - - If he had come to her when May - Danced down the wildwood,--every way - Marked with white flow’rs, as if her gown - Had torn and fallen,--it might be - She had not met him with a frown, - Nor used his love so bitterly. - - Or if he had but come when June - Set stars and roses to one tune, - And breathed in honeysuckle throats - Clove-honey of her spicy mouth, - His heart had found some loving notes - In hers to cheer his life’s long drouth. - - He came when Fall made mad the sky, - And on the hills leapt like a cry - Of battle; when his youth was dead; - To _her_, the young, the wild, the white; - Whose symbol was the rose, blood-red, - And his the red leaf pinched with blight. - - He might have known, since youth was flown, - And autumn claimed him for its own; - And winter neared with snow, wild whirled, - His love to her would seem absurd; - To youth like hers; whose lip had curled - Yet heard him to his last sad word. - - Then laughed and--well, his heart denied - The words he uttered then in pride; - And he remembered how the gray - Was his of autumn, ah! and hers, - The rose-hued colors of the May, - And May was all her universe. - - And then he left her: and, like blood, - In her deep hair, the rose; whose bud - Was badge to her: while unto him, - His middle-age, must still remain - The red-leaf, withering at the rim, - As symbol of the all-in-vain. - - - III - - “Such days as these,” she said, and bent - Among her marigolds, all dew, - And dripping zinnia stems, “were meant - For spring not autumn; days we knew - In childhood; _these_ endearing those; - Much dearer since they have grown old: - Days, once imperfect with the rose, - Now perfect with the marigold.” - - “Such days as these,” he said, and gazed - Long with unlifted eyes that held - Sad autumn nights, “our hopes have raised - In futures that are mist-enspelled. - And so it is the fog blows in - Days dearer for the death they paint - With hues of life and joy,--as sin, - At death, puts off all earthly taint.” - - - IV - - Like deeds of hearts that have not kept - Their riches, as a miser, when - Sad souls have asked, with eyes that wept, - Among the toiling tribes of men, - The summer days gave Earth sweet alms - In silver of white lilies, while - Each night, with healing, outstretched palms - Stood Christ-like with its starry smile. - - Will she remember him when dull - Months drag their duller hours by? - With feet that crush the beautiful - And leave the beautiful to die? - Or never see? nor sit with lost - Dreams withered, ’mid hope’s empty husks, - And wait, heart-counting-up the cost - Of love’s illusions ’mid life’s dusks? - - - V - - He is as one who, treading salty scurf - Of lonely sea-sands, hears the roaring rocks - Of some lost isle of misty crags and lochs; - Who sees no sea, but, through a world of surf, - Gray ghosts of gulls and screaming petrel flocks: - When, from the deep’s white ruin and wild wreck, - Above the fog, beneath the ghostly gull, - The iron ribs of some storm-shattered hull - Loom, packed with pirate treasure to the deck - A century rotten: feels his wealth replete, - When long-baulked ocean claims it; and one dull - Wave flings, derisive at despondent feet, - A skull, one doubloon rattling in the skull. - - - VI - - And when full autumn sets the dahlia stems - On fire with flowers, and the chill dew turns - The maple trees, above geranium urns, - To Emir tents, and strings with flawless gems - The moon-flower and the wahoo-bush that burns; - Calmly she sees the year grow sad and strange, - And stands with one among the wilted walks - Of the old garden of the gray, old grange, - And feels no sorrow for the frost-maimed stalks - Since--though the wailing autumn to her talks-- - Youth marks swift spring on life’s far mountain-range. - Or she will lean to her old harpsichord; - A youthful face beside her; and the glow - Of hickory on the hearth will balk the blow - Of blustering rain that beats the casement hard; - And sing of summer and so thwart the snow. - - “Haply, some day, she yet may sit alone,” - He thinks, “within the shadow-saddened house, - When round the gables stormy echoes moan, - And in the closet gnaws the lonesome mouse; - And Memory come stealing down the stair - From dusty attics where is piled the Past-- - Like so much rubbish that we hate to keep-- - And turn the knob; and, framed in frosty hair, - A grave, forgotten face look in at last, - And she will know, and bow her head and weep.” - - - - - WILD THORN AND LILY - - - I - - That night, returning to the farm, we rode - Before a storm. Uprolling from the west, - Incessant with distending fire, loomed - The multitudes of tempest: towering here - A shadowy Shasta, there a cloudy Hood, - Veined as with agonies, aurora-born, - Of torrent gold; resplendent heaven to heaven, - Far peak to peak, terrific spoke; the vast - Sierras of the storm, within which beat - The caverned thunder like a mighty stream: - Vibrating on, with rushing wind and flame, - Now th’ opening welkin shone, one livid sheet - Of instantaneous gold, a giant’s forge, - Wild-clanging; now, with streak on angled streak - Of momentary light, a labyrinth - Where shouting Darkness stalked with Titan torch: - Again the firmament hung hewn with fire - Whence leapt the thunder; and it seemed that hosts - Of Heaven rushed to war with blazing shields - And swords of splendor. And before the storm - We galloped, while the frantic trees above - Went wild with rain, through whose mad limbs and leaves - Splashed black the first big drops. On, on we drove, - And gained the gates, pillaring the avenue - Of ancient beech, at whose far, flickering end, - At last, beaconed the lights of home. - - And she? - Was it the lightning that lent lividness - And terror to her countenance? or fear - Of her own heart? revulsion? memory? - Did deep regret, that, now the thing _was_ done, - That she was mine, a yearning to be free, - Away from me, assail her? or, the thought, - The knowledge, that she did not love the man - Whom she had wedded? knowing better now - That all her heart was Julien’s from the first, - And would be Julien’s until the end. - And did she now look backward on the past? - Or forward--on the barrier that the church - For all the future years had placed between - The possible and impossible? God knows! - - Yet I had won her honestly with words - Love, only, uttered out of its soul’s truth; - Had won her--was it openly?--perhaps!-- - Although engaged to Julien.--What else - Had led us to elopement?--Well, ’t was done! - The whole, mad, lovely, miserable affair - Of love and youthful folly. Being done - We must abide the reckoning. That is, - _I_ would; and she?--she saw her duty there - Beside her husband. And within myself, - When we alighted from the carriage, thus,-- - Beneath the porch,--my mind resolved the thing: - “I am her husband now, and she my wife. - Less than her husband, I, much less a man, - Were I not able to regain and keep - The love she gave me, that she thinks is his, - That is not his. ’T is pity merely now - That makes her pensive. I am pensive, too, - For Julien, the poet and the friend; - The dreamer and the lover.--But all ’s fair - In love they say; and I,--well, willingly - I’ll bear the burthen of the blame of all.” - Scarce had we entered when high heaven oped - Vast gates of bronze and doors of booming brass - That dammed a deluge, and the deluge poured.-- - I thought of him still; for I felt that she - Was thinking too of Julien and his moods, - That often swept his soul with storm like this, - Yet oftener with sunlight than with storm; - That soul of sun and tempest, ray and rain, - My school-friend Julien! whom once she won - To think she loved--I know not how. My play - Was open as the morning, and as fair. - His poverty and genius here, and here - My wealth and--platitude; and I had won. - But it was hard for him. I did not dream - That it would end so. And when Gwendolyn - Used every gentleness--and that is much-- - I did not dream his poet’s temperament - Were so affected of a love affair, - A wrong or right; he, whose sole aim seemed song. - I did not dream he ’d take it desperately, - And end so tragically. Who ’d have thought - His character, although so sensitive, - Would fall into extremes of morbidness - And melancholy! Had it now been I, - Whose heart had lost in the great game of love, - None would have wondered; for I am of those - Whose vigorous iron does not bend, but break - At one decisive blow: _his_ should have sprung-- - Or so I think, not broken as it had-- - Elastic as fine-tempered steel that bends - And then resumes its usual usefulness. - - A pale smile strained the corners of her mouth - When, from the porch, into the parlor’s blaze - I led her. And her mother met us there, - Her mother and her father. And I saw - The slow reflection of their happiness - Make glad her eyes, as their approval grew - From half-severe rebukes, that were well meant, - To open, glad avowal of their joy. - She had done well, and we were soon forgiven.... - - But I resumed _his_ letter when alone: - His letter written her three months before, - When all was over, and we two were one, - And well upon our way to Italy - For six sweet months of honeymoon. His word, - His letter, all of her, that came to me - At Venice, that I opened in mistake, - Amid a lot of papers sent from home. - She had not read, and never should while I - Had power to conceal until I ’d read. - I would not let the dead scrawl mar or soil - My late-won joy, my testament of love. - No! I would read it, afterwards destroy. - Thoughts made of music for a last farewell, - When he knew all and asked her to perpend - Expressions of past things her gift of love - Had given speech to in the happy days. - And so I read:-- - - - II - - “The rhyme is mine, but yours - The thought and all the music, springing from - The rareness of the love that dawned on me - A little while to make my sad life glad. - Should I regret the sunset it refused, - Since all my morn was richer than the world? - Or that my day should stride without a change - Of crimson, or of purple, or of gold, - Into the barren blackness where the moon - And all God’s stars lay dead? Should I complain, - Upbraid or censure or one moment curse, - _I_ with my morning? ’T is a memory - That stains the midnight now: one wild-rose ray - Laid like a finger pointing me the path - I follow, and I go rejoicingly. - - Our love was very young (nor had it aged-- - If we had lived long lifetimes--here in me), - When one day, strolling in the sun, you spoke - Words I perceived should hint a coming change: - I made three stanzas of the thought, you see: - But now ’t is like the sea-shell that suggests, - And still associates us with the sea - In its vague song and elfland workmanship. - Yet it has lost a something that it had - There by the far sand’s foaming; something rare, - A different beauty like an element: - - I wonder on what life will do - When love is loser of all love; - When life still longs to love anew - And has not love enough:-- - I ’ll turn my heart into a ray, - And wait--a day? - - I wonder on what love will hold - When life is weary of all life; - And life and love have both grown old - With scars of sin and strife:-- - I’ll change my soul into a flower, - And wait--an hour? - - I wonder on why men forget - The life that love made laugh; and why - Weak women will remember yet - The life that love made sigh:-- - I’ll sing my thought into a song, - And wait--how long? - - - III - - “And once you questioned of our mocking-bird, - And of the German nightingale, and I - Knowing a sweeter bird than those sweet two, - Made fast associates of birds and brooks - And learned their numbers. Middle April made - The path of lilac leading to your porch - A rift of fallen Paradise; a blue - So full of fragrance that the birds that built - Among the lilacs thought that God was there, - And of God’s goodness they would sing and sing, - Till every throat seemed bursting with its song, - Note on wild note, diviner each than each. - And waiting by the gate, that reached the lane, - For you, who gave sweet eloquence to all, - The afternoon, the lilacs and the spring, - My heart was singing and it sang of you: - - Two glow-worms are the jewels in - Her ears; and underneath her chin - A diamond like a firefly: - There is no starlight in the sky - When Gwendolyn stands in the maze - Of woodbine, near the portico; - For all the stars are in her gaze, - The night and stars I know. - - A clinging dream of mist the lawn - She wears; and like a bit of dawn - Her fan with one red jewel pinned: - Among the boughs there breathes no wind - When Gwendolyn comes down the path - Of lilacs from the portico; - For all the breeze her coming hath, - The beam and breeze I know. - - Two locust-blooms her hands; and slips - Of eglantine her cheeks and lips; - Her hair, a hyacinth of gloom: - The balmy buds give no perfume - When Gwendolyn draws near to me, - The gate beyond the portico; - For all aroma sweet is she, - All fragrance that I know. - - Life, love, and faith are in her face, - And in her presence all their grace: - And my religion is a word, - A wish of hers. No mocking-bird, - When Gwendolyn laughs near, dare float - One bubble from the portico; - For all of song is in her throat, - All music that I know. - - - IV - - “The mocking-bird! and then weird fancy filled - My soul with vision, and I saw a song - Pursue a bird that was no bird--a voice - Concealed in dim expressions of the spring,-- - Who sits among the forests and the fields, - With dark-blue eyes smiling to life the flowers,-- - Where we strolled happy as the April hills: - - A sunbeam, all the day that fell - Upon the fountain,-- - Like laughter gurgling in the dell - Below the mountain,-- - Drank, with its sparkle, one by one, - The water-words that, in the sun, - Made melody,--the sun-rays tell,-- - That never yet was done. - - A moon-ray, that had gone astray - ’Mid wildwood alleys, - Where Echo haunts the forest way - Among the valleys, - The livelong night upon the rocks - Slept, hid among girl Echo’s locks, - And stole her voice,--the moonbeams say,-- - That mocks and only mocks. - - A shadow, that had made its seat - Amid the roses - And thorns--the bitter and the sweet - That life discloses-- - Mixed with the rose-balm and the dew - And crimson thorns that pierced it through, - Until its soul,--the shades repeat,-- - Was portion of them, too. - - A Fairy found the beam of gold, - And ray of glitter; - The shadow, whose dim soul did hold - Both sweet and bitter; - And made a bird, that haunts the morn - And night; that flits from flower to thorn, - A voice of laughter,--it is told,-- - Love, mockery, and scorn. - - - V - - “Among the white haw-blossoms, where the creek - Droned under drifts of dogwood and of haw, - The red-bird, like a crimson blossom blown - Against the snow-white bosom of the Spring, - The chaste confusion of her lawny breast, - Sang on, prophetic of serener days, - As confident as June’s completer hours. - And I stood listening like a hind, who hears - A wood-nymph breathing in a forest flute - Among gray beech-trees of myth-haunted ways: - And when it ceased, the memory of the air - Blew like a syrinx in my brain: I made - A lyric of the notes that men might know: - - He flies with flirt and fluting-- - As flies a falling star - From flaming star-beds shooting shooting-- - From where the roses are. - - Wings past and sings; and seven - Notes, sweet as fragrance is,-- - That turn to sylphs in heaven,-- - Float round him full of bliss. - - He sings; each burning feather - Thrills, throbbing at his throat; - A song of glow-worm weather, - And of a firefly boat: - - Of Elfland and a princess - Who, born of a perfume, - His music lulls,--where winces - That rose’s cradled bloom. - - No bird is half so airy, - No bird of dusk or dawn, - O masking King of Fairy! - O red-crowned Oberon. - - - VI - - “Alas! the nightingale I never heard. - Yet I, remembering how your voice would thrill - Me with exalted expectation, felt - The passion-throated nightingale would win - Into my soul in some wild way like this, - With reminiscences of dusks long dead, - Presentiments of nights, that mate the flowers - And the prompt stars, and marry them with song. - Of such,--love whispered me when deep in dreams,-- - I made my nightingale. It is a voice - Heard in the April of our year of love: - - Between the stars and roses - There lies a path no man may see, - Where every breeze that blows is - A wandering melody; - Down which each bright star gazes - Upon each rose that raises - Its face up lovingly, - As if with prayers and praises. - - The star and rose are wiser - Than all but love beneath the skies; - No hoard of any miser - Is rich as these are wise: - No bee may reach or rifle, - No mist may cloud or stifle - Their love that never dies, - That knows nor trick nor trifle. - - There is a bird that carries - Love-messages; and comes and goes - Between each star that tarries, - And every rose that blows: - A bird that can not tire, - Whose throat ’s a throbbing lyre, - Whose song is now a rose, - And now a starry fire. - - - VII - - “O May-time woods! O May-time lanes and hours! - And stars, that knew how often there at night - Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew - Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk,-- - When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon - Hung, silvering long windows of your room,-- - I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept. - I watched and waited for--I know not what-- - Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf’s - Unfolding to caresses of the spring: - A rustle of your footsteps: or the dew - That softly rolled, a syllable of love, - In sweet avowal, from a rose’s lips - Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word - Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose-- - The word young lips half murmur in a dream: - - Serene with sleep, light visions load her eyes; - And underneath her window blooms a quince. - The night is a sultana who doth rise - In slippered caution, to admit a prince, - Love, who her eunuchs and her lord defies. - - Are these her dreams? or is it that the breeze - Pelts me with petals of the quince, and lifts - The Balm-of-Gilead buds? and seems to squeeze - Aroma on aroma through sweet rifts - Of Eden, dripping from the rainy trees? - - Along the path the buckeye trees begin - To heap their hills of blossoms.--Oh, that they - Were Romeo ladders, whereby I might win - Her chamber’s sanctity,--where love must pray - And guard her soul!--so stainless of all sin! - - There might I see the balsam scent erase - Its sweet intrusion; and the starry night - Conclude majestic pomp; the virgin grace - Of every bud abashed before the white, - Pure passion-flower of her sleeping face. - - - VIII - - “And once, in early May, a sparrow sang - Among the garden bushes; and you asked - If the suave song stayed knocking at my heart. - I smiled some answer, and, behold, that night - Found that my heart had locked this fancy in: - - Rain, rain, and a ribbon of song - Uncurled where the blossoms are sprinkled; - The song-sparrow sings, and I long - For, the silver-sweet throat, that has tinkled, - To sing in the bloom and the rain, - Sing again, and again, and again, - Under my window-pane. - - Rain, rain, and the trickling tips - Of the million pink blooms of the quinces; - And I hear the song rill from the lips, - The lute-haunted lips of my princess: - O love! in the rain and the bloom, - Sing again in the pelting perfume, - Sweetheart, under my room. - - Rain, rain, and the dripping of drops - From cups of the blossoms they load, or - Tilt over with tipsiest tops: - And eyes as of sun-beam and odor, - There, under the bloom-blowing tree-- - A face like a flower to see, - Love is looking at me. - - - IX - - “Once in the village I had heard a song, - A melody which I wrote down for you, - And which you sang. But, there among your hills, - The dawns and sunsets and the serious stars - Made trite its thought and words, that seemed as stale - As musty parlors of the commonplace. - I changed its words, and here and there its thought, - But, though you praised, you never sang it more, - And so I knew, like some poor poet, it - Had fallen on disfavor, God knows why, - With its high patron. Thus its metre ran: - Look, happy eyes, and let me know - The timid flower her love hath cherished - Fades not before the fruit shall show, - Seen in the clear truth of your glow - Where naught of love hath perished. - - Lift, happy lips, and let me take - The sacred secret of her spirit - To mine in kisses, that shall make - Mute marriage of our souls, and wake - The heart’s sweet silence near it. - - - X - - “And so I wrote another filled with birds, - Deliberate twilight and eve’s punctual star; - And made the music of that song obey - The metre of my own and melody: - - Only to hear that you love me, - Only to feel it is true; - Stars and the gloaming above me, - I in the gloaming with you. - Staining through violet fire, - A sunset of poppy and gold, - Red as a heart with desire, - Rich with a secret untold. - - Deep where the shadows are doubled, - Deep where the blossoms are long, - Listen!--deep love in the bubbled - Breath of a mocking-bird’s song. - You, who have made them the dearer, - Drawing them near from afar!-- - Stars and the heaven the nearer, - Sweet, through the joy that you are. - - - XI - - “Confronted with the certainty that I - Had no approval for my love from you, - No visible sign, but my own prompting hope’s, - Conforming with my heart’s one wild desire, - Who had not dreaded disappointment there! - The shadow of a heart’s unformed denial, - That should take form and soon confirm the doubt: - The doubt that would content itself with this: - - If I might hold her by the hand,-- - Her hands so full of soothing peace!-- - Her heart would hear and understand - My heart’s demand, - And all her idling cease. - - If she would let my eyes look in - Her eyes, whose deeps are full of truth, - Her soul might see how mine would win - Her, without sin, - In all her happy youth. - - If I might kiss her mouth, and lead - The kiss up to her eyes and hair, - There is no prayer that so could plead,-- - And find sure heed,-- - My love’s divine despair. - - - XII - - “And, uninstructed, smiled and wrote ‘despair,’ - Enamoured, yet fearful of the shade that should - Some day come stealing through my silent door - To sit unbidden through the lonely hours.-- - I cast the shudder off, and in the fields - Found hope again, and beauty born of dreams: - For it was summer, and all living things, - The common flowers and the birds and bees, - Became interpreters of love for me: - - Say that he can not tell her how he loves her-- - Words, for such adoration, often fail,-- - When but a bow of ribbon, glove that gloves her, - Clothes her fair femininity in mail. - - So many ways and wisdoms to express what - To th’ language of devotion is denied; - Ambassadors to make the maiden guess what - Before her heart’s high fortress long has sighed. - - A bird to sing his secret--she’ll perpend him: - A bee to bid her soul to hear and see: - A blossom, like a sweet appeal, to bend him, - Before her there, upon a worshiping knee. - - - XIII - - “So was my love confessed to you. I thought - You loved me as love led me to believe: - And so, no matter where I, dreaming, went - Among the hills, the woods, and quiet fields, - All had a poetry so intimate, - So happy and so ready that, for me, - ’Twas but to stoop and gather as I went, - As one goes reaching roses in the June. - Three withered wild ones that I gathered then - I send you now. Their scent and bloom are dust: - - - 1 - - What wild-flower shows perfection - Such as thy face, no blemish mars? - I leave to the selection - Of all the wild-flower stars: - To every wildwood bloom that blows, - Wild phlox, wild daisy, and wild rose. - - What cascade hath suspicion - O’ the marvel that thy whiteness is? - I leave to the decision - Of each proclaiming breeze: - To winds that kiss the buds awake, - And roll the ripple on the lake. - - What bird can sing the naming - Of all the music that thou art? - I leave to the proclaiming - Of that within my heart: - My heart, wherein, the whole day long, - Sits adoration rapt in song. - - - 2 - - What witch then hast thou met, - Who wrought this amulet? - This charm, that makes each look, love, - Of thine a rose; - Thy face an open book, love, - Where beauty gleams and glows, - And thought to music set. - - What fairy of the wood, - To whom thou once wast good, - Gave thee this gift?--Thy words, love, - Should be pure gold; - And all thy songs as bird’s, love, - Sweet as the Mays of old - With youth and love imbued. - - What elfin of the glade - This white enchantment made, - That filled thee with the essence - Of all the Junes? - That made thy soul, thy presence, - Like to the moon’s - Above a far cascade. - - What wizard of the cave - Hath made my heart thy slave? - That dreams of thee when sleeping, - And, when awake, - My anxious spirit keeping - ’Neath spells I can not break, - Sweet spells, whence naught can save. - - 3 - - Dear, (though given conclusion to), - Songs,--no memory surrenders,-- - Still their music breathe in you; - Silence meditation renders - Audible with notes it knew. - - Sweet, when all the flowers are dead, - Perfumes,--that the heart remembers - Made of them a marriage-bed,-- - Shall not fail me in December’s - Gloom, but from your face be shed. - - Dear, when night denies a star, - Darkness will not suffer, seeing - Song and fragrance are not far; - Starlight of the summer being - In the loveliness you are. - - - XIV - - “Revealing distant vistas where I thought - I saw your love stand as ’mid lily blooms, - Long, angel goblets molded out of stars, - Pouring aroma at your feet: and life - Took fire with thoughts your soul must help you read: - - A song; and songs (who does not know?) - Reveal no music but is thine. - Thou singest, and the waters flow, - The breezes blow, - The sunbeams shine, - And all the earth grows young, divine. - - Low laughter; and I look away; - Whate’er the time of year, I dream - I walk beneath sweet skies of May - On ways where play - Both gloom and gleam, - And hear a bird and forest stream. - - A thought; and straight it seems to me, - However dark, the stars arise, - And rain down memories of thee,-- - As, it may be, - From Paradise - One feels an angel-lover’s eyes. - - - XV - - “But is it well to tell you what I felt - When I beheld no change beyond the moods - That gloomed or glistened in your raven eyes? - When I sat singing ’neath one steadfast star - Of morning with no phantoms of strange fears - To slay the look or word that helped me sing: - When song came easier than come buds in spring, - That make the barren boughs one pomp of pearls: - - Oh, let the happy day go past, - And let the night be short or long, - When life and love are one at last, - And hearts are full of song, - ’Tis sweet midsummer of the dream, - And all the dreams thou hast - Are truer than they seem. - - And once I dreamt in autumn of - Death with cadaverous eyes that gazed - From out a shadow.... It was love - Whose deathless eyes were raised - From the deep darkness that unrolled - Wild splendor; and, amazed, - Thy soul I did behold. - - And then it seemed that some one said, - The dead are nearer than dost know. - And when they tell thee love is dead,-- - Although it seems ’t is so,-- - Still shalt thou feel in every beat - And heart-throb of thy woe - Love breathing, bitter-sweet. - - - XVI - - “One evening when I came to talk with you, - Impatience hurt me in your brief replies. - And I who had refused,--because we dread - Approaching horror of our lives made maimed,-- - The inevitable, could not help but see - Some change in you to’ards me.--That night I dreamed - I wandered ’mid old ruins, where the snake - And scorpion crawled in poison-spotted heat; - Plague-bloated bulks of hideous vine and root - Wrapped fallen fanes; and bristling cacti bloomed - Blood-red and death-white on forgotten tombs. - And from my soul went forth a bitter cry - That pierced the silence that was packed with death - And pale presentiment. And so I went, - A white flame beckoning before my face, - And in my ears sounds of primordial seas - That boasted preadamic gods and men: - A flame before me and, beyond, a voice: - But, lo, the white flame when I reached for it - Became thin ashes like a dead man’s dust; - And when I thought I should behold the sea, - Stagnation, turned to filth and rottenness, - Rolled out a swamp: the voice became a stench. - - If we should pray together now - For sunshine and for rain, - And thou shouldst get fair weather now, - And I the clouds again, - Would ray and rain keep single, - Or for the rainbow mingle? - - Dear, if this should be made to me, - That I had asked for light, - And God had given shade to me, - And all to thee that’s bright, - Wouldst thou go by with scorning, - Refusing darkness morning? - - If all my life were winter, love, - And all thy life were spring, - And mine with frost should splinter, love, - While thine with birds should sing, - Wouldst thou walk past and glitter, - Forgetful mine is bitter? - - - XVII - - “Still on the anguish of a dying hope - An infant hope was nourished; all in vain. - For, at the last, although we parted friends, - The friendship lay like sickness on my soul, - That saw all gladness perish from the world - With loss of thee; and, ’mid the future years, - Love building high a sepulchre for hope. - - Ah, could you learn forgetfulness, - And teach my heart how to forget; - And I unlearn all fretfulness, - And teach your soul that still will fret; - The mornings of the world would burn - Before us and we would not turn, - For we would not regret. - - Did you but know what sorrow keeps, - That drives the joy of life away, - And I what each to-morrow keeps - For us until it is to-day; - No grief or change would then surprise - Our lives with what our lives were wise, - And nothing could betray. - - If you could be interior to - My dreams that are all love’s desire; - And I could be superior to - Myself and such in you inspire; - Long stairways would the years unroll - To lift us upward, soul to soul, - To what celestial fire! - - - XVIII - - “There came no words of comfort from your lips. - Not that I asked for pity! that had been - As fire unto the scalded or dry bread - Unto the famished fallen ’mid the sands! - But all your actions said that I was wrong, - But how, I know not and have ceased to care; - Still standing like one stricken blind at noon, - Who gropes and fumbles, feeling all grow strange - That once was so familiar; cursing God - Who locks him in with darkness and despair.-- - Your judgment had been juster had it had - A lesser love than mine to judge.--O love, - Where lay the justice of thy judge in this?-- - - ‘If thou hadst praised thy God as long - As thou hast praised a woman’s eyes, - Perhaps thou hadst not suffered wrong, - As now, and sat with sighs: - But, through thy prayer and praise made strong, - Perhaps thou hadst grown wise. - - ‘If thou hadst bade thy God be more - Than I, thy life had not been sad; - His love to thee had not been poor - As mine. But thou wast mad, - And cam’st, a beggar, to my door, - And had more than I had. - - ‘If thou hadst taught me how to love, - Nor played with love as monarchs play, - My heart had learned right soon enough, - From thine, love’s lowlier way. - But all thy love stood far above, - Nor touched my soul to sway.’ - - - XIX - - “Thus did you write me, or in words like these, - When all was over and your heart was led, - Through pity, haply, thus to justify - Yourself, that needed not to justify, - Since all your reason lay in four small words, - Enough to wreck my world and all my life, - _You did not love_: what more is there to tell?-- - Yet, haply, it was this: One soul, that still - Demanded more than it could well return; - And, searching inward, yet could never pierce - Beyond its superficiality. - You did not know; yet I had felt in me - The rich fulfillment of a rare accord, - And could not, though the longing lay like song - And music on me, win your soul’s response. - - Were it well, lifting me - Eyes that give heed, - Down in your soul to see - Thought, the affinity - Of act and deed? - Knowing what naught may tell - Of heart and soul: - Yet were the knowledge whole, - And were it well? - - Were it well, giving true - Love all enough, - Still to discover new - Depths of true love for you, - Infinite love? - Feeling what naught may tell - Of heart and soul: - Yet were the knowledge whole, - And were it well? - - - XX - - “What else but, laboring for some good, to lift - Ourselves above the despotism of self, - All egoism strangling strength and hope, - To work and work, and, in the love of work, - Which takes the place, in some, of love’s real self, - To quench the flame that eats into the heart? - Art, our intensest and our truest love, - Immaculateness that has never led - One of her lovers wrong, his love all soul! - I followed beauty, and my ardor prayed - Your memory would, feature and form and face, - Be blotted out within me; rise no more - To mar the labor that I owed to Art. - I prayed, yea, to forget you, you I loved: - I prayed; and, see!--how Heaven answered me: - - I have no song to tell thee - The love that I would sing; - The song that should enspell thee - With words, and so compel thee - That thou, with love, must wing - Into my life to-morrow-- - For all my songs are sorrow. - - My strength is not a giant - To hold thee with strong hands, - To make thee less defiant; - Thy spirit more compliant - With all my love demands: - Alas! my love is meekness, - And all my strength is weakness. - - What hope have I to hover-- - When wings refuse to rise-- - Within thy heart’s close cover, - And there to play the lover, - Concealed from mortal eyes? - What hope! to give me boldness, - When all thy looks are coldness? - - - XXI - - “I prayed; and for a time felt strong as strength, - And held both hands out to the loveliness - That lured in the ideal. And I felt - Compelling power upon me that would lift - My face to heaven, now, to see the stars, - Now bend it back to earth to see the flowers. - I learned long lessons ’twixt a look and look: - - Breezes and linden blooms, - Sunshine and showers; - Rain, that the May perfumes, - Cupped in the flowers: - Clouds and the leaves that patter - Raindrops that glint and glare-- - Or be they gems that scatter? - Sapphires the sylphides shake, - When their loose fillets break, - Out of their radiant hair? - - Now is my heart a lute! - Now doth it pinion - Song in love’s swift pursuit - In thought’s dominion! - Dreaming of all thou meanest, - Thou, with uneager eyes, - Nature! of worlds thou queenest, - Whither thy mother hand - Draws us from land to land, - Far from the worldly wise! - - - XXII - - “Thus would I scatter grain around my life, - Gold grain of song, to lure them down to me, - Cloud-colored doves of peace to fill my soul, - And find them turn to ravens while they flew, - Black ravens of despair that would not out. - The old, dull, helpless aching at the heart, - As if some scar had turned a wound again. - While idle grief stared at the brutal past, - Which held a loss that made the past more rich - Than all Earth’s arts: that marveled how it came - Such puny folly should usurp love’s high - Proud pedestal of life that held your form, - In Parian, sculptured by the hands of thought. - And oft I shook myself,--for nightmares weighed - Each sense,--and seemed to wake; yet evermore - Beheld a death’s-head grinning at my eyes. - - So when the opening of the door doth thrill - My soul with sudden knowledge death is come, - Let me forget you or remember still, - It will not matter then that life went ill, - When death bends to me and my lips are dumb. - - Then I shall not remember: and shall leave - No memory behind me, and no trace - Of aught my life accomplished. Let none grieve. - There is no heart my passing will bereave; - And there are thousands who can fill my place. - - Who knocks?--The night camps on each hill and heath: - And round my door are minions of the night: - And like a weapon, riven from its sheath, - The wind sweeps, and the tempest grinds its teeth - Around me and my wild, hand-hollowed light. - - Who knocks?--the door is open!--And I see - The Darkness threatening, with distorted fists - Of cloudy terror, Courage on her knee: - Shine far, O candle! for it so may be - Love is bewildered in the night and mists.-- - - No wandering wisp art thou, that haunts the rain - With pallid flicker, fading as it flies!-- - The door is open!--Will he knock again?-- - The door is open!--Shall it be in vain?-- - Come in! delay not! thou, whose ways are wise! - - Who knocked has entered: let the darkness pass, - The door be closed!--Now morning lights shall thrust - It open; and the sunlight shine and mass - Its splendor here where once but darkness was, - And in its rays--motes and a little dust.” - - * * * * * - - - XXIII - - And I had read, read to the bitter end; - Half hearing lone surmises of the rain - And trouble of the wind. At last I rose - And went to Gwendolyn. She did not know - The kiss I gave her had a shudder in it; - Nor how the form of Julien rose between - Me and her lips, a blood-stain o’er his heart. - - - - - THE IDYLL OF THE STANDING-STONE - - - I - - She knows its windings and its crooks; - The wildflowers of its lovely woods; - The crowfoot’s golden sisterhoods, - That crowd its sunny nooks: - The iris, whose blue blossoms seem - Mab’s bonnets; and, each leaf a-gleam, - The trillium’s fairy-books. - - He knows its shallows and its pools, - Its stair-like beds of rock that go, - Foaming, with waterfall and flow, - Where dart the minnow schools; - Its grassy banks that herons haunt, - Or where the woodcock call; and gaunt - The mushrooms lift their stools. - - She seeks the columbine and phlox, - The bluebell, where the bushes fill - The old stones of the ruined mill; - She wades among the rocks: - Her feet are rose-pearl in the stream; - Her eyes are bluet-blue; a beam - Lies on her nut-brown locks. - - He comes with fishing-reel and line - To angle in the darker deeps, - Where the reflected forest sleeps - Of sycamore and pine: - And now and then a shadow swoops - Above him of a hawk that stoops - From skies as clear as wine. - - And will he see, if they should meet, - That she is fairer than each flower - Her apron fills? and in that hour - Feel life less incomplete?... - He stops below: she walks above-- - The brook floats down, as white as love, - One blossom to his feet. - - And she?--should she behold the tan - Of manly face and honest eyes, - Would all her soul idealize - Him? make him more than man?... - She dropped one blossom when she heard - Soft whistling--was it man or bird, - Whose notes so sweetly ran? - -[Illustration: - - Where the woodcock call Page 161 - - _The Idyll of the Standing-Stone_] - - They knew before they came to meet; - For some divulging influence - Had touched them thro’ the starry lens - God holds to bring in beat - Two hearts--her heart one haunting wish, - And his--forgetful of the fish, - Her flower at his feet. - - - II - - The sassafras twigs had just lit up - The yellow stars of their fragrant candles, - And the dogwood brimmed each blossom-cup - With spring to its brown-tipped handles; - When down the orchard, ’mid apple blooms-- - Say, ho, the hum o’ the honey-bee!-- - A glimpse of Spring in the sprinkled glooms? - Or only a girl? with the warm perfumes - Blown round her breezily. - - The maple, as red as the delicate flush - Of an afterglow, was airy crimson; - And the haw-tree, white in the wing-whipped hush, - Gleamed cool as a cloud that the moonlight dims on; - And under the oak, whose branches strung-- - Say, heigh, the rap o’ the sapsuckér!-- - Gray buds in tassels that sweetly swung, - They stood and listened a bird that sung, - As glad as the heart in her. - - Yellow the bloom of the rattle-weed, - And white the bloom of the plum and cherry; - And red as a stain the red-bud’s brede, - And clover the color of sherry: - And a wren sings there in the orchard drift,-- - And, ho! the dew from the web that slips!-- - And a thrush sings there in the woodland rift, - Where he to his face her face doth lift, - Her face with the willing lips. - - For a while they sat on the moss and grass, - Where the forest bloomed a great wild garden;-- - Then the beam from the hollow--it seemed to pass, - And the ray on the hills to harden, - When she rose to go, and his joy fell flat;-- - And, heigh, the wasp i’ the pawpaw bell!-- - As she waved her hand--why, it seemed at that - ’Twas Spring’s own self he was gazing at, - And the life of his life as well. - - - III - - The teasel and the horsemint spread - The hillsides, as with sunset sown, - Blooming along the Standing-Stone - That ripples in its rocky bed: - There are no treasuries that hold - Gold yellower than the marigold - That crowds its mouth and head. - - ’T is harvest-time: a mower stands - Among the morning wheat and whets - His scythe, and for a space forgets - The labor of the ripening lands; - Then bends, and through the dewy grain - His long scythe hisses, and again - He swings it in his hands. - - And she beholds him where he mows - On acres whence the water sends - Faint music of reflecting bends - And falls that interblend with flows: - She stands among the old bee-gums,-- - Where all the apiary hums,-- - Like some sweet bramble-rose. - - She hears him whistling as he leans, - And, reaping, sweeps the ripe wheat by; - She sighs and smiles and knows not why:-- - These are but simple country scenes: - He whets his scythe again, and sees - Her smiling near the hives of bees - Beneath the flowering beans. - - The peacock-purple lizard creeps - Along the rail; and deep the drone - Of insects makes the country lone - With summer where the water sleeps: - She hears him singing as he swings - His scythe; he thinks of other things-- - Not toil, and, singing, reaps. - - - IV - - Into the woods they went again, - Over the wind-blown oats; - Out of the acres of golden grain, - In where the light was a violet stain, - In where the lilies’ throats - Were brimmed with the summer rain. - - Hung on a bough a reaper’s hook, - Over the wind-blown oats; - A girl’s glad laugh and a girl’s glad look, - And the hush and ripple of tree and brook, - And a wild bird’s silvery notes, - And a kiss that a strong man took. - - Out of the woods the lovers went, - Over the wind-waved wheat; - She with a face, where love was blent, - Like to an open testament; - He, from his head to feet, - Dazed with his hope that was eloquent. - - Here how oft had they come to tryst, - Over the wind-waved wheat! - Here how oft had they laughed and kissed! - Talked and tarried where no one wist, - Here where the woods are sweet, - Dim and deep as a dewy mist. - - - V - - Her pearls are blossoms-of-the-vale, - Her only diamonds are the dews; - Such jewels never can grow stale, - Nor any value lose. - - Among the millet beards she stands: - The languid wind lolls everywhere: - There are wild roses in her hands, - One wild rose in her hair. - - To-morrow, where the shade is warm, - Among the unmown wheat she’ll stop, - And from one daisy-loaded arm - One ox-eyed daisy drop. - - She’ll meet his brown eyes, true and brave, - With blue eyes, false yet dreamy sweet: - He is her lover and her slave, - Who mows among the wheat. - - * * * * * - - When buds broke on the apple trees - She wore an apple-blossom dress, - And laughed with him across the leas, - And love was all a guess. - - When goose-plums ripened in the rain, - Plum-colored was her gown of red; - He kissed her in the creek-road lane-- - She was his life, he said. - - When apples thumped the droughty land, - A russet color was her gown: - Another came, and--won her hand?-- - Nay! carried off to town.... - - When grapes hung purple in the hot, - None missed her and her simple dress, - Save one, whom, haply, she forgot, - Who loved her none the less. - - When snow made white each harvest sheaf, - He sought her out amid her show; - Her rubies, redder than the leaf - That autumn forests sow. - - Not one regret her shame reveals; - She smiles at him, then puts him by; - He pleads; and she? she merely steels - Her heart and--lives her lie. - - - VI - - And he returned when poppies strewed - Their golden blots o’er moss and leaf,-- - Blond little Esaus of the wood, - So fair of face, of life so brief.-- - Did he forget?--Not he, in truth!-- - “No month,” he thought, “holds so much grace, - No month of spring, such grace and youth, - As the sweet April of her face.” - - In fall the frail gerardia - Hung hints of sunset and of dawn - On root and rock, as if to draw - Her lips, remind him of one gone:-- - Of one unworthy, in pursuit - Of butterflies, who does not dream - A flower, broken by her foot, - Sweeps, helpless, with her down the stream. - - - - - SOME SUMMER DAYS - - - I - - If you had seen her waiting there - Among the tiger-lily blooms,-- - That sowed their jewels everywhere - Among the woodland gleams and glooms,-- - You had confessed her very fair, - And sweeter than the wood’s perfumes. - - A country girl with bare brown feet, - She waits, while day slopes down the deeps: - The afternoon is dead with heat, - And all the weary shadow sleeps - Like toil, arm-pillowed in the wheat, - Beside the scythe with which he reaps. - - There is no sound more distant than - The cow-bell on the vine-hung hill; - No nearer than the locust’s span - Of noise that makes the silence shrill: - And now there comes a sun-browned man - Through tiger-lilies of the rill. - - Long will they talk: till, in the end, - The clear west glows, the east grows pale; - Until the glow and pallor blend - Like moonlight on a shifting sail; - And then he ’ll clasp her; she will bend - Her head, consenting. Day will fail: - - The west will flame, then fade away - Through heavy orange, rose, and red, - And leave the heavens violet gray - Above a gypsy-lily bed: - Then they will go; and he will say - Such words to her as none has said. - - A million stars the night will win - Above them; and one firefly - Pulse like a tangled starbeam in - The cedar dark against the sky: - Then he will lift her dimpled chin - And take the kiss she ’ll not deny. - - And when the moon, like the great book - Of Judgment, golden with the light - Of God, lies open o’er yon nook - Of darkest wood and wildest height, - Together they will cross the brook - And reach the gate and kiss good night. - - - II - - And now he wipes his hand along - The beaded fire of his brow - Hard toil has heated; and the strong - Face flushes fuller health as now - He fills his hay-fork to the prong, - And, tossing it, again doth bow. - - And now he rests, and looks away - Across the sun-fierce hills and meads - No rolling cloud has cooled to-day; - And from his face the brawny beads - Drip; and he marks the heaps of hay, - The fields of corn, the fields of weeds. - - At last he sees the tempest build - Black battlements along the west, - Black breastworks that are thunder filled; - And bares his brow; and on his chest - The sweat of toil is cooled; and stilled - The pulse of toil within his breast. - - A strong wind brings the odorous death - Of far hay-meadows, and the scent - Is good within his nostrils’ breath: - The mighty trees are bowed, that leant - For no man, as when Power saith - “Bow down!” and stalwart men are bent. - - He laughs, long-gazing as he goes - Along the elder-sweetened lane: - He feels the storm wind as it blows - Across the sheaves of golden grain, - And stops to pull one bramble-rose, - And watch the swiftly coming rain. - - And there, ’mid locust trees, the farm - Dreams in a martin-haunted place: - He marks the far-off streaks of storm - That, driven of the thunder, race: - He sees his child upon her arm, - And in the door his wife’s fair face. - - - III - - Below the sunset’s range of rose, - Below the heaven’s bending blue, - Down woodways where the balsam blows, - And milkweed tufts hang, gray of hue, - A Jersey heifer stops and lows-- - The cows come home by one, by two. - - There is no star yet: but the smell - Of hay and pennyroyal mix - With herb-aromas of the dell; - And the root-hidden cricket clicks: - Among the ironweeds a bell - Clangs near the rail-fenced clover-ricks. - - She waits upon the slope beside - The windlassed well the plum-trees shade, - The well-curb that the goose-plums hide; - Her light hand on the bucket laid, - Unbonneted she waits, glad-eyed, - Her dress as simple as her braid. - - She sees fawn-colored backs among - The sumacs now; a tossing horn; - A clashing bell of brass that rung: - Long shadows lean upon the corn, - And all the day dies scarlet-stung, - The cloud in it a rosy thorn. - - Below the pleasant moon, that tips - The tree-tops of the hillside, fly - The evening bats; the twilight slips - Some fireflies like spangles by; - She meets him, and their happy lips - Touch; and one star leaps in the sky. - - He takes her bucket, and they speak - Of married hopes while in the grass - The plum lies glowing as her cheek; - The patient cows look back or pass; - And in the west one golden streak - Burns like a great cathedral glass. - - - IV - - The skies are amber, blue, and green - Before the coming of the sun; - And all the deep hills sleep, serene - As if enchanted; every one - Is ribbed with morning mists that lean - On woods through which vague whispers run. - - Birds wake: and on the vine-hung knobs, - Above the brook, a twittering - Confuses songs; one warbler robs - Another of its note; a wing - Beats by; and now a wild throat throbs - Triumphant; all the woodlands sing. - - The sun is up: the hills are heaped - With instant splendor; and the vales - Surprised with shimmers that are steeped - In purple where the thin mist trails; - The water-fall, the rock it leaped, - Are burning gold that foams and fails. - - He drives his horses to the plow - Along the vineyard slopes, where bask - Dew-heavy grapes, half-ripened now, - In sun-shot shafts of shade: no mask - Of joy he wears; his face and brow - Glow as he enters on his task. - - Before him, soaring through the mist, - The gray hawk wildly wings and screams; - Its dewy back gleams, sunbeam-kissed, - Above the wood that drips and dreams; - He guides the plow with one strong fist; - The soil rolls back in level seams. - - Packed to the right the sassafras - Lifts leafy walls of spice that shade - The blackberries, whose tendrils mass - Big berries in the coolness made; - And drop their ripeness on the grass - Where trumpet-flowers fall and fade. - - White on the left the fence and trees - That mark the garden; and the smoke, - Uncurling in the early breeze, - Tells of the roof beneath the oak; - He turns his team, and, turning, sees - The damp, dark soil his coulter broke. - - Bees hum; and o’er the berries poise - Lean-bodied wasps; loud blackbirds turn - Following the plow: there is a noise - Of insect wings that buzz and burn;-- - And now he hears his wife’s low voice, - The song she sings to help her churn. - - - V - - There are no clouds that drift around - The moon’s pearl-kindled crystal, (white - As some sky-summoned spirit wound - In raiment lit with limbs of light), - That have not softened like the sound - Of harps when Heaven forgets to smite. - - The vales are deeper than the dark, - And darker than the vales the woods - That shadowy hill and meadow mark - With broad, blurred lines, whereover broods - Deep calm; and now a fox-hound’s bark - Upon the quietude intrudes. - - And though the night is never still, - Yet what we name its noises makes - Its silence:--now a whippoorwill; - A frog, whose hoarser tremor breaks - The hush; then insect sounds that fill - The night; an owl that hoots and wakes. - - They lean against the gate that leads - Into the lane that lies between - The yard and orchard; flowers and weeds - Smell sweeter than the odors keen - That day distils from hotness; beads - Of dew make cool the gray and green. - - Their infant sleeps. They feel the peace - Of something done that God has blessed, - Still as the pulse that will not cease - There in the cloud that lights the west: - The peace of love that shall increase - While soul to soul still gives its best. - - - - - AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK - - - I - - The wild brook gleams on the sand and ripples - Over the rocks of the riffle; brimming - Under the elms like a nymph who dripples, - Dips and glimmers and shines in swimming: - Under the linns and the ash-trees lodging, - Loops of the limpid waters lie, - Shaken of schools of the minnows, dodging - The glancing wings of the dragon-fly. - - Lower, the loops are lines of laughter - Over the stones and the crystal gravel; - Afar they gloom, like a face seen after - Mirth, where the waters slowly travel; - Shadowy slow where the Fork is shaken - Of the dropping bark of the sycamore, - Where the water-snake, that the footsteps waken, - Slides like a crooked root from shore. - - Peace of the forest; and silence, dimmer - Than dreams. And now a wing that winnows - The willow leaves, with their shadows slimmer - In the shallow there than a school of minnows: - Calm of the creek; and a huge tree twisted, - Ringed, and turned to a tree of pearl; - A gray-eyed man, who is farmer-fisted, - And a dark-eyed, sinewy country girl. - - The brow of the man is gnarled and wrinkled - With the weight of the words that have just been spoken; - And the girl has smiled and her eyes have twinkled, - Though the bonds and the bands of their love lie broken: - She smiles, nor knows how the days have knotted - Her to the heart of the man who says: - “Let us follow the paths that we think allotted. - I will go my ways and you your ways. - - “And the man between us is your decision. - Worse or better he is your lover.-- - Shall I say he ’s worse since the sweet Elysian - Prize he wins where I discover - Only the hell of the luckless chooser?-- - Shall I say he ’s better than I, or more, - Since he is winner and I am loser, - His life ’s made rich and mine made poor?” - - “I tell you now as I oft and ever - Have told,” she answered, the laughter dying - Down in her eyes, “that his arms have never - Held me!--no!--but you think me lying, - And you are wrong. And I think it better - To part forever than still to dwell - With the sad distrust, like an evil tetter, - On our lives forever, and so farewell.” - - And she turned away; and he watched her going, - The girlish pride in her eyes a-smoulder: - He saw her go, and his lips were glowing - Fever that parched. And he stood, one shoulder - Slouched to the tree; and he saw her stooping, - There by the bank, with a reckless foot; - Straighten; and tear from her breast his drooping - Lilies and fasten the pleurisy-root. - - With its orange fire he saw her passing - On and on; and the blood beat, burning - His brain to madness; and seemingly massing - The weight of the world on his heart in yearning ... - Butterflies swarmed in the moist sand-alleys; - A fairy fleet of Ionian sails - They seemed with their wings, or of pirate galleys, - Maroon and yellow, for Elfland gales. - - He watched her going; and harder, thicker - The pulse of his breath and his heart’s hard throbbing.-- - How should he know that her heart was sicker? - How should he know that her soul was sobbing?-- - She never looked back: and he saw her vanish - In swirls of the startled butterflies, - Like a storm of flowers; and he could not banish - The thought he had lost his all through lies. - - - II - - He heard the cocks crow out the lonely hours. - How long the night! how far away the dawn! - It seemed long months since he had seen the flowers, - The leaves, the sunlight, and the bee-hived lawn; - Had heard the thrush flute in the tangled showers. - - His burning eyes ached, staring at the black - Stolidity of midnight. Would God send - No cool relief unto his mind,--a rack - Of inquisition,--tortures to unbend, - That stretched him forward and now strained him back? - - Incomprehensible and undivulged, - The thought that took him back, retraced their walks, - Through woods, on which the sudden perfumes bulged, - The bird-songs and the brilliant-blossomed stalks; - And all the freedom which their talk indulged. - - Oh, strong appeal! And he would almost yield; - When, firmly forward, he could feel her fault - Oppose the error of a rock-like shield, - And to resisting phalanxes cry halt-- - And, lo! bright cohorts broken on the field. - - O mulct of morning! to the despot night - Count down unminted gold, and let the day - Walk free from dungeons of the dark; delight - Herself on mountains of the violet ray, - Clad in white maidenhood and morning white! - - A melancholy coast, plunged deep in dream - And death and silence, stretched the drowsy dark, - Wherein he heard a round-eyed screech-owl scream, - In lamentation, and a watch-dog bark, - Vague as oblivion, lost in night’s deep stream. - - And then hope moved him to divide the blinds - To see if those bright sparkles were a star’s, - Or but his feverish eyelids, which the mind’s - Commotion weighed.--No hint of morning bars - With glimmer heaven’s swart tapestry he finds. - - So he remained, impatient, till the first - Exploring crevices of Aztec morn, - Dim cracks of treasure, Eldorados burst: - Then could he face his cowardice and scorn - His jealousy that thus his life had cursed. - - Love knew no barriers now. And where he went - Each woodland path was musical with birds; - Each flow’r was richer, more divine of scent; - For love sought love with such expressive words - That dawn’s delivery was less eloquent. - - - III - - Who is it hunts with his dog - There where the heron is flying - Gray through the feathering fog - Over the Fork, where is lying, - Bridge-like, a butternut log, - There where the horsemint is drying? - - Who is it hunts in the brush, - Under the linns and the beeches, - Here where the water-falls rush, - Dark, where the noon never reaches? - Here where the Fork is one crush - Of flags with a bloom like the peach’s? - - He is handsome and supple and tall, - Blond-haired and vigorous-chested, - Blue-eyed as the bud by the fall - Where he listens,--his rifle half rested, - Half leaned on the crumbling stone wall,-- - Whose briers he lately has breasted. - - He waits; and the sun on the dew - Of the cedars and leaves of the bushes - Strikes glittering frostiness through ... - If a covey of partridges flushes - What good will a Winchester do, - Or the dog to his feet that he crushes? - - Then a man breaks strong through the weeds - Where the buck-bushes toss and the spires - Of the white-blossomed cohosh; ’mid reeds - Wild-carrots, and trammelling briers: - It is he! to his loved one who speeds-- - And the man in the bushes--he fires.... - - From leaves of the wind-shaken wood - The dew of the dawn is still falling: - He is gone from the place where he stood, - Just there where the black crow is calling: - There is blood on the weeds: is it blood - On the face of the man who is crawling? - - Red blood or a smudge of the dawn?-- - Now he lies with his gray eyes wide, staring, - Stiff, still at the sun: he has drawn - His limbs in a heap: and the faring - Bee-martins light near or pass on, - Not one of them knowing or caring. - - It is noon: and the wood-dove is deep - In the calm of its cooing: and over - The tops of the forest trees sweep - The shadows of buzzards that hover: - Wide-winged they sail on as asleep: - And the bob-white is whistling from cover. - - It is dusk: and the heat, that made wilt - The leaves and the wildflowers’ faces, - Gives place to the dew-drops that tilt - With coolness the weeds where are traces - Of horror and darkness and guilt, - That nothing can wash from those places. - - It is night: and the hoot-owlet mocks - The dove of the day with wild weeping, - The Fork is scarce heard on its rocks - Where the man is so quietly sleeping: - Through the woods snaps the bark of a fox; - The lightning is fitfully leaping. - - - IV - - All day, ’twixt hope and fear, - She waited at the gate, - Looking for him, more dear - Now that he made her wait: - Day went and night draws near: - Stormy it grows and late. - - Still, still she waits: great limbs - The winds rend from the ridge; - Each swollen shallow swims - Head-deep below the bridge; - The drift, that breaks and brims - Swirls lighter than the midge. - - The night grows wildly gray - With lightning-litten rain; - The forests sound and sway, - An oak is rent in twain; - The thunder rolls away - Like some vast bolt and chain. - - The Fork is whirling wreck - Of field and farm and wood; - And many a foaming fleck - Drives where the rock-fence stood;-- - A torrent sweeps break-neck - Above the washed-out blood. - - Night deepens: still she waits - Expectant in despair: - The Fork has reached the gates, - The wood’s wreck everywhere. - But when the storm abates, - She thinks, he will be there. - - She sees the lightning rush - Its blazing hells above; - She hears the thunder crush - Heaven as if earthquake-clove-- - Loud in the tempest’s hush - She calls with all her love. - - He comes, she feels; and stands - The rushing waters o’er - Her feet, and on her hands - And hair the wild down-pour, - The lightnings are wild brands - To light him to her door. - - Night deepens: but she knows - God will not fail to send - Her love to soothe her woes, - And one day’s errors mend.-- - The wild stream foams and flows - Booming in fall and bend. - - Again the lightnings light - The night like some wild torch; - The waters foam and fight; - And one uprooted larch - Sweeps down, with something white - Wedged in it, by her porch. - - She stoops: the lurid rain - Beats on her back and head-- - Ay! he hath come again! - With livid lips once red! - A bullet in his brain - The night hath brought him--dead! - - - - - A NIELLO - - - I - - It is not early spring and yet - Of bloodroot blooms along the stream, - And blotted banks of violet, - My heart will dream. - - Is it because the wind-flower apes - The beauty that was once her brow, - That the white thought of it still shapes - The April now? - - Because the wild-rose learned its blush - From her fresh cheeks of maidenhood, - Their thought makes June of barren brush - And empty wood? - - And then I think how young she died-- - Straight, barren death stalks down the trees, - The hard-eyed hours by his side - That kill and freeze. - - - II - - When orchards are in bloom again - My heart will bound, my blood will beat, - To hear the red-bird so repeat, - On boughs of rosy stain, - His blithe, loud song,--like some far strain - From out the past,--among the bloom,-- - (Where bee, and wasp, and hornet boom)-- - Fresh, redolent with rain. - - When orchards are in bloom once more, - Invasions of lost dreams will draw - My feet, like some insistent law, - Through blossoms to her door: - In dreams I’ll ask her, as before, - To let me help her at the well; - And fill her pail; and long to tell - My love as once of yore. - - I shall not speak until we quit - The farm-gate, leading to the lane - And orchard, all in bloom again, - ’Mid which the wood-doves sit - And coo; and through whose blossoms flit - The cat-birds crying while they fly: - Then tenderly I’ll speak, and try - To tell her all of it. - - And in my dream again she’ll place - Her hand in mine, as oft before,-- - When orchards are in bloom once more,-- - With all her old-time grace: - And we will tarry till a trace - Of sunset dyes the heav’ns; and then-- - We’ll part, and, parting, I again - Will bend and kiss her face. - - And homeward, dreaming, I will go - Along the cricket-chirring ways, - While sunset, like one crimson blaze - Of blossoms, lingers low: - And my lost youth again I’ll know, - And all her love, when spring is here-- - Hers! hers! now dead this many a year - Whose love still haunts me so. - - - III - - I would not die when Springtime lifts - The white world to her maiden mouth, - And heaps its cradle with gay gifts, - Breeze-blown from out the singing South: - Too full of life and loves that cling, - Too heedless of all mortal woe, - The young, unsympathetic Spring, - That death should never know. - - I would not die when Summer shakes - Her daisied locks below her hips, - And, naked as a star that takes - A cloud, into the silence slips. - Too rich is Summer; poor in needs; - Wrapped in her own warm loveliness - Her pomp goes by, and never heeds - If one be more or less. - - But I would die when Autumn goes, - The sad rain dripping from her hair, - Through forests where the wild wind blows - Death and the red wreck everywhere: - Sweet as love’s last farewells and tears - ’T would be to die, when heavens are gray, - In the old autumn of my years, - Like a dead leaf borne far away. - - - - - DEEP IN THE FOREST - - - I - - SPRING ON THE HILLS - - Ah, shall I follow, on the hills, - The Spring, as wild wings follow? - Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills, - Crab-apple trees the hollow, - Haunts of the bee and swallow? - - In red-bud brakes and flowery - Acclivities of berry; - In dogwood dingles, showery - With dew, where wrens make merry? - Or drifts of swarming cherry? - - In valleys of wild-strawberries, - And of the clumped May-apple; - Or cloud-like trees of hawberries, - With which the south-winds grapple, - That brook and pathway dapple? - - With eyes of far forgetfulness,-- - Like some white wood-thing’s daughter, - Whose feet are bee-like fretfulness,-- - To see her run like water - Through boughs that slipped or caught her. - - O Spring, to seek, yet find you not, - To search and still continue; - To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not, - To lose and then to win you, - All sweet evasion in you. - - In pearly, peach-blush distances - You gleam; the woods are braided - Of myths, of dream-existences;-- - There, where the brook is shaded, - Some splendor surely faded. - - O presence, like the primrose’s, - Once more I feel your power! - In rainy scents of dim roses - I breathe you for an hour, - Elusive as a flower. - - - II - - THE WOOD SPIRIT - - Ah me! I still remember - How flushed, before the shower, - The dusk was; like a scarlet rose, - Or blood-red poppy-flower. - - Now heaven is starred; the moonlight - Lays blurs upon the grain-- - You may not know it from white frost, - The moonlight on the rain. - - And all the forest utters - A restless moan in rest, - For all the deep, dark shadow lies - Like iron on its breast. - - I mark the moveless shadow, - I mark the unreaped corn, - Then something whispers overhead, - “Come to me, mortal-born.” - - I sit alone and listen; - The low leaves sound and sigh; - The dew drips from the bearded grain, - A mist slips from the sky.-- - - I hear her whisper, whisper, - And breathe in some dim place; - Her feet are easier than the dew, - And than the mist her face. - - I may not clasp her ever, - This spirit made for song, - Who dwelleth in the young, young oak - The old, old oaks among. - - Her limbs are molded moonlight; - Her breasts are silver moons: - She glimmers and she glitters where - The purple shadow swoons. - - And since she knows I love her, - She says my soul has died, - And laughs and mocks me in the mist - That haunts the forest-side. - - When winds run mad in woodlands - And all the great boughs swing, - I see her wild hair blow and blow - Black as a raven’s wing. - - When winds are tamed and tethered - And stars are keen as frost, - I search and seek within the wood, - There where my soul was lost. - - I seek her, and she flies me; - I follow; and the whole - Dim woodland echoes with her voice, - Soft calling to my soul. - - - III - - OWL ROOST - - The slope is a mass of vines: - If you walk in the daylight there, - A gleam as of twilight shines - Through the vines massed everywhere: - Each trunk, that a creeper twines, - Is a column, strong to bear - The dome of its leaves that wave, - Cathedral-dim and grave. - - Black moss makes silent the feet: - And, above, the fox-grapes lace - So thick that the noonday heat - Is chill as a murdered face: - And the winds for miles repeat - The fugue of a rolling bass: - The deep leaves twinkle and turn - But over no flower or fern. - - An angular spider weaves - Great webs between the trees, - Webs that are witches’ sieves: - And honey-and bumblebees - Go droning among the leaves, - Like the fairies’ oboës: - At dark the owlets croon - To the stars and the sickle-moon. - - At dark I will not go - There where the branches sigh; - Where naught but the glow-worms glow, - Each one like a demon’s eye: - O’er which, like a battle-bow, - With an arrow that it lets fly, - The new-moon and one star - Hang and glimmer afar. - - At dawn, if my mood be dim, - And the day be a cloudless one, - There where the sad winds hymn - I ’ll walk, but its shade will shun; - Its shade, where I feel the grim - Horror of something done - Here in the years long past, - That the place conceals to the last. - - - IV - - MOSS AND FERN - - Where rise the brakes of bramble there, - Wrapped with the trailing rose, - Through cane where waters ramble, there - Where deep the green cress grows, - Who knows? - Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man, - Hides Pan. - - Perhaps the creek, whose pebbles make - A foothold for the mint, - May bear,--where soft its trebles make - Confession,--some vague hint-- - (The print, - Goat-hoofed, of one who lightly ran)-- - Of Pan. - - Where, in the hollow of the hills - Ferns deepen to the knees, - What sounds are those above the hills, - And now among the trees?-- - No breeze!-- - The syrinx, haply, none may scan, - Of Pan. - - In woods where waters break upon - The hush like some soft word; - Where sun-shot shadows shake upon - The moss, who has not heard-- - No bird!-- - The flute, as breezy as a fan, - Of Pan? - - Far in, where mosses lay for us - Still carpets, cool and plush; - Where bloom and branch and ray for us - Swoon in the noonday flush, - The hush - May sound the satyr hoof a span - Of Pan. - - In woods where thrushes sing to us, - And brooks dance sparkling heels; - Where wild aromas cling to us, - And all our worship kneels,-- - Who steals - Upon us, haunch and face of tan, - But Pan? - - - V - - WOODLAND WATERS - - Through leaves of the nodding trees, - Where blossoms sway in the breeze, - Pink bag-pipes made for the bees, - Whose slogan is droning and drawling: - Where the columbine scatters its bells, - And the wild bleeding-heart its shells, - O’er mosses and rocks of the dells - The brook of the forest is falling. - - You can hear it under the hill - When the wind in the wood is still, - And, strokes of a fairy drill, - Sounds the bill of the yellow-hammer: - By the solomon’s-seal it slips, - Cohosh and the grass that drips-- - Like the words of an Undine’s lips, - Is the sound of its falls that stammer. - - I lie in the woods: and the scent - Of the honeysuckle is blent - With the sound: and a Sultan’s tent - Is my dream, with the East enmeshéd:-- - A slave-girl sings; and I hear - The languor of lute-strings near, - And a dancing-girl of Cashmere - In the harem of good Er Reshid. - - From ripples of Irak lace - She flashes the amorous grace - Of her naked limbs and her face, - While her golden anklets tinkle: - Then over mosaic floors - Open seraglio doors - Of cedar: by twos, by fours,-- - Like stars that tremble and twinkle,-- - - While the dulcimers sing, unseen, - The handmaids come of the Queen - ’Neath silvern lamps, one sheen - Of jewels of Afrite treasure: - And I see the Arabia rise - Of the Nights that were rich and wise, - Beautiful, dark, in the eyes - Of Zubeideh, the Queen of Pleasure. - - - VI - - THE THORN-TREE - - The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold, - And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old, - Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the fairy people know, - With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow, - Whom the boyish South-wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping rain, - Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again; - She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew, - That could change the dew to glow-worms and the glow-worms into dew. - - There’s a thorn-tree in the forest, and the fairies know the tree, - With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery; - But the May-time brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white, - Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light. - And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn - How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn: - How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness - Till he told her demon secrets that but made his magic less. - - How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree’s thorns to lie - Forever with his passion that should never dim or die: - And with wicked laughter looking on this thing that she had done, - Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun; - How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard, - All in mockery, at parting, and mock pity of his weird: - But her magic had forgotten that “who bends to give a kiss - Will bring down the curse upon them of the person whose it is”: - So the silence tells the secret.--And at night the fairies see - How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free, - In the thorny arms of Merlin, who, forever, is the tree. - - - VII - - THE HAMADRYAD - - She stood among the longest ferns - The valley held; and in her hand - One blossom like the light that burns, - Vermilion, o’er a sunset land; - And round her hair a twisted band - Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms: - And darker than dark pools, that stand - Below the star-communing glooms, - Her eyes beneath her hair’s perfumes. - - I saw the moon-pearl sandals on - Her flower-white feet, that seemed too chaste - To tread pure gold: and, like the dawn - On splendid peaks that lord a waste - Of solitude lost gods have graced, - Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped, - Bound with the cestused silver,--chased - With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped - With oak-leaves,--whence her chiton slipped. - - Limbs that the gods call loveliness!-- - The grace and glory of all Greece - Wrought in one marble form were less - Than her perfection!--’Mid the trees - I saw her; and time seemed to cease - For me--And, lo! I lived my old - Greek life again of classic ease, - Barbarian as the myths that rolled - Me back into the Age of Gold. - - - - - WRECKAGE - - - I - - Love and the drift of many dreams, - Under the moon of a Florida night, - Over the beach with its silvery seams - White as a sail is white. - - Love that entered into two lives - Out of the dreams that the nights have borne, - Over the waves where the vapor drives, - Mists that the stars have torn. - - Love that welded two hearts and hands - There by the sea, ’neath the shell-white moon, - Like to the stars and the mists and the sands - Setting two lives in tune. - - Nights of love that one still keeps - Sacred;--nights, that the faith of one - Heartened there in the treacherous deeps, - Under a tropic sun. - - - II - - Parting he said to her: “Let us be true to them,-- - All of our dreams, of the night, of the morning: - What is our present, its hope, but a clew to them? - What is our past but a dream and a warning? - Have you considered the life that regretfully - Foldeth weak arms to the fate it might master?-- - Had I been true to my dreams, never fretfully - Halted, my future and joy had been faster.” - - They had come down to the ocean that, bellowing, - Boiled on the sand and the shells that were broken; - All of the summer was fading and yellowing; - Now they must part and their vows had been spoken. - It had befallen that heaven was lowering; - Over the sea, like the wraith of a wrecker, - Clamored the gull; and the mist in the showering - East seemed the ghost of a lofty three-decker. - - Infinite foam; and the boom of the hollowing - Breakers that buried the rocks to their shoulders; - Battle and boast of the deep in the wallowing - World of the waves where the red sunset smoulders. - Long was the leap of the foam on the thunderous - Beach; and each end of the beach was a flying - Fog of the spray: and she said, “Let it sunder us! - Still we will love, for love is undying!” - - Yet, if it comes to the thing he has said to her?-- - Wreckage and death?--the love she has given - Turned into sorrow?--Oh, that was a dread to her! - He, like a weed, by the waters far driven! - Weeping, her bosom with shudders was shaken as - She for a moment hard clung to her sailor, - Kissed him and--parted. His boat had been taken; as - Paler it grew the woman grew paler. - - - III - - All day the rain drove, falling - Upon the sombre sea; - All day, his wet sail hauling, - The sailor tacked a-lea; - And through the wild rain calling, - What was it?--was it he? - - At dusk the gull clanged, drifting - Above the boiling brine; - And, through the wan west sifting, - Streamed one red sunset line; - And in its wild light shifting, - His far sail seemed to shine. - - All night the wind wailed, sighing - Along the wreck-strewn coast; - All night the surf, defying, - Rolled thunder in and boast; - All night she heard a crying-- - The sea? or some lost ghost? - - - IV - - The balm of the night and the glory, - The music and scent of the sea, - Are as song to her heart or a story - Of the never-to-be. - The stars and the night and the whiteness - Of foam on the stretch of the sand; - Faint foam that is tossed, like the brightness - Of a mermaiden’s hand. - - No sail on the ocean; no sailor - On shore, and the winds all asleep; - And her face in the starlight far paler - Than women who weep. - A mist on the deep; and the ghostly - White moon in the deep of the night; - And a light that is neither; that mostly - Is shadow not light. - - No sea-gull, that vanished with gleaming - Of wings, in the swing of the spray; - Perhaps it was only her dreaming, - Or merely a ray - Of moonlight; the glimmering essence - Of all that is grayest and dim-- - But never his face, or his presence - That dripped in each limb. - - And she cried through the night, “Let perish! - O God, let me die of despair! - If he whom I love, whom I cherish, - Is weltering there!” - She seemed but a sea-mist made woman, - And he but a sound of the sea - Made man where nothing was human, - And never would be. - - - V - - Long he sailed the deep that glasses - The face of God and His majesty; - Passed the Horn and the Seas of Grasses, - Drifting aimlessly. - Time went by with its days that ever - Burden the hearts of those who be - Far away from their love; whom sever - Leagues of the shapeless sea. - - Land at last, whose reefs rolled broken - Foam of the balked waves everywhere; - Land; one tangle of weeds and oaken - Wreck and of rocks laid bare. - Here and there the sand stretched livid - Leagues of famine, one blinding glare; - Crags, o’er which gaunt birds winged vivid, - Harsh in the earthquake air. - - A little cloud in the sunset’s splendor; - A little cloud that the sunset stains: - Night, and a wisp of a moon that, slender, - Dreams of the hurricanes. - Winds that stride as with sounding sandals; - Winds that the tempest has loosed from chains: - Light that leaps like a spear he handles, - Shaking his thunder-manes. - - Wrenching the world in wreck asunder, - Black rebellion of hell and night; - Wrath and roar of the rocks and thunder, - Flame and the winds that fight ... - Beating the drift and the hush together, - Waves and winds that the morn makes white; - Calm and peace of the tropic weather - After the typhoon’s might. - - Clouds blow by and the storm’s forgotten. - Savage coasts where the sea-cow feeds. - Wash of weeds and the sea-weeds rotten. - And a dead face in the weeds. - None to know him or name him brother; - Only the savage in feathers and beads; - The South-Sea Islander, fitting another - Barb in the shaft he speeds. - - Far away where the sea-gulls gather; - Far away where the evening falls, - Lone she stands where the wild waves lather, - Rolling the sea in walls.-- - Who shall tell her, the lonely tryster? - Tell her of him on whom she calls?-- - Suns that beat on his face and blister? - Stars? or the sea that crawls? - - - VI - - She dreamed that there, beside the ocean sitting, - Alone she watched, when, at her feet, behold! - Between the foam-ridge and the sea-gull’s flitting, - His body rolled. - - All was not as it was before they parted; - She dreamed he had remembered, she forgot; - He ’d said he would forget her, angry-hearted, - And yet could not. - - And then it seemed that, had she known, she surely - Had given pity when she could not give - Her love to him, who loved her madly, purely, - And bade him live. - - And then she dreamed she looked upon the slanted - Hulk of a wreck: and high above the wave, - Worn of the wind and of the cactus planted, - His nameless grave. - - - - - SIREN SANDS - - - I - - The rhododendrons bloom and shake - Their petals wide and gleam and sway - Among palmettoes, by the lake, - Beyond the bay. - - Shores where we watched the eve reveal - Her cloudy sanctuaries, while - The bay lay lavaed into steel - For mile on mile. - - We watched the purple coast confuse - Soft outlines with the graying light; - And towards the gulf a vessel lose - Itself in night. - - We saw the sea-gulls dip and soar; - The wild-fowl gather past the pier; - And from rich skies, as from God’s door, - Gold far and near. - - Two foreign seamen passed and we - Heard mellow Spanish; like twin stars, - Where they lounged smoking, we could see - Their faint cigars. - - Night; and the heavens stained and strewn - With stars the waters idealized, - Until their light the rising moon - Epitomized. - - Morn; and the pine-wood balms awake; - Winds roll the dew-drop from the rose; - The wide lake burns; and, on the lake, - The ripple glows. - - Far coasts detach deep purple from - The blue horizon, and the day - Beholds the sunburnt sailor come - And sail away. - - The bird that slept at dusk, at dawn - Awakes again within the thorn.-- - Sweet was the night to it, now gone; - And sweet is morn. - - - II - - Through halls of columned scarlet, - Like some dark queen, the Dusk - Trails skirts of myrrh and musk, - Hung in each ear, a starlet - Gleams,--gems the clouds’ gaunt Jinn - Guard; and, beneath her chin, - The moon, an opal tusk. - - There lies a ghostly glory - Upon the sea and sand; - A gleam, as of a hand, - Stretched from the realms of story, - Of rosy golden ray; - Pointing the world the way - To some far Fairyland. - - As fades the west’s vermilion - Above the distant coasts, - The stars come out in hosts; - Within the night’s pavilion, - As flower speaks to flower, - Dim hour calls to hour, - Pale with the past’s sweet ghosts. - - - III - - Music that melts through moonlight, - Faint on the summer breeze; - Fireflies, moonlight, and foaming - Susurrus of the seas. - - Music that drifts like perfume, - And touches like a hand; - Dreams and stars and the ocean, - And we alone on the sand. - - Glimmers and vague reflections, - And the white swirl of the foam; - Pale on the purple a vessel, - And a light that beckons home. - - And I seem to see the music, - On a moonbeam bar that floats, - For the music is moonlight magic, - And the flies are its golden notes. - - And I seem to hear one singing - Of a brown old coast and sea, - Of lives that were filled with passion, - And old-world tragedy. - - And I hear the harsh reef’s calling - For a noble ship at sea, - And the winds of the ocean singing - A dirge for the dead to be. - - Till it seems that I am the pilot, - And you are the mermaidén, - Who lures him on to the wrecking - And into her arms again. - - - _Song_ - - Over the hills where the winds are waking - All is lone as the soul of me; - Over the hills where the stars are shaking, - Breton hills by the sea. - - These were with me to tell me often - How she pined in her Croisic home, - Winds that sing and the stars that soften - Over the miles of foam. - - Fishers’ nets and the sailor faces; - Sad salt marshes and granite piers; - Brown, loud coast where the long foam races-- - And a parting full of tears. - - A gray sail’s ghost where the autumn lies on - Wraiths of the mist and the squall-blown rain; - Her dark girl eyes that search the horizon, - Grave with a haunting pain. - - Stars may burn and the wild winds whistle - Over the rocks where the sea-gulls rave-- - My heart is bleak as the wind-worn thistle - on her seaside grave. - - - IV - - Sad as sad eyes that ache with tears - The stars of night shine through the leaves; - And shadowy as the Fates’ dim shears - The weft that twilight weaves. - - The summer sunset marched long hosts - Of gold adown one golden peak, - That flamed and fell; and now gray ghosts - Of mist the far west streak. - - They seem the shades of things that weep, - Wan things the heavens would conceal; - Blood-stained; that bear within them, deep, - Red wounds that will not heal. - - Night comes, and with it storm, that slips - Wild angles of the jagged light:-- - I feel the wild rain on my lips,-- - A wild girl is the Night. - - A moaning tremor sweeps the trees; - And all the stars are packed with death:-- - She holds me by the neck and knees, - I feel her wild, wet breath. - - Hell and its hags drive on the rain:-- - Night holds me by the hair and pleads; - Her kisses fall like blows again; - My brow is dewed with beads. - - The thunder plants wild beacons on - Each volleying height.--My soul seems blown - Far out to sea. The world is gone, - And night and I alone. - - Tampa, Florida, February, 1893. - - - - - WAR-TIME SILHOUETTES. - - - I - - THE BATTLE - - The night had passed. The day had come, - Bright-born, into a cloudless sky: - We heard the rolling of the drum, - And saw the war-flags fly. - - And noon had crowded upon morn - Ere Conflict shook her red locks far, - And blew her brazen battle-horn - Upon the hills of War. - - Noon darkened into dusk--one blot - Of nightmare lit with hell-born suns;-- - We heard the scream of shell and shot - And booming of the guns. - - On batteries of belching grape - We saw the thundering cavalry - Hurl headlong,--iron shape on shape,-- - With shout and bugle-cry. - - When dusk had moaned and died, and night - Came on, wind-swept and wild with rain, - We slept, ’mid many a bivouac light, - And vast fields heaped with slain. - - - II - - IN HOSPITAL - - Wounded to death he lay and dreamed - The drums of battle beat afar, - And round the roaring trenches screamed - The hell of war. - - Then woke; and, weeping, spoke one word - To the kind nurse who bent above; - Then in the whitewashed ward was heard - A song of love. - - The song _she_ sang him when she gave - The portrait that he kissed; then sighed, - “Lay it beside me in the grave!” - And smiled and died. - - - III - - THE SOLDIER’S RETURN - - A brown wing beat the apple leaves and shook - Some blossoms on her hair. Then, note on note, - The bird’s wild music bubbled. In her book, - Her old romance, she seemed to read. No look - Betrayed the tumult in her trembling throat. - - The thrush sang on. A dreamy wind came down - From one white cloud of afternoon and fanned - The dropping petals on her book and gown, - And touched her hair, whose braids of quiet brown - Gently she smoothed with one white jeweled hand. - - Then, with her soul, it seemed, from feet to brow - She felt him coming: ’t was his heart, his breath - That stirred the blossom on the apple bough; - His step the wood-thrush warbled to. And now - Her cheek went crimson, now as white as death. - - Then on the dappled page his shadow--yes, - Not unexpected, yet her haste assumed - Fright’s startle; and low laughter did confess - His presence there, soft with his soul’s caress - And happy manhood, where the rambo bloomed. - - Quickly she rose and all her gladness sent - Wild welcome to him. Her his unhurt arm - Drew unresisted; and the soldier leant - Fond lips to hers. She wept. And so they went - Deep in the orchard towards the old brick farm. - - - IV - - THE APPARITION - - A day of drought, foreboding rain and wind, - As if stern heaven, feeling earth had sinned, - Frowned all its hatred. When the evening came, - Along the west, from bank on bank unthinned - Of clouds, the storm unfurled its oriflamme. - - Then lightning signaled, and the thunder woke - Its monster drums, and all God’s torrents broke.-- - She saw the wild night when the dark pane flashed; - Heard, where she stood, the disemboweled oak - Roar into fragments when the welkin crashed. - - Long had she waited for a word. And, lo! - Anticipation still would not say “No:” - He has not written; he will come to her; - At dawn!--to-night!--Her heart hath told her so; - And so expectancy and love aver. - - She seems to hear his fingers on the pane-- - The glass is blurred, she can not see for rain: - Is _that_ his horse?--the wind is never still: - And _that_ his cloak?--ah, surely that is plain!-- - A torn vine tossing at the window-sill. - - She hurries forth to meet him; pale and wet, - She sees his face; the war-soiled epaulet; - A sabre-scar that bleeds from brow to cheek; - And now he smiles, and now their lips have met, - And now ... Dear heart, he fell at Cedar Creek! - - - V - - WOUNDED - - It was in August that they brought her news - Of his bad wounds; the leg that he must lose. - And August passed, and when October raised - Red rebel standards on the hills that blazed, - They brought a haggard wreck; she scarce knew whose, - Until they told her, standing stunned and dazed. - - A shattered shadow of the stalwart lad, - The five-months husband, whom his country had - Enlisted, strong for war; returning this, - Whose broken countenance she feared to kiss, - While health’s remembrance stood beside him sad, - And grieved for that which was no longer his. - - They brought him on a litter; and the day - Was bright and beautiful. It seemed that May - In woodland rambles had forgot her path - Of season, and, disrobing for a bath, - By the autumnal waters of some bay, - With her white nakedness had conquered Wrath. - - Far otherwise she wished it: wind and rain; - The sky, one gray commiserative pain; - Sleet, and the stormy drift of frantic leaves; - To match the misery that each perceives - Aches in her hand-clutched bosom, and is plain - In eyes and mouth and all her form that grieves. - - Theirs, a mute meeting of the lips; she stooped - And kissed him once: one long, dark side-lock drooped - And brushed against the bandage of his breast; - With feeble hands he held it and caressed; - Then all his happiness in one look grouped, - Saying, “Now I am home, I crave but rest.” - - Once it was love! but then the battle killed - All that sweet nonsense of his youth, and filled - His heart with sterner passion.--Ah, well! peace - Must balm its pain with patience; whose surcease - Means reconcilement; e’en as God hath willed, - With war or peace who shapes His ends at ease.-- - - What else for these but, where their mortal lot - Of weak existence drags rent ends, to knot - The frail unravel up!--while love (afraid - Time will increase the burthen on it laid), - Seeks consolation, that consoleth not, - In toil and prayer, waiting what none evade. - - - VI - - THE MESSAGE - - Long shadows toward the east: and in the west - A blaze of garnet sunset, wherein rolled - One cloud like some great gnarly log of gold; - Each gabled casement of the farm seemed dressed - In ghosts of roses blossoming manifest. - - And she had brought his letter there to read, - There on the porch, that faced the locust glade; - To watch the summer sunset burn and fade, - And breathe the twilight scent of wood and weed, - Forget all care and her soul’s hunger feed. - - And on his face her fancy mused a while: - “Dark hair, dark eyes.--And now he has a beard - Dark as his hair.”--She smiled; yet almost feared - It changed him so she could not reconcile - Her heart to that which hid his lips and smile. - - Then tried to feature, but could only see - The beardless man who bent to her and kissed - Her and their child and left them to enlist: - She heard his horse grind in the gravel: he - Waved them adieu and rode to fight with Lee. - - Now all around her drowsed the hushful hum - Of evening insects. And his letter spoke - Of love and longings to her: nor awoke - One echo of the bugle and the drum, - But all their future in one kiss did sum. - - The stars were thick now; and the western blush - Drained into darkness. With a dreamy sigh - She rocked her chair.--It must have been the cry - Of infancy that made her rise and rush - To where their child slept, and to hug and - hush. - - Then she returned. But now her ease was gone. - She knew not what, she felt an unknown fear - Press, tightening, at her heart-strings; then a tear - Scalded her eyelids, and her cheeks grew wan - As helpless sorrow’s, and her white lips drawn. - - With stony eyes she grieved against the skies, - A slow, dull, aching agony that knew - Few tears, and saw no answer shining to - Her silent questions in the stars’ still eyes - “Where Peace delays and where her soldier lies.” - - They could have told her. Peace was far away, - Beyond the field that belched black batteries - All the red day. ’Mid picket silences, - On woodland mosses, in a suit of gray, - Shot through the heart, he by his rifle lay. - - - VII - - THE WOMAN ON THE HILL - - The storm-red sun, through wrecks of wind and rain, - And dead leaves driven from the frantic boughs, - Where, on the hill-top, stood a gaunt, gray house, - Flashed wildest ruby on each rainy pane. - - Then woods grew darker than unburdened grief; - And, crimson through the woodland’s ruin, streamed - The sunset’s glare--a furious eye, which seemed - Watching the moon rise like a yellow leaf. - - The rising moon, against which, like despair, - High on the hill, a woman, darkly drawn, - The wild leaves round her, stood; with features wan, - And tattered dress and wind-distracted hair. - - As still as death, and looking, not through tears, - For the young face of one she knows is lost, - While in her heart the melancholy frost - Gathers of all the unforgotten years. - - What if she heard to-night a hurrying hoof, - Wild as the whirling of the withered leaf, - Bring her a more immedicable grief, - A shattered shape to live beneath her roof! - - The shadow of him who claimed her once as wife; - Her lover!--no!--the wreck of all their past - Brought back from battle!--Better to the last - A broken heart than heartbreak all her life! - - - - - MOSBY AT HAMILTON - - - Down Loudon lanes, with swinging reins, - And clash of spur and sabre, - And bugling of the battle-horn, - Six score and eight we rode that morn, - Six score and eight of Southern born, - All tried in war’s hot labor. - - Full in the sun, at Hamilton, - We met the South’s invaders; - Who, over fifteen hundred strong, - ’Mid blazing homes had marched along - All night, with Northern shout and song, - To crush the rebel raiders. - - Down Loudon lanes, with streaming manes, - We spurred in wild March weather; - And all along our war-scarred way - The graves of Southern heroes lay-- - Our guide-posts to revenge that day, - As we rode grim together. - - Old tales still tell some miracle - Of Saints in holy writing-- - But who shall say why hundreds fled - Before the few that Mosby led, - Unless it was that even the dead - Fought with us then when fighting. - - While Yankee cheers still stunned our ears, - Of troops at Harper’s Ferry; - While Sheridan led on his Huns, - And Richmond rocked to roaring guns, - We felt the South still had some sons - She would not scorn to bury. - - - - - THE FEUD - - - Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone - The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream - Through brambles, where the mountain spring lies lone,-- - A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows dream,-- - And one wild road winds like a saffron seam. - - Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note - Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June; - Here cat-and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote - Their presence on the silence with a tune; - And here the fox drank ’neath the mountain moon. - - Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush,-- - Impenetrable briers, deep and dense, - And wiry bushes;--brush, that seemed to crush - The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence - Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence. - - A wasp buzzed by; and then a butterfly - In orange and amber, like a floating flame; - And then a man, hard-eyed and very sly, - Gaunt-cheeked and haggard and a little lame, - With an old rifle, down the mountain came. - - He listened, drinking from a flask he took - Out of the ragged pocket of his coat; - Then all around him cast a stealthy look; - Lay down; and watched an eagle soar and float, - His fingers twitching at his hairy throat. - - The shades grew longer; and each Cumberland height - Loomed, framed in splendors of the dolphin dusk. - Around the road a horseman rode in sight; - Young, tall, blond-bearded. Silent, grim, and brusque, - He in the thicket aimed--Quick, harsh, then husk, - - The echoes barked among the hills and made - Repeated instants of the shot’s distress.-- - Then silence--and the trampled bushes swayed:-- - Then silence, packed with murder and the press - Of distant hoofs that galloped riderless. - - - - - LYNCHERS - - - At the moon’s down-going, let it be - On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree. - - The red-rock road of the underbrush, - Where the woman came through the summer hush. - - The sumac high and the elder thick, - Where we found the stone and the ragged stick. - - The trampled road of the thicket, full - Of footprints down to the quarry pool. - - The rocks that ooze with the hue of lead, - Where we found her lying stark and dead. - - The scraggy wood; the negro hut, - With its doors and windows locked and shut. - - A secret signal; a foot’s rough tramp; - A knock at the door; a lifted lamp. - - An oath; a scuffle; a ring of masks; - A voice that answers a voice that asks. - - A group of shadows; the moon’s red fleck; - A running noose and a man’s bared neck. - - A word, a curse, and a shape that swings; - The lonely night and a bat’s black wings. - - At the moon’s down-going, let it be - On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree. - - - - - DEAD MAN’S RUN - - - He rode adown the autumn wood, - A man dark-eyed and brown; - A mountain girl before him stood - Clad in a homespun gown. - - “To ride this road is death for you! - My father waits you there; - My father and my brother, too-- - You know the oath they swear.” - - He holds her by one berry-brown wrist, - And by one berry-brown hand; - And he hath laughed at her and kissed - Her cheek the sun hath tanned. - - “The feud is to the death, sweetheart: - But forward must I ride.”-- - “And if you ride to death, sweetheart, - My place is by your side.” - - Low hath he laughed again and kissed - And helped her with his hand; - And they have galloped into the mist - That belts the autumn land. - - And they had passed by Devil’s Den, - And come to Dead Man’s Run, - When in the brush rose up two men, - Each with a levelled gun. - - “Down! down! my sister!” cries the one;-- - She gives the reins a twirl.-- - The other shouts, “He shot my son! - And now he steals my girl!” - - The rifles crack: she will not wail: - He will not cease to ride: - But, oh! her face is pale, is pale, - And the red blood stains her side. - - “Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart! - The road is rough to ride!”-- - The road is rough by gulch and bluff, - And her hair blows wild and wide. - - “Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart! - The bank is steep to ride!”-- - The bank is steep for a strong man’s leap, - And her eyes are staring wide. - - “Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart! - The Run is swift to ride!”-- - The Run is swift with mountain drift, - And she sways from side to side. - - Is it a wash of the yellow moss, - Or drift of the autumn’s gold, - The mountain torrent foams across - For the dead pine’s roots to hold? - - Is it the bark of the sycamore, - Or peel of the white birch-tree, - The mountaineer on the other shore - Hath followed and still can see? - - No mountain moss or leaves, wild rolled, - No bark of birchen-gray!-- - Young hair of gold and a face death-cold - The wild stream sweeps away. - - - - - THE RAID - - - I - - Far in the forest, where the rude road winds - Through twisted briers and weeds, stamped down and caked - With mountain mire, the clashing boughs are raked - Again with rain whose sobbing frenzy blinds. - - There is a noise of winds; a gasp and gulp - Of swollen torrents; and the sodden smell - Of woodland soil, dead trees--that long since fell - Among the moss--red-rotted into pulp. - - Fogged by the rain, far up the mountain glen, - Deep in a cave, an elfish wisp of light; - And stealthy shadows stealing through the night - With strong, set faces of determined men. - - - II - - ’Twixt fog and fire, in pomps of chrysoprase, - Above vague peaks, the morning hesitates - Ere, o’er the threshold of her golden gates, - Speeds the wild splendor of her chariot’s rays. - - A gleaming glimmer in the sun-speared mist, - A cataract, reverberating, falls: - Upon a pine a gray hawk sits and calls, - Then soars away no bigger than a fist. - - Along the wild path, through the oaks and firs,-- - Rocks, where the rattler coils himself and suns,-- - Big-booted, belted, and with twinkling guns, - The posse marches with its moonshiners. - - - - - THE BROTHERS - - - Not far from here, it lies beyond - That low-hilled belt of woods. We ’ll take - This unused lane where brambles make - A wall of twilight, and the blond - Brier-roses pelt the path and flake - The margin waters of a pond. - - This is its fence--or that which was - Its fence once--now, rock rolled from rock, - One tangle of the vine and dock, - Where bloom the wild petunias; - And this its gate, the ragweeds block, - Hot with the insects’ dusty buzz. - - Two wooden posts, wherefrom has peeled - The weather-blistered paint, still rise; - Gaunt things--that groan when some one tries - The gate whose hinges, rust-congealed, - Snarl open:--on each post still lies - Its carven panther with a shield. - - We enter; and between great rows - Of locusts winds a grass-grown road; - And at its glimmering end,--o’erflowed - With quiet light,--the white front shows - Of an old mansion, grand and broad, - With grave, Colonial porticoes. - - Grown thick around it, dark and deep, - The locust trees make one vast hush; - Their brawny branches crowd and crush - Its very casements, and o’ersweep - Its rotting roofs: their tranquil rush - Haunts all its spacious rooms with sleep. - - Still is it called The Locusts; though - None lives here now. A tale ’s to tell - Of some dark thing that here befell; - A crime that happened years ago, - When past its walls, with shot and shell, - The war swept on and left it so. - - For one black night, within it, shame - Made revel, while, all here about, - With prayer or curse or battle-shout, - Men died and homesteads leapt in flame: - Then passed the conquering Northern rout, - And left it silent and the same. - - Why should I speak of what has been? - Or what dark part I played in all? - Why ruin sits in porch and hall - Where pride and gladness once were seen; - And why beneath this lichened wall - The grave of Margaret is green. - - Heart-broken Margaret! whose fate - Was sadder far than his who won - Her hand--my brother Hamilton-- - Or mine, who learned to know too late; - Who learned to know, when all was done, - And naught I did could expiate. - - To expiate is still my lot!-- - And, like the Ancient Mariner, - To show to others how things were, - And what I am, still helps me blot - A little from that crime’s red blur, - That on my life is branded hot. - - He was my only brother. She - A sister of my brother’s friend. - They met, and married in the end. - And I remember well when he - Brought her rejoicing home, the trend - Of war moved towards us sullenly. - - And scarce a year of wedlock when - Its red arms tore him from his bride. - With lips by hers thrice sanctified - He left to ride with Morgan’s men. - And I--I never could decide-- - Remained behind. It happened then. - - Long days went by. And, oft delayed, - A letter came of loving word - Scrawled by some camp-fire, sabre-stirred, - Or by a pine-knot’s fitful aid, - When in the saddle, armed and spurred - And booted for some hurried raid. - - Then weeks went by. I do not know - How long it was before there came, - Blown from the North, the clarion fame - Of Morgan, who, with blow on blow, - Had drawn a line of blood and flame - From Tennessee to Ohio. - - Then letters ceased; and days went on. - No word from him. The war rolled back, - And in its turgid crimson track - A rumor grew, like some wild dawn, - All ominous and red and black, - With news of our lost Hamilton. - - News hinting death or capture. Yet - No word was sure; till one day,--fed - By us,--some men rode up who said - They’d been with Morgan and had met - Disaster, and that he was dead, - My brother.--I and Margaret - - Believed them. Grief was ours too: - But mine was more for her than him: - Grief, that her eyes with tears were dim: - Grief, that became the avenue - For love, who crowned the sombre brim - Of death’s dark cup with rose-red hue. - - In sympathy,--unconsciously - Though it be given,--I hold, doth dwell - The germ of love that time shall swell - To blossom. Sooner then in me-- - When close relations so befell-- - That love should spring from sympathy. - - Our similar tastes and mutual bents - Combined to make us intimates - From our first meeting. Different states - Of interest then our temperaments - Begot. Then friendship, that abates - No love, whose soul it represents. - - These led to talks and dreams: how oft - We sat at some wide window while - The sun sank o’er the hills’ far file, - Serene; and of the cloud aloft - Made one vast rose; and mile on mile - Of firmament grew sad and soft. - - And all in harmony with these - Dim clemencies of dusk, afar - Our talks and dreams went; while the star - Of evening brightened through the trees: - We spoke of home; the end of war; - We dreamed of life and love and peace. - - How on our walks, in listening lanes - Or confidences of the wood, - We paused to hear the dove that cooed; - Or gathered wildflowers, taking pains - To find the fairest; or her hood - Filled with wild fruit that left deep stains. - - No echo of the drum or fife, - No hint of conflict entered in - Our thoughts then. Will you call it sin-- - Indifference to a nation’s strife? - What side might lose, what side might win, - Both immaterial to our life. - - Into the past we did not look: - Beyond what was we did not dream; - While onward rolled the thunderous stream - Of war, that, in its torrent, took - One of our own. No crimson gleam - Of its wild course around us shook. - - At last we knew. And when we learned - How he had fallen, Margaret - Wept; and, albeit my eyes were wet, - Within my soul I half discerned - A joy that mingled with regret, - A grief that to relief was turned. - - As time went on and confidence - Drew us more strongly each to each, - Why did no intimation reach - Its warning hand into the dense - Soul-silence, and confuse the speech - Of love’s unbroken eloquence! - - But, no! no hint to turn the poise, - Or check the impulse of our youth; - To chill it with the living truth - As with the awe of God’s own voice; - No hint, to make our hope uncouth; - No word, to warn us from our choice. - - To me a wall seemed overthrown - That social law had raised between; - And o’er its ruin, broad and green - A path went, I possessed alone; - The sky above seemed all serene; - The land around seemed all my own. - - What shall I say of Margaret - To justify her part in this? - That her young heart was never his? - But had been mine since first we met? - So would you say!--Enough it is - That when he left she loved him yet. - - So passed the spring, and summer sped; - And early autumn brought the day - When she her hand in mine should lay, - And I should take her hand and wed: - And still no hint that might gainsay, - No warning word of quick or dead. - - The day arrived; and with it born, - A battle, sullying the East - With boom of cannon, that increased, - And throb of musket and of horn: - Until at last, towards dusk, it ceased; - And men with faces wild and worn, - In fierce retreat, swept past; now groups; - Now one by one: now sternly white, - Or blood-stained; now with looks whose fright - Said all was lost: then sullen troops - That, beaten, still kept up the fight.-- - Then came the victors: shadowy loops - - Of men and horse, that left a crowd - Of officers in hall and porch.... - While through the land, around, the torch - Circled, and many a fiery cloud - Marked out the army’s iron march - In furrows red that pillage plowed, - - Here were we wedded.... Ask the years - How such could be, while over us - A sword of wrath swung ominous, - And on our cheeks its breath struck fierce!-- - All I remember is--’t was thus; - And Margaret’s eyes were wet with tears. - - No other cause my memory sees - Save this, _that_ night was set; and when - I found my home filled with armed men - With whom were all my sympathies - Of Union--why postpone it then? - So argued conscience into peace. - - And then it was, when night had passed, - There came to me an orderly - With word of a Confederate spy - Just taken; who, with head downcast, - Had asked one favor, this: “That I - Would see him ere he breathed his last.” - - I stand alone here. Heavily - My thoughts go back. Had I not gone, - The dead had still been dead! (for none - Had yet believed his story) he, - My dead-deemed brother, Hamilton, - Who in the spy confronted me. - - O you who never have been tried, - How can you judge me!--In my place - I saw him standing,--who can trace - My heart-thoughts then!--I turned aside, - A son of some unnatural race, - And did not speak: and so he died.... - - In hospital or prison, when - It was he lay; what had forbid - His home return so long: amid - What hardships he had suffered, then - I dared not ask; and when I did, - Long afterwards, inquire of men, - No thing I learned. But this I feel-- - He who had so returned to life - Was not a spy. Through stress and strife,-- - This makes my conscience hard to heal!-- - He had escaped: he sought his wife; - He sought his home that should conceal. - - And Margaret! Oh, pity her! - A criminal I sought her side, - Still thinking love was justified - In all for her--whatever were - The price: a brother thrice denied, - Or thrice a brothers murderer. - - Since then long years have passed away. - And through those years, perhaps, you ’ll ask - How to the world I wore my mask - Of honesty?--I can but say - Beyond my powers it was a task; - Before my time it turned me gray. - - And when at last the ceaseless hiss - Of conscience drove, and I betrayed - All to her, she knelt down and prayed: - Then rose: and ’twixt us an abyss - Was opened; and she seemed to fade - Out of my life: I came to miss - The sweet attentions of a bride: - For each appealing heart’s caress - In me her heart assumed a dress - Of dull indifference; till denied - To me was all responsiveness; - And then I knew her love had died. - - Ah, had she loaded me, perchance, - With wild reproach or even hate, - Such would have helped me hope and wait - Forgiveness and returned romance: - But ’twixt our souls, instead, a gate - She closed of silent tolerance. - - Yet, ’t was for love of her I lent - My soul to crime.... I question me - Often, if less entirely - I’d loved her, then, in that event - She had been justified to see - The deed alone stand prominent. - - The deed alone! But love records - In his own heart, I will aver, - No depth I did not feel for her - Beyond the plummet-reach of words: - And though there may be worthier, - No truer love this world affords - Than mine was, though it could not rise - Above itself. And so ’t was best, - Perhaps, that she saw manifest - The crime, so I,--as saw her eyes,-- - Might see; and so, in soul confessed, - Some life atonement might devise. - - Sadly my heart one comfort keeps, - That, towards her end, she took my hands - And said,--as one who understands,-- - “Had I but seen!--But love that weeps - Sees only as its loss commands.” - And sighed.--Beneath this stone she sleeps. - - Yes; I have suffered for that sin: - Yet in no instance would I shun - What I should suffer. Many a one, - Who heard my tale, has tried to win - Me to believe that Hamilton - It was not; and, though proven kin, - - This had not saved him. Still the stain - Of the intention--had I erred - And ’t was not he--had writ the word - Red on my soul that branded Cain: - For still my error had incurred - The fact of guilt that would remain. - - * * * * * - - Ah, love at best is insecure, - And lives with doubt and vain regret; - And hope and faith, with faces set - Upon the past, are never sure; - And through their fever, grief, and fret - The heart may fail that should endure. - - For in ourselves, however blend - The passions that make heaven and hell, - Is evil not accountable - For most the good we comprehend? - And through these two,--or ill, or well,-- - Man must evolve his spiritual end. - - It is with deeds that we must ask - Forgiveness: for, upon this earth, - Life walks alone from very birth - With death, hope tells us is a mask - For life beyond of vaster worth, - Where sin no more sets love a task. - - - EPILOGUE - - _Would I could sing of joy I only - Remember as without alloy: - Of life full-filled, that once was lonely: - Of love a treasure, not a toy: - Of grief, regret but makes the keener, - Of aspiration, failure mars-- - These would I sing, and sit serener. - Than song among the stars._ - - _Would I could sing of faith unbroken; - Of heart-kept vows, and not of tears: - Of promised faith and vows love-spoken, - That have been kept through many years: - Of truth, the false but leaves the truer; - Of trust, the doubt makes doubly sure-- - These would I sing, the noble doer - Whose dauntless heart is pure._ - - _I would not sing of time made hateful; - Of hope that only clings to hate: - Of charity, that grows ungrateful; - And pride that will not stand and wait.--_ - _Of humbleness, care hath imparted; - Of resignation, born of ills, - These would I sing, and stand high-hearted - As hope upon the hills._ - - _Once on a throne of gold and scarlet - I touched a harp and felt it break; - I dreamed I was a king--a varlet, - A slave, who only slept to wake!-- - Still on that harp my memory lingers, - While on a tomb I lean and read, - “Dust are our songs, and dust we singers, - And dust are all who heed.”_ - - - - - POEMS OF LOVE - - _What though I dreamed of mountain heights, - Of peaks, the barriers of the world, - Around whose tops the Northern Lights - And tempests are unfurled!_ - - _Mine are the footpaths leading through - Life’s lowly fields and woods,--with rifts, - Above, of heaven’s Eden blue,-- - By which the violet lifts_ - - _Its shy appeal; and, holding up - Its chaliced gold, like some wild wine, - Along the hillside, cup on cup, - Blooms bright the celandine._ - - _Where soft upon each flowering stock - The butterfly spreads damask wings; - And under grassy loam and rock - The cottage cricket sings._ - - _Where overhead eve blooms with fire, - In which the new moon bends her bow, - And, arrow-like, one white star by her - Burns through the afterglow._ - - _I care not, so the sesame - I find; the magic flower there, - Whose touch unseals each mystery - In water, earth, and air._ - - _That in the oak tree lets me hear - Its heart’s deep speech, its soul’s dim words; - And to my mind makes crystal clear - The messages of birds._ - - _Why should I care, who live aloof - Beyond the din of life and dust, - While dreams still share my humble roof, - And love makes sweet my crust._ - - - - - GERTRUDE - - - When first I gazed on Gertrude’s face, - Beheld her loveliness and grace; - Her brave gray eyes, her raven hair, - Her ways, more winsome than the spring’s; - Her smile, like some sweet flower, that flings - Its fragrance on the summer air; - And when, like some wild-bird that sings, - I heard her voice,--I did declare,-- - And still declare!--there is no one, - No girl beneath the moon or sun, - So beautiful to look upon! - And to my heart, as I know well, - Nothing seems more desirable,-- - Not Ophir gold, nor Orient pearls-- - Than seems this jewel-girl of girls. - - - - - LOVE - - - For him, who loves, each mounting morn - Breathes melody more sweet than birds’; - And every wind-stirred flower and thorn - Whispers melodious words:-- - Would you believe that everything - Through _her_ loved voice is made to sing? - - For her, the faultless skies of day - Grow nearer in eternal blue, - Where God is felt as wind and ray, - And seen as fire and dew:-- - Would you believe that all the skies - Are Heaven only through _his_ eyes? - - For them, the dreams that haunt the night - With mystic beauty and romance, - Are presences of starry light, - And moony radiance:-- - Would you believe this love of theirs - Could make for them a universe? - - - - - HEART OF MY HEART - - - I - - Here where the season turns the land to gold, - Among the fields our feet have known of old,-- - When we were children who would laugh and run, - Glad little playmates of the wind and sun,-- - Before came toil and care and years went ill, - And one forgot and one remembered still; - Heart of my heart, among the old fields here, - Give me your hands and let me draw you near, - Heart of my heart. - - - II - - Stars are not truer than your soul is true; - What need I more of heaven then than you? - Flowers are not sweeter than your face is sweet-- - What need I more to make my world complete? - O woman nature, love that still endures, - What strength hath ours that is not born of yours? - Heart of my heart, to you, whatever come, - To you the lead, whose love hath led me home. - Heart of my heart. - - - - - STROLLERS - - - I - - We have no castles, - We have no vassals, - We have no riches, no gems and no gold: - Nothing to ponder; - Nothing to squander-- - Let us go wander - As minstrels of old. - - - II - - You with your lute, love; - I with my flute, love, - Let us make music by mountain and sea: - You with your glances, - I with my dances, - Singing romances - Of old chivalry. - - - III - - “Derry down derry! - Good folk, be merry! - Hither! and hearken where happiness is! - Never go borrow - Care of to-morrow, - Never go sorrow - While life hath a kiss!” - - - IV - - Let the day gladden, - Or the night sadden, - We will be merry in sunshine or snow: - You with your rhyme, love, - I with my chime, love, - We will make Time, love, - Dance as we go. - - - V - - Nothing is ours; - Only the flowers, - Meadows, and stars, and the heavens above: - Nothing to lie for, - Nothing to sigh for, - Nothing to die for - While still we have love. - - - VI - - “Derry down derry! - Good folk, be merry! - Hither! and hearken a word that is sooth:-- - Care ye not any, - If ye have many, - Or not a penny, - If still ye have youth!” - - - - - THE BURDEN OF DESIRE - - - I - - In some dim way I know thereof: - A garden glows down in my heart, - Wherein I meet and often part - With many an ancient tale of love. - A Romeo garden, banked with bloom, - And trellised with the eglantine; - In which a rose climbs to a room, - A balcony one mass of vine, - Dim, haunted of perfume. - A balcony, whereon she gleams, - The soft Desire of all Dreams, - And smiles and bends like Juliet, - Year after year, - While to her side, all dewy wet, - A rose stuck in his ear, - Love climbs to draw her near. - - - II - - And in another way I know, - Down in my soul a graveyard lies, - Wherein I meet, in ghostly wise, - With many an ancient tale of woe. - A graveyard of the Capulets, - Deep-vaulted with ancestral gloom, - Through whose dark yews the moonlight jets - On many a wildly carven tomb, - That mossy mildew frets. - A graveyard where the Soul’s Desire - Sleeps, pale-entombed; and, kneeling by her, - Love, like that hapless Montague, - Year after year, - Weary and worn and wild of hue, - Within her sepulchre, - Falls bleeding on her bier. - - - - - THE TRYST - - - At dusk there fell a shower: - The leaves were dripping yet: - Each fern and rain-weighed flower - Around was gleaming wet, - When, through the evening glower, - His feet towards her were set. - - The dust’s damp odor sifted - Around him, cool with rain, - Mixed with the musk that drifted - From woodland and from plain, - Where white her garden lifted - Its pickets down the lane. - - And there she stood! ’mid scattered - Clove-pink and pea and whorl - Of honeysuckle,--flattered - To sweetness wild,--a girl, - O’er whom the clouds hung shattered - In moonlit peaks of pearl. - - She made the night completer - For him; and earth and air, - In that small spot, far sweeter - Than heaven or anywhere.-- - Swift were his lips to greet her, - Her lips love lifted there. - - - - - GYPSYING - - - Your heart ’s a-tune with April and mine a-tune with June, - So let us go a-roving beneath the summer moon. - Oh, was it in the sunlight, or was it in the rain, - We met among the blossoms within the locust lane? - All that I can remember ’s the bird that sang aboon, - And with its music in our hearts we ’ll rove beneath the moon. - - A love-word of the wind, dear, of which we ’ll read the rune, - While we two go a-roving beneath the summer moon. - A love-word of the water we ’ll often stop to hear-- - The echoed words and whispers of our own hearts, my dear. - And all our paths shall blossom with wild-rose sweets that swoon, - And with their fragrance in our hearts we ’ll rove beneath the moon. - - It will not be forever; yet merry goes the tune - While we two still are rovers beneath the summer moon. - A cabin, in the clearing, of flickering firelight, - When old-time lanes we strolled in the winter snows make white: - Where we can dream together above the logs and croon - The songs we sang when roving beneath the summer moon. - - - - - UNCERTAINTY - -“_‘He cometh not,’ she said._”--Mariana. - - - It will not be to-day and yet - I think and dream it will; and let - The slow uncertainty devise - So many sweet excuses, met - With the old doubt in hope’s disguise. - - The panes were sweated with the dawn; - Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn, - The aigret of one princess-feather, - One monk’s-hood tuft with oilets wan, - I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather. - - This morning when my window’s chintz - I drew, how gray the day was!--Since - I saw him, yea, all days are gray!-- - I gazed out on my dripping quince, - Defruited, torn; then turned away - To weep, but did not weep: but felt - A colder anguish than did melt - About the tearful-visaged Year!-- - Then flung the lattice wide and smelt - The autumn sorrow. Rotting near - - The rain-drenched sunflowers bent and bleached, - Up which the frost-nipped gourd-vines reached - And morning-glories, seeded o’er - With ashen aiglets; whence beseeched - One last bloom, frozen to the core. - - The podded hollyhocks--that Fall - Had stripped of finery--by the wall - Rustled their tatters; dripped and dripped, - The fog thick on them: near them, all - The tarnished, hag-like zinnias tipped. - - I felt the death and loved it: yea, - To have it nearer, sought the gray, - Chill, fading garth. Yet could not weep, - But wandered in an aimless way, - And yearned with weariness to sleep. - - Mine were the fog, the frosty stalks, - The weak lights on the leafy walks, - The shadows shivering with the cold; - The breaking heart; the lonely talks; - The last, dim, ruined marigold. - - But when, to-night, the moon swings low-- - A great marsh-marigold of glow-- - And all my garden with the sea - Moans, then, through moon and mist, I know - His ghost will come to comfort me. - - - - - LOST LOVE - - - I loved her madly. For--so wrought - Young Love, divining Isles of Truth - Large in the central seas of Youth-- - “Love will win love,” I thought. - - Once when I brought a rare wild pink - To place among her plants, the wise, - Soft lifting of her speaking eyes - Said more than thanks, I think.... - - She loved another.--Yes, I know - All you would say of woman. You, - Like other men, would comfort too.... - But then I loved her so. - - She loved another.--Ah! too well - I know the story of her soul!-- - A weary tale the weary whole - Of how she loved and fell. - - I loved her so!... Remembering now - My mad grief then, I wonder why - Grief never kills.... I could not die.-- - She died--I know not how. - - Strange, is it not? For she was dear - To me as life once.--A regret - She is now; just to make eyes wet - And bring a fullness here. - - Yet, had she lived as dead in shame - As now in death, Love would have used - Pride’s pitying pencil and abused - The memory of her name. - - This helps me thank my God, who led - My broken life in sunlight of - This pure affection, that my love - Lives through her being dead. - - - - - OVERSEAS - - _Non numero horas nisi serenas._ - - - When fall drowns morns in mist, it seems - In soul I am a part of it; - A portion of its humid beams, - A form of fog, I seem to flit - From dreams to dreams. - - An old chateau sleeps ’mid the hills - Of France: an avenue of sorbs - Conceals it: drifts of daffodils - Bloom by a ’scutcheoned gate with barbs - Like iron bills. - - I pass the gate unquestioned, yet, - I feel, announced. Broad holm-oaks make - Dark pools of restless violet. - Between high bramble banks a lake,-- - As in a net. - - The tangled scales twist silver,--shines ... - Gray, mossy turrets swell above - A sea of leaves. And where the pines - Shade ivied walls, there lies my love, - My heart divines. - - I know her window, dimly seen - From distant lanes with hawthorn hedged: - Her garden, with the nectarine - Espaliered, and the peach-tree, wedged - ’Twixt walls of green. - - Cool-babbling a fountain falls - From gryphons’ mouths in porphyry; - Carp haunt its waters; and white balls - Of lilies dip it that the bee - Sucks in and drawls. - - And butterflies, each with a face - Of faëry on its wings, that seem - Beheaded pansies, softly chase - Each other down the gloom and gleam - Trees interspace. - - And roses! roses, soft as vair, - Round sylvan statues and the old - Stone dial--Pompadours that wear - Their royalty of purple and gold - With queenly air.... - - Her scarf, her lute, whose ribbons breathe - The perfume of her touch; her gloves, - Modeling the daintiness they sheathe; - Her fan, a Watteau, gay with loves, - Lie there beneath - - A bank of eglantines that heaps - A rose-strewn shadow.--Naïve-eyed, - With lips as suave as they, she sleeps; - The romance by her, open wide, - O’er which she weeps. - - - - - AT THE STILE - - - Young Harry leapt over the stile and kissed her, - Over the stile when the sun was sinking; - ’T was only Carrie; just Mary’s sister!-- - And love hath a way of thinking. - - “Thy pail, sweetheart, I will take and carry.” - Over the stile one star hung yellow.-- - “Just to the spring, my dearest Harry.”-- - And Love is a heartless fellow. - - “Thou saidst me ‘yea’ in an April shower - Under this tree with leaves a-quiver.”-- - “I say thee nay now the cherry ’s in flower, - And love is taker and giver.” - - “O false! thou art false to me, sweetheart!”-- - The light in her eyes grew trist and trister: - “To thee, the stars, and myself, sweetheart, - I never was aught but Mary’s sister. - - “Sweet Mary’s sister! just little Carrie!-- - But what avail my words or weeping?-- - Next month, perhaps, you two will marry-- - And I in my grave be sleeping.” - - Alone she stands ’mid the meadow millet, - Wan as the petals the wind is strewing: - Some tears in her pail as she stoops to fill it-- - And love hath a way of doing. - - - - - FERN-SEED - -“_We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible._”--Henry IV. - - - And you and I have met but thrice!-- - Three times enough to make me love!-- - I praised your hair once; then your glove; - Your eyes; your gown--you were like ice. - And yet this might suffice, my love, - And yet this might suffice. - - I know now what it is I’ll do: - I’ll search and find the ferns that grow, - The fern-seed that the fairies know, - And sprinkle fern-seed in my shoe, - And haunt the steps of you, my dear, - And haunt the steps of you. - - You ’ll see the poppy-pods dip here, - The blow-ball of the thistle slip, - And no wind breathing--but my lip - Next to your anxious cheek and ear, - To tell you I am near, my love, - To tell you I am near. - - On wood-ways I will tread your gown-- - You ’ll know it is no brier!--then - I’ll whisper words of love again, - And smile to see your quick face frown; - And then I ’ll kiss it down, my dear, - And then I ’ll kiss it down. - - You ’ll sit at home and read or knit, - When suddenly the page is blotted-- - My hands!--or all your needles knotted: - And in your rage you ’ll cry a bit: - But I--I ’ll laugh at it, my love, - But I--I ’ll laugh at it. - - The secrets which you say at prayer - I too will hear; or, when you sing, - I too will sing, and whispering - Bend down and kiss your eyes and hair, - And you will know me there, my dear, - And you will know me there. - - Would it were true what people say!-- - Would I _could_ find that faëry seed! - Then would I win your love, indeed, - By being near you night and day:-- - There is no other way, my love, - There is no other way. - - - - - PORPHYROGENITA - - - I - - Was it when Kriemhild was queen - That we rode by ways forgotten - Through the Rhineland, dimly seen - ’Neath a low moon white as cotton? - I, a knight? or troubadour? - Thou, a princess?--or a poor - Damsel of the Royal Closes?-- - For, I met thee--somewhere sure!... - Was it ’mid Kriemhilda’s roses? - - - II - - Or in Venice, by the sea?-- - What romance grew up between us? - Thou, a doge’s daughter?--She, - Titian painted once as Venus?-- - I, a gondolier whose barque - Glided past thy palace dark?-- - Near St. Mark’s? or Casa d’Oro?-- - From thy casement didst thou hark - To my barcarolle’s “_Te oro_”? - - - III - - Klaia wast, of Egypt: yea, - Languid as its sacred lily. - Didst with me a year and day - Love upon the Isle of Philæ? - I, a priest of Isis?--Sweet, - ’Neath the date-palms did we meet - By a temple’s pillared marble? - While, from its star-still retreat, - Sank the nightingale’s wild warble? - - - IV - - Have I dreamed that I, thy slave, - From thy lattice, my sultana, - Beckoning, thy white hand did wave, - Dropped me once a rose? sweet manna - Of thy kiss warm in its heart? - That, through my Chaldæan art, - With thy Khalif’s bags of treasure, - From Damascus we did start, - Fled to some far land of pleasure? - - - V - - Was I one? another thou?-- - Let it be. What of it, dearest?-- - Haply ’tis the memory now - Of these passions dead thou fearest?-- - Nay! those loves are portions of, - Evolutions of this love, - Present love, where thou appearest - To combine them all and prove. - - - - - THE CASTLE OF LOVE - - _He speaks_ - - - I - - Now listen! ’tis time that you knew it.-- - Like the prince in the Asian tale, - I wandered on deserts that panted - With noon to a castle enchanted, - That Afrits had built in a vale; - A vale where the sunlight lay pale - As moonlight. And round it and through it - I searched and I searched. Like the tale, - - - II - - No eunuch, black-browed as a Marid, - Prevented me. Shadows it seemed - Were the slaves there, with kohl and with henné - In eyes and on fingers; and many - The phantoms of beauty, that dreamed - Where censers of ambergris steamed. - And I came on a colonnade, quarried - From silvery marble it seemed. - - - III - - And here, in a court, wide, estraded, - Rich tulips, like carbuncles, bloomed, - And jonquils and roses:--and lories, - And cockatoos, brilliant in glories - Of plumes, like great blossoms illumed, - Winged, splashed in a fountain perfumed: - Kept captive by network of braided, - Spun gold where stone galleries gloomed. - - - IV - - From nipples of back-bending Peris - Of gold, glowing auburn, in rays - The odorous fountain sprang calling: - I heard through the white water’s falling,-- - As soft as the zephyr that plays - With moonlight on bloom-haunted ways,-- - A music; a sound, as if fairies - Touched wind-harps whose chords were of rays. - - - V - - I followed: through corridors paneled - With sandal; through doorways deep-draped - With stuffs of Chosroës, rich-garded - With Indian gold; up the corded - Stone stairway, bronze-dragoned, wing-shaped: - Through moon-spangled hangings escaped-- - ’Twixt pillars of juniper channeled-- - To a room constellated and draped. - - - VI - - As in legends of witchcraft: a vassal - Of visions beholds naught yet hears - Sweet voices that call and he follows,-- - So me, like the fragrance of aloes, - That chamber with song, it appears, - Surrounded; the song of the spheres ... - My soul found your soul such a castle-- - Your love is the music it hears. - - - - - CONSECRATION - - _She speaks._ - - - Last night you told me, where we, parting, waited, - Of love somehow I’d known before you told.-- - Long, long ago, perhaps, this love was fated, - For why was it made suddenly so old? - - Is it because the love we have and cherish - Born with us seems, and as ourselves shall last? - Part of our lives, we can not let it perish - Out of our present’s future or its past? - - Yet, all was changed; and, still, I did not wonder - That, robed in vaster splendor, broke the dawn: - Nor marvel that, beside my feet and under, - Each flower seemed fairer than the flower gone. - - The wild bird’s silvery warble seemed completer; - A whiter magic filled the morn and noon, - And night--each night!--seemed holier grown and sweeter - With Babylonian witchcraft of the moon.-- - - Is love an emanation? whose ideal - Communicates its beauty?--Is it moved - Through some strange means to consecrate the real? - Making the world the worthier to be loved? - - - - - ROMANTIC LOVE - - - I - - Is it not sweet to know?-- - The moon hath told me so-- - That in some lost romance, love, - Long lost to us below, - A knight with casque and lance, love, - A thousand years ago, - I kissed you from a trance, love?-- - The moon hath told me so. - - - II - - Or were it strange to wis?-- - The stars have told me this-- - That once a nightingale, love, - Sang on an Isle of Greece; - From whose melodious wail, love, - Its song’s wild harmonies, - Was born a spirit-woman-- - Yourself! whom I, a human, - Made mine!... So goes the tale, love!-- - The stars have told me this. - - - III - - Is it not quaint to tell?-- - The flowers remember well-- - How once a wild-rose blew, love, - Dim in a haunted dell; - To which a bee was true, love. - The bee, so it befell, - Was _I_: the rose was _you_, love!... - The flowers remember well. - - - IV - - To moon and flower and star - We are not what we are.-- - Sometimes, from o’er that sea, love, - Whose golden sands are far,-- - From shores of Destiny, love,-- - The dreams that know no bar, - Will waft a truth that glistens - To Memory who listens, - Reminding you and me, love, - We are not what we are. - - - - - PASTORAL LOVE - - - The pied pinks tilt in the wind that worries-- - Sing, Oh, the wind and the red o’ her cheek!-- - And the slow sun creeps on the rye nor hurries-- - And what shall a lover speak? - - The toad-flax brightens the flaxen hollows-- - Sing, Ay, the bloom and her yellow hair!-- - And the greenwood brook a wood-way follows-- - And what shall a lover dare? - - The deep woods gleam that the sunlight sprinkles-- - Sing, Hey, the day and her laughing eye!-- - And a brown bird pipes and a wild fall tinkles-- - And what may a maid reply? - - Hey, the hills when the evening settles! - Oh, the heavens within her eyes! - What will he ask ’mid the dropping petals? - And what will she say with sighs?-- - - “Look, where the west is a blur of roses!”-- - “There’s naught like the rose o’ the cheeks I see!”-- - “Look, where the first star’s eye uncloses!”-- - “But what of _your_ eyes, my destiny?” - - - - - ANDALIA AND THE SPRINGTIME - - - I - - Blow, winds, and waken her! - You, who have taken her, - Never forsaken her, - Filled her with spring! - My mad and merriest - Part of the veriest - Season and cheeriest: - Blow, winds! and sing, - Birds of the spring! that taught her - Airs of the woods; this daughter - Wild of the winds, that waft her - Into my heart with laughter, - Wild as a wildwood thing. - - - II - - She, who is fraught with it, - Thrilled with it, brought with it, - Spring!--like a thought, with it - Beautiful too! - Now like a dream of it; - Filled with the gleam of it; - Now a bright beam of it, - Piercing me through, - Sweet, with her eyes that are often - Laughter and languor; that soften - Dreamily, drowsily, slowly, - Then, on a sudden, are wholly - Dancing as dew. - - - III - - Face,--like the sweetest of - Perfumes,--completest of - Flowers God’s fleetest of - Months ever bear!-- - Listen, O lisper wind,-- - Lighter and crisper wind,-- - Have you a whisper, wind, - Soft as her hair? - Night and the stars did spin it; - Darkness and brightness are in it: - Let but a ray of it bind me, - Wrap it around me and wind me, - Blind as the blind are and blinder, - Yet through my heart would I find her, - Lost though I were. - - - - - OLIVIA IN THE AUTUMN - - - Not redder than her lips - This weather! - Not rosier two rose-hips - Together! - As she comes carolling - Down wildwood ways, where sing - The birds, and flowers swing - In many a feather. - - Of her belovéd cheeks - October - Makes flame-flushed leaves, and speaks,-- - Now sober, - Now wild,--its happiness - In gold, and on her dress - Lays many a bright caress - As if to robe her. - - The wild-birds praise her eyes - Each hour; - Above her bend the skies - And shower - Around her, there and here, - Strays of the passing year, - Azure and gold and sere - Of weed and flower. - - The wood-winds kiss her hair - And wonder - What flower blossoms there: - And, under - Its deeps of acorn-brown, - Her glory and her crown, - The sunbeams lay them down, - And dream and ponder. - - And I--I take her hands, - Her lover; - And kiss her where she stands; - And over - Our heads the soft winds call, - And heav’n smiles down; and all - The golden dreams of Fall - Around us hover. - - - - - SYLVIA OF THE WOODLAND - - - I - - O you, who know our Mays that blow - The bluets by the ways; - The Indian-pink,--whose bloom you ’d think - Was blood for some wild bee to drink,-- - How--can you say--in their wise way - Is it you ’re like our Mays?-- - In gleam and gloom and wild perfume - Of moods that run from shade to sun:-- - While in you seems the light that dreams - In thoughts of other days. - - - II - - Meseems some song, for which I long, - From you to me takes wing - Each time you speak; a bird, whose beak - Is in my heart; whose wildwood art - Makes every beat say “Sweet, sweet, sweet,” - And all its pulses sing. - And when I gaze upon your face, - I seem to look into a brook, - That laughs through buds and leafing woods, - Reflecting all the spring. - - - III - - You spoke but now--and, lo! I vow, - From haunts of hart and hind - I seemed to hear Romance draw near, - White hand in hand with Song, and stand, - In some green aisle of wood, and smile, - Beguiling soul and mind: - You laugh--and, lo! I seem to go - In Mirth’s young train; and bird-songs rain - Around, above; and Joy and Love - Come dancing down the wind. - - - - - WITNESSES - - - I - - You say I do not love you!--Tell me why, - When I have gazed a little on your face, - And then gone forth into the world of men, - A beauty, neither of the earth nor sky, - A glamour, that transforms each common place, - Attends my spirit then? - - - II - - You say I do not love you!--Yet, I know, - When I have heard you speak and dwelt upon - Your words a while, my heart has gone away - Filled with strange music, very soft and low, - A dim companion, touching with sweet tone - The discords of the day. - - - III - - You say I do not love you!--Yet, it seems, - When I have kissed your hand and said farewell, - A fragrance, wilder than the wood’s wild bloom, - Companions dim my soul and fills, with dreams, - The sad and sordid streets where people dwell, - Dreams of spring’s wild perfume. - - - - - A PUPIL OF PAN - - - My love’s adorable and wise - As heaven and the winds of spring: - Go thou and gaze into her eyes-- - Such scholars of the starry skies! - --Canst marvel at the thing? - - My love is like a bud that blows - With fragrant honey in its heart: - Go, watch her smile--Wouldst not suppose - She from some warm, white, serious rose - Had learned the happy art? - - The thoughts she speaks are pearls unstrung - That strew her fancy’s golden floor: - Go listen--For, the woods among, - She met with Pan, when very young, - Who taught her all his lore. - - - - - LORA OF THE VALES - - - Lora is her name that slips - Soft as love between the lips: - You must know she is so wise - All she does is lift her eyes,-- - Larkspur-blue as April skies,-- - At her name--and that replies-- - She ’s so wise, is Lora. - - Lora is her name whose sound - Hedges all my heart around - With the gold of happiness: - When she speaks, you will confess, - Music’s self her words express, - Every vowel a caress-- - She ’s so kind, is Lora. - - Lora is her name that brings - Thoughts to me of morning things: - Songs of birds; of bees that creep - In the rumpled bluebells deep; - Butterflies, that, half asleep, - On some rose their vigil keep-- - She ’s so young, is Lora. - - Lora, lean to mine your face; - So; and round you let me lace - One firm arm, and gently woo - Your small mouth, as fresh as dew, - Till it says your heart is true, - True to me as mine to you, - Sunny-hearted Lora! - - - - - PLEDGES - - - I - - What the May-apple or - Woodland anemone-- - Star-perfect as a star-- - Says to the honey-bee: - Or to the winds that woo, - Filling their hearts with dew: - What says the bluet’s blue - To the sun’s ray--do you - Know or do I?-- - - - II - - Listen, and you may hear - What the oxalis says - Into the downy ear - Of the pale moth that sways - There on its heart and drinks: - Or what the forest-pinks - Say to the dew that winks, - Butterfly-wing that blinks-- - Glimmering by. - - - III - - They say: “When April trod - By in a blowing blush,-- - Wise as a word of God - Holding all Heaven a-hush,-- - Singing a song of love, - We, as she passed above, - Sprang from the notes thereof, - Filling with joy each grove, - Beauty and mystery.” - - - - - ORIENTAL ROMANCE - - - I - - Beyond lost seas of summer she - Dwelt on an island of the sea, - Last scion of that dynasty, - Queen of a race forgotten long,-- - With eyes of light and lips of song, - From seaward groves of blowing lemon, - She called me in her native tongue, - Low-leaned on some rich robe of Yemen. - - - II - - I was a king. Three moons we drove - Across green gulfs, the crimson clove - And cassia spiced, to claim her love. - Packed was my barque with gums and gold; - Rich fabrics; sandalwood, grown old - With odor; gems; and pearls of Oman,-- - Than her white breasts less white and cold;-- - And myrrh, less fragrant than this woman. - - - III - - From Bassora I came. We saw - Her condor castle on a claw - Of soaring precipice, o’erawe - The surge and thunder of the spray: - Like some great opal, far away - It shone, with battlement and spire, - Wherefrom, with wild aroma, day - Blew splintered lights of sapphirine fire. - - - IV - - Lamenting caverns, dark and deep, - That catacombed the haunted steep, - Led upward to her castle-keep ... - Fair as the moon, whose light is shed - In Ramadan, was she, who led - My love unto her island bowers, - To find her ... lying young and dead - Among her maidens and her flowers. - - - - - THE TOLLMAN’S DAUGHTER - - - She stood waist-deep among the briers: - Above, in twisted lengths, were rolled - The sunset’s tangled whorls of gold, - Blown from the west’s cloud-pillared fires. - And in the hush, no sound did mar, - You almost heard, o’er hill and dell, - Deep, bubbling over, star on star, - The night’s blue cisterns slowly well. - A crane, a shadowy crescent, crossed - The sunset, winging ’thwart the west; - While up the east her silver breast - Of light the moon brought, white as frost. - - So have I painted her, you see, - The tollman’s daughter.--What an arm - And throat were hers! and what a form! - --Art dreams of such divinity. - What braids of night to smooth and kiss!-- - There is no pigment anywhere - A man might use to picture this-- - The splendor of her raven hair. - A face as beautiful and bright, - As rosy fair as twilight skies, - Lit with the stars of hazel eyes - And eyebrowed black with penciled night. - - For her, I know, where’er she trod - Each dewdrop raised a looking-glass, - To catch her image, from the grass; - That wildflowers bloomed along the sod, - And whispered perfume when she smiled; - The wood-bird hushed to hear her song, - Or, heart-enamoured, tame though wild, - Before her feet flew fluttering long: - The brook went mad with melody, - Eddied in laughter when she kissed - With naked feet its amethyst-- - And I--she was my world, ah me! - - - - - CREOLE SERENADE - - - Under moss-draped oak and pine, - Murmuring, falls the fountained stream; - In its pool the lilies shine, - Silvery, each a glimmering gleam. - - Roses bloom and roses die - In the warm rose-scented dark, - Where the firefly, like an eye, - Winks and glows, a golden spark. - - Amber-belted through the night - Drifts the alabaster moon, - Like a big magnolia white - On the fragrant heart of June. - - With a broken syrinx there, - With bignonia overgrown, - Is it Pan in hoof and hair?-- - Or his image carved from stone? - - See! her casement’s jessamines part;-- - Through their stars and swooning scent - Like the moon she leans. O heart, - ’T is another firmament! - - - _Sings_: - - The dim verbena drugs the dusk - With lemon odors; everywhere - Wan heliotropes breathe drowsy musk - Into the jasmine-heavy air; - The moss-rose bursts its dewy husk - And spills its attar there. - - The orange at thy casement flings - Star-censers oozing rich perfumes; - The clematis, long-petaled, swings - Deep clusters of dark purple blooms; - With flowers, like moons or sylphide wings, - Magnolias light the glooms. - - Awake, awake from sleep! - Thy balmy hair, - Unbounden, deep on deep, - Like blossoms there,-- - That dew and fragrance weep,-- - Will fill the night with prayer. - Awake, awake from sleep! - - And dreaming here it seems to me - A dryad’s bosom grows confessed, - Nude in the dark magnolia tree, - That rustles with the murmurous West-- - Or is it but some bloom I see, - White as thy virgin breast? - - Through Southern heavens above are rolled - A million feverish stars, that burst, - Like gems, from out the caskets old - Of night, with fires that throb and thirst: - An oleander, showering gold, - The heav’n seems, star-immersed. - - Unseal, unseal thine eyes!-- - Too long her rod - Queen Mab sways o’er their skies - In realms of Nod!-- - Their starry majesties - Will fill the night with God. - Unseal, unseal thine eyes! - - - - - IDEAL DIVINATION - - - How I have thought of her, - Her I have never seen!-- - Now from a raying air - She, like the Magdalene, - Flowers--a face serene, - Radiant with raven hair. - - Now in a balsam scent - Laughs from the stars that gleam; - Naked and redolent, - Bends to me breasts of beam, - Eyes that were made to dream, - Throat that the dimples dent. - - Would she were real, ah me! - Would she were real and here! - And no “impossible she”! - But one to draw me near, - Hold me and name me dear!-- - But, that can never be! - - “Living, each learns to know - Life is not worth its pain; - Loving, each finds a woe - Or, at the end, a chain: - Fardled of hope we strain - Whither no hope may know. - - “Life is too credulous - Of time that beckons on. - Memory still serves us thus-- - Gauging each coming dawn - By a day dead and gone, - Day that ’s a part of us.” - - So says my soul, that ’s mocked - Here of the flesh and held; - Ever rebellion rocked, - Fighting, forever quelled; - Titan-like, fate-compelled, - Yearning to rise, but locked - - Supine where torrents pour - Hellward; on crags that, high, - Scarred of the thunder, gore - Heaven.... The vulture’s eye - Swims, and the harpies’ cry - Clangs through the ocean’s roar.... - - Then, like æolian light, - Calling, it hears her lips: - Scorched by her burning white - Splendor of arms and hips, - Slimy each horror slips - Back to its native night.... - - Rul’st thou some brighter star? - Inviolable queen - Of what the destinies are? - Thou, with thy light unseen - Filling my life with sheen, - Leading my soul afar! - - Thou, who oft leav’st thy skies, - Comest in dreams to me, - With amaranthine eyes, - Asphodel shadowy - Hair, and mysteriously - Say’st to my heart, “Arise! - - “Be not afraid to dare - All of life’s tyranny! - I will reward thee there! - There, where my love shall be - Thine to eternity!-- - Only be brave and bear!” - - - - - APOCALYPSE - - - Before I found her I had found - Within my heart, as in a brook, - Reflections of her: now a sound - Of imaged beauty, now a look. - - So when I found her, gazing in - Those Bibles of her eyes, above - All earth, I saw no word of sin; - Their holy chapters all were love. - - I read them through. I read and saw - The soul impatient of the sod-- - Her soul, that through her eyes did draw - Mine--to the higher love of God. - - - - - CAN I FORGET? - - - Can I forget how Love once led the ways - Of our two lives together, joining them; - How every hour was his anadem, - And every day a tablet in his praise! - Can I forget how, in his garden’s place, - Among the purple roses, stem to stem, - We heard the rumor of his robe’s bright hem, - And saw the aureate radiance of his face!-- - Though I beheld my soul’s high dreams down-hurled, - And Falsehood sit where Truth once towered white, - And in Love’s place usurping Lust and Shame, - Though flowers be dead within the winter world, - Are flowers not there? and starless though the night, - Are stars not there, eternal and the same? - - - - - MY ROSE - - - There was a rose in Eden once: it grows - On Earth now, sweeter for its rare perfume: - And Paradise is poorer by one bloom, - And Earth is richer. In this blossom glows - More loveliness than old seraglios - Or courts of kings did ever yet illume: - More purity than ever yet had room - In soul of nun or saint.--O human rose!-- - Who art initial and sweet period of - My heart’s divinest sentence; where I read - Love, first and last, and in the pauses, love; - Who art the dear ideal of each deed - Through which my life is strong to attain its goal,-- - Set in the mystic garden of my soul! - - - - - RESTRAINT - - - Dear heart and love! what happiness is it - To watch the firelight’s varying shade and shine - On thy young face; and through those eyes of thine-- - As through clear windows--to behold them flit, - In sumptuous chambers of thy mind’s chaste wit, - Thy soul’s fair fancies! then to take in mine - Thy hand, whose pressure brims my heart’s divine - Hushed rapture as with music exquisite! - When I remember how thy look and touch - Sway, like the moon, my blood with ecstasy, - I dare not think to what fierce heaven might lead - Thy soft embrace; or in thy kiss how much - Sweet hell,--beyond all help of me,--might be, - Where I were lost, where I were lost indeed! - - - - - IN JUNE - - - I - - Hotly burns the amaryllis, - Starred with ruby red: - Coolly stand the snowy lilies - In the lily-bed: - Emerald gleams the wild May-apple, - ’Neath its parasol, - And where gold the sunbeams dapple - Woods, and thrushes call, - Marion strolls with Moll, - Singing, “Fol-de-rol; - Fol-de, fol-de-rol. - - - II - - “March was but a blustering liar; - April, sad as night: - May, a milkmaid from the byre, - Full of love but light. - June, sweet June!--ah! she’s My Lady, - Fair and fine and tall, - Strolling down the woodways shady-- - June is best of all! - She is like my Moll! - Fol-de-rol-de-rol! - She is like sweet Moll!” - - - - - WILL O’ THE WISPS - - - Beyond the barley meads and hay, - What was the light that beckoned there? - That made her young lips smile and say: - “Oh, busk me in a gown of May, - And knot red poppies in my hair.” - - Over the meadow and the wood - What was the voice that filled her ears? - That sent into pale cheeks the blood, - Until each seemed a wild-brier bud - Mowed down by mowing harvesters?... - - Beyond the orchard, down the hill, - The water flows, the water swirls; - And there they found her past all ill, - Her pale dead face, sweet, smiling still, - The cresses caught among her curls. - - At twilight in the willow glen - What sound is that the silence hears, - When deep the dusk is hushed again, - And homeward from the fields strong men - And women go, the harvesters? - - One seeks the place where she is laid, - Where violets bloom from year to year-- - “O sunny head! O bird-like maid! - The orchard blossoms fall and fade - And I am lonely, lonely here.” - - Two stars look down upon the vale; - They seem to him the eyes of Ruth: - The low moon rises very pale - As if she, too, had heard the tale, - All heartbreak, of a maid and youth. - - - - - IN A GARDEN - - - The pink rose drops its petals on - The moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn; - The moon, like some wide rose of white, - Drops down the summer night. - No rose there is - As sweet as this-- - Thy mouth, that greets me with a kiss. - - The lattice of thy casement twines - With jasmine vines, with jasmine vines; - The stars, like jasmine blossoms, lie - About the glimmering sky. - No jasmine tress - Can so caress - Like thy white arms’ soft loveliness. - - About thy door magnolia blooms - Make sweet the glooms, make sweet the glooms; - A moon-magnolia is the dusk - Closed in a dewy husk. - However much, - No bloom gives such - Soft fragrance as thy bosom’s touch. - - The flowers blooming now will pass, - And strew the grass, and strew the grass; - The night, like some frail flower, dawn - Will soon make gray and wan. - Still, still above, - The flower of - True love shall live forever, Love. - - - - -“IF I WERE HER LOVER” - - - I - - If I were her lover, - I’d wade through the clover - Over the fields before - The gate that leads to her door; - Over the meadows, - To wait, ’mid the shadows, - The shadows that circle her door, - For the heart of my heart and more. - And there in the clover - Close by her, - Over and over - I’d sigh her: - “Your eyes are as brown - As the Night’s, looking down - On waters that sleep - With the moon in their deep” ... - If I were her lover to sigh her. - - - II - - If I were her lover, - I’d wade through the clover - Over the fields before - The lane that leads to her door; - I’d wait, ’mid the thickets, - Or there by the pickets, - White pickets that fence in her door, - For the life of my life and more. - I’d lean in the clover-- - The crisper - For the dews that are over-- - And whisper: - “Your lips are as rare - As the dewberries there, - As ripe and as red, - On the honey-dew fed” ... - If I were her lover to whisper. - - - III - - If I were her lover, - I’d wade through the clover - Over the fields before - The pathway that leads to her door; - And watch, in the twinkle - Of stars that sprinkle - The paradise over her door, - For the soul of my soul and more. - And there in the clover - I’d reach her; - And over and over - I’d teach her-- - A love without sighs, - Of laughterful eyes, - That reckoned each second - The pause of a kiss, - A kiss and ... that is - If I were her lover to teach her. - - - - - NOËRA - - - Noëra, when sad fall - Has grayed the fallow, - Leaf-cramped the wood-brook’s brawl - In pool and shallow; - When, by the wood-side, tall - Stands sere the mallow: - - Noëra, when gray gold - And golden gray - The crackling hollows fold - By every way, - Shall I thy face behold, - Dear bit of May? - - When webs are cribs for dew, - And gossamers - Streak past you, silver-blue; - When silence stirs - One leaf, of rusty hue, - Among the burrs: - - Noëra, thro’ the wood, - Or thro’ the grain, - Come, with the hoiden mood - Of wind and rain - Fresh in thy sunny blood, - Sweetheart, again! - - Noëra, when the corn, - Heaped on the fields, - The asters’ stars adorn-- - And purple shields - Of ironweeds lie torn - Among the wealds: - - Noëra, haply then, - Thou being with me, - Each ruined greenwood glen - Will bud and be - Spring’s with the spring again, - The spring in thee. - - Thou of the breezy tread, - Feet of the breeze: - Thou of the sunbeam head, - Heart like a bee’s: - Face like a woodland-bred - Anemone’s. - - Thou to October bring - An April part! - Come, make the wild-birds sing, - The blossoms start! - Noëra, with the spring - Wild in thy heart! - - Come with our golden year; - Come as its gold: - With the same laughing, clear, - Loved voice of old: - In thy cool hair one dear - Wild marigold. - - - - - AMONG THE ACRES OF THE WOOD - - - I - - “I know, I know; - The way doth go - Athwart a greenwood glade, oh! - White bloom the wild-plums in that glade, - White as the bosom of the maid - Who, stooping, sits, and milks and sings - Among the dew-dashed clover rings, - When fades the flush, the henna blush, - The orange-glow of sunset low, - And all the winds are laid, oh!” - - - II - - “I wot, I wot.-- - And is it not - Right o’er the viney hill?--” - “Yea: where the wild-grapes mat and make - Penthouses of each bramble-brake, - And dangle plumes of fragrant blooms: - Where threads of sunbeams string the glooms - With beaded gold; and flowers unfold - Their eyes of blue;--and all night through - Sings, wildly shrill, one whippoorwill.” - - - III - - “I ween, I ween, - The path is green - ’Neath beechen boughs that let - Soft glimpses of the sapphire sky - Gleam downward like a wood-nymph’s eye: - At night one far and lambent star - Shines o’er it, like a watching Lar, - ’Mid branching buds a tangled bud - Among the acres of the wood, - Where blooms the wet wild violet - And only we have, trysting, met.” - - - - - WORDS - - - I can not tell what I would tell thee, - What I would say, what thou shouldst hear; - Words of the soul that should compel thee, - Words of the heart to draw thee near. - - For when thou smilest, thou, who fillest - My life with joy, and I would speak, - ’Tis then my lips and tongue are stillest, - Knowing all language is too weak. - - Look in my eyes: read there confession: - The truest love hath least of art: - Nor needs it words for its expression - When soul speaks soul and heart speaks heart. - - - - - THE SIRENS - - - Wail! wail! and smite your lyres’ sonorous gold, - And beckon naked beauty; luring me - With arms and breasts and hips of godly mold, - Dark, wind-wild locks seen through the surf-blown sea! - - Vain all your magic! dull in unclosed ears! - Beside one voice sweet-calling o’er the foam, - That, in my heart, like some strong hand appears - To gently, firmly draw my vessel home. - - - - - WHY? - - - Why are the bright stars brighter after rain? - Why is strong love the stronger after pain? - Reply, reply! - - Why sings the wild swan heavenliest when it dies? - Why is fair love the fairest when it flies? - Oh why! Oh why! - - Why are sweet kisses sweetest when they’re dead? - Why is love loveliest when ’tis buriéd? - Reply, reply! - - - - - NOCTURNE - - - A disc of violet blue, - Rimmed with a thorn of fire, - The new moon hangs in a sky of dew; - And under the vines, where the sunset’s hue - Is blent with blooms, first one, then two, - Begins the crickets’ choir. - - Bright blurs of golden white, - With points of pearly glimmer, - The first stars wink in the web of night; - And through the flowers the moths take flight, - In the honeysuckle-colored light, - Where the shadowy shrubs grow dimmer. - - Soft through the dim and dying eve, - Sweet through the dusk and dew, - Come, while the hours their witchcraft weave, - Dim in the House of the Soul’s-sweet-leave, - Here in the pale and perfumed eve, - Here where I wait for you. - - A great, dark, radiant rose, - Dripping with starry glower, - Is the night, whose bosom overflows - With the balsam musk of the breeze that blows - Into the heart, as each one knows, - Of every nodding flower. - - A voice that sighs and sighs, - Then whispers like a spirit, - Is the wind, that kisses the drowsy eyes - Of the primrose open, and, rocking, lies - In the lily’s cradle, and soft unties - The rose-bud’s crimson near it. - - Sweet through the deep and dreaming night, - Soft through the dark and dew, - Come, where the moments their magic write, - Deep in the Book of the Heart’s-delight, - Here in the hushed and haunted night, - Here where I wait for you. - - - - - METAMORPHOSIS - - - Before Love’s lofty goddess--Life hath toiled - To mold from burning dew and dewy fire-- - Who kneel and worship with a heart sin-soiled, - Within the secret Temple of Desire; - - Their curse is such: that, even while they pray,-- - They shall not see, nor shall they know thereof!-- - Their Deity is changed from fire to clay-- - Lust! fashioned in the very form of Love. - - - - - AT TWENTY-ONE - - - The rosy hills of her high breasts, - Whereon, like misty morning, rests - The breathing lace; her auburn hair, - Wherein, a star-point sparkling there, - One jewel burns: her eyes, that keep - Recorded dreams of love and sleep: - Her mouth, with whose comparison - The richest rose were poor and wan: - Her throat, her form--what masterpiece - Of man can picture half of these!-- - She comes! a classic from the hand - Of God! wherethrough I understand - What Nature means and Art and Love, - And all the immortal myths thereof. - - - - - KINSHIP - - - There is no flower of wood or lea, - No April flower, as fair as she: - O white anemone, who hast - The wind’s wild grace, - Know her a cousin of thy race, - Into whose face - A presence like the wind’s hath passed. - - There is no flower of wood or lea, - No May-day flower, as fair as she: - O bluebell, tender with the blue - Of sapphire skies, - Thy lineage hath kindred ties - In her, whose eyes - The heaven’s own qualities imbue. - - There is no flower of wood or lea, - No June-time flower, as fair as she: - Rose,--odorous with beauty of - Her lips that pressed,-- - Behold thy sister here confessed! - Whose maiden breast - Is fragrant with the dreams of love. - - - - -“SHE IS SO MUCH” - - - She is so much to me, to me, - And, oh, I love her so, - I look into my soul and see - How comfort keeps me company - In hopes she, too, may know. - I love her, I love her, I love her, - This I know. - - So dear she is to me, so dear, - And, oh, I love her so, - I listen in my heart and hear - The voice of gladness singing near - In thoughts she, too, may know. - I love her, I love her, I love her, - This I know. - - So much she is to me, so much, - And, oh, I love her so, - In heart and soul I feel the touch - Of angel callers, that are such - Dreams as she, too, may know. - I love her, I love her, I love her, - This I know. - - - - - HER EYES - - - In her dark eyes dreams poetize; - The soul sits lost in love: - There is no thing in all the skies, - To gladden all the world I prize, - Like the deep love in her dark eyes, - Or one sweet dream thereof. - - In her dark eyes, where thoughts arise, - Her soul’s soft moods I see: - Of hope and faith, that make life wise; - And charity, whose food is sighs-- - Not truer than her own true eyes - Is truth’s divinity. - - In her dark eyes the knowledge lies - Of an immortal sod, - Her soul once trod in angel guise, - Nor can forget its heavenly ties, - Since, there in Heaven, upon her eyes - Once gazed the eyes of God. - - - - - MESSENGERS - - - The wind, that gives the rose a kiss, - With murmured music of the south, - Hath kissed a sweeter thing than this;-- - The wind, that gives the rose a kiss,-- - Hath kissed the red rose of her mouth. - - The brook, that mirrors skies and trees, - And echoes in a grottoed place, - Hath held a fairer thing than these;-- - The brook, that mirrors skies and trees, - Hath held the image of her face. - - O happy wind! O happy brook! - What message from her do you bear?-- - “We bear from her her kiss and look--” - O happy wind! O happy brook!-- - “That blessed us unaware.” - - - - - APART - - - I - - While sunset burns and stars are few, - And roses scent the fading light; - And, like a slim urn, dripping dew, - A spirit carries through the night, - The pearl-pale moon hangs new,-- - I think of you, of you. - - - II - - While waters flow, and soft winds woo - The golden-hearted bud with sighs; - And, like a flower an angel threw, - Out of the momentary skies - A star falls, burning blue,-- - I dream of you, of you. - - - III - - While love believes and hearts are true, - So let me think, so let me dream; - The thought and dream so wedded to - Your face, that, far apart, I seem - To see each thing you do, - And be with you, with you. - - - - - THE BLIND GOD - - - I know not if she be unkind; - If she have faults, I do not care. - Search through the world--where will you find - A face like hers, a form, a mind?-- - I love her to despair! - - If she be cruel, cruelty - Is a great virtue, I will swear: - If she be proud, then pride must be - Better than all humility.-- - I love her to despair! - - Why speak to me of that or this? - All you may say weighs not a hair! - To me, naught but perfection is - In her, whose lips I may not kiss!-- - I love her to despair! - - - - - CARA MIA - - - I - - Sweet lips, where kisses sleep, - Soft eyes, so filled with dreams, - Waken, oh waken! - Open your blossoms deep, - Sweet lips, where kisses sleep: - Unfold your brightest beams, - Soft eyes, so filled with dreams: - Waken, oh, waken! - - - II - - Sweet lips, that give perfume, - Soft eyes, that kindle light, - Come, let me kiss you!-- - To every flower in bloom, - Sweet lips, you lend perfume! - In every star at night, - Soft eyes, you kindle light!-- - Come, let me kiss you! - - - III - - Who would not love to rest? - Who would not love to lie? - Who would not love them? - Of such sweet flowers caressed, - Who would not love to rest? - With such stars in their sky, - Who would not love to lie? - Who would not love them? - - - - - MARGERY - - - I - - When spring is here and Margery - Goes walking in the woods with me, - She is so white, she is so shy, - The little leaves clap hands and cry-- - “Perdie; - So white is she, so shy is she, - Ah me! - The maiden May hath just passed by!” - - - II - - When summer ’s here and Margery - Goes walking in the fields with me, - She is so pure, she is so fair, - The wildflowers eye her and declare-- - “Perdie! - So pure is she, so fair is she, - Just see, - Where our sweet cousin takes the air!” - - - III - - Why is it that my Margery - Hears nothing that these say to me? - She is so good, she is so true, - My heart it maketh such ado, - Perdie! - So good is she, so true is she, - You see, - She can not hear the other two. - - - - - CONSTANCE - - - Beyond the orchard, in the lane, - The crested red-bird sings again-- - O bird, whose song says, “Have no care,” - Should I not care when Constance there,-- - My Constance with the bashful gaze, - Pink-gowned like some sweet hollyhock,-- - If I declare my love, just says - Some careless thing as if in mock? - Like--“Past the orchard, in the lane, - Hark! how the red-bird sings again!” - - There, while the red-bird sings his best, - His listening mate sits on the nest-- - O bird, whose patience says, “All ’s well,” - How can it be with me, come, tell? - When Constance, with averted eyes,-- - Soft-bonneted as some sweet-pea,-- - If I talk marriage, just replies - With some such quaint irrelevancy, - As, “While the red-bird sings his best, - His loving mate sits on the nest.” - - What shall I say? what can I do? - Would such replies mean aught to you, - O birds, whose music says, “Be glad”? - Have I not reason to be sad - When Constance, with demurest glance, - Her face all poppied with distress, - If I reproach her, pouts, perchance, - And answers thus in waywardness?-- - “What shall I say? what can I do? - My meaning should be plain to you!” - - - - - LYDIA - - - When Autumn’s here and days are short, - Let Lydia laugh and, hey! - Straightway ’t is May-day in my heart, - And blossoms strew the way. - - When Summer ’s here and days are long, - Let Lydia sigh and, ho! - December’s fields I walk among, - And shiver in the snow. - - No matter what the seasons are, - My Lydia is so dear, - My heart admits no calendar - Of Earth when she is near. - - - - - HELEN - - - Heaped in raven loops and masses - Over temples smooth and fair, - Have you marked it, as she passes, - Night and starlight mingled there,-- - Braided strands of midnight air,-- - Helen’s hair? - - Deep with dreams and moony mazes - Of the thought that in them lies, - Have you seen them, as she raises - Them in question or surprise,-- - Two gray gleams of daybreak skies,-- - Helen’s eyes? - - Fresh as dew and honied wafters - Of a music sweet that slips, - Have you marked them, brimmed with laughter’s - Song and sunshine to their tips,-- - Blossoms whence the perfume drips,-- - Helen’s lips? - - He who sees her needs must love her: - But, beware, whoe’er thou art! - Lest like me thou shouldst discover - Nature overlooked one part, - In this masterpiece of art-- - Helen’s heart. - - - - - MIGNON - - - Oh, Mignon’s mouth is like a rose, - A red, red rose, that half uncurls - Sweet petals o’er a crimson bee: - Or like a shell, that, opening, shows - Within its rosy curve white pearls, - White rows of pearls, - Is Mignon’s mouth that smiles at me. - - Oh, Mignon’s eyes are like blue gems, - Two azure gems that gleam and glow, - Soft sapphires set in ivory: - Or like twin violets, whose stems - Bloom blue beneath the covering snow, - The lidded snow, - Are Mignon’s eyes that laugh at me. - - O mouth of Mignon, Mignon’s eyes! - O eyes of violet, mouth of fire!-- - Within which lies all ecstasy - Of tears and kisses and of sighs:-- - O mouth, O eyes, and O desire, - O love’s desire, - Have mercy on the soul of me! - - - - - TRANSUBSTANTIATION - - - I - - A sunbeam and a drop of dew - Lay on a red rose in the South: - God took the three and made her mouth, - Her sweet, small mouth, - So red of hue,-- - The burning baptism of His kiss - Still fills my heart with heavenly bliss. - - - II - - A dream of truth and love come true - Slept on a star in daybreak skies: - God mingled these and made her eyes, - Her dear, clear eyes, - So gray of hue,-- - The high communion of His gaze - Still fills my soul with deep amaze. - - - - - LOVE AND A DAY - - - I - - In girandoles of gladioles - The day had kindled flame; - And Heaven a door of gold and pearl - Unclosed, whence Morning,--like a girl, - A red rose twisted in a curl,-- - Down sapphire stairways came. - - Said I to Love: “What must I do? - What shall I do? what can I do?” - Said I to Love: “What must I do, - All on a summer’s morning?” - - Said Love to me: “Go woo, go woo.” - Said Love to me: “Go woo. - If she be milking, follow, O! - And in the clover hollow, O! - While through the dew the bells clang clear, - Just whisper it into her ear, - All on a summer’s morning.” - - - II - - Of honey and heat and weed and wheat - The day had made perfume; - And Heaven a tower of turquoise raised, - Whence Noon, like some pale woman, gazed-- - A sunflower withering at her waist-- - Within a crystal room. - - Said I to Love: “What must I do? - What shall I do? what can I do?” - Said I to Love: “What must I do, - All in the summer nooning?” - - Said Love to me: “Go woo, go woo.” - Said Love to me: “Go woo. - If she be ’mid the rakers, O! - Among the harvest acres, O! - While every breeze brings scents of hay, - Just hold her hand and not take ‘nay,’ - All in the summer nooning.” - - - III - - With song and sigh and cricket cry - The day had mingled rest; - And Heaven a casement opened wide - Of opal, whence, like some young bride, - The Twilight leaned, all starry eyed, - A moonflower on her breast. - - Said I to Love: “What must I do? - What shall I do? what can I do?” - Said I to Love: “What must I do, - All in the summer gloaming?” - - Said Love to me: “Go woo, go woo.” - Said Love to me: “Go woo, - Go meet her at the trysting, O! - And ’spite of her resisting, O! - Beneath the stars and afterglow, - Just clasp her close and kiss her--so, - All in the summer gloaming.” - - - - - LOVE IN A GARDEN - - - I - - Between the rose’s and the canna’s crimson, - Beneath thy window in the night I stand; - The jeweled dew hangs little stars, in rims, on - The white moonflowers; each a spirit hand - That points the path to mystic Shadowland. - - Awaken, sweet and fair! - And add to night thy grace! - Suffer its loveliness to share - The white moon of thy face, - The dark cloud of thy hair. - Awaken, sweet and fair! - - - II - - A moth, like down, swings on th’ althea’s pistil,-- - Ghost of a tone that haunts its bell’s deep dome;-- - And in the August-lily’s cone of crystal - A firefly hangs the lantern of a gnome, - Green as a gem that gleams through hollow foam. - - Approach! the moment flies! - O sweetheart of the South! - Come! mingle with night’s mysteries - The red rose of thy mouth, - The dark stars of thine eyes.-- - Approach! the moment flies! - - - III - - Dim through the dusk, like some unearthly presence, - The night-song silvers of a dreaming bird; - And with it borne, faint on a breeze-blown essence, - The rainy whisper of a fountain’s heard-- - As if young lips had breathed a perfumed word. - - How long, my love, my bliss! - How long must I await - With night--that all impatience is-- - Thy greeting at the gate, - And at the gate thy kiss? - How long, my love, my bliss! - - - - - FLORIDIAN - - - I - - The cactus and the aloe bloom - Beneath the window of your room; - That window where, at evenfall, - Beneath the twilight’s first pale star, - You linger, tall and spiritual, - And hearken my guitar. - - It is the hour - When every flower - Is wooed of moth or bee-- - Would, would you were the flower, dear, - And I the moth to draw you near, - To draw you near to me, - My dear, - To draw you near to me! - - - II - - The jasmine and bignonia spill - Their balm about your windowsill; - That sill where, when magnolia-white, - In foliage mists, the moon hangs far, - You lean with bright deep eyes of night, - And hearken my guitar. - - It is the hour - When from each flower - The wind woos essences-- - Would, would you were the flower, love, - And I the wind to breathe above, - To breathe above and kiss, - My love, - To breathe above and kiss! - - - - - WHEN SHIPS PUT OUT TO SEA - - - I - - It’s “Sweet, good-by,” when pennants fly - And ships put out to sea; - It ’s a loving kiss, and a tear or two - In an eye of brown or an eye of blue:-- - And you’ll remember me, - Sweetheart, - And you’ll remember me. - - - II - - It’s “Friend or foe?” when signals blow - And ships sight ships at sea; - It’s “Clear for action! and man the guns!” - As the battle nears and the battle runs;-- - And you’ll remember me, - Sweetheart, - And you’ll remember me. - - - III - - It’s deck to deck, and wrath and wreck, - When ships meet ships at sea; - It’s scream of shot and shriek of shell, - And hull and turret a roaring hell;-- - And you’ll remember me, - Sweetheart, - And you’ll remember me. - - - IV - - It’s doom and death, and pause a breath, - When ships go down at sea; - It’s hate is over and love begins, - And war is cruel whoever wins;-- - And you’ll remember me, - Sweetheart, - And you’ll remember me. - - - - - A CHRISTMAS CATCH - - - When roads are mired with ice and snow, - And the air of morn is crisp with rime; - When the holly hangs by the mistletoe, - And bells ring in the Christmas-time:-- - It’s--Saddle, my Heart! and ride away - To the sweet-faced girl with eyes of gray! - Who waits with a smile for the gifts you bring-- - A man’s strong love and a wedding-ring-- - It’s--Saddle, my Heart, and ride! - - When vanes veer north and storm-winds blow, - And the sun at noon is a blur o’erhead; - When the holly hangs by the mistletoe, - And the Christmas service is sung and said:-- - It’s--Come, O my Heart, and wait a while, - Where the organ peals, in the altar aisle, - For the gifts that the church now gives to you-- - A woman’s hand and a heart that’s true. - It’s--Come, O my Heart, and wait! - - When rooms gleam warm with the fire’s glow, - And the sleet raps sharp on the window-pane: - When the holly hangs by the mistletoe, - And Christmas revels begin again:-- - It’s--Home, O my Heart, and love, at last! - And her happy breast to your own held fast: - A song to sing and a tale to tell, - A good-night kiss and all is well. - It’s--Home, O my Heart, and love! - - - - - A SONG FOR YULE - - - I - - Sing, Hey, when the time rolls round this way, - And bells peal out, _’Tis Christmas Day_! - The world is better then by half, - For joy, for joy: - In a little while you will see it laugh-- - For a song’s to sing and a glass to quaff, - My boy; my boy. - So here ’s to the man who never says nay!-- - Sing, Hey, a song of Christmas Day! - - - II - - Sing, Ho, when roofs are white with snow, - And homes are hung with mistletoe: - Old Earth is not half bad, I wis-- - What cheer! what cheer! - How it ever seemed sad the wonder is-- - With a gift to give and a girl to kiss, - My dear; my dear. - So here ’s to the girl who never says no! - Sing, Ho, a song of the mistletoe! - - - III - - No thing in the world to the heart seems wrong - When the soul of a man walks out with song; - Wherever they go, glad hand in hand, - And glove in glove, - The round of the land is rainbow-spanned, - And the meaning of life they understand - Is love; is love. - Let the heart be open, the soul be strong, - And life will be glad as a Christmas song. - - - - - CHORDS - - - I - - When love delays, when love delays and joy - Steals like a shadow o’er the happy hills; - When hope is gone; and no to-morrow fills - The promise of to-day; still I employ - My soul with thoughts of thee, - Who ’rt not for me, for me! - - When love delays, when love delays and song - Aches at wild lips, unutterable, as the sound - Of ocean strives, within the shell’s mouth bound; - And hope is gone for ever, slain of wrong; - Still in my heart one word - Keeps calling like a bird. - - When love delays, when love delays and sleep - Seals tired eyelids,--like the sound of foam, - Heard ’mid familiar flowers far from home,-- - When hope lies dead; in dreams, in dreams I keep - Feeling thy lips’ sweet touch,-- - And, oh! it is too much! - - When love delays, when love delays and sorrow - Drinks her own tears that add but to her thirst; - When song and sleep and love itself seem curst, - And hope lies dead; still, still I dream to-morrow - Will bring some word of cheer - From thee who art not here. - - Will love delay, will love delay till death - Hath sealed these lips and locked these eyes in night? - Till unto love and hate indifferent quite - This form shall lie? Then wilt thou, wild of breath, - Bend down and kiss me there - When I no more shall care? - - - II - - If thou wouldst know the Beautiful that breathes - And beckons through the World, far must thou seek!... - She is no shadow wreathed with hemlock wreaths; - No drowsy sorrow whose wan eyes are weak - With melancholy vigils; and no shade - Of tragic sin of the sweet sun afraid: - No tearful anger torn of truthless love, - Who stabs her sick heart to the dagger’s hilt - For vengeance sweet; no miser mood, or maid, - In owlet towers!--Nay! she sings above - On morning meads ’mid flowers that never wilt. - - If thou dost seek the Beautiful, beware! - Lest thou discover her, nor know ’tis she; - And she enslave thee to thy heart’s despair, - And fill thy soul with yearning, utterly, - For that wild-rose which is her mouth, that brings - Dew-odors of the dawn; for those twin springs - Of light, her eyes; the bloom of her white brow, - O’er which the foliage of her dark hair lies: - The melody which is her heart, that sings - The poetry of love, to which all bow, - Both gods and men, the love that never dies. - - Lost art thou then, lost as the first lone star - Set in the splendor of the sunset’s wave; - Lost in thy loneliness of searching far, - Striving to clasp her, evermore her slave: - Lost--gladly lost! a devotee to her - Who, in the end, perhaps may let thee share - A portion of her bliss, her heritage - Of happiness in the same way and wise - As woods and waters share it.--Then prepare - Thy soul,--made perfect,--for its final wage, - Her kiss, whose touch shall apotheosize. - - - III - - Now that the orchard’s leaves are sere, - And drip with rain instead of dew, - No moon-bright fruit hangs moon-like here, - And dead your long white lilies too,-- - And dead the heart that broke for you: - - How comes the dim touch of your arm? - Your faint lips on my feverish cheek? - Your eyes near mine? deep as a charm, - And gray, so gray! till I am weak, - Weak with wild tears and can not speak. - - I am as one who walks in dreams; - Sees, as in youth, his father’s home; - Hears from his native mountain streams - Far music of continual foam, - And one sweet voice that bids him come. - - - - - AT HER GRAVE - - - I - - With your eyes of April blue, - And your mouth - Like a May-rose, fresh with dew, - Of the South, - With your hair as golden sweet - As the ripples of ripe wheat, - How you make my old heart beat!-- - Who are you? - - - II - - There is something that I knew, - Long ago, - In your voice that thrills me through - With the glow - Of remembered happiness; - And your look--I can not guess - What it is there, nor express.-- - Who are you? - - - III - - You are like her! even the hue - Of her eyes!-- - It is strange you stop here, too, - Where she lies!-- - Where she lies who was, you see, - All to me a girl could be-- - But no wife.--You stare at me.-- - Who are you? - - - IV - - Well, I left her. That ’s not new-- - God above! - Men, who live so, often do. - ’T is n’t love. - So I broke her heart, they say,-- - And been wretched since that day: - And our child--don’t turn away!-- - Who are you? - - - - - A CONFESSION - - - These are the facts:--I was to blame. - I brought her here and wrought her shame. - She came with me all trustingly. - Lovely and innocent her face: - And in her perfect form, the grace - Of purity and modesty. - - I think I loved her then: would dote - On her ambrosial breast and throat, - Young as a wildflower’s tenderness: - Her eyes, that were both glad and sad: - Her cheeks and chin, that dimples had: - Her mouth, red-ripe to kiss and kiss. - - Three months passed by; three moons of fire; - When in me sickened all desire: - And in its place a devil,--who - Filled all my soul with deep disgust, - And on the victim of my lust - Turned eyes of loathing,--swiftly grew. - - One night, when by my side she slept, - I rose: and leaning, while I kept - The dagger hid, I kissed her hair - And mouth: and, when she smiled asleep, - Into her heart I drove it deep-- - And left her dead, still smiling there. - - - - - LAST DAYS - - - Ah! heartbreak of the tattered hills, - And heartache of the autumn sky! - Heartbreak and heartache, since God wills, - Are mine, and God knows why! - - I held one dearer than each day - Of life God sets in sunny gold-- - But Death hath ta’en that gem away, - And left me poor and old. - - The heartbreak of the hills is mine, - Of trampled twig and rain-beat leaf, - Of wind that sobs through thorn and pine - An unavailing grief. - - The sorrow of the loveless skies’ - “Farewells” are wild as those I said - When last I kissed my child’s blue eyes - And lips, ice-dumb and dead. - - - - - AT TWILIGHT - - - Once more she holds me with her pensive eyes; - Once more I feel her voice’s witchery - Within my heart unfountain tears and sighs, - And fill the soul of me. - - Once more she bends a silent face above; - Once more I feel her hands’ soft touches shake - My life, unbinding long-imprisoned love, - Bidding my lost dreams wake. - - Once more I see her serious smile; and touch - Once more the lips of her whose kisses say-- - “The night was long, and thou hast suffered much: - At last, dear heart, ’t is day!” - - - - - DAY AND NIGHT - - - They said to me, “The days are not so far off - When she will come, who gave her heart to thee;” - And still I wait, while twilight’s lonely star, off - Her long-loved hills, dips dewy to the sea. - - And I recall that night, which gave its soul of - Calm beauty to the earth, when she did give - Her love’s white starlight to the rugged whole of - My barren life and bade me see and live. - - The days go by, and my sick soul recalls but - The revelation of that evening sky: - The days! whose hours are as narrow walls,--but - Of whiter shadow,--where hearts break and die. - - The day is error’s: it can but deceive us - With shows of Earth, blind with the primal curse. - The night is truth’s: its myriad fires weave us - The thoughts of God, the visible universe. - - - - - THREE BIRDS - - - A red bird sang upon the bough - When wind-flowers nodded in the dew: - My spring of bird and flower wast thou, - O tried and true! - - A brown bird warbled on the wing - When poppy buds were hearts of heat: - I wooed thee with a golden ring, - O sad and sweet! - - A black-bird twittered in the mist - When nightshade blooms were filled with frost: - The leaves upon thy grave are whist, - O loved and lost! - - - - - UNREQUITED - - - Passion? not hers! who held me with pure eyes: - One hand among the deep curls of her brow, - I drank the girlhood of her gaze with sighs: - She never sighed, nor gave me kiss or vow. - - So have I seen a clear October pool, - Cold, liquid topaz, set within the sere - Gold of the woodland, tremorless and cool, - Reflecting all the heartbreak of the year. - - Sweetheart? not she! whose voice was music-sweet; - Whose face was sweeter than melodious prayer. - Sweetheart I called her.--When did she repeat - Sweet to one hope, or heart to one despair! - - So have I seen a wildflower’s fragrant head - Sung to and sung to by a longing bird, - And at the last, albeit the bird lay dead, - No blossom wilted, for it had not heard. - - - - - THE HEART’S DESIRE - - - God made her body out of foam and flowers, - And for her hair the dawn and darkness blent; - Then called two planets from their heavenly towers, - And in her face, divinely eloquent, - Gave them a firmament. - - God made her heart of rosy ice and fire, - Of snow and flame, that freezes while it burns; - And of a starbeam and a moth’s desire - He made her soul, to’ards which my longing turns, - And all my being yearns. - - So is my life a prisoner unto passion, - Enslaved of her who gives nor sign nor word; - So in the cage her loveliness doth fashion - Is love endungeoned, like a golden bird - That sings but is not heard. - - Could it but once convince her with beseeching! - But once compel her as the sun the south! - Could it but once, fond arms around her reaching, - Upon the red carnation of her mouth - Dew its eternal drouth! - - Then might I rise victorious over sadness, - O’er fate and change, and, with but little care, - Torched by the glory of that moment’s gladness, - Breast the black mountain of my life’s despair, - And die, or do and dare. - - - - - OUT OF THE DEPTHS - - - I - - Let me forget her face! - So fresh, so lovely! the abiding place - Of tears and smiles that won my heart to her; - Of dreams and moods that moved my soul’s dim deeps, - As strong winds stir - Dark waters where the starlight glimmering sleeps.-- - In every lineament the mind can trace, - Let me forget her face! - - - II - - Let me forget her form! - Soft and seductive, that contained each charm, - Each grace the sweet word maidenhood implies; - And all the sensuous youth of line and curve, - That makes men’s eyes - Bondsmen of beauty, eager still to serve.-- - In every part that memory can warm, - Let me forget her form! - - - III - - Let me forget her, God! - Her who made honeyed love a bitter rod - To scourge my heart with, barren with despair; - To tear my soul with, sick with vain desire!-- - Oh, hear my prayer! - Out of the hell of love’s unquenchable fire - I cry to thee, with face against the sod, - Let me forget her, God! - - - - -“THIS IS THE FACE OF HER” - - - This is the face of her - I’ve dreamed of long - That in my heart I bear: - This is the face of her - Pictured in song. - - Look on the lily lids, - The eyes of dawn,-- - Deep as a Nereid’s, - Swimming with dewy lids - In waters wan. - - Look on the brows of snow, - The locks of night: - Only the gods can show - Such brows of placid snow, - Such locks of light. - - The cheeks, like rosy moons; - The lips of fire: - Love sighs no sweeter tunes - Under romantic moons - Than these suspire. - - Loved lips and eyes and hair! - Look, this is she! - She, who sits smiling there, - Throned in my heart’s despair, - Never for me! - - - - - INDIFFERENCE - - - She is so dear the wildflowers near - Each path she passes by, - Are over fain to kiss again - Her feet and then to die. - - She is so fair the wild birds there - That sing upon the bough, - Have learned the staff of her sweet laugh, - And sing no other now. - - Alas! that she should never see, - Should never care to know, - The wildflower’s love, the bird’s above, - And his, who loves her so. - - - - - GHOST WEATHER - - - Wild gusts of drizzle hoot and hiss - Through writhing lindens torn in two-- - The dead’s own days are days like this! - Yea; let me sit and be with you. - - Here in your willow chair, whose seat - Spreads purple plush.--Hark! how the gusts - Seem moaning voices that repeat - Some grief here; in this room, where dusts - - Make dim each ornament and chair; - This locked-in memory where you died: - Since angels stood here, saintly fear - Guards each dark corner, mournful-eyed. - - Through this dim light bend your dim face; - Or, like a rain-mist, gray of gleam, - A soft, dim cloudiness of lace, - Stand near me while I dream, I dream. - - - - - THE FOREST POOL - - - One memory persuades me when - Dusk’s lonely star burns overhead, - To take the gray path through the glen-- - That finds the forest pool, made red - With sunset--and forget again, - Forget that she is dead. - - Once more I look into the spring, - That on one rock a finger white - Of foam that beckons still doth bring-- - Some moon-wan spirit of the night, - Who dwells within its murmuring, - Her life the sad moonlight. - - I see the red dusk touch it here - With fire like a blade of blood; - One star reflected, white and clear, - Like a wood-blossom’s drowning bud; - While all my grief stands very near, - Pale in the solitude. - - And then, behold, while yet the moon - Hangs--silver as a twisted horn - Blown out of Elfland--sweet with June, - White in white clusters of the thorn, - Slow, in the water as a tune, - An image pale is born: - - That has her throat of frost; her lips-- - Her mouth where God’s anointment lies; - Her eyes, wherefrom love’s arrow-tips - Break, like the starlight from dark skies; - Her hair, a hazel heap that slips; - Her throat and hair and eyes. - - And then I stoop; the water kissed, - The face fades from me into air; - And in the pool’s dark amethyst - My own pale face returns my stare: - Then night and mist--and in the mist - One dead leaf drifting there. - - - - - AT SUNSET - - - Into the sunset’s turquoise marge - The moon dips, like a pearly barge - Enchantment sails through magic seas, - To fairyland Hesperides, - Over the hills and away. - - Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown, - The young-eyed dusk comes slowly down; - Her apron filled with stars she stands. - And one or two slip from her hands - Over the hills and away. - - Above the wood’s black caldron bends - The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends - The dew and heat, whose bubbles make - The mist and musk that haunt the brake - Over the hills and away. - - Oh, come with me, and let us go - Beyond the sunset lying low, - Beyond the twilight and the night, - Into Love’s kingdom of long light, - Over the hills and away. - - - - - DEAD AND GONE - - - Can you tell me how he rests, - Flowers, growing o’er him there? - His a right warm heart, my sweets,-- - So, cover it with care. - - Can you tell me how he lies - Such nights out in the cold, - O cricket, with your plaintive call, - O glow-worm, with your gold? - - If my eyes are sorrowful, - Well may they weep, I trow,-- - Since his dead eyes gazed into them, - They have been sad enow. - - If my heart make moan and ache, - Well may it break, I’m sure-- - For his dead love is more, ah me! - More than it can endure. - - - - - ONE NIGHT - - - I - - - A night of rain. The wind is out. - And I had wished it otherwise: - A calm, still night; no scudding skies; - Or, in the scud, above the rout, - The moon; by whose pale light my eyes - Might meet her eyes; the smile that tries - To come but will not; lips, that pout - With seeming anger, all surmise, - When I have said “I love your lies”-- - Lips I shall kiss before she dies. - - - II - - What force this wind has! As it runs - Around each unprotecting tree - It seems some beast; and now I see - Its form, its eyes; a woman’s once:-- - Dark eyes! that blaze as lionly - As some bayed beast’s, that will not flee - The pine-knots and derides the guns.-- - Or is it but the thought in me! - The thought of that which is to be, - The deed, that rises shadowy? - - - III - - And now the trees and whipping rain - Confuse them.... I must drive it hence, - The memory of her eyes! the tense - Wild look within them of hard pain!... - Yet she must die--with every sense - Strung to beholding knowledge, whence - My heart shall be made whole again.-- - Here I will wait where night is dense. - Soon she will come, like Innocence, - Thinking her youth is her defense. - - - IV - - And when she leaves,--and none perceives,-- - The old gray manor, where the eight - Old locusts, (twisted shadows), freight - With mossy murmurings its eaves, - One moment at the iron gate - She ’ll tarry. Then, with breath abate, - Come rustling through the autumn leaves. - And I will take both hands and sate - My mouth on hers and say, “You ’re late”; - She ’ll laugh to hear I had to wait.... - - - V - - O passion of past vows, revive - Imagination, and renew - The ardor of love’s language you - For love’s rose-altar kept alive! - Repeat the oaths that rang with dew - And starlight!--Tell her she is true - As beautiful.--I will contrive - To make her think I have no clue - To all her falseness. I will woo - As once I wooed before I knew. - - - VI - - And we will walk against the wind; - The shuffling leaves about our feet; - Our ruin, as the wood’s, complete, - Because one woman so hath sinned - And never suffered. She shall meet - No murder in my eyes; no heat - Of fate in holding hand that ’s pinned - To hers. To make her trust to beat, - I ’ll kiss her hand, her hair,--like wheat - Of affluent summer,--saying “Sweet.” - - - VII - - And should I bungle in this thing, - This purpose that must see her dead - To cure this fever in my head?-- - What other thing is there to bring - Soul satisfaction? when is shed - No real blood, save what makes red - The baulked intention?--I will fling - The mask aside!--But hate hath led - Desire too far now to be fed - With failure. I have naught to dread. - - - VIII - - When we have reached the precipice - That thwarts the battling of the sea, - And wallows out great rocks, that knee - The giant foam with roar and hiss, - I will not cease to coax and be - The anxious lover. Trusting she - Will not suspect my farewell kiss - Until it turns a curse, and we - Sway for an instant totteringly, - And she has shrieked some prayer at me. - - - IX - - O let me see wild terror there - Upon her face! the wilder frown - Of crime’s apprisal, and renown - Of my life’s injury, that bare - This horror with its bloody crown!-- - No pity, God! For, if her gown, - Suspending looseness of her hair, - Delay the plunge ... the night is brown ... - My heel must crush her white face down, - And Hell and Heaven see her drown. - - - - - THE PARTING - - - She passed the thorn-trees, whose gaunt branches tossed - Their spider-shadows round her; and the breeze, - Beneath the ashen moon, was full of frost, - And mouthed and mumbled in the sickly trees, - Like some starved hag who sees her children freeze. - - Dry-eyed she waited by the sycamore. - Some stars made misty blotches in the sky. - And all the wretched willows on the shore - Looked faded as a jaundiced cheek or eye. - She felt deep sorrow yet could only sigh. - - She heard his skiff grind on the river rocks - Whistling he came into the shadow made - By the great tree. He kissed her on her locks; - And round her form his eager arms were laid. - Passive she stood her purpose unbetrayed. - - And then she spoke, while still his greeting kiss - Stung in her hair. She did not dare to lift - Her face to his; her anguished eyes to his - While tears smote crystal in her throat. One rift - Of weakness humored might set all adrift. - - Anger and shame were his. She meekly heard. - And then the oar-locks sounded, and her brain - Remembered he had said no farewell word; - And swift emotion swept her; and again - Left her as silent as a carven pain.... - - She, in the old sad farm-house, wearily - Resumed the drudgery of her common lot, - Regret remembering.--’Midst old vices, he, - Who would have trod on, and somehow did not, - The wildflower, that had brushed his feet, forgot. - - - - - THE DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW - - - Though the panther’s footprints show, - And the wild-cat’s, in the snow, - You will never find a trace - Of the footsteps of a certain - Maiden with a paler face - Than the drifts that fill and curtain - Hillside, valley, and the wood, - Where the hunter’s wigwam stood - In the winter solitude. - - What white beast hath grown the fur - For the whiter limbs of her?-- - Raiment of the frost and ice - To her supple beauty fitting; - Wampum strouds, as white as rice, - Of the frost’s fantastic knitting, - Wrap her form and face complete; - Glove her hands with ice; her feet - Moccasin with beaded sleet. - - ’Though he knew she made a haunt - Of the dell, it did not daunt: - Where the hoar-frost mailed each tree - In soft, phantom alabaster, - And hung ghosts of bud and bee - On each autumn-withered aster; - By the frozen waterfall, - There she stood, beneath its wall, - In the ice-sheathed chaparral. - - Where the beech-tree and the larch - Built a white triumphal arch - For the Winter, marching down - With his icy-armored leaders; - Where each hemlock had a crown, - And pale diadems the cedars; - Where the long icicle shone, - There he saw her, standing lone, - Like a mist-wraith turned to stone. - - And she led him many a mile - With her hand-wave and her smile, - And the printless swiftness of - Feet of frost, and snowy flutter - Of her raiment; now above, - Now below, the boughs of utter - Winter whiteness. Led him on - Till the dawn and day were gone, - And the evening star hung wan.... - - Hunters found him dead, they tell, - In the winter-wasted dell, - With his quiver and his bow, - Where the cascade ran a rafter, - White, of crystal and of snow; - Where he listened to her laughter, - Promises, that were as far - As the secrets of a star, - And her love that naught could mar. - - And her countenance is this - Stamped on his: and this her kiss, - Haunting still his mouth and eyes, - Colder than the cold December: - This her passion, that defies - All control, the stars remember - Filled him, killed him: this is she - Clinging to him, neck and knee, - Where his limbs sank wearily. - - - - - THE SPIRIT OF THE STAR - - (_Love Spiritual_) - -“_This union of the human soul with the divine æthereal substance of the - universe, is the ancient doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato._”--Divine - Legation. - - - There is love for love: the heaven - Teems with possibilities: - And, when love is purely given, - Love returns from where none sees: - And such love becomes a ladder - Reaching heavenward, from the sadder - Night of Earth; from out the driven - Darkness of its miseries. - - There is love for love: and Beauty, - From her star above the Earth, - Smiles, and straight each cloud of sooty - Night takes on celestial worth: - And, like some white flower unfolding, - Love is born; and softly holding - Up its face, as if in duty, - Grows to that which gave it birth. - - Earth and Heaven are prolific - Of love’s wonders: and the sky - Teems with spirits, fair, terrific, - Who, if loved, shall never die: - Dæmons, haggard as their mountains; - Naiads, sparkling as their fountains; - Sylphids of the winds, pacific - As the stars they tremble by.... - - Such was I; who long had waited - For the everlasting sleep: - Where, around me, worlds dilated, - Waned or waxed within the deep: - Where, beneath my star, a planet - Whirled and shone, like glowing granite, - While around it ne’er abated - One white satellite its sweep. - - I was sad: my beauty wearied, - Useless as a scentless bud - Fading ere it blooms. The serried - Mists of worlds, as red as blood, - Streamed beneath me. And the starry - Firmament above bent, barry - With the wild auroras, ferried - Of the meteors’ sisterhood. - -[Illustration: - - Something drew me, unreturning, - Filled me with a finer flame - - Page 418 - _The Spirit of the Star_] - - I was loveless with a yearning - After love that never came; - All my astral being burning - Towards that world without a name, - World I knew not: till, with splendor - Of compulsion that was tender, - Something drew me, unreturning, - Filled me with a finer flame. - - So I left my star, whose lances - Pierced with arrowy gold the heat - Of heaven’s hyacinth; its glances - Saddened me. No more to meet, - Then I left my star; and, beating - Downward, heard it still repeating - Far farewells; and through the trances - Of dark space its face looked sweet. - - Passed your moon: a melancholy - Disc at first; then, vast and sharp, - Lo, a world, all white and holy! - Where, upon the crystal scarp - Of a mountain,--like a story - Of high Heaven revealed in glory,-- - Gradual, as if music slowly - Built it, rolling from a harp,-- - - Rose a city: cloudy nacre - Were its walls, that towered round - Acre upon arch-piled acre - Of a marble-terraced ground: - Caryatids alternated - With Atlantes, sculpture-weighted: - And its gates--some god the maker-- - Rhombs of symboled diamond. - - In the white light glittered swimming - Domes of dazzle: swirl on swirl, - Temples lifted columns, brimming - Crystal flame, that seemed to whirl: - Battlemented moonstone darkled; - Palaces, pale-pillared, sparkled, - Cloudy opal: and, far dimming, - Aqueducts of ghostly pearl. - - Streaming steeples shone, of dædal - Emblem; each an obelisk: - Minarets, each one a needle, - Balancing a bubble-disc; - Some of diamond, like a blister - Frozen; some of topaz-glister, - Vinous; in whose blinding middle - Blazed an orb of burning bisque. - - And I saw where, silvery slanted, - A vast pyramidic heap - Rose of spar; whereon was planted - The acropolis of Sleep,-- - God of these:--that, looming higher, - Wrought of seeming ice and fire, - Where pale rainbow-colors panted, - Gleamed above the lunar deep. - - Robed in white simarre and chiton, - Visions filled its every square, - Moving like a finer light on - Light: and in the glory there - Music rang and golden laughter; - And before each shape, and after, - Radiance went, that shadowed white, on - Temple and on palace stair. - - Though they called me, I descended - Earthward. For great longing drew - Me and, drawing me, was blended - With your world. I never knew - It was Earth, until,--forsaking - Heaven,--I beheld it taking,-- - A great azure sphere,--its splendid - Way along the singing blue. - - And when night came, here, above you,-- - Sleeping by your folded sheep - On the hills,--I stooped: whereof you - Dreamed: I kissed you in your sleep: - I, your destiny, who wrought it - So you knew me: you, who thought it - Not so strange that I should love you, - I a spirit of the deep. - - ’Twas your love that sought and found me, - Drew me from that star-life sad; - Won my soul to yours and bound me - With such love as none hath had: - I am she, you may remember, - That fair star that seemed an ember - O’er you, that you loved.--Around me - Wrap your arms now and be glad. - - Look above: what seems a petal, - Burning, of a rose; that far - Point of radiance, bright as metal, - Fiery silver, is your star! - Look above you: rise unto it. - Let it lead you now who drew it - Down to Earth, where shadows settle!-- - On that star no shadows are! - - - - - THE SPIRIT OF THE VAN - - (_Love Ideal_) - -“_Among the mountains of Carmarthen, lies a beautiful and romantic piece - of water, named The Van Pools. Tradition relates, that after midnight, - on New Year’s Eve, there appears on this lake a being named The Spirit - of the Van. She is dressed in a white robe, bound by a golden girdle; - her hair is long and golden; her face is pale and - melancholy_.”--Keightley’s “Fairy Mythology.” - - - Midsummer-night; the Van. Through night’s wan noon, - Wading the storm-scud of an eve of storm, - Pale o’er Carmarthen’s peaks the mounting moon.-- - Wilds of Carmarthen! sombre heights, that swarm - Girdling this water, as old giants might - Crouch, guarding some enchanted gem of charm,-- - Wilds of Carmarthen, that for me each night - Reëcho prayers and pleadings,--all the year - Unanswered,--made to listening waters white! - Mountains, behold me yet again! Bend near! - Behold her lover! hers, that shape of snow, - Who dwells amid these pools; who will not hear - My heart’s wild pleading, calling loud, now low, - Unhappy, to her, ’mid the lonely hills. - - Whene’er a ripple trembles into glow, - Where yeasty moonshine scuds the foam, straight thrills - Heart’s expectation through my veins, and high - With “she!” each pulse the exultation fills. - But she ’tis never. Once ... and then! would I, - Would I had perished, so beholding!--World, - ’Twas you, O world, who would not let me die! - Once I beheld her!--If some fiend had curled - Stiff talons in my hair, and, twisting tight, - Had raised me high, then into Hell had hurled; - Fresh from that vision of her beauty white, - With Heaven in my soul, I, unamerced, - Shackled with tortures, yet might mock Hell’s spite. - - Immortal memory, quench in me this thirst!-- - O starlike vision, that a moment clove - My sight, and then for ever left me curst! - Oh, make me mad with love, with all thy love! - Me, me, who seek thee ’mid these wilds when gloom - Storms or drip gold the sibylline stars above!-- - Let thy high coming in a flash consume - The light of all the stars! and make me mad, - Mad with love’s madness! fill me with sweet doom! - - Sleep will I not now, for my soul is sad: - For, should I sleep, there might come other dreams,-- - Sadder than thou art,--in thy beauty clad - And all thy tyranny. To me it seems - Better to wake here, underneath this pine, - Until thy face upon my vision gleams.-- - Thou, who art wrought of elements divine, - And I of crasser clay, clay that will think, - “Since I am hers, why should she not be mine?” - Again, its usual phantom, on the brink - Of thy lone lake, I ask thee: “Must I yearn - Forever, haunted of that vision’s wink?”-- - When, glassing out great circles, which did urn - Some intense essence of interior light, - (As clouds, that clothe the moon, unbinding, burn, - Riven, erupt her orb, triumphant white,) - I saw, midmost the Van, a feathering fire - Dilating ivory-wan.--Expectant night - Tiptoed attentive, fearful to suspire.-- - Wherefrom arose--what white divinity? - What godhead sensed with glory and desire? - Born for the moment for the eyes of me! - Then re-absorbed into the brassy gloom - Of whispering waves that sighed their ecstasy. - Thou! in whose path harmonious colors bloom, - Pale pearl and lilac, asphodel and rose,-- - Like many flow’rs auroral of perfume,-- - Thou leftst me thus, to marvel as who knows - He is not dead and yet it seems he is, - Since all his soul with spirit-rapture glows.-- - O sylph-like brow! lips like an angel’s kiss! - High immortality! whose face was such - As starlight in a lily’s loveliness!... - The gold that bound thee seemed too base to clutch - Thy chastity, though clear as golden gum - That almugs sweat, and fragrance to the touch! - Thy hair--not hair!--seemed rays, like those that come - Strained through the bubble of a chrysolite.-- - No word I said: thy beauty struck me dumb. - Thy face, that is upon my soul’s quick sight - Eternal seared, hath made of me a shade, - A wandering shadow of the day and night: - A seeker ’mid the hoary hills for aid, - The sole society of my sick heart, who - Shuns all companionship of man and maid: - Who, comrade of the mountain blossoms blue, - And intimate of old trees, goes dreaming they,-- - As in that legendary world that drew - Oracles from lips in oaks--, may sometime say - Prophetic precepts to it: how were won - A spirit loved to love a mortal;--yea, - In vain.-- - But one day, frog-like in the sun, - Beside a cave,--the nightshade vines made rank - And hairy henbane, where huge spiders spun,-- - Wrinkled as Magic, I a grizzled, lank, - Squat something startled, naught save skin and hair; - With eyes wherein dwelt demons; flames, that shrank - And grew;--familiars, who fixed me with glare - As, raising claw-like hands when I drew near, - Frog-like he croaked, “Thou fool! go seek her there! - Woo her with thy heart’s actions! making clear - Thy soul’s white passage for her coming feet!-- - In! in! thou fool! plunge in! Fear naught but fear!” - - Yet I have waited many weeks. Repeat. - Acts of the heart with passionate offering - Of love whose anguish makes it seven times sweet. - Still all in vain, in vain. To-night I bring - My self alone; my soul unfearing, see! - My soul unto thee!--Shall the clay still cling - Clogging fulfillment? and achievement be - Balked still by flesh?--no! let me in--to die, - Haply; or, for a moment’s mystery, - Gaze in thine eyes: one splendid instant lie - In thy white arms and bosom; and thy kiss, - My elemental immortality!-- - Part of thy breathing waves, to laugh or hiss - In foam; or winds, that rock the awful deeps, - Or build with song vast temples for thy bliss. - Wherein, responsive as thy white hand sweeps - The chords of some sad shell, I’ll dream and roam - Through glaucous chambers where the green day sleeps. - Dead not with death, what secrets hath thy home - Not mine then, epoched in exultant foam?... - Deeper, down deeper! yea, at last I come! - - - - - THE CAVERNS OF KAF - - (_Love Sensual_) - - “_‘Where am I?’ cried he; ‘what are these dreadful rocks? these - valleys of darkness? are we arrived at the horrible - Kaf?’_”--Vathek. - - - One, Benreddin, I have heard, - Near the town of Mosul sleeping, - In a dream beheld a bird, - Wonderful, with plumes of sweeping - Whiteness, crowned pomegranate-red: - And, it seemed, his soul it led, - Brilliant as a blossom, keeping - Near the Tigris as it fled. - - Following, at last he came - To a haggard valley, shouldered - Under peaks that had no name: - Where it vanished. ’Mid the bouldered - Savageness a woman, fair, - In a white simarre, stood there, - Auburn-haired; around whom smoldered - Pensive lights of purple air. - - And she led him down to vast - Caves of sardonyx, whose ceiling - Domed one chrysoberyl. Blast - On blast of music,--stealing - Out of aural atmospheres,-- - Beat like surf upon his ears; - Then receded, faintly pealing - Psalteries and dulcimers. - - Living figures seemed to heave - High the walls, where, wild, embattled, - Warred Amshaspand and the Deev: - Over all two splendors rattled - Arms of Heaven, arms of Hell; - Forms of flame that seemed to swell - Godlike: Aherman who battled - With Ormuzd he could not quell. - - There she left him wond’ring; till - The reverberant music, drifting, - Strong beyond his utmost will, - Drew him onward where, high lifting - Pillar and entablature, - Vast with emblem, yawned a door-- - Valves of liquid lightning, shifting - In and out and up and o’er. - - Through the door he swept: deep-domed, - Green with serpentine and beryl, - Loomed a cavern, crusted, foamed, - Tortuous with gems of peril: - Difficult, a colonnade - Seemed, of satin-spar, to braid - Deeps of labyrinthed and sterile - Tiger-spar that, twisting, rayed. - - Dizzy stones of magic price - Crammed volute and loaded corbel: - Irridescent shafts of ice - Leapt: with long reëchoed warble - Waters unto waters sang: - Crystal arc and column sprang - Into fire as each marble - Fountain flung its foam that rang. - - And around him, filled with sound, - Streams of resonant colors jetted: - Rainbow surf that interwound - Crypts and arcades, crescent-fretted: - Mists of citron and of roon; - Lemon lights that mocked the moon; - Shot with scarlet, veined and netted, - Beating golden hearts of tune. - - Suns arose, of blinding blue; - Moons of green-dilating splendor: - In whose centers slowly grew - Spots like serpents’ eyes that, slender, - Glared; at first, prismatic beams; - Then, intolerable gleams; - Hissing trails of fire, tender - As an houri’s breath that dreams. - - Characters of Arabic, - Cabalistic, red as coral, - Flashed through violet veils, so quick - None might read: as if, in quarrel, - Iran wrote of Turan there - Hate and scorn, or, everywhere, - Wrought some talisman of moral - Strength no Afrit’s heart would dare. - - Sounding splendors drew him on - To another cavern; hollow; - Hewn of alabastar wan; - Lucid; where his gaze could follow - Caves in caves; transparent flights - Rolling, lost in moving lights, - Glaucous gold: he like a swallow - O’er a lake the morning smites. - - Down the dome flashed out and in - Instant faces of the Peris: - Restless eyes of Deevs and Jinn - In the walls watched: unseen Faeries - Out of rainbows rained and tossed - Flowers of fire full of frost; - Blossoms where the fire varies, - Gold and green and crimson-mossed. - - Then there met him, face to face, - Seven odalisques of Heaven, - Swinging in a silver space - Flaming censers: and the seven, - Crowned with stars of burning green, - Seemed to turn to incense; seen, - As it rose, to be a driven - Hippogrif, or rosmarine. - - Aloes, Nard, and Ambergris, - Sandal, Frankincense, and Civet,-- - Genii of the fragrances,-- - Rein each winged aroma; give it - Spurs and race it down the lull - Of the caverns, clouded dull - With wild manes of musk; now vivid, - Vaporous white and wonderful. - - And Benreddin’s aching soul, - In each sense intoxicated, - Reached, at last, what seemed the goal - Of all passion: golden-gated, - Vast, a fountain: where he saw - Limbs of light without a flaw; - Breasts and arms of bloom; that waited - For his soul to nearer draw. - - Houri faces shimmered there; - Fluid forms.--It, with a thunder - Of wild music, like the hair - Of a genie, flamed from under - Caverns of the demon-world: - Filled with voices, high it hurled, - Calling him, with beckoning wonder - Of cœrulean forms that swirled. - - And with burning lips and eyes - In he plunged: hoarse laughter greeted, - Demon laughter: then sad sighs, - Dying downward: passion-heated - Hands seemed drawing him away, - Downward: where a rocking ray - Flamed and swung, and Eblis-sheeted - Shadows wandered ghostly gray. - - * * * * * - - And, ’tis said, that he was young, - Young that morning. When the darting, - Anguish-throated bulbuls sung, - In the silent starlight starting, - One, a Baghdad merchant, led - By the hoarness of its head, - Found what seemed a mummy: parting - Hair from brow, Benreddin--dead. - - - - - THE SALAMANDER - - (_Love Dæmonic_) - -“_The Fire-Philosophers, and the Rosicrucians, or Illuminati, taught -that all knowable things (both of the soul and of the body) were evolved -out of fire, and finally resolvable into it: and that fire was the last -and the only-to-be known God: as that all things were capable of being -searched down into it, and all things were capable of being thought up -into it._”--The Rosicrucians. - - - Once she breathed upon my eyes, - Touched the soul that dreamed within me; - All the magic that might win me - Whispered to my heart with sighs-- - Darkness can not make them lies!... - - Bring me moly, hellebore! - Mix them for my soul’s nepenthe, - For my spirit’s dread Amenti, - For the curse that comes once more - With unutterable lore! - - Sunlight, starlight or the moon, - Stormlight, firelight or the sheening - Witchlight intimate no meaning - Of her glory’s plenilune; - Of her soul’s unriddled rune, - - And most awful beauty! nor - Actual, nor yet ideal!-- - Insubstantial and yet real; - Partly flame and partly star, - Yet no part of what these are. - - I am hers and--woe is mine!... - Has she drugged me with the sadness - Of some elemental madness?-- - Like a demigod I pine - ’Twixt the mortal and divine.... - - When I see her, lo, she stands - In the luminous electre - Of a star: a smiling spectre - With white scintillating hands - Luring to unhallowed lands. - - Then, behold, in fearful file, - A mirage of tower and terrace, - Lawn and mountain range,--that buries - Flame in frost,--looms! mile on mile - Of her crescent-glowing Isle: - - Where the lurid waters lull - Shores that roll the rainbow fire; - Where, with living lute and lyre, - Rose-red, swiftly as a gull, - Glides her star-like galley’s hull. - - And, behold, before I know, - I am where her walls of amber, - Towers of limpid ruby, clamber - Over terraces below - Summits of refulgent snow. - - Lambent lazuli and shell - Colonnade her courts of marble; - Where, of lightning, fountains warble - Out of basined pearl, or well - Into hollowed carbuncle. - - Rosy silver seems her skin, - And a flame her arm commanding, - With its gleaming hand, me, standing - At her gates, to enter in, - Burning as a Seraphin. - - Lucid darkness are her eyes, - Where the frozen fire smolders; - And upon her shining shoulders, - Like a tangible glitter, lies - Auburn hair like sunset skies. - - Mouth of sibilant soft flame; - Lilith lips, whose roses lighten - With illusive love; and brighten - With wild passion and the name - Of desire no man may tame. - - Passion, and the thoughts that wed - Love and loathing; such caresses - Of sweet touch as naught expresses - Here on Earth, yet full of dread, - Madness, whereof death is bred. - - She hath drawn me to her lips; - Borne me through her palace portal; - And the fire, which is immortal, - From me like a garment slips-- - Ah, the spirit-part’s eclipse! - - As when moon and planet swoon - Unto each, my body kindles, - Strangely, while my spirit dwindles, - Like the Earth-o’ershadowed moon, - Darkening from lune to lune. - - Then she laughs; and leads me where - Cloudy, wild, chameleon color - Marbles halls with hues, the duller - For her astral presence there, - Beaming white with beaming hair: - - Where, in roses purple pale,-- - Dropping like a ruby bubble - Through the moon dust,--“double double,” - Throbs the crimson nightingale, - There she lures me with some tale. - - Or to where the scarlet snake - Coils beneath great flaming flowers; - Where the musk mimosa bowers - Roll their rosy clouds, and make - Sunset heavens of each lake. - - Where the bees and moths go by, - Fiery diamond; opal-burning - Butterflies, and iris-turning - Peacock-painted birds, that vie - With the flow’rs, like fragments fly - Of wild rainbow: Where, in rills, - Down the rocks, that lichens redden, - Constellated moss and leaden - Fungus glow; and all the hills, - As with flames, the orchid fills. - - Where, in coruscating light, - Glare the golden-checkered zinnias; - And the bugle-bloomed gloxinias, - Making morning of each height, - Float like mists of ruby white. - - There, beneath some blazing vine, - Where the liquid moonlight glitters - Of a river,--coral litters - Red with grail,--like prisms in wine - I have watched the fishes shine. - - Or, o’er sunset-colored moss, - Glow-worms trail their beryls; sprinkling - Green the smouldering shade; while, twinkling, - With convulsive sapphire gloss, - Fireflies rained blue lights across. - - Where the reeds seemed rays of rose, - And white mirrored moons, the lotus-- - Each a spirit giving notice - Of the inner light that glows - Where the under water flows-- - - Shapes arose of flashing spray:-- - Where, a wild auroral splendor, - Rolled the forest,--emerald-tender - As the light of breaking day,-- - Beckoned forms of starry ray. - - Through the violetish light, - Winged with nautilus and lily - Flame, adown the forests stilly - Vistas, moony whirls of white, - Floated shapes with eyes of night. - - I must follow where she leads.-- - Blinding portals of her castle - To my entering feet are facile.... - Love no terrible trumpet needs - At her gates to bugle deeds.... - - Lo, my being never veils - Aught from her. To her caresses - All my heart knows it confesses - With a faith that never fails, - Though it hears the truth that wails - In its soul’s admonishment, - Of the curse that sits in session - In each amorous expression - Of her love; its violent - Flame, by which my life is rent. - - I have drained the feverish cup - Of all darkness. Made a leman - Of an elemental demon; - And my soul lies, staring up, - Draining poison at each sup.-- - - While she smiles on me ’tis well: - I shall follow, though she make me - What her self is; never wake me - From the dream I can not tell, - That is neither heaven nor hell: - - Where I drink mesmeric gold - Of wild vision,--that romances - In informing Protean fancies - With a beauty never old, - And emotion never cold.-- - - Let me drink and never wake - From the trances that environ - Me, and ’neath the subtle siren - See the demon, like a snake, - With destroying eyes that ache. - - While the slow laconic look - Of her eyes express no censure, - Gazing in them, I adventure,-- - Far beyond the wisest book,-- - Ways her serpent fancy took. - - Yet I know I reverence - One whose gaze in God’s negation; - One who, like an emanation - Of all evil, chains my sense - With satanic influence. - - Yet, while still I hear her say, - “One more kiss before the morning! - One more bliss for love’s adorning! - One more kiss ere break of day,” - Still my soul with her must stay. - - Stay, nor know, nor ever see! - Till her basilisk beauty flashes, - And the curse, from out the ashes - Of her passion, fiery, - Strikes--destroying utterly. - - - - - LYANNA. - -“_These elementary beings, we are told, were by their constitution more -long-lived than man, but with this essential disadvantage, that at death -they wholly ceased to exist. In the meantime they were inspired with an -earnest desire for immortality; and there was one way left for them, by -which this desire might be gratified. If they were so happy as to awaken -in any of the initiated (Rosicrucians) a passion, the end of which was -marriage, then the sylph became immortal._”--Godwin’s “Lives of the -Necromancers.” - - - Summer came over the Indian Ocean - Girdled with fire, tiaraed with light; - Her eyes all languor, her lips--a potion - To quaff--of poppy. And gold and white - She flashed and sparkled; all gleam and motion, - All blush and blossom she came; and I, - Of the race of the sylphs, o’er the Indian Ocean - Followed her through the sky. - - Self-exiled so from the sylphs that cluster, - Pulsing with pearl and burning with blue, - In domes of the dawn,--where the organs bluster - Low of the winds,--where they glow like dew - As the day dreams up, and their armies muster, - Ranges of glitter, in cloudy gold, - At the gates of the Dawn, of blinding luster, - To forth when her gates unfold. - - For Summer murmured me, “Follow! follow!” - Whispered one word that was all of love.-- - Winged with the speed of the sweeping swallow, - I followed the word she had breathed above: - “Follow! follow!”--the god Apollo - Never followed, with speed as strong - The flying nymph through holt and hollow, - As I that word of song. - - Fleet as the winds are fleet, yea, and fleeter - Far than the stars that throb, like foam, - Through the firmament’s blue, in musical metre - Winnowed my wings; and the golden gloam - Rang; and life was a passion, completer - Than a life in Eden; and love,--a lyre - That sang in my heart and made life sweeter - With hope,--a leaping fire. - - Thus to the north my wings went maying - Radiant ways, till a castle shone - Gaunt on great cliffs, with the late skies graying - O’er walls of war and their towers lone, - With tortuous steps to the sea, where, spraying, - Thundered the breakers; and terrace and stair, - Rock o’er the waters, rose rosy and raying - Deep in the sunset’s glare. - - A dewdrop burns when the dawn lights prickle: - And all my being tingled with light, - Bloomed when I saw her, tarrying fickle, - White on the castled height: - Slender she shone as the moon in sickle, - The slim new-moon, like a pearl-pale streak; - And golden, too, as the honey-trickle - Of combs where the wax is weak. - - In dreams I came to her, lo! as a vision: - Yea, by her side as a dream I stood; - To her innermost spirit I sighed my mission, - In the vestal ear of her maidenhood: - And she deemed me a dream; and I made a prison - Of my arms for her soul while she, smiling, slept: - Her body lay still, but her soul had arisen, - And looked on my face and wept: - - “Lyanna, I hoop thee with arms of fire!”-- - My words were music, a harp afloat,-- - “Lyanna, my heart is a vibrant wire, - Thy love is its only note. - Let it sing forever. Let it sound entire, - Full as the angels’ who hover and harp - To the glory that’s God, like a golden lyre - Borne in a beam that is sharp.... - - “Behold me, thy rose! full of flame and splendor! - Thy rose to pluck: thy ruby bloom: - Thy sylphid rose, with eyes that are tender; - Lips that are fire; and limbs of perfume - And fragrant fire: thy heart’s defender! - Thy airy lover!” ... And, bending above, - Sweeter my speech than a flower’s that, slender, - Tells to the stars its love. - - Lo, as I spoke, with thoughts that thicken, - Her heart seemed filled; and she spoke; but sleep - Shadowed her words, till my kiss did quicken - And free, like stars from the night that leap:-- - “Long I have waited; and long did sicken - To clasp thee thus, O my rose of love! - Oft have I dreamed of thee, yea, and was stricken - With joy at the thought thereof. - - “White are the clouds; but I saw thee whiter - ’Mid dazzling domes of the dawn; and knew - Tho’ bright are God’s stars, that thine eyes were brighter, - Brighter and burning blue. - And my heart was thine, though it held thee slighter - Than hues that the mists of the morning take: - And waited and yearned, and the yearning tighter - Than tears in the hearts that break. - - “‘Lyanna! Lyanna!’ I heard thee ever - Calling ‘Lyanna,’ a ripple of flame: - ‘Lyanna! Lyanna!’ like song forever; - And I marveled at my name. - The sound was such--that if stars could sever - And silver-syllable a word of beams, - So would it sound.--I turned; but never - Beheld thee, only in dreams. - - “Thou walkedst a beauty afar: a glitter - Of gleaming aroma: and I, with moan, - Reached thee my arms: but thy gaze was bitter, - Calmer and sterner than stone: - Avoiding thou passedst in scorn: a sitter, - I seemed, on the uttermost bounds of bliss: - When, lo! on the wind,--a flame, a flitter - Of fire,--thy laugh, and thy kiss!”-- - - I had won her love. And, behold! the thunder - Trumpeted tempest: I heard the seas - Lunge at the walls like a roaring wonder, - And the rain-wind sing in the trees.-- - Lyanna my bride.--And the heavens asunder - Rushed--chasms of glaring storm, where poured - The thunder’s cataracts, rolling under-- - And showed me, horde on horde, - - The shouting spirits of storm.--The portal - Of sleep was riven; she rose, and saw: - And I said to her soul, “Of the utterly mortal - Mine the eternal lot and law.”-- - “I love thee!” she answered.--And I, “Immortal - Am I through thy love!” ... And so we fled.... - Behold! when they came in the morn, astartle, - Men whispered--“Lyanna is dead!” - - - - - THE SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS - - - _Voices of Darkness_ - - Ere the birth of Death and of Time, - And of Hell, with its tears and its torments: - Ere the waves of heat and of rime, - And the winds to the heavens were as garments: - Cloud-like in the womb of Space, - Mist-like from her monster womb, - We sprang, a myriad race - Of thunder and tempest and gloom. - - - _Voices of Light_ - - As from the evil good - Springs, and desire: - As the white lily’s hood - Buds from the mire: - So from this midnight brood - Sprang we with fire. - - - _Voices of Darkness_ - - We had lain for long ages asleep - In her bosom, a bulk of torpor, - When down through the vasts of the deep - Clove a sound, like the notes of a harper: - Clove a sound, and the horrors grew - Tumultuous with turbulent night, - With whirlwinds of blackness that blew, - And storm that was godly in might. - And the walls of our dungeon were shattered - Like the crust of a fire-wrecked world: - As torrents of clouds that are scattered, - From the womb of the deep we were hurled. - - - _Voices of Light_ - - Us in unholy thought - Patiently lying, - Eöns of violence wrought, - Violence defying; - When, on a mighty wind, - Voiced of a godly mind, - Big with a motive kind, - Girdled with wonder, - Flame and a strength of song, - Rolling vast light along, - Thundered the Word, and Wrong - Vanished,--and we were strong, - Strong as the thunder. - - - _Voices of Darkness_ - - We people the lower spaces, - Where our cities of silence make scorn - Of the sun, and our shadowy faces - Are safe from the splendors of morn. - Our homes are wrecked worlds and each planet - Whose sun is a light that is sped; - Bleak moons, whose cold bodies of granite - Are hollow and flameless and dead. - - - _Voices of Light_ - - We in the living sun - Live like a passion: - Ere the sad Earth begun - We and the sun were one, - As God did fashion. - Lo! from our burning hands, - Flung like inspired brands, - Sowed we the worlds, like sands, - Countless as ocean: - And ’tis our breath gives life, - Life to those stars, all rife - With iridescent strife, - Music and motion. - - - _Voices of Darkness_ - - We joy in the hate of all mortals; - Inspire their crimes and the thought - That falters and halts at the portals - Of actions, intentions unwrought. - We cover the face of to-morrow: - We frown in the hours that be: - We breathe in the presence of sorrow: - And death and destruction are we. - - - _Voices of Light_ - - We are man’s hope and ease, - Joy and his pleasure; - Authors of love and peace, - Love that shall never cease, - Free as the azure. - Lo! we but look, and light - Heartens the world with might, - Vanquishes death and night - Hate and its burnings: - And from our bosoms stream - Beauty and yearnings - For a diviner dream, - Higher discernings. - - - _Voices of the Break of Day_ - - Morning and birth are ours; - Light that is blown - From our fair lips; and flowers, - Dropped from our hands in showers, - Seeds that are sown: - Song and the bursting buds, - Life of the fields and floods; - Strength that’s full-grown: - And, from our beryl jars, - Filled with the clouds and stars, - Pour we the winds and dew; - While by our eyes of blue - Darkness is rent in two, - Conquered and strown. - - - _Voices of the Dawn_ - - Ye in your darkness are - Dark and infernal; - Subject to death and mar! - But in the spaces far, - Like our effulgent star, - We are eternal. - - - - - THE WATER WITCH - - - See! the milk-white doe is wounded. - He will follow as it bounds - Through the woods. His horn has sounded, - Echoing, for his men and hounds. - But no answering bugle blew. - He has lost his retinue - For the shapely deer that bounded - Past him when his bow he drew. - - Not one hound or huntsman follows. - Through the underbrush and moss - Goes the slot; and in the hollows - Of the hills, that he must cross, - He has lost it. He must fare - Over rocks where she-wolves lair; - Wood-pools where the wild-boar wallows: - So he leaves his hunter there. - - Through his mind then flashed an olden - Legend told him by the monks:-- - Of a girl, whose hair is golden, - Haunting fountains and the trunks - Of the woodlands; who, they say, - Is a white doe all the day, - But when woods are night-enfolden - Turns into an evil fay. - - Then the story once his teacher - Told him: of a mountain lake - Demons dwell in; vague of feature, - Human-like; but each a snake, - She is queen of.--Did he hear - Laughter at his startled ear? - Or a bird?--And now, what creature - Is it,--or the wind,--stirs near? - - Fever of the hunt! This water, - Falling here, will cool his head. - Through the forest, dyed in slaughter, - Slants the sunset; ruby-red - Are the drops that slip between - Hollowed hands, while on the green,-- - Like the couch of some wild daughter - Of the forest,--he doth lean. - - But the runnel, bubbling, dripping, - Seems to bid him to be gone; - As with crystal words and tripping - Steps of sparkle luring on. - Now a spirit in the rocks - Calls him; now a face that mocks, - From behind some boulder slipping, - Laughs at him through lilied locks. - - And he follows through the flowers, - Blue and gold, that blossom there; - Thridding twilight-haunted bowers - Where each ripple seems the bare - Beauty of white limbs that gleam - Rosy through the running stream; - Or bright-shaken hair, that showers - Starlight in the sunset’s beam. - - Till, far in the forest, sleeping - Like a luminous darkness, lay - A deep water, wherein, leaping, - Fell the Fountain of the Fay, - With a singing, sighing sound, - As of spirit things around, - Musically laughing, weeping - In the air and underground. - - Not a ripple o’er it merried: - Like the round moon in a cloud, - In its rocks the lake lay buried: - And strange creatures seemed to crowd - Its dark depths: dim limbs and eyes - To the surface seemed to rise - Spawn-like; or, all formless, ferried - Through the water shadow-wise. - - Foliage things with woman faces, - Demon-dreadful, pale and wild - As the forms the lightning traces - On the clouds the storm has piled - In the darkness.--On the strand-- - What is that which now doth stand?-- - ’Tis a woman: and she places - On his arm a spray-white hand. - - Ah! two mystic worlds of sorrow - Were her eyes; her hair, a place - Whence the moon its gold might borrow; - And a dream of ice her face: - Round her hair and throat in rims - Pearls of foam hung; and through whims - Of her robe, as breaks the morrow, - Gleamed the rose-light of her limbs. - - Who could help but gaze with gladness - On such beauty? though within, - Deep within the beryl sadness - Of those eyes, the serpent sin - Seemed to coil.--She placed her cheek - Chilly upon his, and weak - With love-longing and its madness - Grew he. Then he heard her speak:-- - - “Dost thou love me?”--“If surrender - Of the soul means love, I love.” - “Dost not fear me?”--“Fear?--more slender - Art thou than a wildwood dove. - Yet I fear--I fear to lose - Thee, thy love.”--“And thou dost choose - Aye to be my heart’s defender?”-- - “Take me. I am thine to use.” - - “Follow then.--Ah, love, no lowly - Home I give thee.”--With fixed eyes - To the water’s edge she slowly - Drew him.... Nor did he surmise - Who this creature was, until - O’er his face the foam closed chill, - Whispering, and the lake unholy - Rippled, rippled and was still. - - - - - THE SUCCUBA - - - I have dreams where I believe - That a queen of some dim palace, - One, whose name is Genevieve, - Weighs me with her love or malice: - She is dead and yet my bride: - And she glimmers at my side - Offering a crystal chalice - Filled with fire, diamond-dyed. - - I have dreams. Ah, would that I - Might forget them!--I remember - How her gaze, all icily - Draws me, like a glowing ember, - Up her castle-stair’s pale-paved - Alabaster, from the waved - Ocean, grayer than November, - Where I linger, soul-enslaved. - - Walls of shadow and of night - Lit with casements full of fire, - Somber red or piercing white: - As the wind breathes lower, higher, - Round the towers spirit-things - Whisper, and the haunted strings - Moan of each huge, plangent lyre - Set upon its four chief wings. - - In its corridors at tryst - Flame-eyed phantoms meet. Its sparry - Halls are misty amethyst: - Battlemented ’neath the starry - Skies it looms; the strange unknown - Skies where, green as glow-worms, sown, - Gloom the stars; the moon hangs barry - Beryl, low and large and lone.... - - Can it be a witch is she? - Or a vampire? she, far whiter - Than the spirits of the sea!-- - She whose eyes are cold, yet brighter - Than her throat’s pale jewels. Lo! - Flame she is though seeming snow: - And her love lies tighter, tighter - On my heart than utter woe. - - Though I dream, it seems I live; - And my heart is sick with sorrow - Of the love that it must give - To her; passion, it must borrow - Of herself, unhallowed, vain; - Then return it her again: - Thus she holds me; and to-morrow - Still will hold with sweetest pain. - - In her garden’s moon-white space - Strangest flowers bloom: huge lilies, - Each one with a human face; - Knots of spirit-amaryllis; - Cactus-bulks with pulpy blooms - Gnome-like in the silver glooms; - And dim deeps of daffadillies, - Fay-like, brimming faint perfumes. - - But to me their fragrance seems - Poison; and their lambent lustre, - Spun of twilight and of dreams, - Poison; and each pearly cluster - Hides a serpent’s fang. And I, - Looking from an oriel, sigh; - For my soul is fain to muster - Heart to breathe of them and die. - - Then I feel big eyes, as bright - As the sea-stars. Gray with glitter, - She behind me, moony white, - Smiles, ’mid hangings wherein flitter - Loves and deeds of Amadis - Darkly worked. And then her kiss - On my mouth falls; sweet and bitter - With a bliss that is not bliss. - - And I kiss her eyes and hair; - Smooth her tresses till their golden - Glimmer sparkles. Everywhere - Shapes of strange aromas, holden - Of the walls, around us troop; - And in golden loop on loop,-- - Of the lull’d eyes vague beholden,-- - Forms of music o’er us stoop. - - Yet I see beneath it all, - All this sorcery, a devil, - Beautiful, and white, and tall, - Broods with shadowy eyes of evil: - She, who must resume with morn - Her true shape: a cactus-thorn, - Monstrous, on some lonely level - Of that demon-world forlorn. - - I have dreams where I believe - That a queen of some dim palace, - One, whose name is Genevieve, - Weighs me with her love or malice: - And all night I am her slave - There beside the demon wave, - Where I drain the loathsome chalice - Of her love, that is my grave. - - - - - MASKS - - _Cucullus non facit monachum_ - - - Live it down! as you have spoken - You could live it ere you knew - What love was--“a bauble broken, - Foolish, of a thing untrue.”-- - You, Viola, with your beauty, - Cloistered, die a nun? No! you-- - You must wed: it is your duty. - - There’s your poniard; for the second - In this tazza dropped: the blood - On it scarcely hard.... I reckoned - Happily that hour we stood - There upon your palace-stairway, - How, with the Franciscan hood - Cowled, I said, there was a bare way. - - In the minster there I found it-- - Our revenge. I saw him, wild, - Stalking towards the church: around it - Dogged him, marking how he smiled - In the moonlight where I waited. - When the great clock, beating, dialed - Ten, I knew he would be mated. - - Heaven or my better devil!-- - Hardly had his sword and plume - Vanished in the dark, when, level - On the long lagoon, did loom, - Under moonlight-woven arches, - Her slim gondola: all gloom: - One tall gondolier: no torches. - - Dusky gondolas kept bringing - Revellers: and far the night - Rang with instruments and singing.-- - From the imbricated light - Of the oar-vibrating water, - Gliding up the stairway, white, - Velvet-masked,--the count’s own daughter! - - Quick I met her: whispered, “Flora, - Gaston.--_Mia_, till they go, - One brief moment here, Siora.-- - She’ll perceive us--she, below, - See! the duchess’ diamonds sparkling - Round the inviolable glow - Of her throat--there, dimly darkling: - - “That’s Viola!” ... Thus I drew her - In the church’s ancient pile-- - Under her black mask I knew her, - By her chin, her lips, her smile. - Through one marble-foliated - Window fell the moon-rays. While - All the maskers passed we waited. - - I had drawn the dagger. Turning - Called her by her name. Some lie - Of a passion sighed, her burning - Hand in mine; when, stalking by, - In the square, _his_ form bejeweled - Gleamed. My very blood burned dry - With the hate his presence fueled. - - Our revenge! up-pushing slightly - Cowl, the mask fell, and revealed - Balka, as the poniard whitely - Flashed. The hollow nave re-pealed - One long shriek the loft repeated. - Swift, I stabbed her thrice. She reeled - Dead. I thought of you, the heated - - Horror on my hands; and tarried - Still as silence. Drawn aside - On her face the mask hung, married - To its camphor-pallor: wide - Eyes with terror--stone. One second - I regretted; then defied - All remorse. Your promise beckoned; - - And I left her. Love had pointed - Me this way. I walked the way - Clear-eyed and ... it has anointed - Us fast lovers?--Do not say, - Now, that you will go and nun it! - For this man who scorned you?--Nay!-- - Live to hate him! You ’ve begun it. - - - - - CARMEN - - - _La Gitanilla_, tall dragoons - In Andalusian afternoons, - With ogling eye and compliment, - Smiled on you as along you went - Some sleepy street of old Seville; - Twirled with a military skill - Moustaches; buttoned uniforms - Of Spanish yellow bowed your charms. - - Proud, wicked head, and hair blue-black, - Whence the mantilla, half thrown back, - Discovered shoulders and bold breast - Bohemian brown. And you were dressed - In some short skirt of gypsy red - Of smuggled stuff; and stockings,--dead - White silk,--that, worn with many a hole, - Let the plump leg peep through; while stole, - Now in, now out, your dainty toes, - Sheathed in morocco shoes, with bows - Of scarlet ribbon.--Flirtingly - You walked by me; and I did see - Your oblique eyes, your sensuous lip - That gnawed the rose I saw you flip - At bashful José’s nose while loud - The gaunt guards laughed among the crowd. - And in your brazen chemise thrust, - Heaved with the swelling of your bust, - A bunch of white acacia blooms - Whiffed past my nostrils hot perfumes. - - As in a cool _neveria_ - I ate an ice with Mérimée, - Dark Carmencita, very gay - You passed, with light and lissome tread, - All holiday bedizenéd; - A new mantilla on your head: - Your crimson dress gleamed, spangled fierce; - And crescent gold, hung in your ears, - Shone, wrought Morisco; and each shoe, - Of Cordovan leather, buckled blue, - Glanced merriment; and from large arms - To well-turned ankles all your charms - Blew flutterings and glitterings - Of satin bands and beaded strings: - Around each tight arm, twisted gold - Coiled serpents, and, a single fold, - Wreathed wrists; each serpent’s jeweled head, - With rubies set, convulsive red. - In flowers and trimmings, to the jar - Of mandolin and gay guitar, - You in the grated patio - Danced: the curled coxcombs’ staring row - Rang pleased applause. I saw you dance, - With wily motion and glad glance, - Voluptuous, the wild _romalis_, - Where every movement was a kiss, - A song, a poem, interwound - With your Basque tambourine’s dull sound. - I,--as the ebon castanets - Clucked out dry time in unctuous jets,-- - Saw angry José through the grate - Glare on us, a pale face of hate, - When some indecent officer - Presumed too lewdly to you there. - - Some still night in Seville: the street - Candilejo: two shadows meet: - Swift sabres flash within the moon-- - Clash rapidly.--A dead dragoon. - - - - - AT NINEVEH - - - There was a princess once, who loved the slave - Of an Assyrian king, her father; known - At Nineveh as Hadria; o’er whose grave - The sands of centuries have long been blown; - Yet sooner shall the night forget its stars - Than love her story:--How, unto his throne, - One day she came, where, with his warriors, - The King sat in his hall of audience, - ’Mid pillared trophies of barbaric wars, - And, kneeling to him, asked, “O father, whence - Comes love and why?”--He, smiling on her said,-- - “O Hadria, love is of the gods, and hence - Divine, is only soul-interpreted. - But why love is, ah, child, we do not know, - Unless ’t is love that gives us life when dead.”-- - And then his daughter, with a face aglow - With all the love that clamored in her blood - Its sweet avowal, lifted arms of snow, - And, like Aurora’s rose, before him stood, - Saying,--“Since love is of the powers above, - I love a slave, O Asshur!--Let the good - The gods have giv’n be sanctioned.--Speak not of - Dishonor and our line’s ancestral dead! - _They_ are imperial dust. _I_ live and love.”-- - Black as black storm then rose the King and said,-- - A lightning gesture sweeping at her there,-- - “Enough! ho, Rhana, strike me off her head!” - And at the mandate, with his limbs half bare - A slave strode forth. Majestic was his form - As some young god’s. He, gathering up her hair, - Wound it three times around his sinewy arm; - Then drew his sword. It for one moment shone - A semicircling light, and, dripping warm, - Lifting the head he stood before the throne. - Then said the despot, “By the horn of Bel! - This was no child of mine!”--Like chiseled stone - Stern stood the slave, a son of Israel. - Then striding towards the monarch, in his eye - The wrath of heaven and the hate of hell, - Shrieked, “Beast! I loved her! look on us and die!” - Swifter than fire clove him to the brain. - Then kissed her face, and, holding it on high, - Cried out, “Judge thou, O God, between us twain!” - And, fifty daggers in his heart, fell slain. - - - - - SENORITA - - - An agate black, her roguish eyes - Claim no proud lineage of the skies, - No starry blue; but of good earth - The reckless witchery and mirth. - - Looped in her raven hair’s repose, - A hot aroma, one red rose - Droops; envious of that loveliness, - Through being near which, its is less. - - Twin sea-shells hung with pearls, her ears; - Whose delicate rosiness appears - Part of the pearls; whose pallid fire - Binds the attention these inspire. - - One slim hand crumples up the lace - About her bosom’s swelling grace; - A ruby at her samite throat - Lends the required color-note. - - The moon brings up the violet night - An urn of pearly-chaliced light; - And from the dark-railed balcony - She stoops and waves her fan at me. - - O’er orange blossoms and the rose - Vague, odorous lips the South Wind blows, - Peopling the night with whispers of - Romance and palely passionate love. - - And now she speaks; and seems to reach - My soul like song that learned its speech - From some dim instrument--who knows?-- - Or flow’r, a dulcimer or rose. - - - - - SINCE THEN - - - I found myself among the trees - What time the reapers ceased to reap; - And in the sunflower-blooms the bees - Huddled brown heads and went to sleep, - Rocked by the balsam-breathing breeze. - - I saw the red fox leave his lair, - A shaggy shadow, on the knoll; - And, tunnelling his thoroughfare - Beneath the soil, I watched the mole-- - Stealth’s own self could not take more care. - - I heard the death-moth tick and stir, - Slow-honeycombing through the bark; - I heard the cricket’s drowsy chirr, - And one lone beetle burr the dark-- - The sleeping woodland seemed to purr. - - And then the moon rose: and a white - Low bough of blossoms--grown almost - Where, ere you died, ’t was our delight - To tryst,--dear heart!--I thought your ghost: - --The wood is haunted since that night. - - - - - AFTER DEATH - - - At moonset, when ghost speaks with ghost - And spirits meet where once they sinned, - Between the whispering wood and coast, - My soul met her soul on the wind, - My late-lost Evalind. - - I kissed her mouth. Her face was wild. - Two burning shadows were her eyes, - Wherein the love,--that once had smiled - A heartbreak smile,--in some strange wise, - I did not recognize. - - Then suddenly I seemed to see - How sin had damned my soul and doomed - To wander thus eternally - With love and loathing, that assumed - The form of her entombed. - - - - - - THE OLD MAN DREAMS - - - The blackened walnut in its spicy hull - Rots where it fell; - And, in the orchard, where the trees stand full, - The pear’s brown bell - Drops; and the log-house in the bramble lane, - From whose low door - Stretch yellowing acres of the corn and cane, - He sees once more. - - The cat-bird sings upon its porch of pine; - And o’er its gate, - All slender-podded, twists the trumpet-vine - Its leafy weight: - And in the woodland, by the spring, mayhap, - With eyes of joy - Again he bends to set a rabbit-trap, - A brown-faced boy. - - Then, whistling, through the underwoods he goes, - Out of the wood, - Where, with young cheeks, red as an autumn rose, - In gingham hood, - His sweetheart waits, her school-books on her arm: - And now it seems - Beside his chair bends down his wife’s fair form-- - The old man dreams. - - - - - MEMORIES - - - Here where Love lies perishéd, - Look not in upon the dead, - Lest the shadowy curtains, shaken - In my Heart’s dark chamber, waken - Ghosts, beneath whose garb of sorrow - Whilom gladness bows his head: - When you come at morn, to-morrow, - Look not in upon the dead, - Here where Love lies perishéd. - - Here where Love lies cold interred, - Let no syllable be heard, - Lest the hollow echoes, housing - In my Soul’s deep tomb, arousing - Wake a voice of woe, once laughter - Claimed and clothed in joy’s own word: - When you come at dusk, or after, - Let no syllable be heard, - Here where Love lies cold interred. - - - - - MARCH AND MAY - - - Windy the sky and mad; - Surly the gray March day; - Bleak the forests and sad,-- - Oh, that it only were May! - - On maples, tasseled with red, - No blithe bird, fluting, swung; - The brook, in its swollen bed, - Raved on in an unknown tongue. - - We walked in the wind-tossed wood: - Her face as the May’s was fair; - Her blood was the May’s own blood; - And May’s her radiant hair. - - And we found in the woodland wild - One cowering violet, - Like a frail and timorous child, - In the caked leaves bowed and wet. - - And I said, “We have walked in vain! - To find but this shivering bud, - Weighed down with its weight of rain, - Crouched here in the wild March wood.” - - But she said, “Though the day be sad, - And the skies be dark with fate, - There is always something glad - That will help our hearts to wait. - - “Look, now, at this beautiful thing, - In this wood’s wild hollow curled! - ’Tis a promise of joy and spring, - And of love, to the waiting world. - - “Ah, the sinless Earth is fair, - And man’s are the sin and the gloom-- - Come, bury the days that were, - And look to’ard the days to come!” - - * * * * * - - And the May came on with her charms, - With twinkle and rustle of feet; - Blooms stormed from her luminous arms - And songs that were wildly sweet. - - Now I think of her words that day, - This day that I longed so to see, - That finds her dead with the May, - And my life but a withered tree. - - - - - IN AUTUMN - - - I - - Sunflowers wither and lilies die, - Poppies are pods of seeds; - The first red leaves on the pathway lie, - Like blood of a heart that bleeds. - - Weary alway will it be to-day, - Weary and wan and wet; - Dawn and noon will the clouds hang gray, - And the autumn wind will sigh and say, - “He comes not yet, not yet, - Weary alway, alway!” - - - II - - Hollyhocks bend all tattered and torn, - Marigolds all are gone; - The last pale rose lies all forlorn, - Like love that is trampled on. - - Weary, ah me! to-night will be, - Weary and wild and hoar; - Rain and mist will blow from the sea, - And the wind will sob in the autumn tree, - “He comes no more, no more. - Weary, ah me! ah me!” - - - - -“WHEN SHE DRAWS NEAR” - - - I - - When she draws near, - I seem to hear - The shy approach of some wild innocence: - As if--in acorn crown-- - A dryad should step down - From some dim oak-tree where the woods are dense. - - - II - - When she’s with me, - I seem to see - The brambles blossom where just touched her dress: - As, with her love’s perfume, - She touches into bloom - The thorns of life and gives them loveliness. - - - - - REED CALL FOR APRIL - - - I - - When April comes, and pelts with buds - And apple-blooms each orchard space, - And takes the dogwood-whitened woods - With rain and sunshine of her moods, - Like your fair face, like your sweet face: - - It’s honey for the bud and dew, - And honey for the heart! - And, oh, to be away with you - Beyond the town and mart. - - - II - - When April comes and tints the hills - With gold and beryl that rejoice, - And from her airy apron spills - The laughter of the winds and rills, - Like your young voice, like your sweet voice: - - It’s gladness for God’s bending blue, - And gladness for the heart! - And, oh, to be away with you - Beyond the town and mart. - - - III - - When April comes, and binds and girds - The world with warmth that breathes above, - And to the breeze flings all her birds, - Whose songs are welcome as the words - Of you I love, O you I love: - - It’s music for all things that woo, - And music for the heart! - And, oh, to be away with you - Beyond the town and mart. - - - - - HER VIOLIN - - - I - - Her violin!--Again begin - The dream-notes of her violin; - And tall and fair, with gold-brown hair, - I seem to see her standing there, - Soft-eyed and sweetly slender: - The room again, with strain on strain, - Vibrates to Love’s melodious pain, - As, sloping slow, is poised her bow, - While round her form the golden glow - Of sunset spills its splendor. - - - II - - Her violin!--Now deep, now thin, - Again I hear her violin; - And, dream by dream, again I seem - To see the love-light’s tender gleam - Beneath her eyes’ long lashes: - While to my heart she seems a part - Of her pure song’s inspired art; - And, as she plays, the rosy grays - Of twilight halo hair and face, - While sunset burns to ashes. - - - III - - O violin!--Cease, cease within - My soul, O haunting violin! - In vain, in vain, you bring again, - Back from the past, the blissful pain - Of all the love then spoken; - When on my breast, at happy rest, - A sunny while her head was pressed-- - Peace, peace to these wild memories! - For, like my heart naught remedies, - Her violin lies broken. - - - - - MEETING IN SUMMER - - - A tranquil bar - Of rosy twilight under dusk’s first star. - - A glimmering sound - Of whispering waters over grassy ground. - - A sun-sweet smell - Of fresh-reaped hay from dewy field and dell. - - A lazy breeze - Jostling the ripeness from the apple-trees. - - A vibrant cry, - Passing, then gone, of bullbats in the sky. - - And faintly now - The katydid upon the shadowy bough. - - And far off then - The little owl within the lonely glen. - - And soon, full soon, - The silvery arrival of the moon. - - And, to your door, - The path of roses I have trod before. - - And, sweetheart, you! - Among the roses and the moonlit dew. - - - - - HER VIVIEN EYES - - - Her Vivien eyes,--beware! beware!-- - Though they be stars, a deadly snare - They set beneath her night of hair. - Regard them not! lest, drawing near-- - As sages once in old Chaldee-- - Thou shouldst become a worshiper, - And they thy evil destiny. - - Her Vivien eyes,--away! away!-- - Though they be springs, remorseless they - Gleam underneath her brow’s bright day. - Turn, turn aside, whate’er the cost! - Lest in their deeps thou lures behold, - Through which thy captive soul were lost, - As was young Hylas once of old. - - Her Vivien eyes,--take heed! take heed!-- - Though they be bibles, none may read - Therein of God or Holy Creed. - Look, look away! lest thou be cursed,-- - As Merlin was, romances tell,-- - And in their sorcerous spells immersed, - Hoping for Heaven thou chance on Hell. - -[Illustration: - - I look into thy heart and then I know - The wondrous poetry of the long-ago - - Page 496 - _Reasons_] - - - - - REASONS - - - I - - Yea, why I love thee let my heart repeat: - I look upon thy face and then divine - How men could die for beauty, such as thine,-- - Deeming it sweet - To lay my life and manhood at thy feet, - And for a word, a glance, - Do deeds of old romance. - - - II - - Yea, why I love thee let my heart unfold: - I look into thy heart and then I know - The wondrous poetry of the long-ago, - The Age of Gold, - That speaks strange music, that is old, so old, - Yet young, as when ’t was born, - With all the youth of morn. - - - III - - Yea, why I love thee let my heart conclude: - I look into thy soul and realize - The undiscovered meaning of the skies,-- - That long have wooed - The world with far ideals that elude,-- - Out of whose dreams, maybe, - God shapes reality. - - - - - HER VESPER SONG - - - The summer lightning comes and goes - In one white cloud above the hill, - As if within its soft repose - A burning heart were never still-- - As in my bosom pulses beat - Before the coming of his feet. - - All drugged with odorous sleep, the rose - Breathes dewy balm about the place, - As if the dreams the garden knows - Arose, in immaterial grace-- - As in my heart sweet thoughts arise - Beneath the ardour of his eyes. - - The moon above the darkness shows - An orb of silvery snow and fire, - As if the night would now disclose - To heav’n her one divine desire-- - As in the rapture of his kiss - All my glad soul is drawn to his. - - The cloud divines not that it glows; - The rose knows nothing of its scent; - Nor knows the moon that it bestows - Light on our earth and firmament-- - So is the soul unconscious of - The beauties it reveals through love. - - - - - - THE GLORY AND THE DREAM - - - There in the past I see her as of old, - Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room - Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold; - Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom - Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold - Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume, - As of a moonlit lily brimmed with rain, - Breathes from her presence, drowsing heart and brain. - - Her head is bent; some red carnations glow - Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;-- - Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow, - Her breasts, through which the veinéd violets stream.-- - I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow - As thoughts of love that haunt a poet’s dream: - And at her feet once more I sit and hear - Wild words of passion--dead this many a year. - - - - - SNOW AND FIRE - - - Deep-hearted roses of the purple dusk - And lilies of the morn; - And cactus, holding up a slender tusk - Of fragrance on a thorn; - All heavy flowers, sultry with their musk, - Her presence puts to scorn. - - For she is like the pale, pale snowdrop there, - Scentless and chaste of heart; - The moonflower, making spiritual the air, - Like some pure work of art; - Divine and holy, exquisitely fair, - And virtue’s counterpart. - - Yet when her eyes gaze into mine, and when - Her lips to mine are pressed,-- - Why are my veins all fire then? and then - Why should her soul suggest - Voluptuous perfumes, maddening unto men, - And prurient with unrest? - - - - - IN MAY - - - I - - When you and I in the hills went Maying, - You and I in the bright May weather, - The birds, that sang on the boughs together, - There in the green of the woods, kept saying - All that my heart was saying low, - “I love you! love you!” soft and low;-- - And did you know? - When you and I in the hills went Maying. - - - II - - There where the brook on its rocks went winking, - There by its banks where the May had led us, - Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows, - Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking - All that my soul was thinking there, - “I love you! love you!” softly there;-- - And did you care? - There where the brook on its rocks went winking. - - - III - - Whatever befalls through fate’s compelling, - Should our paths unite or our pathways sever, - In the Mays to-come I shall feel forever - The wildflowers thinking, the wild-birds telling, - In words as soft as the falling dew, - The love that I keep here still for you, - As deep and true, - Whatever befalls through fate’s compelling. - - - - -“WERE I AN ARTIST” - - - Were I an artist, Lydia, I - Would paint you as you merit, - Not as my eyes, but dreams descry; - Not in the flesh, but spirit. - - The canvas I would paint you on - Should be a strip of heaven; - My brush, a sunbeam; pigments, dawn - And night and starry even. - - Your form and features to express - Likewise your soul’s chaste whiteness, - I’d take the primal essences - Of darkness and of brightness. - - I’d take pure night to paint your hair; - Stars for your eyes; and morning - To paint your skin--the rosy air - Which is your limbs’ adorning. - - To paint the love-bows of your lips, - I’d mix, for colors, kisses; - And for your breasts and finger-tips, - Sweet odors and soft blisses. - - And to complete the picture well, - I’d temper all with woman,-- - Some tears, some laughter; heaven and hell, - To show you yet are human. - - - - - THE RIDE - - - She rode o’er hill, she rode o’er plain, - She rode by fields of barley, - By morning-glories filled with rain, - Along the wood-side gnarly. - - She rode o’er plain, she rode o’er hill, - By orchard land and berry; - Her eyes were sparkling as the rill, - Cheeks, redder than the cherry. - - A bird sang here, a bird sang there, - Then blithely sang together; - Sang sudden greeting everywhere, - “Good-morrow!” and “Good weather!” - - The sunlight’s laughing radiance - Laughed in her radiant tresses; - The bold breeze made her wild curls dance, - And flushed her face with kisses. - - “Why ride you here, why ride you there, - Why ride you here so merry? - The sunlight living in your hair, - And in your cheek the berry? - - “Why ride you with your sea-green plumes, - Your sea-green silken habit, - By balmy bosks of faint perfumes, - And haunts of roe and rabbit?” - - “The morning ploughed the east with gold, - And planted it with holly; - And I was young and he was old, - And rich, and melancholy. - - “A wife they ’d have me to his bed, - And to the church they hurried; - But now, gramercy! he is dead! - Thank God! is dead and buried. - - “I ride by tree, I ride by rill, - I ride by rye and clover, - For by the church beyond the hill - Awaits my first true lover.” - - - - - AT PARTING - - - What is there left for us to say, - Now it is time to speak good-by? - And all our dreams of yesterday - Are one with yester-evening’s sky-- - What is there left for us to say, - Now different ways before us lie? - - A word of hope, a word of cheer, - A word of love, whose help shall last, - When we are far to bring us near - Through memories of the happy past; - A word of hope, a word of cheer, - To keep our young hearts true and fast. - - What is there left for us to do, - Now it is time to say farewell? - And care, that bade us once adieu, - Returns again with us to dwell-- - What is there left for us to do, - Now different ways our fates compel? - - Clasp hands and kiss, touch lips and smile, - And look the love that shall remain-- - When severed so by many a mile-- - The sweetest balm for bitterest pain: - Clasp hands and kiss, touch lips and smile, - And trust to God to meet again. - - - - - IN THE GARDEN OF GIRLS - - - Serious, but smiling, stately and serene, - And lovelier than a flower, - She stands; in whom all sympathies convene - As perfumes in a bower; - Through whom I feel what soul and heart must mean, - And all their love and power. - - Eyes, that commune with the frank skies of truth, - Beneath their cloud-like curls; - Lips of immortal rose, where joy and youth - Nestle like priceless pearls; - Hair, that suggests the Bible braids of Ruth, - Deeper than any girl’s. - - When first I saw her, ’t was as if within - My gaze took shape some song-- - Played by a master of the violin-- - A music, pure and strong, - That rapt my soul above all earthly sin - To heights that know no wrong. - - - - -“COME TO THE HILLS” - - - Come to the hills, the woods are green-- - The heart is high when lovers meet-- - There is a brook that flows between - Mossed rocks where we will make our seat, - Where we will sit and speak unseen. - - I hear you laughing in the lane-- - The heart is high when lovers meet-- - The clover smells of sun and rain - And spreads a carpet for our feet, - Where we will walk and dream again. - - Come to the woods, the dusk is here-- - The heart is high when lovers meet-- - A bird upon the branches near - Sets music to our hearts’ sweet beat, - Our hearts that beat with something dear. - - I hear your step; the lane is passed-- - The heart is high when lovers meet-- - The little stars come bright and fast, - Like happy eyes that watch us, Sweet, - That see us greet and kiss at last. - - - - - EVASION - - - I - - Why do I love you, who have never given - My heart encouragement or any cause? - Is it because, as earth is held of heaven, - Your soul holds mine by some mysterious laws? - Perhaps, unseen of me, within your eyes - The answer lies. - - - II - - From your sweet lips no word hath ever fallen - To tell my heart its love is not in vain-- - The bee that woos the flow’r hath honey and pollen - To cheer him on and bring him back again: - But what have I, your other friends above, - To feed my love? - - - III - - Still, still you are my dream and my desire; - Your love is an allurement and a dare - Set for attainment, like a shining spire, - Far, far above me in the starry air: - And gazing upward, ’gainst the hope of hope, - I breast the slope. - - - - - WILL YOU FORGET? - - - In years to come, will you forget, - Dear girl, how often we have met? - And I have gazed into your eyes - And there beheld no sad regret - To cloud the gladness of their skies, - While in your heart--unheard as yet-- - Love slept, oblivious of my sighs?-- - In years to come, will you forget? - - Ah, me! I only pray that when, - In other days, some man of men - Has taught those eyes to laugh and weep - With joy and sorrow, hearts must ken - When love awakens in their deep,-- - I only pray some memory then, - Or sad or sweet, you still will keep - Of me and love that might have been. - - - - - CONTRASTS - - No eve of summer ever can attain - The gladness of that eve of late July, - When ’mid the roses, dripping with the rain, - Against the wondrous topaz of the sky, - I met you, leaning on the pasture bars,-- - While heaven and earth grew conscious of the stars. - - No night of blackest winter can repeat - The bitterness of that December night, - When, at your gate, gray-glittering with sleet, - Within the glimmering square of window-light, - We parted,--long you clung unto my arm,-- - While heaven and earth surrendered to the storm. - - - - - CARISSIMA MEA - - - I look upon my sweetheart’s face, - And, in the world about me, see - No face like hers in any place. - - It is not made, as others sing - Of their young loves, like ivory, - But like a wild-rose in the spring. - - Her brow is low and very fair, - And o’er it, smooth and shadowy, - Lies deep the darkness of her hair. - - Beneath her brows her eyes gleam gray, - And gaze out glad and fearlessly-- - Their wonder haunts me night and day. - - Her eyebrows, arched and delicate,-- - Twin curves of penciled ebony,-- - Within their spans contain my fate. - - Her mouth, that was for kisses curved,-- - So small and sweet!--it well may be - That it for me is yet reserved. - - Between her hair and rounded chin, - Calm with her soul’s calm purity, - There lies no shadow of a sin. - - Of perfect form, she is not tall,-- - Just higher than the heart of me, - O’er which I place her, all in all. - - She is not shaped, as some have sung - Of their young loves, like some slim tree, - But like the moon when it is young. - - Her hands, that smell of violet, - So white and fashioned fragrantly, - Have woven round my heart a net. - - Yea, I have loved her many a day; - And though for me she may not be, - Still at her feet my love I lay. - - Albeit she be not for me, - God send her grace and grant that she - Know naught of sorrow all her days, - And help me still to sing her praise! - - - - - AN AUTUMN NIGHT - - - Some things are good on autumn nights, - When with the storm the forest fights, - And in the room the heaped hearth lights - Old-fashioned press and rafter: - Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat, - A mug of cider, sharp and sweet, - And at your side a face petite, - With lips of laughter. - - Upon the roof the rolling rain, - And, tapping at the window-pane, - The wind that seems a witch’s cane - That summons spells together: - A hand within your own a while; - A mouth reflecting back your smile; - And eyes, two stars, whose beams exile - All thoughts of weather. - - And, while the wind lulls, still to sit - And watch her fire-lit needles flit - A-knitting, and to feel her knit - Your very heart-strings in it: - Then, when the old clock ticks “’t is late,” - To rise, and at the door to wait - Two words, or, at the garden-gate, - A kissing minute. - - - - - A DAUGHTER OF THE STATES - - - She has the eyes of some barbarian Queen - Leading her wild tribes into battle; eyes, - Wherein th’ unconquerable soul defies, - And Love sits throned, imperious and serene. - - And I have thought that Liberty, alone - Among her mountain stars, might look like her, - Kneeling to God, her only emperor, - Kindling her torch on Freedom’s altar-stone. - - For in her self, regal with riches of - Beauty and youth, again those Queens seem born-- - Boadicea, meeting scorn with scorn, - And Ermengarde, returning love for love. - - - - - THE QUARREL - - - An instant only and her eyes - Flashed lightning like the angry skies; - - And o’er her forehead, curving down, - Fell dark the shadow of a frown; - - Then backward, deep and stormy fair, - She tossed the tempest of her hair; - - Then of her lips’ full rose disdain - Made a pink-folded bud again; - - Then quicker than all utterance, - All changed: and at a word, a glance, - - Her anger rained its tears, then passed; - And she was in my arms at last; - - The austere woman, doubly dear, - And lovelier for each falling tear: - - But why we quarreled, how it grew, - I can not tell, I never knew: - - Perhaps ’t was Love; he, who, with tears, - Would show how fair a face appears; - - As, after storm, the sky ’s more blue, - A wildflower ’s fairer for the dew. - - - - - MIRIAM - - - What better praise for all her ways - Than that all days her ways illume? - Such brightness as the maiden year - Knows, when God’s kindness seems as near - As flowers whose wisdom ’s but to bloom. - - Hers the deep hair: a face more fair - Than roses June sets blossoming: - The sunshine of her gladness gleams - In bloom-bright lips and cheeks, and dreams - Upon her throat’s soft coloring. - - Her voice is sweet as birds that greet - With song the coming of the light: - The serious happy gleam that lies - In the dark lustre of her eyes - Is as the starlight to the night. - - Beyond the sea such girls as she - It was whom Titian loved to paint, - With calm Madonna eyes, and hair - Rich auburn; robed in gold and vair, - Fair as the vision of a saint. - - - - - THE SUMMER SEA - - - Over the summer sea, - When the white-eyed stars look pale, - And the moonbeams make a trail - Of gold through the waves for me, - I turn my ghostly sail - Away, away, - And follow the form I see - Over the summer sea. - - Over the misty sea, - Ere the cliff which highest soars - From the billow-beaten shores - Reddens all rosily, - Where the witch-white water roars, - Far on, far on. - Through the foam she beckons me - Over the summer sea. - - Over the haunted sea, - When the great, gold moon low lies - On the rim of the western skies, - ’Twixt the moon, she comes, and me, - And gazes in my eyes; - Low down, low down, - ’Twixt the orbéd moon and me, - Over the summer sea. - - Deep in the bitter sea, - Wilt thou drag me down, O sweet? - Down, down! from hair to feet - Filled with thee utterly? - Against thy heart’s wild beat?-- - At last! at last! - Wilt drag me down with thee, - Deep in the summer sea? - - - - - FINALE - - - So let it be. Thou dare not say ’t was I!-- - Here in life’s temple, where thy soul can see, - Look where the beauty of our love doth lie, - Shattered in shards, a dead divinity!-- - Approach: kneel down: yea, render up one sigh! - This is the end. What need to tell it thee! - So let it be. - - So let it be. Care, who hath stood with him, - And sorrow, who sat by him deified,-- - For whom his face made comfort,--lo! how dim - They heap his altar which they can not hide, - While memory’s lamp swings o’er it, burning slim.-- - This is the end. What shall be said beside? - So let it be. - - So let it be. Did we not drain the wine, - Red, of love’s sacramental chalice, when - He laid sweet sanction on thy lips and mine? - Dash it aside! Lo, who will fill again - Now it is empty of the god divine!-- - This is the end. Yea, let us say Amen. - So let it be. - - - - - - CONCLUSION - - - The songs Love sang to us are dead: - Yet shall he sing to us again, - When the dull days are wrapped in lead, - And the red woodland drips with rain. - - The lily of our love is gone, - That graced our spring with golden scent: - Now in the garden low upon - The wind-stripped way its stalk is bent. - - Our rose of dreams is passed away, - That lit our summer with sweet fire: - The storm beats bare each thorny spray, - And its dead leaves are trod in mire. - - The songs Love sang to us are dead: - Yet shall he sing to us again, - When the dull days are wrapped in lead, - And the red woodland drips with rain. - - The marigold of memory - Shall fill our autumn then with glow: - Haply its bitterness will be - Sweeter for love of long-ago. - - The cypress of forgetfulness - Shall haunt our winter with its hue: - Its apathy to us not less - Dear for the dreams love’s summer knew. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems of Madison Cawein, vol. 2, by -Madison Cawein - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF MADISON CAWEIN, VOL. 2 *** - -***** This file should be named 54902-0.txt or 54902-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/9/0/54902/ - -Produced by Larry B. 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