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Title: Poems

Author: Madison Cawein

Release Date: March, 2005  [EBook #7796]
[This file was first posted on May 17, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, POEMS ***




Eric Eldred, S.R. Ellison, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team



             POEMS

               BY

         MADISON CAWEIN

    (SELECTED BY THE AUTHOR)

              WITH
A FOREWORD BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

              1911




INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The verses composing this volume have been selected by the author almost
entirely from the five-volume edition of his poems published by the
Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1907. A number have been included from the three
or four volumes which have been published since the appearance of the
Collected Poems; namely, three poems from the volume entitled "Nature
Notes and Impressions," E. P. Button & Co., New York; one poem from "The
Giant and the Star," Small, Maynard & Co., Boston; Section VII and part of
Section VIII of "An Ode" written in commemoration of the founding of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, and published by John P. Morton & Co.,
Louisville, Ky.; some five or six poems from "New Poems," published in
London by Mr. Grant Richards in 1909; and three or four selections from
the volume of selections entitled "Kentucky Poems," compiled by Mr. Edmund
Gosse and published in London by Mr. Grant Richards in 19O2.
Acknowledgment and thanks for permission to reprint the various poems
included in this volume are herewith made to the different publishers.

The two poems, "in Arcady" and "The Black Knight" are new and are
published here for the first time.

In making the selections for the present book Mr. Cawein has endeavored to
cover the entire field of his poetical labors, which extends over a
quarter of a century. With the exception of his dramatic work, as
witnessed by one volume only, "The Shadow Garden," a book of plays four in
number, published in 1910, the selection herewith presented by us is, in
our opinion, representative of the author's poetical work.




CONTENTS

The Poetry of Madison Cawein.

Hymn to Spiritual Desire.
Beautiful-Bosomed, O Night.
Discovery.
O Maytime Woods.
The Redbird.
A Niello.
In May.
Aubade.
Apocalypse.
Penetralia.
Elusion.
Womanhood.
The Idyll of the Standing-Stone.
Noera.
The Old Spring.
A Dreamer of Dreams.
Deep in the Forest
  I. Spring on the Hills.
  II. Moss and Fern.
  III. The Thorn Tree.
  IV. The Hamadryad.
Preludes.
May.
What Little Things.

In the Shadow of the Beeches.
Unrequited.
The Solitary.
A Twilight Moth.
The Old Farm.
The Whippoorwill.
Revealment.
Hepaticas.
The Wind of Spring.
The Catbird.
A Woodland Grave.
Sunset Dreams.
The Old Byway.
"Below the Sunset's Range of Rose".
Music of Summer.
Midsummer.
The Rain-Crow.
Field and Forest Call.
Old Homes.
The Forest Way.
Sunset and Storm.
Quiet Lanes.
One who loved Nature.
Garden Gossip.
Assumption.
Senorita.
Overseas.
Problems.
To a Windflower.
Voyagers.
The Spell.
Uncertainty.

In the Wood.
Since Then.
Dusk in the Woods.
Paths.
The Quest.
The Garden of Dreams.
The Path to Faery.
There are Faeries.
The Spirit of the Forest Spring.
In a Garden.
In the Lane.
The Window on the Hill.
The Picture.
Moly.
Poppy and Mandragora.
A Road Song.
Phantoms.
Intimations of the Beautiful.
October.
Friends.
Comradery.
Bare Boughs.
Days and Days.
Autumn Sorrow.
The Tree-Toad.
The Chipmunk.
The Wild Iris.
Drouth.
Rain.
At Sunset.
The Leaf-Cricket.
The Wind of Winter.

The Owlet.
Evening on the Farm.
The Locust.
The Dead Day.
The Old Water-Mill.
Argonauts.
"The Morn that breaks its Heart of Gold".
A Voice on the Wind.
Requiem.
Lynchers.
The Parting.
Feud.
Ku Klux.
Eidolons.
The Man Hunt.
My Romance.
A Maid who died Old.
Ballad of Low-Lie-Down.
Romance.
Amadis and Oriana.
The Rosicrucian.
The Age of Gold.
Beauty and Art.
The Sea Spirit.
Gargaphie.
The Dead Oread.
The Faun.
The Paphian Venus.
Oriental Romance.
The Mameluke.
The Slave.
The Portrait.

The Black Knight.
In Arcady.
Prototypes.
March.
Dusk.
The Winds.
Light and Wind.
Enchantment.
Abandoned.
After Long Grief.
Mendicants.
The End of Summer.
November.
The Death of Love.
Unanswered.
The Swashbuckler.
Old Sir John.
Uncalled.




THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN

When a poet begins writing, and we begin liking his work, we own willingly
enough that we have not, and cannot have, got the compass of his talent.
We must wait till he has written more, and we have learned to like him
more, and even then we should hesitate his definition, from all that he
has done, if we did not very commonly qualify ourselves from the latest
thing he has done. Between the earliest thing and the latest thing there
may have been a hundred different things, and in his swan-long life of a
singer there would probably be a hundred yet, and all different. But we
take the latest as if it summed him up in motive and range and tendency.
Many parts of his work offer themselves in confirmation of our judgment,
while those which might impeach it shrink away and hide themselves, and
leave us to our precipitation, our catastrophe.

It was surely nothing less than by a catastrophe that I should have been
so betrayed in the volumes of Mr. Cawein's verse which reached me last
before the volume of his collected poems.... I had read his poetry and
loved it from the beginning, and in each successive expression of it, I
had delighted in its expanding and maturing beauty. I believe I had not
failed to own its compass, and when--

    "He touched the tender stops of various quills,"

I had responded to every note of the changing music. I did not always
respond audibly either in public or in private, for it seemed to me that
so old a friend might fairly rest on the laurels he had helped bestow. But
when that last volume came, I said to myself, "This applausive silence has
gone on long enough. It is time to break it with open appreciation.
Still," I said, "I must guard against too great appreciation; I must mix
in a little depreciation, to show that I have read attentively,
critically, authoritatively." So I applied myself to the cheapest and
easiest means of depreciation, and asked, "Why do you always write Nature
poems? Why not Human Nature poems?" or the like. But in seizing upon an
objection so obvious that I ought to have known it was superficial, I had
wronged a poet, who had never done me harm, but only good, in the very
terms and conditions of his being a poet. I had not stayed to see that his
nature poetry was instinct with human poetry, with _his_ human poetry,
with mine, with yours. I had made his reproach what ought to have been his
finest praise, what is always the praise of poetry when it is not
artificial and formal. I ought to have said, as I had seen, that not one
of his lovely landscapes in which I could discover no human figure, but
thrilled with a human presence penetrating to it from his most sensitive
and subtle spirit until it was all but painfully alive with memories, with
regrets, with longings, with hopes, with all that from time to time
mutably constitutes us men and women, and yet keeps us children. He has
the gift, in a measure that I do not think surpassed in any poet, of
touching some smallest or commonest thing in nature, and making it live
from the manifold associations in which we have our being, and glow
thereafter with an inextinguishable beauty. His felicities do not seem
sought; rather they seem to seek him, and to surprise him with the delight
they impart through him. He has the inspiration of the right word, and the
courage of it, so that though in the first instant you may be challenged,
you may be revolted, by something that you might have thought uncouth, you
are presently overcome by the happy bravery of it, and gladly recognize
that no other word of those verbal saints or aristocrats, dedicated to the
worship or service of beauty, would at all so well have conveyed the sense
of it as this or that plebeian.

If I began indulging myself in the pleasure of quotation, or the delight
of giving proofs of what I say, I should soon and far transcend the modest
bounds which the editor has set my paper. But the reader may take it from
me that no other poet, not even of the great Elizabethan range, can
outword this poet when it comes to choosing some epithet fresh from the
earth or air, and with the morning sun or light upon it, for an emotion or
experience in which the race renews its youth from generation to
generation. He is of the kind of Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth and
Coleridge, in that truth to observance and experience of nature and the
joyous expression of it, which are the dominant characteristics of his
art. It is imaginable that the thinness of the social life in the Middle
West threw the poet upon the communion with the fields and woods, the days
and nights, the changing seasons, in which another great nature poet of
ours declares they "speak in various language." But nothing could be
farther from the didactic mood in which "communion with the various forms"
of nature casts the Puritanic soul of Bryant, than the mood in which this
German-blooded, Kentucky-born poet, who keeps throughout his song the
sense of a perpetual and inalienable youth, with a spirit as pagan as that
which breathes from Greek sculpture--but happily not more pagan. Most
modern poets who are antique are rather over-Hellenic, in their wish not
to be English or French, but there is nothing voluntary in Mr. Cawein's
naturalization in the older world of myth and fable; he is too sincerely
and solely a poet to be a _posseur;_ he has his eyes everywhere except on
the spectator, and his affair is to report the beauty that he sees, as if
there were no one by to hear.

An interesting and charming trait of his poetry is its constant theme of
youth and its limit within the range that the emotions and aspirations of
youth take. He might indeed be called the poet of youth if he resented
being called the poet of nature; but the poet of youth, be it understood,
of vague regrets, of "tears, idle tears," of "long, long thoughts," for
that is the real youth, and not the youth of the supposed hilarity, the
attributive recklessness, the daring hopes. Perhaps there is some such
youth as this, but it has not its home in the breast of any young poet,
and he rarely utters it; at best he is of a light melancholy, a smiling
wistfulness, and upon the whole, October is more to his mind than May.

In Mr. Cawein's work, therefore, what is not the expression of the world
we vainly and rashly call the inanimate world, is the hardly more
dramatized, and not more enchantingly imagined story of lovers, rather
unhappy lovers. He finds his own in this sort far and near; in classic
Greece, in heroic England, in romantic Germany, where the blue flower
blows, but not less in beautiful and familiar Kentucky, where the blue
grass shows itself equally the emblem of poetry, and the moldering log in
the cabin wall or the woodland path is of the same poetic value as the
marble of the ruined temple or the stone of the crumbling castle. His
singularly creative fancy breathes a soul into every scene; his touch
leaves everything that was dull to the sense before glowing in the light
of joyful recognition. He classifies his poems by different names, and
they are of different themes, but they are after all of that unity which I
have been trying, all too shirkingly, to suggest. One, for instance, is
the pathetic story which tells itself in the lyrical eclogue "One Day and
Another." It is the conversation, prolonged from meeting to meeting,
between two lovers whom death parts; but who recurrently find themselves
and each other in the gardens and the woods, and on the waters which they
tell each other of and together delight in. The effect is that which is
truest to youth and love, for these transmutations of emotion form the
disguise of self which makes passion tolerable; but mechanically the
result is a series of nature poems. More genuinely dramatic are such
pieces as "The Feud," "Ku Klux," and "The Lynchers," three out of many;
but one which I value more because it is worthy of Wordsworth, or of
Tennyson in a Wordsworthian mood, is "The Old Mill," where, with all the
wonted charm of his landscape art, Mr. Cawein gives us a strongly local
and novel piece of character painting.

I deny myself with increasing reluctance the pleasure of quoting the
stanzas, the verses, the phrases, the epithets, which lure me by scores
and hundreds in his poems. It must suffice me to say that I do not know
any poem of his which has not some such a felicity; I do not know any poem
of his which is not worth reading, at least the first time, and often the
second and the third time, and so on as often as you have the chance of
recurring to it. Some disappoint and others delight more than others; but
there is none but in greater or less measure has the witchery native to
the poet, and his place and his period.

It is only in order of his later time that I would put Mr. Cawein first
among those Midwestern poets, of whom he is the youngest. Poetry in the
Middle West has had its development in which it was eclipsed by the
splendor, transitory if not vain, of the California school. But it is
deeply rooted in the life of the region, and is as true to its origins as
any faithful portraiture of the Midwestern landscape could be; you could
not mistake the source of the poem or the picture. In a certain tenderness
of light and coloring, the poems would recall the mellowed masterpieces of
the older literatures rather than those of the New England school, where
conscience dwells almost rebukingly with beauty....

W. D. HOWELLS.

From _The North American Review_. Copyright, 1908, by the North American
Review Publishing Company.




POEMS




HYMN TO SPIRITUAL DESIRE

I

Mother of visions, with lineaments dulcet as numbers
Breathed on the eyelids of Love by music that slumbers,
Secretly, sweetly, O presence of fire and snow,
Thou comest mysterious,
In beauty imperious,
Clad on with dreams and the light of no world that we know:
Deep to my innermost soul am I shaken,
Helplessly shaken and tossed,
And of thy tyrannous yearnings so utterly taken,
My lips, unsatisfied, thirst;
Mine eyes are accurst
With longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken;
And mine ears, in listening lost,
Yearn, waiting the note of a chord that will never awaken.

II

Like palpable music thou comest, like moonlight; and far,--
Resonant bar upon bar,--
The vibrating lyre
Of the spirit responds with melodious fire,
As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake,
With laughter and ache,
The chords of existence, the instrument star-sprung,
Whose frame is of clay, so wonderfully molded of mire.

III

Vested with vanquishment, come, O Desire, Desire!
Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of Love!
Make of my heart an Israfel burning above,
A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal, but stammer!
Smite every rapturous wire
With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor,
Crying--"Awake! awake!
Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour
With its mountains of magic, its fountains of faery, the spar-sprung,
Hast thou wandered away, O Heart!"

Come, oh, come and partake
Of necromance banquets of Beauty; and slake
Thy thirst in the waters of Art,
That are drawn from the streams
Of love and of dreams.

IV

"Come, oh, come!
No longer shall language be dumb!
Thy vision shall grasp--
As one doth the glittering hasp
Of a sword made splendid with gems and with gold--
The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of it merely.
And out of the stark
Eternity, awful and dark,
Immensity silent and cold,--
Universe-shaking as trumpets, or cymbaling metals,
Imperious; yet pensive and pearly
And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals,
Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too early,--
The majestic music of God, where He plays
On the organ, eternal and vast, of eons and days."




BEAUTIFUL-BOSOMED, O NIGHT

I

Beautiful-bosomed, O Night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly
As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders.  Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.--
Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom?
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,
Whom I hear, whom I hear?
With their sighs of silver and pearl?
Invisible ghosts,--
Each sigh a shadowy girl,--

Who whisper in leaves and glimmer in blossoms and hover
In color and fragrance and loveliness, breathed from the deep
World-soul of the mother,
Nature; who over and over,--
Both sweetheart and lover,--
Goes singing her songs from one sweet month to the other.

II

Lo! 'tis her songs that appear, appear,
In forest and field, on hill-land and lea,
As visible harmony,
Materialized melody,
Crystallized beauty, that out of the atmosphere
Utters itself, in wonder and mystery,
Peopling with glimmering essence the hyaline far and the near....

III

Behold how it sprouts from the grass and blossoms from flower and tree!
In waves of diaphanous moonlight and mist,
In fugue upon fugue of gold and of amethyst,
Around me, above me it spirals; now slower, now faster,
Like symphonies born of the thought of a musical master.--
O music of Earth! O God, who the music inspired!
Let me breathe of the life of thy breath!
And so be fulfilled and attired
In resurrection, triumphant o'er time and o'er death!




DISCOVERY

What is it now that I shall seek
Where woods dip downward, in the hills?--
A mossy nook, a ferny creek,
And May among the daffodils.

Or in the valley's vistaed glow,
Past rocks of terraced trumpet vines,
Shall I behold her coming slow,
Sweet May, among the columbines?

With redbud cheeks and bluet eyes,
Big eyes, the homes of happiness,
To meet me with the old surprise,
Her wild-rose hair all bonnetless.

Who waits for me, where, note for note,
The birds make glad the forest trees?--
A dogwood blossom at her throat,
My May among th' anemones.

As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,
And dews caress the moon's pale beams,
My soul shall drink her lips' perfumes,
And know the magic of her dreams.



O MAYTIME WOODS!

  From the idyll "Wild Thorn and Lily"

O Maytime woods! O Maytime 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:
The rustle of your footsteps: or the dew
Syllabling avowal on a tulip'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 weigh 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-o'-Gilead buds? and seems to squeeze
     Aroma on aroma through sweet rifts
Of Eden, dripping through 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 dreams must pray
About her soul!--That I might enter in!--

A dream,--and see the balsam scent erase
     Its dim 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.



THE REDBIRD

From "Wild Thorn and Lily"

Among the white haw-blossoms, where the creek
Droned under drifts of dogwood and of haw,
The redbird, 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 the beech-boles 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 crimson star
  From flaming star-beds shooting--
      From where the roses are.

  Wings past and sings; and seven
      Notes, wild as fragrance is,--
  That turn to flame in heaven,--
      Float round him full of bliss.

  He sings; each burning feather
      Thrills, throbbing at his throat;
  A song of firefly weather,
      And of a glowworm boat:

  Of Elfland and a princess
      Who, born of a perfume,
  His music rocks,--where winces
      That rosebud's cradled bloom.

  No bird sings half so airy,
      No bird of dusk or dawn,
  Thou masking King of Faery!
      Thou red-crowned Oberon!



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 windflower apes
The beauty that was once her brow,
That the white memory of it shapes
    The April now?

Because the wild-rose wears the blush
That once made sweet her maidenhood,
Its thought makes June of barren bush
    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 redbird 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 of 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 bluebirds sit
And sing; and through whose blossoms flit
The catbirds 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 young-girl grace:
And we shall tarry till a trace
Of sunset dyes the heav'ns; and then--
We'll part; and, parting, I again
    Shall bend and kiss her face.

And homeward, singing, I shall go
Along the cricket-chirring ways,
While sunset, one long crimson blaze
    Of orchards, lingers low:
And my dead youth again I'll know,
And all her love, when spring is here--
Whose memory holds me 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;
    In egotism of loveliness
Her pomp goes by, and never heeds
    One life the more or less.

But I would die when Autumn goes,
    The dark 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
    To fall asleep when skies are gray,
In the old autumn of my years,
    Like a dead leaf borne far away.



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,
      Both deep and true,
Whatever befalls through fate's compelling.



AUBADE

Awake! the dawn is on the hills!
  Behold, at her cool throat a rose,
  Blue-eyed and beautiful she goes,
Leaving her steps in daffodils.--
Awake! arise! and let me see
  Thine eyes, whose deeps epitomize
All dawns that were or are to be,
  O love, all Heaven in thine eyes!--
Awake! arise! come down to me!

Behold! the dawn is up: behold!
  How all the birds around her float,
  Wild rills of music, note on note,
Spilling the air with mellow gold.--
Arise! awake! and, drawing near,
  Let me but hear thee and rejoice!
Thou, who keep'st captive, sweet and clear,
  All song, O love, within thy voice!
Arise! awake! and let me hear!

See, where she comes, with limbs of day,
  The dawn! with wild-rose hands and feet,
  Within whose veins the sunbeams beat,
And laughters meet of wind and ray.
Arise! come down! and, heart to heart,
  Love, let me clasp in thee all these--
The sunbeam, of which thou art part,
  And all the rapture of the breeze!--
Arise! come down! loved that thou art!



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 read 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.



PENETRALIA

I am a part of all you see
In Nature; part of all you feel:
I am the impact of the bee
Upon the blossom; in the tree
I am the sap,--that shall reveal
The leaf, the bloom,--that flows and flutes
Up from the darkness through its roots.

I am the vermeil of the rose,
The perfume breathing in its veins;
The gold within the mist that glows
Along the west and overflows
With light the heaven; the dew that rains
Its freshness down and strings with spheres
Of wet the webs and oaten ears.

I am the egg that folds the bird;
The song that beaks and breaks its shell;
The laughter and the wandering word
The water says; and, dimly heard,
The music of the blossom's bell
When soft winds swing it; and the sound
Of grass slow-creeping o'er the ground.

I am the warmth, the honey-scent
That throats with spice each lily-bud
That opens, white with wonderment,
Beneath the moon; or, downward bent,
Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood:
I am the dream that haunts it too,
That crystallizes into dew.

I am the seed within the pod;
The worm within its closed cocoon:
The wings within the circling clod,
The germ, that gropes through soil and sod
To beauty, radiant in the noon:
I am all these, behold! and more--
I am the love at the world-heart's core.



ELUSION

I

My soul goes out to her who says,
"Come, follow me and cast off care!"
Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,
And like a flower before me sways
Between the green leaves and my gaze:
This creature like a girl, who smiles
Into my eyes and softly lays
Her hand in mine and leads me miles,
Long miles of haunted forest ways.

II

Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,
A fragrance that a flower exhaled
And God gave form to; now, unveiled,
A sunbeam making gold the gloom
Of vines that roof some woodland room
Of boughs; and now the silvery sound
Of streams her presence doth assume--
Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,
A crystal shape she seems to bloom.

III

Sometimes she seems the light that lies
On foam of waters where the fern
Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn
Of woodland, bright against the skies,
She seems the rainbowed mist that flies;
And now the mossy fire that breaks
Beneath the feet in azure eyes
Of flowers; now the wind that shakes
Pale petals from the bough that sighs.

IV

Sometimes she lures me with a song;
Sometimes she guides me with a laugh;
Her white hand is a magic staff,
Her look a spell to lead me long:
Though she be weak and I be strong,
She needs but shake her happy hair,
But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong,
My soul must follow--anywhere
She wills--far from the world's loud throng.

V

Sometimes I think that she must be
No part of earth, but merely this--
The fair, elusive thing we miss
In Nature, that we dream we see
Yet never see: that goldenly
Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl,
The Greek made a divinity:--
A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl,
That haunts the forest's mystery.



WOMANHOOD

I

The summer takes its hue
From something opulent as fair in her,
And the bright heaven is brighter than it was;
Brighter and lovelier,
Arching its beautiful blue,
Serene and soft, as her sweet gaze, o'er us.

II

The springtime takes its moods
From something in her made of smiles and tears,
And flowery earth is flowerier than before,
And happier, it appears,
Adding new multitudes
To flowers, like thoughts, that haunt us evermore.

III

Summer and spring are wed
In her--her nature; and the glamour of
Their loveliness, their bounty, as it were,
Of life and joy and love,
Her being seems to shed,--
The magic aura of the heart of her.



THE IDYLL OF THE STANDING STONE

The teasel and the horsemint spread
  The hillside as with sunset, sown
  With blossoms, o'er the Standing-Stone
That ripples in its rocky bed:
  There are no treasuries that hold
  Gold richer than the marigold
That crowns its sparkling head.

'Tis 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,--
A simple bramble-rose.

She hears him whistling as he leans,
  And, reaping, sweeps the ripe wheat by;
  She sighs and smiles, and knows not why,
Nor what her heart's disturbance means:
  He whets his scythe, and, resting, sees
  Her rose-like 'mid 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--who thinks of other things
Than toil, and, singing, reaps.



NOERA

Noera, when sad Fall
  Has grayed the fallow;
Leaf-cramped the wood-brook's brawl
  In pool and shallow;
When, by the woodside, tall
  Stands sere the mallow.

Noera, 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 by you, silver-blue;
  When silence stirs
One leaf, of rusty hue,
  Among the burrs:

Noera, through the wood,
  Or through the grain,
Come, with the hoiden mood
  Of wind and rain
Fresh in thy sunny blood,
  Sweetheart, again.

Noera, when the corn,
  Reaped on the fields,
The asters' stars adorn;
  And purple shields
Of ironweeds lie torn
  Among the wealds:

Noera, 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!
Noera, 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.



THE OLD SPRING

I

Under rocks whereon the rose
Like a streak of morning glows;
Where the azure-throated newt
Drowses on the twisted root;
And the brown bees, humming homeward,
Stop to suck the honeydew;
Fern- and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward,
Drips the wildwood spring I knew,
Drips the spring my boyhood knew.

II

Myrrh and music everywhere
Haunt its cascades--like the hair
That a Naiad tosses cool,
Swimming strangely beautiful,
With white fragrance for her bosom,
And her mouth a breath of song--
Under leaf and branch and blossom
Flows the woodland spring along,
Sparkling, singing flows along.

III

Still the wet wan mornings touch
Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such
Slender stars as dusk may have
Pierce the rose that roofs its wave;
Still the thrush may call at noontide
And the whippoorwill at night;
Nevermore, by sun or moontide,
Shall I see it gliding white,
Falling, flowing, wild and white.



A DREAMER OF DREAMS

He lived beyond men, and so stood
Admitted to the brotherhood
Of beauty:--dreams, with which he trod
Companioned like some sylvan god.
And oft men wondered, when his thought
Made all their knowledge seem as naught,
If he, like Uther's mystic son,
Had not been born for Avalon.

When wandering mid the whispering trees,
His soul communed with every breeze;
Heard voices calling from the glades,
Bloom-words of the Leimoniaeds;
Or Dryads of the ash and oak,
Who syllabled his name and spoke
With him of presences and powers
That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.

By every violet-hallowed brook,
Where every bramble-matted nook
Rippled and laughed with water sounds,
He walked like one on sainted grounds,
Fearing intrusion on the spell
That kept some fountain-spirit's well,
Or woodland genius, sitting where
Red, racy berries kissed his hair.

Once when the wind, far o'er the hill,
Had fall'n and left the wildwood still
For Dawn's dim feet to trail across,--
Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss,
The air around him golden-ripe
With daybreak,--there, with oaten pipe,
His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan,
Goat-bearded, horned; half brute, half man;
Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme
Blew in his reed to rudest time;
And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye--
Beneath the slowly silvering sky,
Whose rose streaked through the forest's roof--
Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof
The branch was snapped, and, interfused
Between gnarled roots, the moss was bruised.

And often when he wandered through
Old forests at the fall of dew--
A new Endymion, who sought
A beauty higher than all thought--
Some night, men said, most surely he
Would favored be of deity:
That in the holy solitude
Her sudden presence, long-pursued,
Unto his gaze would stand confessed:
The awful moonlight of her breast
Come, high with majesty, and hold
His heart's blood till his heart grew cold,
Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone,
And snatch his soul to Avalon.



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,
  Crabapple trees the hollow,
  Haunts of the bee and swallow?

In redbud brakes and flowery
  Acclivities of berry;
In dogwood dingles, showery
  With white, where wrens make merry?
  Or drifts of swarming cherry?

In valleys of wild strawberries,
  And of the clumped May-apple;
Or cloudlike trees of haw-berries,
  With which the south winds grapple,
  That brook and byway dapple?

With eyes of far forgetfulness,--
  Like some wild wood-thing's daughter,
Whose feet are beelike fretfulness,--
  To see her run like water
  Through boughs that slipped or caught her.

O Spring, to seek, yet find you not!
  To search, yet never win you!
To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not!
  To lose, and still continue,
  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,
  A sudden splendor faded.

O presence, like the primrose's,
  Again I feel your power!
With rainy scents of dim roses,
  Like some elusive flower,
  Who led me for an hour!



II. MOSS AND FERN

Where rise the brakes of bramble there,
  Wrapped with the trailing rose;
Through cane where waters ramble, there
  Where deep the sword-grass 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
  Sleep, waking with a rush--
      The hush
But sounds the satyr hoof a span
      Of Pan.

O woods,--whose thrushes sing to us,
  Whose brooks dance sparkling heels;
Whose wild aromas cling to us,--
  While here our wonder kneels,
      Who steals
Upon us, brown as bark with tan,
      But Pan?



III.  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 faery 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 glowworms and the glowworms into dew.
There's a thorn tree in the forest, and the faeries know the tree,
With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;
But the Maytime 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 daemon secrets that must make 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 which 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,
In a mockery of parting and mock pity of his weird:
But her magic had forgotten that "who bends to give a kiss
Will but bring the curse upon them of the person whose it is":
So the silence tells the secret.--And at night the faeries see
How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,
In the thorny arms of Merlin, who forever is the tree.



IV.  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 moonbeam sandals on
  Her flowerlike feet, that seemed too chaste
To tread true 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 as with 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 shape 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.



PRELUDES

I

There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that's half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.--
If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach
My heart their beautiful parts of speech,
And the natural art that they say these with,
My soul would sing of beauty and myth
In a rhyme and metre that none before
Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,
And the world would be richer one poet the more.

II

A thought to lift me up to those
Sweet wildflowers of the pensive woods;
The lofty, lowly attitudes
Of bluet and of bramble-rose:
To lift me where my mind may reach
The lessons which their beauties teach.

A dream, to lead my spirit on
With sounds of faery shawms and flutes,
And all mysterious attributes
Of skies of dusk and skies of dawn:
To lead me, like the wandering brooks,
Past all the knowledge of the books.

A song, to make my heart a guest
Of happiness whose soul is love;
One with the life that knoweth of
But song that turneth toil to rest:
To make me cousin to the birds,
Whose music needs not wisdom's words.



MAY

The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed,
  That spangle the woods and dance--
No gleam of gold that the twilights hold
  Is strong as their necromance:
For, under the oaks where the woodpaths lead,
The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed
  Are the May's own utterance.

The azure stars of the bluet bloom,
  That sprinkle the woodland's trance--
No blink of blue that a cloud lets through
  Is sweet as their countenance:
For, over the knolls that the woods perfume,
The azure stars of the bluet bloom
  Are the light of the May's own glance.

With her wondering words and her looks she comes,
  In a sunbeam of a gown;
She needs but think and the blossoms wink,
  But look, and they shower down.
By orchard ways, where the wild bee hums,
With her wondering words and her looks she comes
  Like a little maid to town.



WHAT LITTLE THINGS!

    From "One Day and Another"

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.



IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES

In the shadow of the beeches,
  Where the fragile wildflowers bloom;
Where the pensive silence pleaches
  Green a roof of cool perfume,
Have you felt an awe imperious
As when, in a church, mysterious
  Windows paint with God the gloom?

In the shadow of the beeches,
  Where the rock-ledged waters flow;
Where the sun's slant splendor bleaches
  Every wave to foaming snow,
Have you felt a music solemn
As when minster arch and column
  Echo organ worship low?

In the shadow of the beeches,
  Where the light and shade are blent;
Where the forest bird beseeches,
  And the breeze is brimmed with scent,--
Is it joy or melancholy
That o'erwhelms us partly, wholly,
  To our spirit's betterment?

In the shadow of the beeches
  Lay me where no eye perceives;
Where,--like some great arm that reaches
  Gently as a love that grieves,--
One gnarled root may clasp me kindly,
While the long years, working blindly,
  Slowly change my dust to leaves.



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 loaned language to 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 SOLITARY

Upon the mossed rock by the spring
  She sits, forgetful of her pail,
Lost in remote remembering
  Of that which may no more avail.

Her thin, pale hair is dimly dressed
  Above a brow lined deep with care,
The color of a leaf long pressed,
  A faded leaf that once was fair.

You may not know her from the stone
  So still she sits who does not stir,
Thinking of this one thing alone--
  The love that never came to her.



A TWILIGHT MOTH

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on its state
  Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
  Or dim conceit, a lily bud confessed;
Or of a rose the visible wish; that, white,
Goes softly messengering through the night,
  Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.

All day the primroses have thought of thee,
  Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;
All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly
  Veiled snowy faces,--that no bee might greet,
Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;--
Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last,
  Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's
  Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks
The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays
  Nocturnes of fragrance, thy wing'd shadow links
In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;
O bearer of their order's shibboleth,
  Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks.

What dost them whisper in the balsam's ear
  That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,--
A syllabled silence that no man may hear,--
  As dreamily upon its stem it rocks?
What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant,
Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant,
  Some specter of some perished flower of phlox?

O voyager of that universe which lies
  Between the four walls of this garden fair,--
Whose constellations are the fireflies
  That wheel their instant courses everywhere,--
Mid faery firmaments wherein one sees
Mimic Booetes and the Pleiades,
  Thou steerest like some faery ship of air.

Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer,
  Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest
Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her
  His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.--
Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy,
That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me!
  And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!



THE OLD FARM

Dormered and verandaed, cool,
  Locust-girdled, on the hill;
Stained with weather-wear, and dull-
  Streak'd with lichens; every sill
Thresholding the beautiful;

I can see it standing there,
  Brown above the woodland deep,
Wrapped in lights of lavender,
  By the warm wind rocked asleep,
Violet shadows everywhere.

I remember how the Spring,
  Liberal-lapped, bewildered its
Acred orchards, murmuring,
  Kissed to blossom; budded bits
Where the wood-thrush came to sing.

Barefoot Spring, at first who trod,
  Like a beggermaid, adown
The wet woodland; where the god,
  With the bright sun for a crown
And the firmament for rod,

Met her; clothed her; wedded her;
  Her Cophetua: when, lo!
All the hill, one breathing blur,
  Burst in beauty; gleam and glow
Blent with pearl and lavender.

Seckel, blackheart, palpitant
  Rained their bleaching strays; and white
Snowed the damson, bent aslant;
  Rambow-tree and romanite
Seemed beneath deep drifts to pant.

And it stood there, brown and gray,
  In the bee-boom and the bloom,
In the shadow and the ray,
  In the passion and perfume,
Grave as age among the gay.

Wild with laughter romped the clear
  Boyish voices round its walls;
Rare wild-roses were the dear
  Girlish faces in its halls,
Music-haunted all the year.

Far before it meadows full
  Of green pennyroyal sank;
Clover-dotted as with wool
  Here and there; with now a bank
Hot of color; and the cool

Dark-blue shadows unconfined
  Of the clouds rolled overhead:
Clouds, from which the summer wind
  Blew with rain, and freshly shed
Dew upon the flowerkind.

Where through mint and gypsy-lily
  Runs the rocky brook away,
Musical among the hilly
  Solitudes,--its flashing spray
Sunlight-dashed or forest-stilly,--

Buried in deep sassafras,
  Memory follows up the hill
Still some cowbell's mellow brass,
  Where the ruined water-mill
Looms, half-hid in cane and grass....

Oh, the farmhouse! is it set
  On the hilltop still? 'mid musk
Of the meads? where, violet,
  Deepens all the dreaming dusk,
And the locust-trees hang wet.

While the sunset, far and low,
  On its westward windows dashes
Primrose or pomegranate glow;
  And above, in glimmering splashes,
Lilac stars the heavens sow.

Sleeps it still among its roses,--
  Oldtime roses? while the choir
Of the lonesome insects dozes:
  And the white moon, drifting higher,
O'er its mossy roof reposes--
Sleeps it still among its roses?



THE WHIPPOORWILL

I

Above lone woodland ways that led
To dells the stealthy twilights tread
The west was hot geranium red;
  And still, and still,
Along old lanes the locusts sow
With clustered pearls the Maytimes know,
Deep in the crimson afterglow,
We heard the homeward cattle low,
And then the far-off, far-off woe
  Of "whippoorwill!" of "whippoorwill!"

II

Beneath the idle beechen boughs
We heard the far bells of the cows
Come slowly jangling towards the house;
  And still, and still,
Beyond the light that would not die
Out of the scarlet-haunted sky;
Beyond the evening-star's white eye
Of glittering chalcedony,
Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry
  Of "whippoorwill," of "whippoorwill."

III

And in the city oft, when swims
The pale moon o'er the smoke that dims
Its disc, I dream of wildwood limbs;
  And still, and still,
I seem to hear, where shadows grope
Mid ferns and flowers that dewdrops rope,--
Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope
Above the clover-sweetened slope,--
Retreat, despairing, past all hope,
  The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill.



REVEALMENT

  A sense of sadness in the golden air;
  A pensiveness, that has no part in care,
As if the Season, by some woodland pool,
  Braiding the early blossoms in her hair,
  Seeing her loveliness reflected there,
Had sighed to find herself so beautiful.

  A breathlessness; a feeling as of fear;
  Holy and dim, as of a mystery near,
As if the World, about us, whispering went
  With lifted finger and hand-hollowed ear,
  Hearkening a music, that we cannot hear,
Haunting the quickening earth and firmament.

  A prescience of the soul that has no name;
  Expectancy that is both wild and tame,
As if the Earth, from out its azure ring
  Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame,--
  As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came,--
The swift, divine revealment of the Spring.



HEPATICAS

In the frail hepaticas,--
  That the early Springtide tossed,
Sapphire-like, along the ways
  Of the woodlands that she crossed,--
I behold, with other eyes,
  Footprints of a dream that flies.

One who leads me; whom I seek:
  In whose loveliness there is
All the glamour that the Greek
  Knew as wind-borne Artemis.--
I am mortal. Woe is me!
  Her sweet immortality!

Spirit, must I always fare,
  Following thy averted looks?
Now thy white arm, now thy hair,
  Glimpsed among the trees and brooks?
Thou who hauntest, whispering,
  All the slopes and vales of Spring.

Cease to lure! or grant to me
  All thy beauty! though it pain,
Slay with splendor utterly!
  Flash revealment on my brain!
And one moment let me see
  All thy immortality!



THE WIND OF SPRING

The wind that breathes of columbines
And celandines that crowd the rocks;
That shakes the balsam of the pines
With laughter from his airy locks,
Stops at my city door and knocks.

He calls me far a-forest, where
The twin-leaf and the blood-root bloom;
And, circled by the amber air,
Life sits with beauty and perfume
Weaving the new web of her loom.

He calls me where the waters run
Through fronding ferns where wades the hern;
And, sparkling in the equal sun,
Song leans above her brimming urn,
And dreams the dreams that love shall learn.

The wind has summoned, and I go:
To read God's meaning in each line
The wildflowers write; and, walking slow,
God's purpose, of which song is sign,--
The wind's great, gusty hand in mine.



THE CATBIRD

I

The tufted gold of the sassafras,
  And the gold of the spicewood-bush,
Bewilder the ways of the forest pass,
  And brighten the underbrush:
The white-starred drifts of the wild-plum tree,
  And the haw with its pearly plumes,
And the redbud, misted rosily,
  Dazzle the woodland glooms.

II

And I hear the song of the catbird wake
  I' the boughs o' the gnarled wild-crab,
Or there where the snows of the dogwood shake,
  That the silvery sunbeams stab:
And it seems to me that a magic lies
  In the crystal sweet of its notes,
That a myriad blossoms open their eyes
  As its strain above them floats.

III

I see the bluebell's blue unclose,
  And the trillium's stainless white;
The birdfoot-violet's purple and rose,
  And the poppy, golden-bright!
And I see the eyes of the bluet wink,
  And the heads of the white-hearts nod;
And the baby mouths of the woodland-pink
  And sorrel salute the sod.

IV

And this, meseems, does the catbird say,
  As the blossoms crowd i' the sun:--
"Up, up! and out! oh, out and away!
  Up, up! and out, each one!
Sweethearts! sweethearts! oh, sweet, sweet, sweet!
  Come listen and hark to me!
The Spring, the Spring, with her fragrant feet,
  Is passing this way!--Oh, hark to the beat
Of her beelike heart!--Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet!
  Come! open your eyes and see!
    See, see, see!"



A WOODLAND GRAVE

White moons may come, white moons may go--
She sleeps where early blossoms blow;
Knows nothing of the leafy June,
That leans above her night and noon,
Crowned now with sunbeam, now with moon,
  Watching her roses grow.

The downy moth at twilight comes
And flutters round their honeyed blooms:
Long, lazy clouds, like ivory,
That isle the blue lagoons of sky,
Redden to molten gold and dye
  With flame the pine-deep glooms.

Dew, dripping from wet fern and leaf;
The wind, that shakes the violet's sheaf;
The slender sound of water lone,
That makes a harp-string of some stone,
And now a wood bird's glimmering moan,
  Seem whisperings there of grief.

Her garden, where the lilacs grew,
Where, on old walls, old roses blew,
Head-heavy with their mellow musk,
Where, when the beetle's drone was husk,
She lingered in the dying dusk,
  No more shall know that knew.

Her orchard,--where the Spring and she
Stood listening to each bird and bee,--
That, from its fragrant firmament,
Snowed blossoms on her as she went,
(A blossom with their blossoms blent)
  No more her face shall see.

White moons may come, white moons may go--
She sleeps where early blossoms blow:
Around her headstone many a seed
Shall sow itself; and brier and weed
Shall grow to hide it from men's heed,
  And none will care or know.



SUNSET DREAMS

The moth and beetle wing about
  The garden ways of other days;
Above the hills, a fiery shout
Of gold, the day dies slowly out,
  Like some wild blast a huntsman blows:
  And o'er the hills my Fancy goes,
Following the sunset's golden call
Unto a vine-hung garden wall,
Where she awaits me in the gloom,
  Between the lily and the rose,
With arms and lips of warm perfume,
  The dream of Love my Fancy knows.

The glowworm and the firefly glow
  Among the ways of bygone days;
A golden shaft shot from a bow
Of silver, star and moon swing low
  Above the hills where twilight lies:
  And o'er the hills my Longing flies,
Following the star's far-arrowed gold,
Unto a gate where, as of old,
She waits amid the rose and rue,
  With star-bright hair and night-dark eyes,
The dream, to whom my heart is true,
  My dream of Love that never dies.



THE OLD BYWAY

Its rotting fence one scarcely sees
Through sumac and wild blackberries,
  Thick elder and the bramble-rose,
Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees
  Hang droning in repose.

The little lizards lie all day
Gray on its rocks of lichen-gray;
  And, insect-Ariels of the sun,
The butterflies make bright its way,
  Its path where chipmunks run.

A lyric there the redbird lifts,
While, twittering, the swallow drifts
  'Neath wandering clouds of sleepy cream,--
In which the wind makes azure rifts,--
  O'er dells where wood-doves dream.

The brown grasshoppers rasp and bound
Mid weeds and briers that hedge it round;
  And in its grass-grown ruts,--where stirs
The harmless snake,--mole-crickets sound
  Their faery dulcimers.

At evening, when the sad west turns
To lonely night a cheek that burns,
  The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing;
And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns
  The winds wake, whispering.



"BELOW THE SUNSET'S RANGE OF ROSE"

Below the sunset's range of rose,
Below the heaven's deepening blue,
Down woodways where the balsam blows,
And milkweed tufts hang, gray with dew,
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,
Where 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 gown as simple as her braid.

She sees fawn-colored backs among
The sumacs now; a tossing horn
Its clashing bell of copper rung:
Long shadows lean upon the corn,
And slow 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 flitting bats; the twilight slips,
In firefly spangles, twinkling by,
Through which _he_ comes: Their happy lips
Meet--and one star leaps in the sky.

He takes her bucket, and they speak
Of married hopes while in the grass
The plum drops glowing as her cheek;
The patient cows look back or pass:
And in the west one golden streak
Burns as if God gazed through a glass.



MUSIC OF SUMMER

I

Thou sit'st among the sunny silences
Of terraced hills and woodland galleries,
Thou utterance of all calm melodies,
Thou lutanist of Earth's most affluent lute,--
  Where no false note intrudes
To mar the silent music,--branch and root,--
Charming the fields ripe, orchards and deep woods,
  To song similitudes
  Of flower and seed and fruit.

II

Oft have I seen thee, in some sensuous air,
Bewitch the broad wheat-acres everywhere
To imitated gold of thy deep hair:
The peach, by thy red lips' delicious trouble,
  Blown into gradual dyes
Of crimson; and beheld thy magic double--
Dark-blue with fervid influence of thine eyes--
  The grapes' rotundities,
  Bubble by purple bubble.

III

Deliberate uttered into life intense,
Out of thy soul's melodious eloquence
Beauty evolves its just preeminence:
The lily, from some pensive-smitten chord
  Drawing significance
Of purity, a visible hush stands: starred
With splendor, from thy passionate utterance,
  The rose writes its romance
  In blushing word on word.

IV

As star by star Day harps in Evening,
The inspiration of all things that sing
Is in thy hands and from their touch takes wing:
All brooks, all birds,--whom song can never sate,--
  The leaves, the wind and rain,
Green frogs and insects, singing soon and late,
Thy sympathies inspire, thy heart's refrain,
  Whose sounds invigorate
  With rest life's weary brain.

V

And as the Night, like some mysterious rune,
Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon,
Thou lutest us no immaterial tune:
But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn,
  By thy still strain made strong,
Earth's awful avatar,--in whom is born
Thy own deep music,--labors all night long
  With growth, assuring Morn
  Assumes with onward song.



MIDSUMMER

I

The mellow smell of hollyhocks
And marigolds and pinks and phlox
Blends with the homely garden scents
Of onions, silvering into rods;
Of peppers, scarlet with their pods;
And (rose of all the esculents)
Of broad plebeian cabbages,
Breathing content and corpulent ease.

II

The buzz of wasp and fly makes hot
The spaces of the garden-plot;
And from the orchard,--where the fruit
Ripens and rounds, or, loosed with heat,
Rolls, hornet-clung, before the feet,--
One hears the veery's golden flute,
That mixes with the sleepy hum
Of bees that drowsily go and come.

III

The podded musk of gourd and vine
Embower a gate of roughest pine,
That leads into a wood where day
Sits, leaning o'er a forest pool,
Watching the lilies opening cool,
And dragonflies at airy play,
While, dim and near, the quietness
Rustles and stirs her leafy dress.

IV

Far-off a cowbell clangs awake
The noon who slumbers in the brake:
And now a pewee, plaintively,
Whistles the day to sleep again:
A rain-crow croaks a rune for rain,
And from the ripest apple tree
A great gold apple thuds, where, slow,
The red cock curves his neck to crow.

V

Hens cluck their broods from place to place,
While clinking home, with chain and trace,
The cart-horse plods along the road
Where afternoon sits with his dreams:
Hot fragrance of hay-making streams
Above him, and a high-heaped load
Goes creaking by and with it, sweet,
The aromatic soul of heat.

VI

"Coo-ee! coo-ee!" the evenfall
Cries, and the hills repeat the call:
"Coo-ee! coo-ee!" and by the log
Labor unharnesses his plow,
While to the barn comes cow on cow:
"Coo-ee! coo-ee!"--and, with his dog,
Barefooted boyhood down the lane
"Coo-ees" the cattle home again.



THE RAIN-CROW

I

Can freckled August,--drowsing warm and blond
  Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead,
In her hot hair the yellow daisies wound,--
  O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed
  To thee? when no plumed weed, no feathered seed
Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond,
  That gleams like flint within its rim of grasses,
  Through which the dragonfly forever passes
    Like splintered diamond.

II

Drouth weights the trees; and from the farmhouse eaves
  The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,
Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves
  Limp with the heat--a league of rutty way--
  Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay
Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves--
  Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain,
  In thirsty meadow or on burning plain,
    That thy keen eye perceives?

III

But thou art right. Thou prophesiest true.
  For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting,
When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue,
  Great water-carrier winds their buckets bring
  Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring
And flash and rumble! lavishing large dew
  On corn and forest land, that, streaming wet,
  Their hilly backs against the downpour set,
    Like giants, loom in view.

IV

The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower,
  Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art;
The bumblebee, within the last half-hour,
  Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart;
  While in the barnyard, under shed and cart,
Brood-hens have housed.--But I, who scorned thy power,
  Barometer of birds,--like August there,--
  Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair,
    Like some drenched truant, cower.



FIELD AND FOREST CALL

I

There is a field, that leans upon two hills,
Foamed o'er of flowers and twinkling with clear rills;
That in its girdle of wild acres bears
The anodyne of rest that cures all cares;
Wherein soft wind and sun and sound are blent
With fragrance--as in some old instrument
Sweet chords;--calm things, that Nature's magic spell
Distills from Heaven's azure crucible,
And pours on Earth to make the sick mind well.
  There lies the path, they say--
  Come away! come away!

II

There is a forest, lying 'twixt two streams,
Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams;
That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf
Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief;
Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things,
Vague, whispering' touches, gleams and twitterings,
Dews and cool shadows--that the mystic soul
Of Nature permeates with suave control,
And waves o'er Earth to make the sad heart whole.
  There lies the road, they say--
  Come away! come away!



OLD HOMES

Old homes among the hills! I love their gardens;
Their old rock fences, that our day inherits;
Their doors, round which the great trees stand like wardens;
Their paths, down which the shadows march like spirits;
Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens.

I see them gray among their ancient acres,
Severe of front, their gables lichen-sprinkled,--
Like gentle-hearted, solitary Quakers,
Grave and religious, with kind faces wrinkled,--
Serene among their memory-hallowed acres.

Their gardens, banked with roses and with lilies--
Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers--
Where Springtime mints her gold in daffodillies,
And Autumn coins her marigolds in showers,
And all the hours are toilless as the lilies.

I love their orchards where the gay woodpecker
Flits, flashing o'er you, like a winged jewel;
Their woods, whose floors of moss the squirrels checker
With half-hulled nuts; and where, in cool renewal,
The wild brooks laugh, and raps the red woodpecker.

Old homes! old hearts! Upon my soul forever
Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter;
Like love they touch me, through the years that sever,
With simple faith; like friendship, draw me after
The dreamy patience that is theirs forever.



THE FOREST WAY

I

I climbed a forest path and found
A dim cave in the dripping ground,
Where dwelt the spirit of cool sound,
Who wrought with crystal triangles,
And hollowed foam of rippled bells,
A music of mysterious spells.

II

Where Sleep her bubble-jewels spilled
Of dreams; and Silence twilight-filled
Her emerald buckets, star-instilled,
With liquid whispers of lost springs,
And mossy tread of woodland things,
And drip of dew that greenly clings.

III

Here by those servitors of Sound,
Warders of that enchanted ground,
My soul and sense were seized and bound,
And, in a dungeon deep of trees
Entranced, were laid at lazy ease,
The charge of woodland mysteries.

IV

The minions of Prince Drowsihead,
The wood-perfumes, with sleepy tread,
Tiptoed around my ferny bed:
And far away I heard report
Of one who dimly rode to Court,
The Faery Princess, Eve-Amort.

V

Her herald winds sang as they passed;
And there her beauty stood at last,
With wild gold locks, a band held fast,
Above blue eyes, as clear as spar;
While from a curved and azure jar
She poured the white moon and a star.



SUNSET AND STORM

Deep with divine tautology,
The sunset's mighty mystery
Again has traced the scroll-like west
With hieroglyphs of burning gold:
Forever new, forever old,
Its miracle is manifest.

Time lays the scroll away. And now
Above the hills a giant brow
Of cloud Night lifts; and from his arm,
Barbaric black, upon the world,
With thunder, wind and fire, is hurled
His awful argument of storm.

What part, O man, is yours in such?
Whose awe and wonder are in touch
With Nature,--speaking rapture to
Your soul,--yet leaving in your reach
No human word of thought or speech
Commensurate with the thing you view.



QUIET LANES

From the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another"

Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses round brown temples, she
Fulfills 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.--
Deepening with tenderness,
Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
The lonesome west; sadder the song
Of the wild redbird in the leafage yellow.--
Deeper and dreamier, aye!
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 purses thrust,
Plump 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 woodland dark 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
Gay in the crescent of the blade of death,--
Spaced innocents whom he prepares to reap,--
Staying his scythe 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
With flame the sunlight. And, as sparkles creep
Through charring vellum, up that window's screen
The cypress dots with crimson all its green,
The haunt of many bees.
Cascading dark old porch-built lattices,
The nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood
Hanging in clusters 'mid the blue monk's-hood.

There is a garden old,
Where bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold
Their formal flowers; where the marigold
Lifts a pinched shred of orange sunset caught
And elfed in petals; the nasturtium,
Deep, pungent-leaved and acrid of perfume,
Hangs up a goblin bonnet, pixy-brought
From Gnomeland. There, predominant red,
And arrogant, the dahlia lifts its head,
Beside the balsam's rose-stained horns of honey,
Lost 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 shall 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, among these 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 murmurs rocks,
I might behold her,--white
And weary,--Summer, 'mid her flowers asleep,
Her drowsy flowers asleep,
The withered poppies knotted in her locks.



ONE WHO LOVED NATURE

I

He was not learned in any art;
But Nature led him by the hand;
And spoke her language to his heart
So he could hear and understand:
He loved her simply as a child;
And in his love forgot the heat
Of conflict, and sat reconciled
In patience of defeat.

II

Before me now I see him rise--
A face, that seventy years had snowed
With winter, where the kind blue eyes
Like hospitable fires glowed:
A small gray man whose heart was large,
And big with knowledge learned of need;
A heart, the hard world made its targe,
That never ceased to bleed.

III

He knew all Nature. Yea, he knew
What virtue lay within each flower,
What tonic in the dawn and dew,
And in each root what magic power:
What in the wild witch-hazel tree
Reversed its time of blossoming,
And clothed its branches goldenly
In fall instead of spring.

IV

He knew what made the firefly glow
And pulse with crystal gold and flame;
And whence the bloodroot got its snow,
And how the bramble's perfume came:
He understood the water's word
And grasshopper's and cricket's chirr;
And of the music of each bird
He was interpreter.

V

He kept no calendar of days,
But knew the seasons by the flowers;
And he could tell you by the rays
Of sun or stars the very hours.
He probed the inner mysteries
Of light, and knew the chemic change
That colors flowers, and what is
Their fragrance wild and strange.

VI

If some old oak had power of speech,
It could not speak more wildwood lore,
Nor in experience further reach,
Than he who was a tree at core.
Nature was all his heritage,
And seemed to fill his every need;
Her features were his book, whose page
He never tired to read.

VII

He read her secrets that no man
Has ever read and never will,
And put to scorn the charlatan
Who botanizes of her still.
He kept his knowledge sweet and clean,
And questioned not of why and what;
And never drew a line between
What's known and what is not.

VIII

He was most gentle, good, and wise;
A simpler heart earth never saw:
His soul looked softly from his eyes,
And in his speech were love and awe.

Yet Nature in the end denied
The thing he had not asked for--fame!
Unknown, in poverty he died,
And men forget his name.



GARDEN GOSSIP

Thin, chisel-fine a cricket chipped
  The crystal silence into sound;
And where the branches dreamed and dripped
A grasshopper its dagger stripped
  And on the humming darkness ground.

A bat, against the gibbous moon,
  Danced, implike, with its lone delight;
The glowworm scrawled a golden rune
Upon the dark; and, emerald-strewn,
  The firefly hung with lamps the night.

The flowers said their beads in prayer,
  Dew-syllables of sighed perfume;
Or talked of two, soft-standing there,
One like a gladiole, straight and fair,
  And one like some rich poppy-bloom.

The mignonette and feverfew
  Laid their pale brows together:--"See!"
One whispered: "Did their step thrill through
Your roots?"--"Like rain."--"I touched the two
  And a new bud was born in me."

One rose said to another:--"Whose
  Is this dim music? song, that parts
My crimson petals like the dews?"
"My blossom trembles with sweet news--
  It is the love of two young hearts."



ASSUMPTION

I

A mile of moonlight and the whispering wood:
  A mile of shadow and the odorous lane:
One large, white star above the solitude,
  Like one sweet wish: and, laughter after pain,
  Wild-roses wistful in a web of rain.

II

No star, no rose, to lesson him and lead;
  No woodsman compass of the skies and rocks,--
Tattooed of stars and lichens,--doth love need
  To guide him where, among the hollyhocks,
  A blur of moonlight, gleam his sweetheart's locks.

III

We name it beauty--that permitted part,
  The love-elected apotheosis
Of Nature, which the god within the heart,
  Just touching, makes immortal, but by this--
  A star, a rose, the memory of a kiss.



SENORITA

An agate-black, your roguish eyes
Claim no proud lineage of the skies,
No starry blue; but of good earth
The reckless witchery and mirth.

Looped in your raven hair's repose,
A hot aroma, one red rose
Dies; envious of that loveliness,
By being near which its is less.

Twin sea shells, hung with pearls, your ears,
Whose slender rosiness appears
Part of the pearls; whose pallid fire
Binds the attention these inspire.

One slim hand crumples up the lace
About your bosom's swelling grace;
A ruby at your samite throat
Lends the required color note.

The moon bears through the violet night
A pearly urn of chaliced light;
And from your dark-railed balcony
You stoop and wave your fan at me.

O'er orange orchards and the rose
Vague, odorous lips the south wind blows,
Peopling the night with whispers of
Romance and palely passionate love.

The heaven of your balcony
Smiles down two stars, that say to me
More peril than Angelica
Wrought with her beauty in Cathay.

Oh, stoop to me! and, speaking, reach
My soul like song that learned sweet speech
From some dim instrument--who knows?--
Or flower, a dulcimer or rose.



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, slimly 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 when the bee
    Creeps in and drawls.

And butterflies--each with a face
  Of faery 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 wanton 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 eglantine, that heaps
  A rose-strewn shadow.--Naive-eyed,
With lips as suave as they, she sleeps;
  The romance by her, open wide,
    O'er which she weeps.



PROBLEMS

Man's are the learnings of his books--
  What is all knowledge that he knows
Beside the wit of winding brooks,
  The wisdom of the summer rose!

How soil distills the scent in flowers
  Baffles his science: heaven-dyed,
How, from the palette of His hours,
  God gives them colors, hath defied.

What dream of heaven begets the light?
  Or, ere the stars beat burning tunes,
Stains all the hollow edge of night
  With glory as of molten moons?

Who is it answers what is birth
  Or death, that nothing may retard?
Or what is love, that seems of Earth,
  Yet wears God's own divine regard?



TO A WINDFLOWER

I

Teach me the secret of thy loveliness,
  That, being made wise, I may aspire to be
As beautiful in thought, and so express
  Immortal truths to Earth's mortality;
Though to my soul ability be less
  Than 'tis to thee, O sweet anemone.

II

Teach me the secret of thy innocence,
  That in simplicity I may grow wise;
Asking of Art no other recompense
  Than the approval of her own just eyes;
So may I rise to some fair eminence,
  Though less than thine, O cousin of the skies.

III

Teach me these things; through whose high knowledge, I,--
  When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins,
And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie
  In that vast house, common to serfs and thanes,--
I shall not die, I shall not utterly die,
  For beauty born of beauty--_that_ remains.



VOYAGERS

Where are they, that song and tale
  Tell of? lands our childhood knew?
Sea-locked Faerylands that trail
  Morning summits, dim with dew,
Crimson o'er a crimson sail.

Where in dreams we entered on
  Wonders eyes have never seen:
Whither often we have gone,
  Sailing a dream-brigantine
On from voyaging dawn to dawn.

Leons seeking lands of song;
  Fabled fountains pouring spray;
Where our anchors dropped among
  Corals of some tropic bay,
With its swarthy native throng.

Shoulder ax and arquebus!--
  We may find it!--past yon range
Of sierras, vaporous,
  Rich with gold and wild and strange
That lost region dear to us.

Yet, behold, although our zeal
  Darien summits may subdue,
Our Balboa eyes reveal
  But a vaster sea come to--
New endeavor for our keel.

Yet! who sails with face set hard
  Westward,--while behind him lies
Unfaith,--where his dreams keep guard
  Round it, in the sunset skies,
He may reach it--afterward.



THE SPELL

_"We have the receipt of fern seed: we walk invisible."_
--HENRY IV

And we have met but twice or 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.

St. John hath told me what to do:
  To search and find the ferns that grow
  The fern seed that the faeries know;
Then 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 shall 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.

And when at home you read or knit,--
  Who'll know it was my hands that blotted
  The page?--or all your needles knotted?
When in your rage you cry a bit:
  And loud I laugh at it, my love,
  And loud I laugh at it.

The secrets that you say in prayer
  Right so I'll hear: and, when you sing,
  The name you speak; and whispering
I'll bend and kiss your mouth and hair,
  And tell you I am there, my dear,
  And tell you I am there.

Would it were true what people say!--
  Would I _could_ find that elfin seed!
  Then should I win your love, indeed,
By being near you night and day--
  There is no other way, my love,
  There is no other way.

Meantime the truth in this is said:
  It is my soul that follows you;
  It needs no fern seed in the shoe,--
While in the heart love pulses red,
  To win you and to wed, my dear,
  To win you and to wed.



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, gnarled; 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, haglike 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 sighed with weariness for 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
My love will come to comfort me.



IN THE WOOD

The waterfall, deep in the wood,
Talked drowsily with solitude,
A soft, insistent sound of foam,
That filled with sleep the forest's dome,
Where, like some dream of dusk, she stood
Accentuating solitude.

The crickets' tinkling chips of sound
Strewed dim the twilight-twinkling ground;
A whippoorwill began to cry,
And glimmering through the sober sky
A bat went on its drunken round,
Its shadow following on the ground.

Then from a bush, an elder-copse,
That spiced the dark with musky tops,
What seemed, at first, a shadow came
And took her hand and spoke her name,
And kissed her where, in starry drops,
The dew orbed on the elder-tops.

The glaucous glow of fireflies
Flickered the dusk; and foxlike eyes
Peered from the shadows; and the hush
Murmured a word of wind and rush
Of fluttering waters, fragrant sighs,
And dreams unseen of mortal eyes.

The beetle flung its burr of sound
Against the hush and clung there, wound
In night's deep mane: then, in a tree,
A grig began deliberately
To file the stillness: all around
A wire of shrillness seemed unwound.

I looked for those two lovers there;
His ardent eyes, her passionate hair.
The moon looked down, slow-climbing wan
Heaven's slope of azure: they were gone:
But where they'd passed I heard the air
Sigh, faint with sweetness of her hair.



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 tunneling 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 one white
Low bough of blossoms--grown almost
Where, ere you died, 'twas our delight
To meet,--dear heart!--I thought your ghost....
The wood is haunted since that night.



DUSK IN THE WOODS

Three miles of trees it is: and I
Came through the woods that waited, dumb,
For the cool summer dusk to come;
And lingered there to watch the sky
Up which the gradual splendor clomb.

A tree-toad quavered in a tree;
And then a sudden whippoorwill
Called overhead, so wildly shrill
The sleeping wood, it seemed to me,
Cried out and then again was still.

Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight
An owl took; and, at drowsy strife,
The cricket tuned its faery fife;
And like a ghost-flower, silent white,
The wood-moth glimmered into life.

And in the dead wood everywhere
The insects ticked, or bored below
The rotted bark; and, glow on glow,
The lambent fireflies here and there
Lit up their jack-o'-lantern show.

I heard a vesper-sparrow sing,
Withdrawn, it seemed, into the far
Slow sunset's tranquil cinnabar;
The crimson, softly smoldering
Behind the trees, with its one star.

A dog barked: and down ways that gleamed,
Through dew and clover, faint the noise
Of cowbells moved. And then a voice,
That sang a-milking, so it seemed,
Made glad my heart as some glad boy's.

And then the lane: and, full in view,
A farmhouse with its rose-grown gate,
And honeysuckle paths, await
For night, the moon, and love and you--
These are the things that made me late.



PATHS

I

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?--
The path that takes me in the spring
Past quince-trees where the bluebirds sing,
And peonies are blossoming,
Unto a porch, wistaria-hung,
Around whose steps May-lilies blow,
A fair girl reaches down among,
Her arm more white than their sweet snow.

II

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?--
Another path that leads me, when
The summer time is here again,
Past hollyhocks that shame the west
When the red sun has sunk to rest;
To roses bowering a nest,
A lattice, 'neath which mignonette
And deep geraniums surge and sough,
Where, in the twilight, starless yet,
A fair girl's eyes are stars enough.

III

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?--
A path that takes me, when the days
Of autumn wrap the hills in haze,
Beneath the pippin-pelting tree,
'Mid flitting butterfly and bee;
Unto a door where, fiery,
The creeper climbs; and, garnet-hued,
The cock's-comb and the dahlia flare,
And in the door, where shades intrude,
Gleams bright a fair girl's sunbeam hair.

IV

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?--
A path that brings me through the frost
Of winter, when the moon is tossed
In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak
With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak
With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak
The tattered ice, whereunder is
A fire-flickering window-space;
And in the light, with lips to kiss,
A fair girl's welcome-smiling face.



THE QUEST

I

First I asked the honeybee,
  Busy in the balmy bowers;
Saying, "Sweetheart, tell it me:
Have you seen her, honeybee?
  She is cousin to the flowers--
All the sweetness of the south
In her wild-rose face and mouth."
  But the bee passed silently.

II

Then I asked the forest bird,
  Warbling by the woodland waters;
Saying, "Dearest, have you heard?
Have you heard her, forest bird?
  She is one of music's daughters--
Never song so sweet by half
As the music of her laugh."
  But the bird said not a word.

III

Next I asked the evening sky,
  Hanging out its lamps of fire;
Saying, "Loved one, passed she by?
Tell me, tell me, evening sky!
  She, the star of my desire--
Sister whom the Pleiads lost,
And my soul's high pentecost."
  But the sky made no reply.

IV

Where is she? ah, where is she?
  She to whom both love and duty
Bind me, yea, immortally.--
Where is she? ah, where is she?
  Symbol of the Earth-Soul's beauty.
I have lost her. Help my heart
Find her! her, who is a part
  Of the pagan soul of me.



THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

Not while I live may I forget
That garden which my spirit trod!
Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,
And beautiful as God.

Not while I breathe, awake, adream,
Shall live again for me those hours,
When, in its mystery and gleam,
I met her 'mid the flowers.

Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,
Beneath mesmeric lashes, where
The sorceries of love and hope
Had made a shining lair.

And daydawn brows, whereover hung
The twilight of dark locks: wild birds,
Her lips, that spoke the rose's tongue
Of fragrance-voweled words.

I will not tell of cheeks and chin,
That held me as sweet language holds;
Nor of the eloquence within
Her breasts' twin-mooned molds.

Nor of her body's languorous
Wind-grace, that glanced like starlight through
Her clinging robe's diaphanous
Web of the mist and dew.

There is no star so pure and high
As was her look; no fragrance such
As her soft presence; and no sigh
Of music like her touch.

Not while I live may I forget
That garden of dim dreams, where I
And Beauty born of Music met,
Whose spirit passed me by.



THE PATH TO FAERY

I

When dusk falls cool as a rained-on rose,
And a tawny tower the twilight shows,
With the crescent moon, the silver moon, the curved
    new moon in a space that glows,
A turret window that grows alight;
There is a path that my Fancy knows,
A glimmering, shimmering path of night,
That far as the Land of Faery goes.

II

And I follow the path, as Fancy leads,
Over the mountains, into the meads,
Where the firefly cities, the glowworm cities, the faery
    cities are strung like beads,
Each city a twinkling star:
And I live a life of valorous deeds,
And march with the Faery King to war,
And ride with his knights on milk-white steeds.

III

Or it's there in the whirl of their life I sit,
Or dance in their houses with starlight lit,
Their blossom houses, their flower houses, their elfin
   houses, of fern leaves knit,
With fronded spires and domes:
And there it is that my lost dreams flit,
And the ghost of my childhood, smiling, roams
With the faery children so dear to it.

IV

And it's there I hear that they all come true,
The faery stories, whatever they do--
Elf and goblin, dear elf and goblin, loved elf and goblin,
    and all the crew
Of witch and wizard and gnome and fay,
And prince and princess, that wander through
The storybooks we have put away,
The faerytales that we loved and knew.

V

The face of Adventure lures you there,
And the eyes of Danger bid you dare,
While ever the bugles, the silver bugles, the far-off
    bugles of Elfland blare,
The faery trumpets to battle blow;
And you feel their thrill in your heart and hair,
And you fain would follow and mount and go
And march with the Faeries anywhere.

VI

And she--she rides at your side again,
Your little sweetheart whose age is ten:
She is the princess, the faery princess, the princess fair
    that you worshiped when
You were a prince in a faerytale;
And you do great deeds as you did them then,
With your magic spear, and enchanted mail,
Braving the dragon in his den.

VII

And you ask again,--"Oh, where shall we ride,
Now that the monster is slain, my bride?"--
"Back to the cities, the firefly cities, the glowworm
    cities where we can hide,
The beautiful cities of Faeryland.
And the light of my eyes shall be your guide,
The light of my eyes and my snow-white hand--
And there forever we two will abide."



THERE ARE FAERIES

I

There are faeries, bright of eye,
  Who the wildflowers' warders are:
Ouphes, that chase the firefly;
  Elves, that ride the shooting-star:
Fays, who in a cobweb lie,
  Swinging on a moonbeam bar;
Or who harness bumblebees,
Grumbling on the clover leas,
To a blossom or a breeze--
  That's their faery car.
If you care, you too may see
There are faeries.--Verily,
  There are faeries.

II

There are faeries. I could swear
I have seen them busy, where
Roses loose their scented hair,
  In the moonlight weaving, weaving,

Out of starlight and the dew,
Glinting gown and shimmering shoe;
Or, within a glowworm lair,
  From the dark earth slowly heaving
Mushrooms whiter than the moon,
On whose tops they sit and croon,
With their grig-like mandolins,
To fair faery ladykins,
Leaning from the windowsill
Of a rose or daffodil,
Listening to their serenade
All of cricket-music made.
Follow me, oh, follow me!
Ho! away to Faerie!
Where your eyes like mine may see
There are faeries.--Verily,
  There are faeries.

III

There are faeries. Elves that swing
In a wild and rainbow ring
Through the air; or mount the wing
Of a bat to courier news
To the faery King and Queen:
Fays, who stretch the gossamers
On which twilight hangs the dews;

Who, within the moonlight sheen,
Whisper dimly in the ears
Of the flowers words so sweet
That their hearts are turned to musk
And to honey; things that beat
In their veins of gold and blue:
Ouphes, that shepherd moths of dusk--
Soft of wing and gray of hue--
Forth to pasture on the dew.

IV

There are faeries; verily;
  Verily:
For the old owl in the tree,
  Hollow tree,
He who maketh melody
For them tripping merrily,
  Told it me.
There are faeries.--Verily,
  There are faeries.



THE SPIRIT OF THE FOREST SPRING

Over the rocks she trails her locks,
Her mossy locks that drip, drip, drip:
Her sparkling eyes smile at the skies
In friendship-wise and fellowship:
While the gleam and glance of her countenance
Lull into trance the woodland places,
As over the rocks she trails her locks,
Her dripping locks that the long fern graces.

She pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse,
Its crystal cruse that drips, drips, drips:
And all the day its limpid spray
Is heard to play from her finger tips:
And the slight, soft sound makes haunted ground
Of the woods around that the sunlight laces,
As she pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse,
Its dripping cruse that no man traces.

She swims and swims with glimmering limbs,
With lucid limbs that drip, drip, drip:
Where beechen boughs build a leafy house,
Where her eyes may drowse or her beauty trip:
And the liquid beat of her rippling feet
Makes three times sweet the forest mazes,
As she swims and swims with glimmering limbs,
With dripping limbs through the twilight hazes.

Then wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps,
She whispering sleeps and drips, drips, drips:
Where moon and mist wreathe neck and wrist,
And, starry-whist, through the dark she slips:
While the heavenly dream of her soul makes gleam
The falls that stream and the foam that races,
As wrapped in the deeps of the wild she sleeps,
She dripping sleeps or starward gazes.



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.



IN THE LANE

When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock,
  And the brown bee drones i' the rose;
And the west is a red-streaked four-o'clock,
  And summer is near its close--
It's oh, for the gate and the locust lane,
And dusk and dew and home again!

When the katydid sings and the cricket cries,
  And ghosts of the mists ascend;
And the evening star is a lamp i' the skies,
  And summer is near its end--
It's oh, for the fence and the leafy lane,
And the twilight peace and the tryst again!

When the owlet hoots in the dogwood tree,
  That leans to the rippling Run;
And the wind is a wildwood melody,
  And summer is almost done--
It's oh, for the bridge and the bramble lane,
And the fragrant hush and her hands again!

When fields smell sweet with the dewy hay,
  And woods are cool and wan,
And a path for dreams is the Milky Way,
  And summer is nearly gone--
It's oh, for the rock and the woodland lane,
And the silence and stars and her lips again!

When the weight of the apples breaks down the boughs,
  And muskmelons split with sweet;
And the moon is a light in Heaven's house,
  And summer has spent its heat--
It's oh, for the lane, the trysting lane,
The deep-mooned night and her love again!



THE WINDOW ON THE HILL

Among the fields the camomile
Seems blown mist in the lightning's glare:
Cool, rainy odors drench the air;
Night speaks above; the angry smile
Of storm within her stare.

The way that I shall take to-night
Is through the wood whose branches fill
The road with double darkness, till,
Between the boughs, a window's light
Shines out upon the hill.

The fence; and then the path that goes
Around a trailer-tangled rock,
Through puckered pink and hollyhock,
Unto a latch-gate's unkempt rose,
And door whereat I knock.

Bright on the oldtime flower place
The lamp streams through the foggy pane;
The door is opened to the rain:
And in the door--her happy face
And outstretched arms again.



THE PICTURE

Above her, pearl and rose the heavens lay:
Around her, flowers flattered earth with gold,
Or down the path in insolence held sway--
Like cavaliers who ride the king's highway--
Scarlet and buff, within a garden old.

Beyond the hills, faint-heard through belts of wood,
Bells, Sabbath-sweet, swooned from some far-off town:
Gamboge and gold, broad sunset colors strewed
The purple west as if, with God imbued,
Her mighty palette Nature there laid down.

Amid such flowers, underneath such skies,
Embodying all life knows of sweet and fair,
She stood; love's dreams in girlhood's face and eyes,
Fair as a star that comes to emphasize
The mingled beauty of the earth and air.

Behind her, seen through vines and orchard trees,
Gray with its twinkling windows--like the face
Of calm old age that sits and dreams at ease--
Porched with old roses, haunts of honeybees,
The homestead loomed within a lilied space.

For whom she waited in the afterglow,
Star-eyed and golden 'mid the poppy and rose,
I do not know; I do not care to know,--
It is enough I keep her picture so,
Hung up, like poetry, in my life's dull prose.

A fragrant picture, where I still may find
Her face untouched of sorrow or regret,
Unspoiled of contact; ever young and kind;
The spiritual sweetheart of my soul and mind,
She had not been, perhaps, if we had met.



MOLY

When by the wall the tiger-flower swings
  A head of sultry slumber and aroma;
And by the path, whereon the blown rose flings
  Its obsolete beauty, the long lilies foam a
White place of perfume, like a beautiful breast--
Between the pansy fire of the west,
And poppy mist of moonrise in the east,
  This heartache will have ceased.

The witchcraft of soft music and sweet sleep--
  Let it beguile the burthen from my spirit,
And white dreams reap me as strong reapers reap
  The ripened grain and full blown blossom near it;
Let me behold how gladness gives the whole
The transformed countenance of my own soul--
Between the sunset and the risen moon
  Let sorrow vanish soon.

And these things then shall keep me company:
  The elfins of the dew; the spirit of laughter
Who haunts the wind; the god of melody
  Who sings within the stream, that reaches after

The flow'rs that rock themselves to his caress:
These of themselves shall shape my happiness,
Whose visible presence I shall lean upon,
  Feeling that care is gone.

Forgetting how the cankered flower must die;
  The worm-pierced fruit fall, sicklied to its syrup;
How joy, begotten 'twixt a sigh and sigh,
Waits with one foot forever in the stirrup,--
Remembering how within the hollow lute
Soft music sleeps when music's voice is mute;
And in the heart, when all seems black despair,
  Hope sits, awaiting there.



POPPY AND MANDRAGORA

  Let us go far from here!
Here there is sadness in the early year:
Here sorrow waits where joy went laughing late:
The sicklied face of heaven hangs like hate
Above the woodland and the meadowland;
And Spring hath taken fire in her hand
Of frost and made a dead bloom of her face,
Which was a flower of marvel once and grace,
And sweet serenity and stainless glow.
  Delay not. Let us go.

  Let us go far away
Into the sunrise of a fairer May:
Where all the nights resign them to the moon,
And drug their souls with odor and soft tune,
And tell their dreams in starlight: where the hours
Teach immortality with fadeless flowers;
And all the day the bee weights down the bloom,
And all the night the moth shakes strange perfume,
Like music, from the flower-bells' affluence.
  Let us go far from hence.

  Why should we sit and weep,
And yearn with heavy eyelids still to sleep?
Forever hiding from our hearts the hate,--
Death within death,--life doth accumulate,
Like winter snows along the barren leas
And sterile hills, whereon no lover sees
The crocus limn the beautiful in flame;
Or hyacinth and jonquil write the name
Of Love in fire, for each passer-by.
  Why should we sit and sigh?

  We will not stay and long,
Here where our souls are wasting for a song;
Where no bird sings; and, dim beneath the stars,
No silvery water strikes melodious bars;
And in the rocks and forest-covered hills
No quick-tongued echo from her grotto fills
With eery syllables the solitude--
The vocal image of the voice that wooed--
She, of wild sounds the airy looking-glass.
  Our souls are tired, alas!

  What should we say to her?--
To Spring, who in our hearts makes no sweet stir:
Who looks not on us nor gives thought unto:
Too busy with the birth of flowers and dew,
And vague gold wings within the chrysalis;
Or Love, who will not miss us; had no kiss
To give your soul or the sad soul of me,
Who bound our hearts to her in poesy,
Long since, and wear her badge of service still.--
  Have we not served our fill?

  We will go far away.
Song will not care, who slays our souls each day
With the dark daggers of denying eyes,
And lips of silence! ... Had she sighed us lies,
Not passionate, yet falsely tremulous,
And lent her mouth to ours in mockery; thus
Smiled from calm eyes as if appreciative;
Then, then our love had taught itself to live
Feeding itself on hope, and recompense.
  But no!--So let us hence.

  So be the Bible shut
Of all her Beauty, and her wisdom but
A clasp for memory! We will not seek
The light that came not when the soul was weak
With longing, and the darkness gave no sign
Of star-born comfort. Nay! why kneel and whine
Sad psalms of patience and hosannas of
Old hope and dreary canticles of love?--
Let us depart, since, as we long supposed,
  For us God's book was closed.



A ROAD SONG

It's--Oh, for the hills, where the wind's some one
With a vagabond foot that follows!
And a cheer-up hand that he claps upon
Your arm with the hearty words, "Come on!
We'll soon be out of the hollows,
  My heart!
We'll soon be out of the hollows."

It's--Oh, for the songs, where the hope's some one
With a renegade foot that doubles!
And a jolly lilt that he flings to the sun
As he turns with the friendly laugh, "Come on!
We'll soon be out of the troubles,
  My heart!
We'll soon be out of the troubles!"



PHANTOMS

This was her home; one mossy gable thrust
  Above the cedars and the locust trees:
This was her home, whose beauty now is dust,
  A lonely memory for melodies
  The wild birds sing, the wild birds and the bees.

Here every evening is a prayer: no boast
  Or ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth;
Here, through the twilight, like a pale flower's ghost,
  A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth;
  And dusk spreads darkness like a dewy cloth.

In vagabond velvet, on the placid day,
  A stain of crimson, lolls the butterfly;
The south wind sows with ripple and with ray
  The pleasant waters; and the gentle sky
  Looks on the homestead like a quiet eye.

Their melancholy quaver, lone and low,
  When day is done, the gray tree-toads repeat:
The whippoorwills, far in the afterglow,
  Complain to silence: and the lightnings beat,
  In one still cloud, glimmers of golden heat.

He comes not yet: not till the dusk is dead,
  And all the western glow is far withdrawn;
Not till,--a sleepy mouth love's kiss makes red,--
  The baby bud opes in a rosy yawn,
  Breathing sweet guesses at the dreamed-of dawn.

When in the shadows, like a rain of gold,
  The fireflies stream steadily; and bright
Along the moss the glowworm, as of old,
  A crawling sparkle--like a crooked light
  In smoldering vellum--scrawls a square of night,--

Then will he come; and she will lean to him,--
  She,--the sweet phantom,--memory of that place,--
Between the starlight and his eyes; so dim
  With suave control and soul-compelling grace,
  He cannot help but speak her, face to face.



INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL

I

The hills are full of prophecies
And ancient voices of the dead;
Of hidden shapes that no man sees,
Pale, visionary presences,
That speak the things no tongue hath said,
No mind hath thought, no eye hath read.

The streams are full of oracles,
And momentary whisperings;
An immaterial beauty swells
Its breezy silver o'er the shells
With wordless speech that sings and sings
The message of diviner things.

No indeterminable thought is theirs,
The stars', the sunsets' and the flowers';
Whose inexpressible speech declares
Th' immortal Beautiful, who shares
This mortal riddle which is ours,
Beyond the forward-flying hours.

II

It holds and beckons in the streams;
It lures and touches us in all
The flowers of the golden fall--
The mystic essence of our dreams:
A nymph blows bubbling music where
Faint water ripples down the rocks;
A faun goes dancing hoiden locks,
And piping a Pandean air,
Through trees the instant wind shakes bare.

Our dreams are never otherwise
Than real when they hold us so;
We in some future life shall know
Them parts of it and recognize
Them as ideal substance, whence
The actual is--(as flowers and trees,
From color sources no one sees,
Draw dyes, the substance of a sense)--
Material with intelligence.

III

What intimations made them wise,
The mournful pine, the pleasant beech?
What strange and esoteric speech?--
(Communicated from the skies
In runic whispers)--that invokes
The boles that sleep within the seeds,
And out of narrow darkness leads
The vast assemblies of the oaks.

Within his knowledge, what one reads
The poems written by the flowers?
The sermons, past all speech of ours,
Preached by the gospel of the weeds?--
O eloquence of coloring!
O thoughts of syllabled perfume!
O beauty uttered into bloom!
Teach me your language! let me sing!

IV

Along my mind flies suddenly
A wildwood thought that will not die;
That makes me brother to the bee,
And cousin to the butterfly:
A thought, such as gives perfume to
The blushes of the bramble-rose,
And, fixed in quivering crystal, glows
A captive in the prismed dew.

It leads the feet no certain way;
No frequent path of human feet:
Its wild eyes follow me all day;
All day I hear its wild heart beat:
And in the night it sings and sighs
The songs the winds and waters love;
Its wild heart lying tranced above,
And tranced the wildness of its eyes.

V

Oh, joy, to walk the way that goes
Through woods of sweet-gum and of beech!
Where, like a ruby left in reach,
The berry of the dogwood glows:
Or where the bristling hillsides mass,
'Twixt belts of tawny sassafras,
Brown shocks of corn in wigwam rows!

Where, in the hazy morning, runs
The stony branch that pools and drips,
The red-haws and the wild-rose hips
Are strewn like pebbles; and the sun's
Own gold seems captured by the weeds;
To see, through scintillating seeds,
The hunters steal with glimmering guns!

Oh, joy, to go the path which lies
Through woodlands where the trees are tall!
Beneath the misty moon of fall,
Whose ghostly girdle prophesies
A morn wind-swept and gray with rain;
When, o'er the lonely, leaf-blown lane,
The night-hawk like a dead leaf flies!

To stand within the dewy ring
Where pale death smites the boneset blooms,
And everlasting's flowers, and plumes
Of mint, with aromatic wing!
And hear the creek,--whose sobbing seems
A wild-man murmuring in his dreams,--
And insect violins that sing.

Or where the dim persimmon tree
Rains on the path its frosty fruit,
And in the oak the owl doth hoot,
Beneath the moon and mist, to see
The outcast Year go,--Hagar-wise,--
With far-off, melancholy eyes,
And lips that sigh for sympathy.

VI

Towards evening, where the sweet-gum flung
Its thorny balls among the weeds,
And where the milkweed's sleepy seeds,--
A faery Feast of Lanterns,--swung;
The cricket tuned a plaintive lyre,
And o'er the hills the sunset hung
A purple parchment scrawled with fire.

From silver-blue to amethyst
The shadows deepened in the vale;
And belt by belt the pearly-pale
Aladdin fabric of the mist
Built up its exhalation far;
A jewel on an Afrit's wrist,
One star gemmed sunset's cinnabar.

Then night drew near, as when, alone,
The heart and soul grow intimate;
And on the hills the twilight sate
With shadows, whose wild robes were sown
With dreams and whispers;--dreams, that led
The heart once with love's monotone,
And memories of the living-dead.

VII

All night the rain-gusts shook the leaves
Around my window; and the blast
Rumbled the flickering flue, and fast
The storm streamed from the dripping eaves.
As if--'neath skies gone mad with fear--
The witches' Sabboth galloped past,
The forests leapt like startled deer.

All night I heard the sweeping sleet;
And when the morning came, as slow
As wan affliction, with the woe
Of all the world dragged at her feet,
No spear of purple shattered through
The dark gray of the east; no bow
Of gold shot arrows swift and blue.

But rain, that whipped the windows; filled
The spouts with rushings; and around
The garden stamped, and sowed the ground
With limbs and leaves; the wood-pool filled
With overgurgling.--Bleak and cold
The fields looked, where the footpath wound
Through teasel and bur-marigold.

Yet there's a kindness in such days
Of gloom, that doth console regret
With sympathy of tears, which wet
Old eyes that watch the back-log blaze.--
A kindness, alien to the deep
Glad blue of sunny days that let
No thought in of the lives that weep.

VIII

This dawn, through which the Autumn glowers,--
As might a face within our sleep,
With stone-gray eyes that weep and weep,
And wet brows bound with sodden flowers,--
Is sunset to some sister land;
A land of ruins and of palms;
Rich sunset, crimson with long calms,--
Whose burning belt low mountains bar,--
That sees some brown Rebecca stand
Beside a well the camel-band
Winds down to 'neath the evening star.

O sunset, sister to this dawn!
O dawn, whose face is turned away!
Who gazest not upon this day,
But back upon the day that's gone!
Enamored so of loveliness,
The retrospect of what thou wast,
Oh, to thyself the present trust!
And as thy past be beautiful
With hues, that never can grow less!
Waiting thy pleasure to express
New beauty lest the world grow dull.

IX

Down in the woods a sorcerer,
Out of rank rain and death, distills,--
Through chill alembics of the air,--
Aromas that brood everywhere
Among the whisper-haunted hills:
The bitter myrrh of dead leaves fills
Wet valleys (where the gaunt weeds bleach)
With rainy scents of wood-decay;--
As if a spirit all the day
Sat breathing softly 'neath the beech.

With other eyes I see her flit,
The wood-witch of the wild perfumes,
Among her elfin owls,--that sit,
A drowsy white, in crescent-lit
Dim glens of opalescent glooms:--
Where, for her magic, buds and blooms
Mysterious perfumes, while she stands,
A thornlike shadow, summoning
The sleepy odors, that take wing
Like bubbles from her dewy hands.

X

Among the woods they call to me--
The lights that haunt the wood and stream;
Voices of such white ecstasy
As moves with hushed lips through a dream:
They stand in auraed radiances,
Or flash with nimbused limbs across
Their golden shadows on the moss,
Or slip in silver through the trees.

What love can give the heart in me
More hope and exaltation than
The hand of light that tips the tree
And beckons far from marts of man?
That reaches foamy fingers through
The broken ripple, and replies
With sparkling speech of lips and eyes
To souls who seek and still pursue.

XI

Give me the streams, that counterfeit
The twilight of autumnal skies;
The shadowy, silent waters, lit
With fire like a woman's eyes!
Slow waters that, in autumn, glass
The scarlet-strewn and golden grass,
And drink the sunset's tawny dyes.

Give me the pools, that lie among
The centuried forests! give me those,
Deep, dim, and sad as darkness hung
Beneath the sunset's somber rose:
Still pools, in whose vague mirrors look--
Like ragged gypsies round a book
Of magic--trees in wild repose.

No quiet thing, or innocent,
Of water, earth, or air shall please
My soul now: but the violent
Between the sunset and the trees:
The fierce, the splendid, and intense,
That love matures in innocence,
Like mighty music, give me these!

XII

When thorn-tree copses still were bare
And black along the turbid brook;
When catkined willows blurred and shook
Great tawny tangles in the air;
In bottomlands, the first thaw makes
An oozy bog, beneath the trees,
Prophetic of the spring that wakes,
Sang the sonorous hylodes.

Now that wild winds have stripped the thorn,
And clogged with leaves the forest-creek;
Now that the woods look blown and bleak,
And webs are frosty white at morn;
At night beneath the spectral sky,
A far foreboding cry I hear--
The wild fowl calling as they fly?
Or wild voice of the dying Year?

XIII

And still my soul holds phantom tryst,
When chestnuts hiss among the coals,
Upon the Evening of All Souls,
When all the night is moon and mist,
And all the world is mystery;
I kiss dear lips that death hath kissed,
And gaze in eyes no man may see,
Filled with a love long lost to me.

I hear the night-wind's ghostly glove
Flutter the window: then the knob
Of some dark door turn, with a sob
As when love comes to gaze on love
Who lies pale-coffined in a room:
And then the iron gallop of
The storm, who rides outside; his plume
Sweeping the night with dread and gloom.

So fancy takes the mind, and paints
The darkness with eidolon light,
And writes the dead's romance in night
On the dim Evening of All Saints:
Unheard the hissing nuts; the clink
And fall of coals, whose shadow faints
Around the hearts that sit and think,
Borne far beyond the actual's brink.

XIV

I heard the wind, before the morn
Stretched gaunt, gray fingers 'thwart my pane,
Drive clouds down, a dark dragon-train;
Its iron visor closed, a horn
Of steel from out the north it wound.--
No morn like yesterday's! whose mouth,
A cool carnation, from the south
Breathed through a golden reed the sound
Of days that drop clear gold upon
Cerulean silver floors of dawn.

And all of yesterday is lost
And swallowed in to-day's wild light--
The birth deformed of day and night,
The illegitimate, who cost
Its mother secret tears and sighs;
Unlovely since unloved; and chilled
With sorrows and the shame that filled
Its parents' love; which was not wise
In passion as the day and night
That married yestermorn with light.

XV

Down through the dark, indignant trees,
On indistinguishable wings
Of storm, the wind of evening swings;
Before its insane anger flees
Distracted leaf and shattered bough:
There is a rushing as when seas
Of thunder beat an iron prow
On reefs of wrath and roaring wreck:
'Mid stormy leaves, a hurrying speck
Of flickering blackness, driven by,
A mad bat whirls along the sky.

Like some sad shadow, in the eve's
Deep melancholy--visible
As by some strange and twilight spell--
A gaunt girl stands among the leaves,
The night-wind in her dolorous dress:
Symbolic of the life that grieves,
Of toil that patience makes not less,
Her load of fagots fallen there.--
A wilder shadow sweeps the air,
And she is gone.... Was it the dumb
Eidolon of the month to come?

XVI

The song birds--are they flown away?
The song birds of the summer time,
That sang their souls into the day,
And set the laughing hours to rhyme.
No catbird scatters through the bush
The sparkling crystals of its song;
Within the woods no hermit-thrush
Thridding with vocal gold the hush.

All day the crows fly cawing past:
The acorns drop: the forests scowl:
At night I hear the bitter blast
Hoot with the hooting of the owl.
The wild creeks freeze: the ways are strewn
With leaves that clog: beneath the tree
The bird, that set its toil to tune,
And made a home for melody,
Lies dead beneath the snow-white moon.



OCTOBER

Far off a wind blew, and I heard
  Wild echoes of the woods reply--
The herald of some royal word,
  With bannered trumpet, blown on high,
    Meseemed then passed me by:

Who summoned marvels there to meet,
  With pomp, upon a cloth of gold;
Where berries of the bittersweet,
  That, splitting, showed the coals they hold,
    Sowed garnets through the wold:

Where, under tents of maples, seeds
  Of smooth carnelian, oval red,
The spice-bush spangled: where, like beads,
  The dogwood's rounded rubies--fed
    With fire--blazed and bled.

And there I saw amid the rout
  Of months, in richness cavalier,
A minnesinger--lips apout;
  A gypsy face; straight as a spear;
    A rose stuck in his ear:

Eyes, sparkling like old German wine,
  All mirth and moonlight; naught to spare
Of slender beard, that lent a line
  To his short lip; October there,
    With chestnut curling hair.

His brown baretta swept its plume
  Red through the leaves; his purple hose,
Puffed at the thighs, made gleam of gloom;
  His tawny doublet, slashed with rose,
    And laced with crimson bows,

Outshone the wahoo's scarlet pride,
  The haw, in rich vermilion dressed:
A dagger dangling at his side,
  A slim lute, banded to his breast,
    Whereon his hands were pressed.

I saw him come.... And, lo, to hear
  The lilt of his approaching lute,
No wonder that the regnant Year
  Bent down her beauty, blushing mute,
    Her heart beneath his foot.



FRIENDS

Down through the woods, along the way
That fords the stream; by rock and tree,
Where in the bramble-bell the bee
Swings; and through twilights green and gray
The redbird flashes suddenly,
My thoughts went wandering to-day.

I found the fields where, row on row,
The blackberries hang dark with fruit;
Where, nesting at the elder's root,
The partridge whistles soft and low;
The fields, that billow to the foot
Of those old hills we used to know.

There lay the pond, all willow-bound,
On whose bright face, when noons were hot,
We marked the bubbles rise; some plot
To lure us in; while all around
Our heads,--like faery fancies,--shot
The dragonflies without a sound.

The pond, above which evening bent
To gaze upon her gypsy face;
Wherein the twinkling night would trace
A vague, inverted firmament;
In which the green frogs tuned their bass,
And firefly sparkles came and went.

The oldtime place we often ranged,
When we were playmates, you and I;
The oldtime fields, with boyhood's sky
Still blue above them!--Naught was changed:
Nothing.--Alas! then, tell me why
Should we be? whom the years estranged.



COMRADERY

With eyes hand-arched he looks into
The morning's face; then turns away
With truant feet, all wet with dew,
Out for a holiday.

The hill brook sings; incessant stars,
Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast;
And where he wades its water-bars
Its song is happiest.

A comrade of the chinquapin,
He looks into its knotty eyes
And sees its heart; and, deep within,
Its soul that makes him wise.

The wood-thrush knows and follows him,
Who whistles up the birds and bees;
And round him all the perfumes swim
Of woodland loam and trees.

Where'er he pass the silvery springs'
Foam-people sing the flowers awake;
And sappy lips of bark-clad things
Laugh ripe each berried brake.

His touch is a companionship;
His word an old authority:
He comes, a lyric on his lip,
The woodboy--Poesy.



BARE BOUGHS

O heart,--that beat the bird's blithe blood,
The blithe bird's strain, and understood
The song it sang to leaf and bud,--
What dost thou in the wood?

O soul,--that kept the brook's glad flow,
The glad brook's word to sun and moon,--
What dost thou here where song lies low,
And dead the dreams of June?

Where once was heard a voice of song,
The hautboys of the mad winds sing;
Where once a music flowed along,
The rain's wild bugle's ring.

The weedy water frets and ails,
And moans in many a sunless fall;
And, o'er the melancholy, trails
The black crow's eldritch call.

Unhappy brook! O withered wood!
O days, whom Death makes comrades of!
Where are the birds that thrilled the blood
When Life struck hands with Love?

A song, one soared against the blue;
A song, one silvered in the leaves;
A song, one blew where orchards grew
Gold-appled to the eaves.

The birds are flown; the flowers, dead;
And sky and earth are bleak and gray:
Where Joy once went, all light of tread,
Grief haunts the leaf-wild way.



DAYS AND DAYS

The days that clothed white limbs with heat,
  And rocked the red rose on their breast,
Have passed with amber-sandaled feet
  Into the ruby-gated west.

These were the days that filled the heart
  With overflowing riches of
Life, in whose soul no dream shall start
  But hath its origin in love.

Now come the days gray-huddled in
  The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip;
Who pin beneath a gypsy chin
  The frosty marigold and hip.

The days, whose forms fall shadowy
  Athwart the heart: whose misty breath
Shapes saddest sweets of memory
  Out of the bitterness of death.



AUTUMN SORROW

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.



THE TREE-TOAD

I

Secluded, solitary on some underbough,
  Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light,
Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how
  The slow toadstool comes bulging, moony white,
  Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,
The glowworm gathers silver to endow
  The darkness with; or how the dew conspires
  To hang, at dusk, with lamps of chilly fires
    Each blade that shrivels now.

II