Ocean drew back in shudderings to his caves,
Huge mountains shook and rumbled to their base,
Great streams dried up, old cities smoked and fell,
And all life met confusion and despair,
And dread annihilation.
Then the Gods,
Pitying wrecked nature, in their sudden vengeance,
Me, impious, hurled from out my dizzying height.
Time vanished, reason swooned, then left her throne,
And darkness wrapt me as I shuddering fell,
Oblivion-clouded, to the plunging seas.
Ocean received me, folding in her deeps,
Cooling and emerald. Here in coral dreams
I rest and cure me, never wholly waking,
Filled with one splendor, fumbling in a dream,
As waves do fumble all about a cave,
For one clear memory of that one high day.
I failed, was mortal; where I climbed I fell.
But all else little matters; life was mine,
I dreamed, I dared, I grappled with, I fell;
And here I live it over in my dreams.
All things may pass, decline, and come to naught,
Death 'whelm life as day engulfed in dark,
But I have greatly lived, have greatly dared,
And death will never wholly wrap me round
And black me in its terrors. I am made
One with the future, dwelling in the dreams
And memories dread of envious gods and men.
The Humming Bee
Glad music of the summer's heart,
Jargoning from flower to flower,
A part of each unconscious hour
Until the happy days depart!
Thou dream-like toiler of the fields!
Each honeyed spot thou knowest well
Where Nature's heart her sweetness yields,
Some ruined trunk thy citadel;
There buildest a home for Winter's hour
In some lone, sunlight-haunted place,
When all the year is at its power,
And June's high-tide on bank and bower
Mirrors in blossoms Nature's face.
At early morn by breathing wood,
Or in some dewy clover dell,
Tuning the young day's solitude,--
Or down the slumbrous afternoon,
Rich-freighted, wingest thy tuneful way,
Self-musing, murmurous, musical;
Amid the whole world's dreamy swoon,
Sole voice of all the drowsèd day,
Until the gradual shadows fall:--
Then, by some lonely pasture-fell
At ruddy eve when homeward come
Past deepening shade or fading ray
The weary children of the day.
I hear thy joyous, drowsy hum,
Till stars peep out and woods breathe low,
And sounds of human toil grow dumb,
And Night, the blessèd, comes apace,
Bending to Earth's her cooling face,
While airs across the dark outblow:
Then rocked on some glad blossom's breast,
Thou dreamest to rest.
When Summer wanes to Autumn's age,
And come the days of fate and rage,
O happy Humming Bee!
Then wilt thou sink to wintry sleep,
When storms are hoarse along the deep,
In hushed tranquillity.
No more wilt wind thy subtle horn
By dreamy eve or misty morn,
When trees are leafless, pastures shorn.
Ah me! ah me!
Could we, like thee, go down the days
Of summer hush to autumn haze.
Housing, with what we built before,
The gold of all our memory's store
And garnered thought;
So when the bleak December's hate
Beat round the bastions of our fate,
We, wrapt in wealth of honeyed dreams
Of kindlier visions, far-off streams,
Might heed it not.
The Children of the Foam
Out forever and forever,
Where our tresses glint and shiver
On the icy moonlit air;
Come we from a land of gloaming,
Children lost, forever homing,
Never, never reaching there;
Ride we, ride we, ever faster,
Driven by our demon master,
The wild wind in his despair;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Wan, white children of the foam.
In the wild October dawning,
When the heaven's angry awning
Leans to lakeward, bleak and drear;
And along the black, wet ledges,
Under icy, caverned edges,
Breaks the lake in maddened fear;
And the woods in shore are moaning;
Then you hear our weird intoning,
Mad, late children of the year;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Lost, white children of the foam.
All gray day, the black sky under,
Where the beaches moan and thunder,
Where the breakers spume and comb,
You may hear our riding, riding,
You may hear our voices chiding,
Under glimmer, under gloam;
Like a far-off infant wailing,
You may hear our hailing, hailing,
For the voices of our home;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Haunted children of the foam.
And at midnight, when the glimmer
Of the moon grows dank and dimmer,
Then we lift our gleaming eyes;
Then you see our white arms tossing,
Our wan breasts the moon embossing,
Under gloom of lake and skies;
You may hear our mournful chanting,
And our voices haunting, haunting,
Through the night's mad melodies;
Riding, riding, ever home,
Wild, white children of the foam.
There, forever and forever,
Will no demon-hate dissever
Peace and sleep and rest and dream;
There is neither fear nor fret there
When the tired children get there,
Only dews and pallid beam
Fall in gentle peace and sadness
Over long surcease of madness,
From hushed skies that gleam and gleam:
In the longed-for, sought-for home
Of the children of the foam.
There the streets are hushed and restful,
And of dreams is every breast full,
With the sleep that tired eyes wear;
There the city hath long quiet
From the madness and the riot,
From the failing hearts of care;
Balm of peacefulness ingliding,
Dream we through our riding, riding,
As we homeward, homeward fare;
Riding, riding, ever home,
Wild, white children of the foam.
Under pallid moonlight beaming,
Under stars of midnight gleaming,
And the ebon arch of night;
Round the rosy edge of morning,
You may hear our distant horning,
You may mark our phantom flight;
Riding, riding, ever faster,
Driven by our demon master,
Under darkness, under light;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Wild, white children of the foam.
How One Winter Came
IN THE LAKE REGION
For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,
Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;
The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,
And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,
In those gray, withered days.
Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,
At night the moon would nestle in a cloud;
The fisherman, a ghost, did cast his net;
The lake its shores forgot to chafe and fret,
And hushed its caverns loud.
Far in the smoky woods the birds were mute,
Save that from blackened tree a jay would scream,
Or far in swamps the lizard's lonesome lute
Would pipe in thirst, or by some gnarlèd root
The tree-toad trilled his dream.
From day to day still hushed the season's mood,
The streams stayed in their runnels shrunk and dry;
Suns rose aghast by wave and shore and wood,
And all the world, with ominous silence, stood
In weird expectancy:
When one strange night the sun like blood went down,
Flooding the heavens in a ruddy hue;
Red grew the lake, the sere fields parched and brown,
Red grew the marshes where the creeks stole down,
But never a wind-breath blew.
That night I felt the winter in my veins,
A joyous tremor of the icy glow;
And woke to hear the north's wild vibrant strains,
While far and wide, by withered woods and plains,
Fast fell the driving snow.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.
Transcriber's Notes:
Inconsistent punctuation changed as follows:
Quotation mark removed before _Those holy dreams_
(=The Tree of Truth=, stanza 11, line 2).
Added quotation mark after _five more days!_
(=Unabsolved=, stanza 11, line 11).
Added quotation mark after _To greatly fall_
(=Phaethon=, stanza 1, line 71).
End of Project Gutenberg's Beyond the Hills of Dream, by W. Wilfred Campbell