That rustled freshness near them, as it fell
From its full-mantled urn, in his deep casque,
And prayed her quaff; then bathed her brow, a task
That had accompaning tears of joy and vows
Of love, sweet intercourse of eyes and brows,
And many clinging kisses eloquent.
And how, when dressed his arm, behind him bent
She clasped him on the same steed and they went
On thro' the gold wood toward the golden West,
Till on one low hill's forest-covered crest
Up in the gold his castle's battlements pressed.
And then she felt she'd loved him till had come
Fame of the love of Isoud, whom from home
Brought knightly Tristram o'er the Irish foam,
And Guenevere's for Launcelot of the Lake.
And then how passion from these seemed to wake
Longing for some great gallant who would slake--
And such found Accolon.
And then she thought
How far she'd fallen and how darkly fraught
With consequence was this. Then what distress
Were hers and his--her lover's; and success
How doubly difficult if Arthur slain,
King Urience lived to assert his right to reign.
So paused she pondering on the blade; her lips
Breathless and close as close cold finger tips
Hugged the huge weapon's hilt. And so she sighed,
"Nay! long, too long hast lived who shouldst have died
Even in the womb abortive! who these years
Hast leashed sweet life to care with stinging tears,
A knot thus harshly severed!--As thou art
Into the elements naked!"
O'er his heart
The long sword hesitated, lean as crime,
Descended redly once. And like a rhyme
Of nice words fairly fitted forming on,--
A sudden ceasing and the harmony gone,
So ran to death the life of Urience,
A strong song incomplete of broken sense.
There glowered the crimeful Queen. The glistening sword
Unfleshed, flung by her wronged and murdered lord;
And the dark blood spread broader thro' the sheet
To drip a horror at impassive feet
And blur the polished oak. But lofty she
Stood proud, relentless; in her ecstacy
A lovely devil; a crowned lust that cried
On Accolon; that harlot which defied
Heaven with a voice of pulses clamorous as
Steep storm that down a cavernous mountain pass
Blasphemes an hundred echoes; with like power
The inner harlot called its paramour:
Him whom King Arthur had commanded, when
Borne from the lists, be granted her again
As his blithe gift and welcome from that joust,
For treacherous love and her adulterous lust.
And while she stood revolving how her deed's
Concealment were secured,--a grind of steeds,
Arms, jingling stirrups, voices loud that cursed
Fierce in the northern court. To her athirst
For him her lover, war and power it spoke,
Him victor and so King; and then awoke
A yearning to behold, to quit the dead.
So a wild specter down wide stairs she fled,
Burst on a glare of links and glittering mail,
That shrunk her eyes and made her senses quail.
To her a bulk of iron, bearded fierce,
Down from a steaming steed into her ears,
"This from the King, a boon!" laughed harsh and hoarse;
Two henchmen beckoned, who pitched sheer with force,
Loud clanging at her feet, hacked, hewn and red,
Crusted with blood a knight in armor--dead;
Even Accolon, tossed with the mocking scoff
"This from the King!"--phantoms in fog rode off.
And what remains? From Camelot to Gore
That right she weeping fled; then to the shore,--
As that romancer tells,--Avilion,
Where she hath Majesty gold-crowned yet wan;
In darkest cypress a frail pitious face
Queenly and lovely; 'round sad eyes the trace
Of immemorial tears as for some crime:
They future fixed, expectant of the time
When the forgiving Arthur cometh and
Shall have to rule all that lost golden land
That drifts vague amber in forgotten seas
Of surgeless turquoise dim with mysteries.
And so was seen Morgana nevermore,
Save once when from the Cornwall coast she bore
The wounded Arthur from that last fought fight
Of Camlan in a black barge into night.
But oft some see her with a palfried band
Of serge-stoled maidens thro' the drowsy land
Of Autumn glimmer; when are sharply strewn
The red leaves, while broad in the east a moon
Swings full of frost a lustrous globe of gleams,
Faint on the mooning hills as shapes in dreams.
DER FREISCHUTZ.
_Es gibt im Menschenleben Augenblicke,
Wo er dem Weltgeist naeher ist als sonst._--SCHILLER.
He? why, a tall Franconian strong and young,
Brown as a walnut the first frost hath hulled;
A soul of full endeavor powerful
Bound in lithe limbs, knit into grace and strength
Of bronze-like muscles elegant, that poised
A head like Hope's; and then the manly lines
Of face developed by action and mobile
To each suggestive impulse of the mind,
Of smiles of buoyancy or scowls of gloom.--
And what deep eyes were his!--Aye; I can see
Their wild and restless disks of luminous night
Instinct with haughtiness that sneered at Fate,
Glared cold conclusion to all circumstance,
As with loud law, to his advantage swift:
With scorn derisive that shot out a barb,
Stabbed Superstition to its dagger hilt;
That smiled a thrust-like smile which curled the lip,
A vicious heresy with incredible lore,
When God's or holy Mary's name came forth
Exclaimed in reverence or astonishment;
And then would say,
"What is this God you mouth,
Employ whose name to sanctify and damn?--
A benedictive curse?--'T hath past my skill
Of grave interpretation. And your faith--
Distinguishment unseen, design unlawed.
For earth, air, fire or water or keen cold,
Hints no existence of such, worships not,
Such as men's minds profess. Rather, meseems,
Throned have they one such as their hopes have wrought
In hope there may prove such an one in death
For Paradise or punishment. I hold
He juster were and would be kinglier kind
In sovereign mercy and a prodigal--
Not to few favored heads who, crowned with state,
Rule sceptered Infamies--of indulgence free
To all that burn luxuriant incense on
Shrines while they prayer him love's obedience.
Are all not children of the same weak mold?
Clay of His Adam-modeled clay made quick?
Endowed with the like hopes, loves, fears and hates,
Our mother's weaknesses? And these, forsooth,
These little crowns that lord it o'er His world,
Tricked up with imitative majesty,
God-countenanced arrogances, throned may still
Cry, 'crawl and worship, for we are as gods
Through God! great gods incarnate of his kind!'
--Omnipotent Wrong-representatives!
With might that blasts the world with wars and wrings
Groans from pale Nations with hell's tyranny.
So to my mind real monarch only he--
Your Satan cramped in Hell!--aye, by the fiend!
To pygmy Earth's frail tinsel majesties,
That ape a God in a sonorous Heaven.
Grant me the Devil in all mercy then,
For I will none of such! a fiend for friend
While Earth is of the earth; and afterward--
Nay! ransack not To-morrow till To-day,
If all that's joy engulf you when it is."
And laughed an oily laugh of easy jest
To bow out God and hand the Devil in.--
I met him here at Ammendorf one Spring,
Toward the close of April when the Harz,
Veined to their ruin-crested summits, pulsed
A fluid life of green and budded gold
Beneath pure breathing skies of boundless blue:
Where low-yoked oxen, yellow to the knees,
Along the fluted meadow, freshly ploughed,
Plodded and snuffed the fragrance of the soil,
The free bird sang exultant in the sun.
Triumphant Spring with hinted hopes of May
And jaunty June, her mouth a puckered rose.
Here at this very hostelery o' The Owl;
Mine host there sleek served cannikins of wine
Beneath that elm now touseled by that shrew,
Lean Winter. Well!--a lordly vintage that!
With tang of fires which had sucked out their soul
From feverish sun-vats, cooled it from the moon's;
From wine-skin bellies of the bursting grape
Trodden, in darkness of old cellars aged
Even to the tingling smack of olden earth.
Rich! I remember!--wine that spurred the blood--
Thou hast none such, I swear, nor wilt again!--
That brought the heart loud to the generous mouth,
And made the eyes unlatticed casements whence
The good man's soul laughed interested out.
Stoups of rare royal Rhenish, such they say
As Necromance hides guarded in vast casks
Of antique make far in the Kyffhaeuser,
The Cellar of the Knights near Sittendorf.
So, mellowed by that wine to friendship frank,
He spake me his intent in coming here;
But not one word of what his parentage;
But this his name was, Rudolf, and his home,
Franconia; but nor why he left nor when:
His mind to live a forester and be
Enfellowed in the Duke of Brunswick's train
Of buff and green; and so to his estate
Even now was bound, a youth of twenty-three.
And when he ceased the fire in his eyes
Worked restless as a troubled animal's,
Which hate-enraged can burn a steady flame,
Brute merciless. And thus I mused with me,
When he had ceased to fulminate at state,
"Another Count von Hackelnburg the fiend
Hath tricked unto the chase!--for hounds from Hell?"
But answered nothing, save light words of cheer
As best become fleet friends warm wine doth make.
Then as it chanced, old Kurt had come that morn
With some six of his jerkined foresters
From the Thuringian forest; damp with dew;
Red-cheeked as morn with early travel; bound
For Brunswick, Dummburg and the Hakel passed.
Chief huntsman he then to the goodly Duke,
And father of the sunniest maiden here
In Ammendorf, the blameless Ilsabe;
Who, motherless, the white-haired father prized
A jewel priceless. As huge barons' ghosts
Guard big, accumulated hoards of wealth,
Fast-sealed in caverned cellars, robber wells,
Beneath the dungeoned Dummburg, so he watched
Her, all his world in her who was his wealth.
A second Lora of Thuringia she.
Faultless for love, instilled all souls with love,
Who, in the favor of her maiden smile,
Felt friendship grow up like a golden thought;
A life of love from words; and light that fell
And wrought calm influence from her pure blue eyes.
Hair sedate and austerely dressed o'er brows
White as a Harz dove's wing; hair with the hue
Of twilight mists the sun hath soaked with gold.
A Tyrolean melody that brought
Dim dreams of Alpine heights, of shepherds brown,
Goat-skinned, with healthy cheeks and wrinkled lips
That fill wild oaten pipes on wand'ring ways,
Embowered deep, with mountain melodies,--
Simple with love and plaintive even to tears,--
Her presence, her sweet presence like a song.
And when she left, it was as when one hath
Beheld a moonlit Undine, ere the mind
Adjusts one thought, cleave thro' the glassy Rhine
A glittering beauty wet, and gone again
A flash--the soul drifts wondering on in dreams.
Some thirty years agone is that; and I,
Commissioner of the Duke--no sinecure
I can assure you--had scarce reached the age
Of thirty (then some three years of that House).
Thro' me the bold Franconian, whom at first,
By bitter principles and scorn of state--
Developed into argument thro' wine--
The foresthood like was to be denied,
Was then enfellowed. "Yes," I said, "he's young;
True, rashly young! yet, see: a wiry frame,
A chamois' footing, and a face for right;
An eye which likes me not, but quick with pride,
And aimed at thought, a butt it may not miss:
A soul with virgin virtues which crude flesh
Makes seem but vices, these but God may see--
Develop these. But, if there's aught of worth,
Body or mind, in him, Kurt, thou wilt know,
And to the surface wear, as divers win
From hideous ooze and life rich jewels lost
Of polished pureness, worthless left to night,
Thou or thy daughter, and inspire for good."
A year thereafter was it that I heard
Of Rudolf's passion for Kurt's Ilsabe,
Then their betrothal. And it was from this,--
For, ah, that Ilsabe! that Ilsabe!--
Good Mary Mother! how she haunts me yet!
She, that true touchstone which philosophers feign
Contacts and golds all base; a woman who
Could touch all evil into good in man.--
Surmised I of the excellency which
Refinement of her gentle company,
Warm presence of chaste beauty, had resolved
His fiery nature to, conditioning slave.
And so I came from Brunswick--as you know--
Is custom of the Duke or, by his seal
Commissioned proxy, his commissioner,--
To test the marksmanship of Rudolf who
Succeeded Kurt with marriage of his child,
An heir of Kuno.--He?--Great grandfather
Of Kurt, and one this forestkeepership
Was first possesor of; established thus--
Or such the tale they told me 'round the hearths.
Kuno, once in the Knight of Wippach's train,
Rode on a grand hunt with the Duke, who came
With vast magnificence of knights and hounds,
And satin-tuniced nobles curled and plumed
To hunt Thuringian deer. Then Morn too slow
On her blithe feet was; quick with laughing eyes
To morrow mortal eyes and lazy limbs;
Rather on tip-toed hills recumbent yawned,
Aroused an hour too soon; ashamed, disrobed,
Rubbed the stiff sleep from eyes that still would close,
While brayed the hollow horns and bayed lean hounds,
And cheered gallants until the dingles dinned,
Where searched the climbing mists or, compact light,
Fled breathless white, clung scared a moted gray,
Low unsunned cloudlands of the castled hills.
And then near mid-noon from a swarthy brake
The ban-dogs roused a red gigantic stag,
Lashed to whose back with grinding knotted cords,
Borne with whom like a nightmare's incubus,
A man shrieked; burry-bearded and his hair
Kinked with dry, tangled burrs, and he himself
Emaciated and half naked. From
The wear of wildest passage thro' the wild,
Rent red by briars, torn and bruised by rocks.
--For, such the law then, when the peasant chased
Or slew the dun deer of his tyrant lords,
As punishment the torturing withes and spine
Of some big stag, a gift of game and wild
Enough till death--death in the antlered herd
Or crawling famine in bleak, haggard haunts.
Then was the dark Duke glad, and forthwith cried
To all his dewy train a rich reward
For him who slew the stag and saved the man,
But death to him who slew the man and stag,
The careless error of a loose attempt.
So crashed the hunt along wild, glimmering ways
Thro' creepers and vast brush beneath gnarled trees,
Up a scorched torrent's bed. Yet still refused
Each that sure shot; the risk too desperate
The poor life and the golden gift beside.
So this young Kuno with two eyes wherein
Hunt with excitement kindled reckless fire
Clamored, "And are ye cowards?--Good your grace,
You shall not chafe!--The fiend direct my ball!"
And fired into a covert deeply packed,
An intertangled wall of matted night,
Wherein the eye might vainly strive and strive
To pierce one foot or earn one point beyond.
But, ha! the huge stag staggered from the brake
Heart-hit and perished. That wan wretch unhurt
Soon bondless lay condoled. But the great Duke,
Charmed with the eagle shot, admired the youth,
There to him and his heirs forever gave
The forest keepership.
But envious tongues
Were soon at wag; and whispered went the tale
Of how the shot was free, and that the balls
Used by young Kuno were free bullets, which
Molded were cast in influence of the fiend
By magic and directed by the fiend.
Of some effect these tales were and some force
Had with the Duke, who lent an ear so far
As to ordain Kuno's descendants all
To proof of skill ere their succession to
The father's office. Kurt himself hath shot
The silver ring from out the popinjay's beak--
A good shot he, you see, who would succeed.
The Devil guards his mysteries close as God.
For who can say what elementaries
Demoniac lurk in desolate dells and woods
Shadowy? malicious vassals of that power
Who signs himself, thro' these, a slave to those,
Those mortals who act open with his Hell,
Those only who seek secretly and woo.
Of these free, fatal bullets let me speak:
There may be such; our Earth hath things as strange;
Then only in coarse fancies may exist;
For fancy is among our peasantry
A limber juggler with the weird and dark;
For Superstition hides not her grim face,
A skeleton grin on leprous ghastliness,
From Ignorance's mossy thatches low.
A cross-way, as I heard, among gaunt hills,
A solitude convulsed of rocks and trees
Blasted; and on the stony cross-road drawn
A bloody circle with a bloody sword;
Herein rude characters; a skull and thighs
Fantastic fixed before a fitful fire
Of spiteful coals. Eleven of the clock
Cast, the first bullet leaves the mold,--the lead
Mixed with three bullets that have hit their mark,
Burnt blood,--the wounded Sacramental Host,
Unswallowed and unhallowed, oozed when shot
Fixed to a riven pine.--Ere twelve o'clock,
When dwindling specters in their rotting shrouds
Quit musty tombs to mumble hollow woes
In Midnight's horrored ear, with never a cry,
Word or weak whisper, till that hour sound,
Must the free balls be cast; and these shall be
In number three and sixty; three of which
Semial--he the Devil's minister--
Claims for his master and stamps as his own
To hit awry their mark, askew for harm.
_Those other sixty shall not miss their mark._
No cry, no word, no whisper, tho' there gibe
Most monstrous shapes that flicker in thick mist
Lewd human countenances or leer out
Swoln animal faces with fair forms of men,
While wide-winged owls fan the drear, dying coals,
That lick thin, slender tongues of purple fire
From viperous red, and croaks the night-hawk near.
No cry, no word, no whisper should there come
Weeping a wandering form with weary, white
And pleading countenance of her you love,
Faded with tears of waiting; beckoning
With gray, large arms or censuring; her shame
In dull and desolate eyes; who, if you speak
Or stagger from that circle--hideous change!--
Shrinks, faced a hag of million wrinkles, which
Ridge scaly sharpness of protruding bones,
To rip you limb from limb with taloned claws.
Nor be deceived if some far midnight bell
Boom that anticipated hour, nor leave
By one short inch the bloody orbit, for
The minion varlets of Hell's majesty
Expectant cirque its dim circumference.
But when the hour of midnight smites, be sure
You have your bullets, neither more nor less;
For, if thro' fear one more or less you have,
Your soul is forfeit to those agencies,
Right rathe who are to rend it from the flesh.
And while that hour of midnight sounds a din
Of hurrying hoofs and shouting outriders--
Six snorting steeds postilioned roll a stage
Black and with groaning wheels of spinning fire,
"Room there!--ho! ho!--who bars the mountain-way!
On over him!"--but fear not nor fare forth,--
'Tis but the last trick of your bounden slave:
And ere the red moon strives from dingy clouds
And dives again, high the huge leaders leap
Iron fore-hoofs flashing and big eyes like gledes,
And, spun a spiral spark into the night,
Whistling the phantom flies and fades away.
Some say there comes no stage, but Hackelnburg,
Wild Huntsman of the Harz, rides hoarse in storm,
Dashing the dead leaves with dark dogs of hell
Direful thro' whirling thickets, and his horn
Croaks doleful as an owl's hoot while he hurls
Straight 'neath rain-streaming skies of echoes, sheer
Plunging the magic circle horse and hounds.
And then will come, plutonian clad and slim,
Upon a stallion vast intensely black,
Semial, Satan's lurid minister,
To hail you and inform you and assure.--
Enough! these wives-tales heard to what I've seen;
To Ammendorf I came; and Rudolf there
With Kurt and all his picturesque foresters
Met me. And then the rounding year was ripe;
Throbbing the red heart of full Autumn: When
Each morning gleams crisp frost on shriveled fields;
Each noon sits veiled in mysteries of mist;
Each night unrolls a miracle woof of stars,
Where moon--bare-bosomed goddess of the hunt--
Wades calm, crushed clouds or treads the vaster blue.
Then I proposed the season's hunt; till eve
The test of Rudolf's skill postponed, with which
Annoyed he seemed. And so it was I heard
How he an execrable marksman was,
And whispered tales of near, incredible shots
That wryed their mark, while in his flint-lock's pan
Flashed often harmless powder, while wild game
Stared fearless on him and indulgent stood,
An open butt to such wide marksmanship.
Howbeit, he that day acquitted him
Of these maligners' cavils; in the hunt
Missing no shot however rash he made
Or distant thro' thick intercepting trees;
And the piled, curious game brought down of all
Good marksmen of that train had not sufficed,
Doubled, nay, trebled, to have matched his heap.
And wonderstruck the _jaegers_ saw, nor knew
How to excuse them. My indulgence giv'n,
Still swore that only yesterday old Kurt
Had touched his daughter's tears and Rudolf's wrath
By vowing end to their betrothed love,
Unless that love developed better aim
Against the morrow's test; his ancestor's
High fame should not be damaged. So he stormed,
But bowed his gray head and wept silently;
Then looking up forgave when big he saw
Tears in his daughter's eyes and Rudolf gone
Forth in the night that wailed with coming storm.
Before this inn, The Owl, assembled came
The nice-primped villagers to view the trial:
Fair _fraeuleins_ and blonde, comely, healthy _fraus_;
Stout burgers. And among them I did mark
Kurt and his daughter. He, a florid face
Of pride and joy for Rudolf's strange success;
She, radiant and flounced in flowing garb
Of bridal white deep-draped and crowned with flowers;
For Kurt insisted this their marriage eve
Should Rudolf come successful from the chase.
So pleased was I with what I'd seen him do,
The test of skill superfluous seemed and so
Was on the bare brink of announcement, when,
Out of the evening heaven's hardening red,
Like a white warning loosed for augury,
A word of God some fallen angel prized
As his last all of heaven, penitent,
Hell-freed, sent minister to save a soul,
A wild dove clove the luminous winds and there,
A wafted waif, pruned settled on a bough:
Then I, "Thy weapon, Rudolph, pierce its head!"
Cried pointing, "And chief-forester art thou!"
Pale as a mist and wavering he turned;
"I had a dream--" then faltered as he aimed,
"A woman's whim!" But starting from the press
Screamed Ilsabe, "My dove!" to plead its life
Came--cracked the rifle and untouched the dove
Rose beating lustrous wings, but Ilsabe--
"God's wrath! the sight!"--fell smitten, and the blood
Sprang red from shattered brow and silent hair--
That bullet strangely thro' her brow and brain....
And what of Rudolf? ah! of him you ask?
That proud Franconian who would scoff at Fate
And scorn all state; who cried black Satan friend
Sooner than our white Christ;--why, he went mad
O' the moment, and into the haunted Harz
Fled, an unholy thing, and perished there
The prey of demons of the Dummburg. But
I one of few less superstitious who
Say, as the finale of a madman's deed,
He in the Bode, from that ragged rock,
The Devil's Dancing Place, did leap and die.
TO REVERY.
What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought,
What walls of bastioned Parian, lucid rose,
What marts of crystal, for the eyes of Thought
Hast builded on what Islands of Repose!
Vague onyx columns ranked Corinthian,
Or piled Ionic, colonnading heights
That loom above long burst of mythic seas:
Vast gynaeceums of carnelian;
Micaceous temples, far marmorean flights,
Where winds the arabesque and plastique frieze.
Where bulbous domes of coruscating ore
Cloud--like convulsive sunsets--lands that dream,
Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas and hoar,
Dashed with stiff, breezy foam of ocean's stream.
Tempestuous architecture-revelries;
Built melodies of marble or clear glass;
Effulgent sculptures chiseled out of thought
In misty attitudes, whose majesties
Feed full the pleasure as those beauties pass
To pale extinctions which are beauty fraught.
On rebeck and on rose in plinths of spars,
On glimmering solitudes of flower and stone,
A twilight-glow swoons settled, burned with stars,
Deep violet dusk developing nor done.
Where float fair nacreous shapes like deities,--
Existences of glory musical,--
'Round whose warm hair twist fillets' coiling gold,
Their limbs Olympian lovely, and their eyes
Dark oblique fervors; and most languorous tall
In woven white with girdling gold threefold.
There darkling the consummate vintage sleeps,--
Lethe-nepenthes for Earth-agony,--
In sealed amphorae some Sybil keeps,
World-old, forever cellared secretly.
A wine of Xeres or of Syracuse?
A fierce Falernian?--Ah! no vile Sabine!--
A stol'n ambrosia of what olden god?
Whose bubbled rubies maiden feet did bruise
From crusted vats of vintage rich, I ween,
Vivacious purple of some Samian sod.
Oh, for the cold conclusion of one draught!
Elysian ecstacy of classic earth!--
Where heroes warred with gods and where gods laughed
In eyes of mortal brown, a lusty mirth
Of deity delirious with desire:
Where danced the sacrifice to horned shrines,
And splashed the full libation blue as blood.--
Oh, to be drunk with dreaming! to inspire
The very soul of beauty whence it shines
Too lost for utterance yet understood!
In cogitation of what verdurous shades,
Dull-droning quietudes where wild-bees lolled
Suck, lulled in pulpy lilies of the glades,
Barbaric-smothered with the kerneled gold:
Teased by some torso of the golden age,
Nude breasts of Cytherea, famous fair,
Uncestus'd, yet suggestive of what loves
Immortal! yearn enamoured; or to rage
With sun-burnt Poesy whose throat breathes bare
O'er leopard skins and flute among her groves.
LATE OCTOBER.
Ah, haughty hills, sardonic solitudes,
What wizard touch hath, crowning you with gold,
Cast Tyrian purple o'er broad-shouldered woods,
And to your pride anointed empire sold
For wan traditioned death, whose misty moods
Shake each huge throne of quarried shadows cold?
Now where the agate-foliaged forests sleep,
Bleak briars are ruby-berried, and the brush
Flames--when the winds armsful of motion heap
In wincing gusts upon it--amber blush;
The beech an inner beryle breaks from deep
Encrusting topaz of a sullen flush.
Dead gold, dead bronze, dull amethystine rose,
Rose cameo, in day's gray, somber spar
Of smoky quartz--intaglioed beauty--glows
Luxuriance of color. Trunks that are
Vast organs antheming the winds' wild woes
A faded sun and pale night's paler star.
Bulged from its cup the dark-brown acorn falls,
And by its gnarly saucer in the streams
Swells plumped; and here the spikey spruce-gum balls
Rust maces of an ouphen host that dreams;
Beneath the chestnut the split burry hulls
Disgorge fat purses of sleek satin gleams.
Burst silver white, nods an exploded husk
Of snowy, woolly smoke the milk-weed's puff
Along the orchard's fence, where in the dusk
And ashen weeds,--as some grim Satyr's rough
Red, breezy cheeks burn thro' his beard,--the brusque
Crab apples laugh, wind-tumbled from above.
Runs thro' the wasted leaves the crickets' click,
Which saddest coignes of Melancholy cheers;
One bird unto the sumach flits to pick
Red, sour seeds; and thro' the woods one hears
The drop of gummy walnuts; the railed rick
Looms tawny in the field where low the steers.
Some slim bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked,
The birds to Echo's shores, where flossy foams
Boom low long cream-white cliffs.--Where once buzzed
Unmillioned bees within unmillioned blooms,
One hairy hummer cramps one bloom, frost mocked,--rocked
A miser whose rich hives squeeze oozing combs.
Twist some lithe maple and right suddenly
A leafy storm of stars about you breaks--
Some Hamadryad's tears: Unto her knee
Wading the Naiad clears her brook that streaks
Thro' wadded waifs: Hark! Pan for Helike
Flutes melancholy by the minty creeks.
AN ANEMONE.
"Teach me the wisdom of thy beauty, pray,
That, being thus wise, I may aspire to see
What beauty is, whence, why, and in what way
Immortal, yet how mortal utterly:
For, shrinking loveliness, thy brow of day
Pleads plaintive as a prayer, anemone.
"Teach me wood-wisdom, I am petulant:
Thou hast the wildness of a Dryad's eyes,
The shyness of an Oread's, wild plant:--
Behold the bashful goddess where she lies
Distinctly delicate!--inhabitant
Ambrosial-earthed, star-cousin of the skies.