The chasm’d clouds; and blended
With rainy rose and rainy blue,
The heavens, pearled with many a hue,
Die like a dolphin splendid....
High-buoyed in wrack, now one or two
Slight stars peep out--the pirate clue
To night’s rich hoard.--In dusk and dew
Here is our pathway ended.
THE OLD FARM
Dormered and verandaed, cool,
Locust-girdled on the hill,
Stained with weather-wear; at Yule
And Midsummer every sill
Thresholding the beautiful,
Still I see it standing there,
Brown above the woodland deep,
Wrapped in lights of lavender,
And slow shadows, rocked asleep
By the warm wind everywhere.
I remember how the spring,
Liberal-lapped, bewildered its
Acred orchards, murmuring,
With the blossoms’ budded bits,
Where the wood-thrush came to sing.
Barefoot Spring, at first who trod,
Like a beggarmaid, adown
The wet woodland, where the god,
With the bright sun for a crown
And the firmament for rod,
Met her; clothed her; wedded her;
Her Cophetua: when, lo!
All the hill, one breathing blur,
Burst in blossom, gleam and glow,
Peach and pearl and lavender.
Seckel, blackheart, palpitant,
Rained their bleaching strays; and white
Snowed the damson, bent aslant;
Rambow-tree and romanite
Seemed beneath deep drifts to pant.
And it stood there, brown and gray,
In the bee-boom and the bloom,
In the shadow and the ray,
In the passion and perfume,
Grave as age among the gay.
Sweet with laughter romped the clear
Boyish voices round its walls;
Rare wild-roses were the dear
Girlish faces in its halls,
Music-haunted all the year.
Far before it meadows full
Of green pennyroyal sank;
Clover-dotted as with wool
Here and there; and now a bank
Of wild color: and the cool
Dark blue shadows undefined
Of the clouds rolled overhead;
Clouds, from which the summer wind
Blew with rain, and freshly shed
Dew upon the flowerkind.
Where, through mint and gypsy-lily,
Runs the rocky brook away,
Musical among the hilly
Solitudes,--its flashing spray
Sunbeam-dashed or shadow-stilly,--
Buried in thick sassafras,
Memory follows up the hill
Still some cowbell’s mellow brass,
Where the ruined water-mill
Looms, half-hid in cane and grass.
Ah, the old farm! is it set
On the hilltop still? ’mid musk
Of the meads? where, violet,
Deepens all the dreaming dusk,
And the locust trees hang wet?
While the sunset, far and low,
On its westward windows dashes
Primrose or pomegranate glow?
And above, in lilac splashes,
Faint, first stars the heavens sow?
Sleeps it still among its roses,
Yellow roses? while the choir
Of the lonesome insects dozes?
And the white moon, filled with fire,
O’er its mossy roof reposes--
Sleeps it still among its roses?
TO SUMMER
I
Thou sit’st among the sunny silences
Of terraced hills and woodland galleries,
Thou utterance of all calm melodies,
Thou lutanist of Earth’s most fecund lute,--
Where no false note intrudes
To mar the silent music,--branch and root,
Playing the fields ripe, orchards and deep woods,
To song similitudes
Of flower and seed and fruit.
II
Oft have I felt thee, in some sensuous air,
Bewitch the wide wheat-acres everywhere
To imitated gold of thy rich hair:
The peach, by thy red lips’ delicious trouble,
Blown into gradual dyes
Of crimson, have I seen: have watched thee double--
With interluded music of thine eyes--
The grapes’ rotundities,
Bubble by purple bubble.
III
Deliberate uttered into life intense,
Out of thy song’s melodious eloquence
Beauty evolves its just preëminence:
The lily, from some pensive-smitten chord
Drawing significance
Of purity, a visible hush stands: starred
With splendor, from thy passionate utterance,
The rose tells its romance
In blushing word on word.
IV
As star by star day harps in evening,
The inspiration of all things that sing
Is in thy hands and from their touch takes wing:
All brooks, all birds,--whom song can never sate,--
Even the wind and rain,
And frogs and insects, singing soon and late,
Thy sympathies inspire, thy heart’s refrain,
Whose sounds invigorate
With rest life’s weary brain.
V
And as the night, like some mysterious rune,
Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon,
Thou lutest us no immaterial tune:
But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn,
By thy still strain made strong,
Earth’s awful avatar,--in whom is born
Thy own deep music,--labors all night long
With growth, assuring morn
Assumes like onward song.
A GRAY DAY
I
Long volleys of wind and of rain,
And the rain on the drizzled pane,
And the day ends chill and murk;
But on yesterday’s eve, I trow,
The new-moon’s thorn-thin bow
Stabbed rosy through gold and through glow,
Like a rich, barbaric dirk.
II
The throats of the snapdragons,--
Cool-colored with gold like the dawns
That come with spring o’er the hills,--
Are filled with a sweet rain, fine,
Of starry, scintillant shine,
A faery vat of thin wine,
That the rain for the elfins fills.
III
Dabbled the poppies shrink,
And the coxcomb and the pink;
And the candytuft’s damp crown
Droops, dribbled, low bowed i’ the wet;
And rows of the mignonette
Little musk-sacks open set,
Which the weight o’ the dew drags down.
IV
Stretched taunt ’twixt the blades of grass,
A gossamer-fibered glass,
That the garden-spider spun,
The web, where the round rain clings
In the sag o’ its middle, swings--
A hammock for elfin things
When the stars succeed the sun.
V
And, mark, where the pale gourd grows
As high as the climbing rose,
How the tiger-moth is pressed
To that wide leaf’s under side.--
And I know where the red wasps hide,
And the brown bees,--that defied
The first strong gusts,--distressed.
VI
Yet I feel that the gray will blow
Aside for an afterglow;
And the wind, on a sudden, toss
Drenched boughs; a pattering shower
Athwart the red dusk in a glower,
Big drops heard hard on each flower,
The grass and the flowering moss.
VII
And then for a minute, may be,--
A pearl, hollow-worn, of the sea,--
A glimmer of moon will smile,
And a star, rinsed clean, through the dusk:
And a freshness of moonlit musk
O’er the showery lawns blow brusque
As spice from an Indian Isle.
THE MOOD O’ THE EARTH
My heart is high as the day is clear,
As the wind in the wood that blows;
My heart is high with a mood that’s cheer,
And glows like a sun-blown rose.
My heart is high, and up and away
Like a bird in the skies’ deep blue;
My heart goes singing through the day,
As glad as a bee i’ the dew.
My heart, my heart is high; its beat
Is wild as the scent o’ the wood,
The wild sweet wind, with its pulse of heat,
And its musk of blossom and bud.
My heart is high; and it leads my feet
Where the sense of summer is full,
To woods and waters where lovers meet
To hills where the creeks run cool.
My heart is one, is one with the heart,
With the joy o’ the bee that comes
And sucks i’ the flowers, that dip apart
For his dusty body that hums.
My heart is glad as the glad redstart,
The flame-flecked bird, the spotted bird,
Whose lilt my soul has got by heart,
Fitting each note with a word.
God’s love! I tread the wind and air!
Am one with the hoiden wind;
And the stars that swim in the blue, I swear,
Right soon in my hair I’ll find.
To live high up, a life o’ the mist,
With the cloud-things in white skies,--
With their limbs of pearl and of amethyst,--
That laugh cerulean eyes!
To creep and to suck, like an elfin thing,
In the aching heart of a rose;
In the bluebell’s ear to cling and swing,
And whisper what no one knows!
To live on wild-honey, as fresh, as thin
As the rain that’s left in a flower!
And roll forth, golden from feet to chin,
In the pollen’s Danaë-shower!
Or free, bird-hearted, bend back the throat,
With a vigorous look at the blue,
And launch from my soul one wild, true note,
Is the thing that my heart would do!
God’s life! the blood o’ the earth is mine!
And the mood o’ the earth I’ll take,
And brim my soul with her wonderful wine,
And sing till my heart doth break!
NOONING
I
Weak winds that make the waters wink;
White clouds that sail from lands of Fable
To white Utopias, vague, that brink
Sky-gulfs of blue unfathomable:
Their rolling shadows, drifting
O’er hills of forest, lifting
Wild peaks of purple range, that loom and sink.
II
Warm knolls, whereon the Summer dreams;
And droning dells, where all her brightness
Lies, lulled with hymns of mountain-streams’
Far-foaming falls of windy whiteness:
Where, from the glooming hollow,
With cawing crows that follow,
The hunted hawk wings wearily and screams.
III
Dry-buzzing heat and drought that shrills
With one harsh locust’s lonesome whirring;
No voice amid the answering hills
Recedes in echoes far-recurring;
As when, with twilight wimpled,
The Morning, rosy dimpled,
From dewy tops called o’er responding rills.
IV
Wan with sweet summer hangs the deep
Hot heaven with the high sun hearted--
A great, wide bluebell bloom asleep
With golden-pistiled petals parted.--
So lone, one would not startle
If from yon wood should dartle
Some wildwood Dream, some Myth the wildwoods keep.
THE LOG-BRIDGE
I
Last month, where the old log-bridge is laid
O’er the woodland creek, in the belts o’ the shade,
To the right and the left, pink-packed, was made
A gloaming glory of scented tangle
By the bramble roses there--that wade,
High-heaped, from the banks--with many a braid
That, wilting, powdered the ruts, and swayed,
To the waters beneath, loose loops of spangle;
Where the breeze that blew and the beam that rayed
Were murmurous-soft with the bees awrangle.
II
This month--’tis August--the lane that leads
To the bramble-bridge runs waste with weeds,
That bloom bright saffron, or satin seeds
Of thistle-fleece blow at you, hazy:
Starry the lane with the thousand bredes
Of the yellow daisy, and bud-like beads
Of marigold eyes, around which speeds
The butterfly, sumptuous with mottle and lazy;
Whereunder the pewee picks and pleads,
On the sumach’s tassel that dips to the daisy.
III
All golden the spot in the noon’s gold shine,
Where the yellow-bird sits with eyes like wine
And swings and whistles; where, line on line,
In coils of warmth the sunbeams nestle;
Where cool by the pool (where the crawfish, fine
As a shadow’s shadow, darts dim) to mine
The wet creek-clay with their peevish whine,
Come mason-hornets; and roll and wrestle
With balls of clay they carry, and twine
In hollow nests on the joists o’ the trestle.
IV
Where the horsemint shoots through the grasses,--high
On the root-thick rivage that roofs,--a dry
Gray knob that bristles with pink, the sigh
Of crickets is heard; and the leaves’ deep bosoms
Are pierced, at dusk, with a bird’s quick cry,
A passing bird that twitters by:
And the frogs’ grave antiphons rise and die;
And here, to drink, come the wild opossums:
And here, to-night, will you and I
Linger and lean while the great moon blossoms.
AMONG THE KNOBS
There is a place embanked with brush
Three wooded knobs beyond,
Lost, in a valley, where the lush
Wild eglantine blows blond.
Where light the dogwoods earliest
Their torches of white fires,
And, bee-bewildered, east and west
The red haws build their spires.
The wild crab-apples’ flowery sprays
Blur through the pensive gloom
A fragrant pink; and by lone ways
The close blackberries bloom.
I love the spot: a shallow brook
Slips from the forest, near
A cane-brake and a violet nook;
Its rustling depths so clear
The minnows glimmer where they glide
Above its rocky bed:
A boyhood-haunted brook, not wide,
That has its sparkling head
Among the rainy hills; and drops
By five low waterfalls--
Wild music of a hundred stops--
Between the forests’ walls:
Down to a water-gate, that hangs
Across the stream; a dull
Portcullis rude, whose wooden fangs
The moss makes beautiful.
The brass-bright dragonflies about
Its seeding grasses swim;
The streaked wasps, worrying in and out,
Dart sleepily and slim.
Here in the moon-gold moss, that glows
Like pools of moonlight, dies
The pale anemone; and blows
The bluet, blue as skies.
And, where in April tenderly
The wild geranium made
A thin, peculiar fragrance, we,
Cool in pellucid shade,
Found wild strawberries just a-bud;
Wild berries, tart and fresh,--
Pale scarlet as a wood-bird’s blood,--
That May’s low vines would mesh.
Once from that hill a farm-house ’mid
Deep orchards--cozy brown,--
In lilacs and old roses hid,--
With picket-fence looked down.
O’er ruins now the roses guard;
The plum and seckel-pear
And apricot rot on the sward
Their wasted ripeness there.
Again when huckleberries blow
Their waxen bells I’ll tread
That dear accustomed way; and go
Adown that orchard; led
To that avoided spot, which seems
The haunt of vanished springs;
Lost as the hills in drowsy dreams
Of visionary things.
THE FALLS OF THE OHIO
Here on this jutting headland, where the trees
Spread a dusk carpet for the sun to cast
And count his golden guineas on, we’ll rest.
Behold th’ Ohio Falls: see how it seethes!
Though hardly heard from this high, wooded point,
Yet how it still confuses tongue and ear
With its subdued and low monotonous roar!
Not as it did, however, when we stood
And marked it from the spanning of the bridge
Rushing beneath, impetuous as a herd,--
A tameless herd, with manes of flying spray,--
Between the pillars towering above.
No more does it confound us and confuse;
Its clamor here is softened to a sound,
Incessant and subdued, like that which haunts
The groves of spring, when, like some dim surprise,
A wind, precursor of the rain, rides down
From a gray cloud and sets the leafy tongues
Cool-gossiping of the approaching shower.
There runs the dam; and where its dark line cuts
The river’s sheen, already you may see
The ripples glancing to the summer sun,
As if a host had couched a thousand spears
And tossed a thousand plumes of fleecy foam,
In answer to the challenge of the Falls,
Blown from his limestone battlements, and cried
From his wave-builded city’s roaring walls.
And there, you see, the waves like champions charge;
Crowding, wild form on form, their foam-hoofs beat
The ragged rocks that roll them on their way:
Billowing they come; knight-like, to ringing lists,
With shout on shout, tossing a thousand plumes,
A thousand spears in sparkling tournament;
Lifting, opposing each, a silvery shield
Or shining pennon, now that sinks or soars,
And many a glittering sword of twinkling foam,
And many a helmet, shattered in flakes of froth,
That, to the trumpeting wind, hisses away:
While, o’er it all, swell out the rush and roar
Of onset, as of battle borne afar.--
On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop!
On, on, along the sandy banks that fling
Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay
Their ruinous rush, the knightly strife of waves,
Warring, and winding wild their watery horns.
Look, where a thousand oily eddies whirl,
And turn and turn like wheels of liquid steel
Below this headland! ’Tis a place that none
Has bottomed yet with sounding lead and line.
Like some huge kraken, coiling vast its length,
The Eddy sleeps; and, bending from the shores,
The spotted sycamores have gazed and gazed,
Watching its slumber as gray giants might
A dragon in the hollow of gaunt hills,
Its serpent bulk wound round some magic hoard.
So long they’ve watched, their ancient backs have grown
Humped, gnarled, and bent, but still they gaze and gaze,
Leaning above; and from the glassy waves
Their images stare back their wonderment.
Haply they see the guardian Genius lie
At the dark bottom in an oozy cave
Of coral; webbed, recumbent on his mace
Of mineral; his locks of dripping green
Circling a crown of ore; his fishy eyes
Dull with the aqueous dullness of his realms.
But when the storm’s abroad and whips the waves
With stinging lashes of the myriad rain,
Or scars with thunder some ancestral oak,
Sire of a forest, then he wakes in wrath,
And on the dark foundation of the stream
Rises, a monarch, crowned with iron crown,
And hurls his challenge upward at the storm,
And rages through the waters; heaves and breaks
Through the wild waves, whose round and murky bulks,
Ribbed white with foam, wallow their monster way,
Like giant herds, along yon edge of rock
O’erstrewn with petrifactions of far time;
Mollusk and trilobite and honeycomb
Of whitest coral; and with mass on mass
Of root-like reptiles; writhings turned to rock;
Huge saurian bulks that, haply, sported there,
Convolved; and, in a moment, when the change,--
Which made and unmade continents and seas,
That teemed and groaned with mammoth and plesiosaur,--
Came, with upheaval of the universe,
Thro’ all their monster spines were struck to stone.
There where uprises a wild knoll, o’erstrewn
With wrecks of ancient forest, in mid-stream
Once rose an island, green and beautiful
With willow and beech, poplar and sycamore;
A river-island where the woodman built,--
Stream-guarded from the savage-haunted shore,--
His rude log cabin. Here he sowed his maize;
Here saw it tassel in the summer heat,
And glance like ranks of feathered Indians through
The glimmering vistas of the broken wood;
Here reaped and sheaved its stalks, all ivory-eared,
In shocks like wigwam rows, when like a maid,
An Indian maid, ruddy in dogwood beads,
The autumn came, soft o’er the sunset hills,
That blushed for love, and underneath her feet
Cast untold gold in leaves and yellow fruit.
Here dwelt the pioneer and here he died,
And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth
And loam of what was once an island; now
A bed of limestone rock and water pools,--
Where, in the quarry, you may see the blast
Spout heavenward the dust and dirt and stone,
And flap and pound its echoes round the hills
In giant strokes as of some Titan hammer;--
A mound of stump-pierced soil where once an isle,--
As rich and fair in forest and in field
As any isle that rises to a sail
In tropic seas,--arose to kiss the sun.
There lies the other half of what was once
Corn Island: broad the channel beats between.
Lower it lies, and mantled with dwarf brakes
Of willow and of cottonwood and beech,
Degenerate offsprings of the mighty boles
That once o’erbrowed the stream in majesty
Of tall primeval beauty. In the morn,
Ere yet the east assumes its faintest blush,
Here you may hear the melancholy snipe
Piping, or see her paddling in the pools
That splash the low bed of the rocky soil.
Here once the Indian stole in natural craft
From wahoo-bush to bush, from tree to tree,
His head plumes like a bird, below, above,
Fluttering and nodding ’mid the undergrowth;
In his brown hand the pliant, polished bow,
And at his back his gaudy quiver filled
With tufted arrows headed blue with flint.
And while the deep flamingo-colored west
Flamed on his ruddy cheek, and airy fire
Struck rosy ’thwart the stream, he, swift as thought,
Strung his quick bow and through the gray wild goose,
That rose with clamor from the rushy pool,
Sent a fleet arrow; crested with the quills
Which yesterday, perhaps, its mate’s gray wing
Made beautiful; and plucked to decorate
The painted shaft that should to-day speed home
And redden all their white with kindred blood:
It falling, gasping at his moccasined feet,
Breathed out its wild life, while the lonely brave
Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills
Answered his exultation with a whoop.
1885.
FALL FANCIES
Far off a wind blew, and I heard
Wild echoes of the woods reply--
The herald of some royal word,
With bannered trumpet, blown on high,
Meseemed, then passed me by:
Who summoned marvels there to meet,
In pomp, upon a cloth of gold;
Where berries of the bitter-sweet,
That, splitting, showed the coals they hold,
Sowed garnets through the wold:
Where, under tents of maples, seeds
Of smooth carnelian, oval red,
The spice-bush spangled: where, like beads,
The dogwood’s rounded rubies--fed
With fire--blazed and bled.
And there I saw amid the rout
Of months, in richness cavalier,
A minnesinger--lips apout;
A gypsy face; straight as a spear;
A rose stuck in his ear:
Eyes, sparkling like old German wine,
All mirth and moonlight; naught to spare
Of slender beard, that lent a line
Unto his lip; October there,
With chestnut curling hair.
His blue baretta swept its plume
White through the leaves; his purple hose,
Puffed at the thighs, made gleam of gloom;
His tawny doublet, slashed with rose,
And laced with crimson bows,
Outshone the wahoo’s scarlet pride,
The haw, in rich vermilion dressed:
A dagger dangling at his side,
A slim lute, banded to his breast,
Whereon his hands did rest,
I saw him come.... And, lo, to hear
The lilt of his approaching lute,
No wonder that the regnant Year
Bent down her beauty, blushing mute,
Her heart beneath his foot.
LATE OCTOBER
Bulged from its cup the dark brown acorn falls,
And by its gnarly saucer, in the stream’s
Clear puddles, swells; the sweet-gum’s spike-crowned balls
Beside them lie; and, opening all their seams,
Beneath the chestnut-tree the hurry hulls
Split, and, within, each nut like copper gleams.
Burst silver white, nods,--an exploded husk
Of snowy, woolly smoke,--the milk-weed’s puff
Along the orchard’s fence; where in the dusk
And ashen weeds,--as some grim Satyr’s rough
Red, breezy cheeks burn through his beard,--the brusque
Crab-apples glow, wind-tumbled from above.
And under withered leaves the crickets’ clicks
Seem some dim dirge sighed into memory’s ears;
One bird sits in the sumach, flits and picks
Its sour seeds. Thro’ all the wood one hears
The dropping hickories. Round the hay’s railed ricks,
Among the fields, gather the lowing steers.
Some slim, bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked,
Like birds, the flowers, herding from their homes
To warmer woods and skies. Where once were rocked
Unnumbered bees within unnumbered blooms,
One feeble bee clings to one bloom, or, locked
Within it, dreams of summer’s oozing combs.
Winds shake the maples, and all suddenly
A storm of leafy stars around you freaks,--
Some Dryad’s tattered raiment. To her knee
Wading, the Naiad haunts her stream that streaks
Through woodland waifs. Hark! Pan for Helike
Flutes in the forest, while he seeks and seeks.
A NOVEMBER WALK
I
_Morning_
The hoar frost crisps beneath the feet;
And, sparkling in the morning’s strength,
The fence, along its straggling length,
Gleams as if wrought of virgin sleet.
On broom-sedge fields and sassafras
Neglectfully the dim wind lifts
The dead leaves; and around me drifts
The milkweed, shaken from the grass.
Reluctantly and one by one
The useless leaves drift slowly down;
And, seen through woodland vistas, brown
The nut-tree patters in the sun.
Where pools the brook beneath its fall
With scales of ice its edge is bound;
And on the pebbles scattered round
The ooze is frozen; each a ball,
It seems, of crystal fallen there.
And now the wind sweeps through the wood
With sighings, and the solitude
Seems shaken with a mighty care.
Decay and melancholy drape
The near-by hills in mysteries
Of mist, through which the rocks and trees
Loom, hazy, each a phantom shape.
To sullenness the surly crow
All his derisive being yields,
And o’er the barren stubble-fields
Flaps, cawless, wrapped in hungry woe.
II
_Evening_
As eve comes on the teasel stoops
Its spike-crowned cone before the blast:
The tattered leaves drive whirling past
In frantic and fantastic troops.
The matted elder-copses sigh;
Their broad, blue combs, with berries weighed,
Like heavy pendulums are swayed
With every gust that wanders by.
Through broken walls of tangled brier,
That hedge the lane, the sumachs thrust
Their scarlet torches, red as rust,
Lit with the sunset’s stolid fire.
The eve is here: Cold, hard, and drear
The cloudless west with livid white
Of flaming silver walls the night
Far as one star’s thin rays appear.
Wedged ’thwart the west’s white luridness
The wild geese wing; from roseless domes
The far “honk” of the leader comes
Lonely and harsh and colorless.
The west dies down; and in its cup,
Shadow on shadow, pours the night;
The east glows with a mystic light;
The stars are keen; the moon comes up.
THE WHITE EVENING
On hills, beneath the steely skies,
The wind-tossed forests rock and roar:
Along the river’s ringing shore
Homeward the skimming skater flies.
On windy meads of icy brakes,
Where, sheathed in sleet, the haw-tree stands,
The moon looks down on glistening lands,
Where with the cold each bramble shakes.
Last night the sleet made white the world:
All day the wind moaned in the pines:
Now like a wolf, that whines and whines,
Like some wild wolf its hate is hurled
Against the hut upon the wold,
And the one willow by the stream:
Where, huddled, in the moon’s chill gleam,
The houseless hare leaps through the cold.