Her hieroglyphic meanings which elude;
A symbol language of similitude,
Into whose secrets science may not glance;
In which the Mind-in-Nature doth romance
In miracles that baffle if pursued--
No guess shall search them and no thought intrude
Beyond the limits of her sufferance.
So doth the great Intelligence above
Hide His own thought’s creations; and attire
Forms in the dream’s ideal, which He dowers
With immaterial loveliness and love--
As essences of fragrance and of fire--
Preaching th’ evangels of the stars and flowers.
FULFILLMENT
There are some souls who may look in on these
Essential peoples of the earth and air--
That have the stars and flowers in their care--
And read their soul-suggestive secrecies:
Heart-intimates and comrades of the trees,
Who from them learn, what no known schools declare,
God’s knowledge; and from winds, that, singing, fare,
God’s gospel, filled with mighty harmonies.
Souls, unto whom the waves impart a word
Of fuller faith; the sunset and the dawn
Preach sermons more inspired even than
The tongues of Pentecost; as, distant heard
In forms of change, through Nature upward drawn,
God doth address th’ immortal part of Man.
TOO LATE
I looked upon a dead girl’s face and heard
What seemed the voice of Death cry out to me,
Deep in her heart, all of the agony
Of her lost dreams, complaining word on word:--
How on her soul no soul had touched, or stirred
Her life’s sad depths to rippling melody,
Or made the imaged longing, there, to be
The realization of a hope deferred.
So in her life had Love behaved to her.
Between the lonely chapters of her years
And her young eyes making no golden blur
With god-bright face and hair; who led me to
Her side at last, and bade me, through my tears,
With Death’s dumb lips, too late, to see and know.
THE WITCH
She gropes and hobbles, where the dropsied rocks
Are hairy with the lichens and the twist
Of knotted wolf’s-bane, mumbling in the mist,
Hawk-nosed and wrinkle-eyed with scrawny locks.
At her bent back the moon, slow-sinking, mocks,
Like some lewd evil whom the Fiend hath kissed;
Once at her feet the slipping serpent hissed,
And once the owl called to the forest fox.--
What Sabboth brew does she intend? What root
Now seek for, seal for what satanic spell
Of incantations and demonic fire?--
From her rude hut, hill-huddled in the brier,
What dark Familiar points her sure pursuit,
There, with gaunt eyes, red with the glow of Hell?
THE SOMNAMBULIST
Oaks and a water. By the water--eyes,
Ice-green and steadfast as still stars; and hair
Yellow as eyes deep in a she-wolf’s lair;
And limbs--like mist the lightning’s flicker dyes.
The humped oaks huddle under iron skies;
The dry wind whirls the dead leaves everywhere;
White on the water falls a vulture-glare
Of moon, and black the circling raven flies.
Again the power of this thing hath laid
Compulsion on me: and I seem to hear
A sweet voice calling me beyond the gates
To longed-for love: I come: each forest glade
Seems reaching out white arms to draw me near--
Nearer and nearer to the death that waits.
OPIUM
_On reading De Quincey’s “Confessions of an Opium Eater.”_
I seemed to stand before a temple walled
From shadows and night’s unrealities;
Filled with dark music of dead memories,
And voices,--lost in darkness,--deep that called.
I entered. And beneath the dome’s high-halled
Immensity one forced me to my knees
Before a blackness--throned ’mid semblances
And spectres--crowned with flames of emerald.
Then, lo! two shapes that thundered at mine ears
The names of Horror and Oblivion,--
Priests of this god,--and bade me die and dream.
Then, in the heart of Hell, a thousand years
Meseemed I lay--dead! while the iron stream
Of Time beat out the seconds, one by one.
MUSIC AND SLEEP
These have a life that hath no part in death:
These circumscribe the soul and make it strong:
Between the breathing of a dream and song,
Building a world of beauty in a breath.
Unto the heart the voice of this one saith
Ideals, its emotions live among;
Unto the mind the other speaks a tongue
Of visions, where the guess,--men christen Faith,--
May face the fact of immortality--
As may a rose its unembodied scent,
Or star its own reflected radiance.
We do not know these save subconsciously,
To whose mysterious shadows God hath lent
No certain shape, no certain countenance.
AMBITION
Now to my lips lift thou some opiate
Of dull forgetfulness! while in thy gaze
Still lures the loveless beauty that betrays,
And in thy mouth the music that is hate.
No promise more hast thou to make me wait;
No smile to cozen my sick heart with praise!
Far, far behind thee stretch laborious days,
And far before thee, labors soon and late.
Thine is the fen-fire that we deem a star,
Flying before us, ever fugitive,
Thy mocking policy still holds afar:
And thine the voice to which our longings give
Hope’s siren face, that speaks us sweet and fair,
Only at last to whelm us with despair.
DESPONDENCY
Not all the bravery that day puts on
Of gold and azure, ardent or austere,
Shall ease my soul of sorrow; grief, more dear
Than all the joy that heavenly hope may don.
Far up the skies the rumor of the dawn
May run, and eve like some wild torch appear;
These shall not change the darkness, gathered here,
Of thought that rusts like an old sword undrawn.
Oh, for a place far-sunken from the sun!
A wildwood cave of primitive rocks and moss!
Where Sleep and Silence--breast to married breast--
Lie with their child, night-eyed Oblivion;
Where, freed from all the burden of my cross,
I might forget, I might forget--and rest!
DESPAIR
Shut in with phantoms of life’s hollow hopes,
And shadows of old sins satiety slew,
And the young ghosts of the dead dreams love knew,
Out of the day into the night she gropes.
Behind her, high the silvered summit slopes
Of hope and faith, she will not turn to view;
But towards the cave of heartbreak, harsh of hue,
She goes, where all the dropsied horror ropes.
There is a voice of waters in her ears,
And on her brow a wind that never dies:
One is the anguish of desired tears;
One is the sorrow of unuttered sighs;
And, burdened with the immemorial years,
Downward she goes with never lifted eyes.
QUATRAINS
I
_Penury_
Above his misered embers, gaunt and gray,
With toil-gnarled limbs he stoops: around his hut,
Want, like a hobbling hag, goes, night and day,
Trying the windows and the doors tight-shut.
II
_Strategy_
Craft’s silent sister and the daughter deep
Of Contemplation, she, who spreads below
A hostile tent soft comfort for her foe,
With eyes of Jael watching till he sleep.
III
_Tempest_
With helms of lightning, glittering in the skies,
On steeds of thunder, form on cloudy form,
Terrific beauty in their hair and eyes,
Sweep down the wild Valkyries of the storm.
IV
_The Locust Blossom_
The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met
The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour:
Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet,
Was born the fragrant beauty of this flower.
V
_Melancholy_
With shadowy immortelles of memory
About her brow, she sits with eyes that look
Upon the stream of Lethe wearily,
In hesitant hands Death’s partly-opened book.
VI
_Content_
Among the meadows of Life’s sad unease--
In labor still renewing her soul’s youth--
With trust, for patience, and with love, for peace,
Singing she goes with the calm face of Ruth.
VII
_Life and Death_
Of our own selves God makes a glass, wherein
Two shades are imaged, passing like a breath:
And one is Life, whose other name is Sin;
And one is Love, whose other name is Death.
VIII
_Sorrow_
Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste
Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice
Of lost Love’s tears, and, famishing, can but taste
The dead-sea fruit of Life’s remembered joys.
A LAST WORD
_Not for myself, but for the sake of Song,
Would I succeed as others have who gave
Their lives unto her, shaping sure and strong
Her lovely limbs that made them god and slave._
_Not for myself, but for the sake of Art,
Would I advance beyond the others’ best,
Winning a deeper secret from her heart
To hang it moonlike ’mid the starry rest._
NATURE POEMS
(SECOND SERIES)
FOREWORD
_In the first rare Spring of song,
In my heart’s young hours,
In my youth ’twas thus I sang,
Choosing ’mid the flowers_:--
“_Fair the Dandelion is,
But for me too lowly;
And the winsome Violet
Is, forsooth, too holy.
‘But the Touch-me-not?’--Go to!
What! a face that’s speckled
Like a common milking-maid’s,
Whom the sun hath freckled.
Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt;
And the Trillium-Lily,
In her spotless gown, ’s a prude,
Sanctified and silly.
By her cap the Columbine,
To my mind, ’s too merry--
Gossips, I would sooner woo
Some plebeian Berry.
And the shy Anemone--
Well, her face shows sorrow;
Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day,
Dead and gone to-morrow.
Then that hold-eyed, buxom wench,
Big and blond and lazy,--
She’s been chosen over oft!--
Sirs, I mean the Daisy.
Pleasant persons are they all,
And their virtues many;
Faith! I know but good of each,
And naught ill of any.
But I choose a May-Apple;
She shall be my Lady;
Blooming, hidden and refined,
Sweet in places shady.”_
_In my youth ’twas thus I sang,
In my heart’s young hours,
In the first rare Spring of song,
Choosing ’mid the flowers.
So I hesitated when
Time alone was reckoned
By the hours that Fancy smiled,
Love and Beauty beckoned.
Hard it was for me to choose
From the flowers that flattered;_
_And the blossom that I chose
Soon lay dead and scattered.
Hard I found it then, ah me!
Hard I found the choosing;
Harder, harder since I’ve found,
All too hard, the losing.
Haply had I chosen then
From the weeds that tangle
Wayside, woodland, and the wall
Of my garden’s angle,
I had chosen better, yea,
For these later hours--
Longer live the weeds, and oft
Sweeter are than flowers._
WEEDS BY THE WALL
THE CRICKET
I
First of the insect choir, in the spring
We hear his faint voice fluttering in the grass,
Beneath some blossom’s rosy covering,
Or frond of fern, upon a wildwood pass.
When in the marsh, in clamorous orchestras,
The shrill hylodes pipe; when, in the haw’s
Bee-swarming blooms, or tasseling sassafras,
Sweet threads of silvery song the sparrow draws,
Bow-like, athwart the vibrant atmosphere,--
Like some dim dream low-breathed in slumber’s ear,--
We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_.
II
All summer long the mellowing meadows thrill
To his blithe music. Be it day or night,
Close gossip of the grass, on field and hill
He serenades the silence with delight:
Silence, that hears the melon slowly split
With ripeness; and the plump peach, hornet-bit,
Loosen and fall; and everywhere the white,
Warm, silk-like stir of leafy lights that flit
As breezes blow; above which, loudly clear,--
Like joy who sings of life and has no fear,--
We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_.
III
Then in the autumn, by the waterside,
Leaf-huddled; or along the weed-grown walks,
He dirges low the flowers that have died,
Or with their ghosts holds solitary talks.
Lover of warmth, all day above the click
And crunching of the sorghum-press, through thick
Sweet steam of juice; all night when, white as chalk,
The hunter’s-moon hangs o’er the rustling rick,
Within the barn ’mid munching cow and steer,--
Soft as a memory the heart holds dear,--
We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_.
IV
Kinsman and cousin of the Faëry Race,
All winter long he sets his sober mirth,--
That brings good-luck to many a fireplace,--
To folk-lore song and saga of the hearth.
Between the back-log’s bluster and the slim
High twittering of the kettle,--sounds that hymn
Home-comforts,--when, outside, the starless earth
Is icicled in every laden limb,--
Defying frost and all the sad and sere,--
Like love that dies not and is always near,--
We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_.
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 glow-worm 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
O vague confederate of the whippoorwill,
Of owl and cricket and the katydid!
Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill
Vibrating note and send’st it where, half hid
In cedars, twilight sleeps--each azure lid
Drooping a line of golden eyeball still.--
Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice
Within the Garden of the Hours apoise
On dusk’s deep daffodil.
III
Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon
Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover
And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune
Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over.
Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover
Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon
Of twilight’s hush, and little intimate
Of eve’s first fluttering star and delicate
Round rim of rainy moon!
IV
Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn
Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour
When they may gambol under haw and thorn,
Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?
Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower
The liriodendron is? from whence is borne
The elfin music of thy bell’s deep bass,
To summon Fairies to their starlit maze,
To summon them or warn.
THE SCREECH-OWL
I
When, one by one, the stars have trembled through
Eve’s shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire--
As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew
Orbs its bright beads;--and, one by one, the choir
Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier:
Then through the woods--where wandering winds pursue
A ceaseless whisper--like an eery lyre
Struck in the Erl-king’s halls, where ghosts and dreams
Hold revelry, your goblin music screams,
Shivering and strange as some strange thought come true.
II
Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees,
Or those fantastic fungi of the woods
That crowd the dampness--are you kin to these
In some mysterious way that still eludes
My fancy? you, who haunt the solitudes
With hag-like wailings? voice, that seems to freeze
Out of the darkness,--like the scent which broods,
Rank and rain-sodden, over autumn nooks,--
That, to the mind, might well suggest such looks,
Ghastly and gray, as pale clairvoyance sees.
III
You people night with weirdness: lone and drear,
Beneath the stars, you cry your wizard runes;
And in the haggard silence, filled with fear,
Your shuddering hoot seems some wild grief that croons
Mockery and terror; or,--beneath the moon’s
Cloud-hurrying glimmer,--to the startled ear,
Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes,
The witless wit of outcast Edgar there
In the wild night; or, wan with all despair,
The mirthless laughter of the Fool in Lear.
THE CHIPMUNK
I
He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence,
Or on the fallen tree,--brown as a leaf
Fall stripes with russet,--gambols down the dense
Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence
He comes, nor whither--’tis a time too brief!--
He vanishes;--swift carrier of some Fay,
Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief--
A goblin glimpse from woodland way to way.
II
What harlequin mood of nature qualified
Him so with happiness? and limbed him with
Such young activity as winds, that ride
The ripples, have, that dance on every side?
As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith
Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight,
Gnome-like, in darkness,--like a moonlight myth,--
Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.
III
Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole
Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps;
Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole
Tunnelling its mine--like some ungainly Troll
--Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps
Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute;
Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps,
And trees unrolling mighty root on root.
IV
Such is the music of his sleeping hours.
Day hath another--’tis a melody
He trips to, made by the assembled flowers,
And light and fragrance laughing ’mid the bowers,
And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.
Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze--
The silent music of Earth’s ecstasy--
The Satyr’s soul, the Faun of classic days.
THE WILD IRIS
That day we wandered ’mid the hills,--so lone
Clouds are not lonelier,--the forest lay
In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:
And many a bird the glimmering light along
Showered the golden bubbles of its song.
Then in the valley, where the brook went by,
Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,--
An isolated slip of fallen sky,
Epitomizing heaven in its sum,--
An iris bloomed--blue, as if, flower-disguised,
The gaze of Spring had there materialized.
I have forgotten many things since then--
Much beauty and much happiness and grief;
And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men,
Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.
“’Tis winter now,” so says each barren bough;
And face and hair proclaim ’tis winter now.
I would forget the gladness of that spring!
I would forget that day when she and I,
Between the bird-song and the blossoming,
Went hand in hand beneath the soft spring sky!--
Much is forgotten, yea--and yet, and yet,
The things we would we never can forget.--
Nor I how May then minted treasuries
Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light
The sorrel’s cups, whose elfin chalices
Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white.
Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort,
And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt.
But most of all, yea, it were well for me,
Me and my heart, that I forget that flower,
The blue wild-iris, azure fleur-de-lis,
That she and I together found that hour.
Its recollection can but emphasize
The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes.
THE PATH BY THE CREEK
There is a path that leads
Through purple ironweeds,
By button-bush and mallow
Along a creek;
A path that wildflowers hallow,
That wild-birds seek;
Roofed thick with eglantine
And grape and trumpet-vine.
This side, the blackberries sweet
Glow cobalt in the heat;
That side, a creamy yellow,
In summer-time
The pawpaws slowly mellow:
And autumn’s prime
Strews red the Chickasaw,
Persimmon brown and haw.
The glittering dragon-fly,
A wingéd gem, goes by;
And tawny wasp and hornet
Make drowsy drone;
The beetle, like a garnet,
Basks on the stone;
And butterflies float there,
Spangling with gold the air.
Here the brown thrashers hide,
And chat and cat-bird chide;
The blue kingfisher houses
Above the stream,
And here the heron drowses,
Lost in his dream;
The vireo’s flitting note
Makes woodlands more remote.
And now a cow’s slow bell
Tinkles from dale to dell;
Where breeze-dropped petals winnow
From blossomy limbs
On waters, where the minnow,
Faint-twinkling, swims;
Where, in the root-arched shade,
Slim prisms of light are laid.
When in the tangled thorn
The new-moon hangs a horn,
Or, ’mid the sunset’s islands,
Guides her canoe,
The brown owl in the silence
Calls, and the dew
Beads glimmering orbs of damp,
Each one a glow-worm lamp.
Then when the night is still
Here sings the whippoorwill;
And stealthy sounds of crickets,
And winds that pass,
Whispering, through bramble thickets
Along the grass,
Faint with warm scents of hay,
Seem feet of dreams astray.
And where the water shines
Dark through tree-twisted vines,
Some water-spirit, dreaming,
Braids in her hair
A star’s reflection; seeming
A jewel there;
While all the sweet night long
Ripples her quiet song....
Would I could imitate,
O path, thy happy state!
Making my life all beauty,
All bloom and beam;
Knowing no other duty
But just to dream,
And far from pain and woe
Lead feet that come and go.
Leading to calm content,
O’er ways the Master went,
Through lowly things and humble,
To peace and love;
Teaching the lives that stumble
To look above,
Forget the world of toil
And all its mad turmoil.
ALONG THE STREAM
Where the violet shadows brood
Under cottonwoods and beeches,
Through whose leaves the restless reaches
Of the river glance, I’ve stood,
While the red-bird and the thrush
Set to song the morning hush.
There,--when wakening woods encroach
On the shadowy winding waters,
And the bluets, April’s daughters,
At the darling Spring’s approach,
Star their myriads through the trees,--
All the land is one with peace.
Under some imposing cliff,
That, with bush and tree and boulder,
Thrusts a gray, gigantic shoulder
O’er the stream, I’ve oared a skiff,
While great clouds of iceberg hue
Lounged along the noonday blue.
There,--when harvest heights impend
Over shores of rippling summer,
And to greet the fair new-comer,--
June,--the wildrose thickets bend
In a million blossoms dressed,--
All the land is one with rest.
On some rock, where gaunt the oak
Reddens and the sombre cedar
Darkens, like a sachem leader,
I have lain and watched the smoke
Of the steamboat, far-away,
Trailed along the dying day.
There,--when margin waves reflect
Autumn colors, gay and sober,
And the Indian-girl, October,
Wampum-like in berries decked,
Leans above the leaf-strewn streams,--
All the land is one with dreams.
Through the bottoms where,--out-tossed
By the wind’s wild hands,--ashiver
Bend the willows o’er the river,
I have walked in sleet and frost,
While beneath the cold round moon,
Frozen, gleamed the long lagoon.
There,--when leafless woods uplift
Spectral arms the storm-blasts splinter,
And the hoary trapper, Winter,
Builds his camp of ice and drift,
With his snow-pelts furred and shod,--
All the land is one with God.
VOICES
When blood-root blooms and trillium flowers
Unclasp their stars to sun and rain,
My heart strikes hands with winds and showers
And wanders in the woods again.
O urging impulse, born of spring!
That makes glad April of my soul,
No bird, however wild of wing,
Is more impatient of control.
Impetuous of pulse it beats
Within my blood and bears me hence;
Above the housetops and the streets
I hear its happy eloquence.
It tells me all that I would know,
Of birds and buds, of blooms and bees;
I seem to hear the blossoms blow,
And leaves unfolding on the trees.
I seem to hear the bluebells ring
Faint purple peals of perfume; and
The honey-throated poppies fling
Their golden laughter o’er the land.
It calls to me; it sings to me;
I hear its far voice night and day;
I can not choose but go when tree
And flower clamor, “Come away!”
THE ROAD HOME
Over the hills as the pewee flies,
Under the blue of the southern skies;
Over the hills where the red-bird wings,
Like a scarlet blossom, or sits and sings;
Under the shadow of rock and tree,
Where the warm wind drones with the honeybee;
And the tall wild-carrots around you sway
Their lace-like flowers of cloudy gray:
By the black-cohosh and its pearl-white plume
A-nod in the woodland’s odorous gloom;
By the old rail-fence, in the elder’s shade,
That the myriad hosts of the weeds invade:
Where the butterfly-weed, like a coal of fire,
Blurs orange-red through brush and brier;
Where the pennyroyal and mint smell sweet,
And blackberries tangle the humming heat,
The old road leads; then crosses the creek,
Where the minnow dartles, a silvery streak;
Where the cows wade deep through the blue-eyed grass,
And the flickering dragon-flies gleaming pass.
That road is easy, however long,
Which wends with beauty as toil with song;
And the road we follow shall lead us straight
Past creek and wood to a farm-house gate.
Past hill and hollow, whence scents are blown
Of dew-wet clover that scythes have mown;
To a house that stands with porches wide
And gray low roof on the green hill-side.
Colonial, stately; ’mid shade and shine
Of the locust tree and the southern pine;
With its orchard acres and meadowlands
Stretched out before it like welcoming hands.
And gardens, where, in the myrrh-sweet June,
Magnolias blossom with many a moon
Of fragrance; and, in the feldspar light
Of August, roses bloom red and white.
In a woodbine arbor, a perfumed place,
A slim girl sits with listening face;
Her bonnet by her, a sunbeam lies
On her lovely hair, in her earnest eyes.
Her eyes, as blue as the distant deeps
Of the heavens above where the high hawk sleeps;
A book beside her, wherein she read
Till she saw _him_ coming, she heard _his_ tread.
Come home at last; come back from the war;
In his eyes a smile, on his brow a scar:
To the South come back--who wakes from her dream
To the love and the peace of a new regime.
DROUTH
I