Of blossom-petals in the face, and flees:
Elusive, made of mirthful mockeries,
Yet tender with the prescience of the rose;
A strain desired, that through the memory goes,
Too subtle-slender for the voice to seize;
A flame dissembled, only lit to tease,
Whose touch were half a kiss, if one but knows.
She shows by Leonato’s dove-like daughter
A falcon, by a prince to be possessed,
Gay-graced with bells that ever chiming are;
In azure of the bright Sicilian water,
A billow that has rapt into its breast
The swayed reflection of a dancing star!
“SONGS OF A SEMITE.”
I.
Armed soul that ridest through a land of peace,
Her borders filled with finest of the wheat,
Her children reaping, where with weary feet
Sad sowers trod who taste not the increase:
We hear thy trump, whose echo shall not cease,
In hush of night resounding, while we meet
Around unthreatened fires, but pressing fleet
Thou passest, proud, to claim thy kin’s release;
Thy trump, that doth arraign the entombèd Past,
Till shapes that march as if with martyr-psalm
In glow and gloom of kindly hearths we see:
And now to present war a keener blast
Calls loud, and spirits late content and calm
Spring up enforced, and spur to follow thee!
II.
To war? What words are mine, that do thee wrong!
Whose suit is powerful Peace, resplendent-shod,
Fair on the mountains; who wouldst set the rod
Borne as a staff o’er stony ways and long
Yet withered not, to strike new root and strong
Deep in its nursing earth. Oh, there the clod
Were virtue, and the sun the smile of God,
And buds should break to bloom, as maids to song!
Aye, would for thee that,—even as the dove
Whose silver wings have o’er waste places passed,
When in the lonely west the evening burns,
Her unforgetful breast a-throb with love,
To her own pillared porch of flight returns,—
On the old hills might Israel rest at last!
ON READING THE POEMS OF EDITH THOMAS.
_Then will I, tasting, say—_
_This is arbutus’ gift,_
_Reached from the leafy drift_
_On a glistening April day._
WILD HONEY.
Arbutus’ gift, in very truth, I deem
These gathered, golden songs that keep the gleam
Of early sunlight through the awakened wood;
The vernal spirits of the sisterhood
There cloistered, rosy-cool and vestal-shy,
Are in these lucent cells enforced to lie;
Here bides the baffling fragrance, here the charm.
Henceforth I fear not frosty Hiems’ harm,
Though all his bluff besiegers he should bring;
Behold, my bookshelf lodges Ver, the Spring!
POSIES.
—_Is this ... the posy of a ring?_
HAMLET.
I.
FRIENDSHIP.
I were not worth you, could I long for you;
But should you come, you would find me ready.
The lamp is lighted, the flame is steady:
Over the strait I toss this song for you!
II.
A ROSE.
Too-perfect Rose, thy heavy breath has power
To wake a dim, an unexplained regret:
Art body to the soul of some deep hour
That all my seasons have not yielded yet?
But if it be so—Hour, too-perfect Hour,
Ah, blow not full, though all the yearning days
Should tremble bud-like, since the wind must shower
Thine unreturning grace along the ways!
III.
WISTARIA.
—_lumenque juventæ_
_Purpureum_—
O smile of spring, that o’er the worn gray brow
Of some old many-memoried house dost run,
The very light of purple Youth art thou
The laughing goddess shed upon her son!
IV.
ON A FLY-LEAF.
“It is the nightingale, and not the lark!”
O poet-heart, enamored of the Past,
That Romeo with the ruby in his ear!
No longer sicken to detain the dark:
Thine eyes along the clear horizon cast:
Behold, a fresh imperious dawn is here!
AN IVORY MINIATURE.
When State Street homes were stately still;
When out of town was Murray Hill;
In late-deceased “old times”
Of vast, embowering bonnet-shapes,
And creamy-crinkled Canton crapes,
And florid annual-rhymes,
He owned a small suburban seat
Where now you see a modern street,
A monochrome of brown;
The sad “brown-brown” of Dante’s dreams,
A twilight turned to stone, that seems
To weight our city down.
Through leafy chestnuts whitely showed
The pillared front of his abode:
A garden girt it ’round,
Where pungent box did trim enclose
The marigold and cabbage-rose,
And “pi’ny” heavy-crowned.
Yea, whatso sweets, the changing year’s,
He most affected. Gone: but here’s
His face who loved them so.
Old eyes like sherry, warm and mild;
A cheek clear-hued as cheek of child;
Sleek head, a sphere of snow.
His mouth was pious, and his nose
Patrician; with which mould there goes
A disaffected view.
In those sublime, be-oratored,
Spread-eagle days, his soul deplored
So _much_ red-white-and-blue!
In umber ink, with S’s long,
He left behind him censure strong
In stiffest phrases clothed;
But Time—a pleasant jest enough!—
Has turned the tory leaves to buff,
The liberal hue he loathed.
Of many a gentle deed he made
Brief simple record. Never fade
Those everlasting-flowers
That spring up wild by good men’s walks;
Opinions wither on their stalks,
And sere grow Fashion’s bowers.
Erect, be-frilled, in neckcloth tall,
His semblance sits, removed from all
Our needs and noises new;
Released from all the rent we pay
As tenants of the large To-day,
Cool, in a background blue.
And he, beneath a cherub chipped,
Plump, squamous-pinioned, pouting-lipped,
Sleeps calm where Trinity
Points finger dark to clouds that fleet;
A warning, seen from surging street,
A welcome, seen from sea.
There fall, ghosts glorified of tears
Shed for the dead in buried years,
The silver notes of chimes;
And there, with not unreverent hand
Though light, I lay this “greene garlànd,”
This woven wreath of rhymes.
TO MY GOLDFISH.
O my gorgeous-mailéd knight,
Whom a finger-tip can fright!
At my touch upstarting shy,
With a silvery-rolling eye,
Leaping, winding, sudden splashing,
This way dashing, that way flashing!
I’ll not harm thee; lie thou still;
Heave not fin nor glittering gill;
Globe-kept captive, thou shalt find
Fellow-feeling makes me kind.
I, too, own a hermit’s heart,
Swift at aught unknown to start:
And I, too, am walled about,
Though the sunbeams find me out.
Scarce I see the stirring world
More than thou the brook breeze-curled,
But must make, like thee, delight
From a few small pebbles white;
Trifles, that may fancy bear
To some rippled pleasance rare.
Let thy thought, free-swimming, make
This, thy globe, a spring-fed lake,
And with water crystal-bright
I’ll refresh it morn and night,
That such dreams the easier be:
Deal, sweet Fates! as well by me.
“AS THE CROW FLIES.”
Buccaneer with blackest sails,
Steering home by compass true,
Now that all the rich West pales
From its ingot-hue!
Would that compass in thy breast
Thou couldst lend, for guiding me
here my Hope hath made her nest—
In how far a tree!
Swerving not, nor stooping low,
To that dear, that distant mark
Could I undiverted go,
What were coming dark?
—Careless of the twilight ground,
O’er the wood and o’er the stream
Still he sails, with hollow sound
Strange, as in a dream!
SPRIGS O’ HEATHER.
I.
TO COMIN’ YEARS.
Here’s awa’ wi’ bairnies’ fears!
Here’s a health to comin’ years!
They maun bring me smiles wi’ tears;
Smiles are wisdom’s wealth.
Sae I’ll sing it in their ears:
“I’m na scared o’ ye, my dears!
To ye canty comin’ years
Here’s a hearty health!
“Just a line o’ lasses ye,
Steppin’ shy, but blinkin’ slee;
There’s a spark in ilk sweet e’e
To my soul declares
Frowns o’ yours are light to dree;
Ilka lip so bright o’ blee
Keeps in guard a kiss to gie
To the lad that dares!”
II.
WONDERFU’ SLEE.
O Jamie MacPherson! Ye’re sic a slee person!
I kenned ye for keen ever sin’ we were wee;
Ye hae stown my ain mither, hae stown my ain brither,
Hae stown my ain sister awa’ frae me!
At kirk door they see’d ye—sic follies, I rede ye,
Are na for the likes o’ that Sabbath-day place;
Ye leukit at me wi’ the tear in your e’e,
And ye staw them awa’ wi’ your lang droopit face.
Sic knittin’ o’ brows, mon, sic shakin’ o’ pows, mon,
Sic praisin’ of ye, mon, for douce and genteel!
Mither canna get sleep for the thocht o’ your sheep,
Nor Meg for the thocht o’ the dool ye maun feel.
E’en dumb dozin’ Collie has heard o’ my folly,
And leuks at me sidelang whenever I pass,
His e’e sadly blinkin’, and sighs while down-sinkin’,
As though he were thinkin’, “Puir daft feckless lass!”
Naught for it but roamin’ late into the gloamin’
(Sin’ now it’s na canty beside the hearthstane),
When the pale primsie moon she is walkin’ aboon,
But nae lass below her gaes roamin’ alane!
A lad I hae seen, he has witchin’ black e’en—
O Jamie MacPherson, ye’re wonderfu’ slee!
Ye hae stown my ain mither, hae stown my ain brither,
But Robin has stown my ain heart frae me!
III.
MY AIN, AIN LASS.
I’m fain for toys o’ Fortune whyles;
I hae no hate for ranks and styles;
But lairdship o’ the braw blue isles
I’d e’en let pass
For are o’ her fine tremblin’ smiles—
My ain, ain lass!
I aiblins dream on days to be,
An’ feel my heart leap out a wee;
But friendly Fate can grant nae fee
Could e’er surpass
Her e’en, sae dark wi’ luve to me—
My ain, ain lass!
Whyles, gray and ghaistly, by me stand
Auld memories in an eerie band;
But swift as prints on slidin’ sand
Sic phantoms pass,
If sae I baud her warm, warm hand,
My ain, ain lass!
The past she sweetens through and through,
An’, far as heaven, the future too;
For, surely, as her dear soul’s due,
They’ll let me pass!
Wi’out me there what wad she do,
My ain, ain lass?
EVENING PRIMROSES.
While gray was the summer evening,
Hast never a small sprite seen
Lighting the fragrant torches
For the feast of the Fairy Queen?
The buds on the primrose-bushes
Upspring into yellow light
But ever the wee deft spirit
Escapes my bewildered sight.
Yet oft, through the dusky garden,
A dainty white moth will fly,
Or, pink as a pink rose-petal,
One lightly will waver by.
Perhaps ’tis the shape he comes in,
Perhaps it is he indeed,
Sir Moth, or the merry Cobweb,
Or the whimsical Mustard-seed!
A HUMMING-BIRD.
Twelve daughters of the Trumpet-vine
Spread wide their scarlet silks to-day.
Sir Summer Breeze, my gossip fine,
Can you the reason say?
“Oh listen while I whisper low!
The Honeysuckle told the Bee,
(_Her_ girls wore out their gowns, you know!)
And Master Buzz told me.
“’Twas done for Some One’s sake, I ween,
Who by and by will hither float,
All gay in gold and emerald green,
With rubies round his throat!
“You doubt me? Hearken! There he went,
The flashing Prince of Idle Hours,
Whose silvery sing-song compliment
Delights the flattered flowers!”
CHILD SONGS.
I.
WOOL-GATHERING.
“Where are my Five Wits gone,
And will they come back soon?”
They’re gone a-gathering wool
In the Valleys of the Moon.
There the little Dream-Sheep,
That look like mounds of snow,
Through the green, green meadows
Go grazing to and fro.
Thither have I sent them,
Those Five Wits of mine,
Two with bags, and two with crooks,
And one with shears that shine.
They catch the little Dream-Sheep
And cut their fleece away,
All to weave a story from
Upon another day!
II.
THE LAND WITHOUT A NAME.
Where the Sun sails bold on the Sea of Gold
Past the Violet Islands fair,
And the ragged shapes of the Rosy Capes
And the Castles of the Air,
Can you call aright all that country bright
That is washed by waves like flame?
’Tis the coast admired, ’tis the clime desired—
’Tis the Land Without a Name!
And the way to go, since you fain would know,
Is to charter the Crescent Ship,
All of silver pale, with a cobweb sail,
And merrily does she dip!
There’s a crew of Hopes at her filmy ropes,
And on board that ship of fame
Many a longing Dream seeks the shores agleam
Of the Land Without a Name!
III.
A LULLABY.
Now while rest the happy herds,
And in folds the fleecy sheep,
All the boughs are full of birds,
Crowding, sound asleep.
_Sleep, sleep, sleep,_
_Under the fair, fair flocks of stars_
_That roam all night and know no bars,_
_Sleep, sweet, sleep!_
Now if we an Owl could ride,—
Yes, an Owl with yellow eyes,
Globy lanterns, clear and wide,
Flaming while he flies,—
We should see the pretty things,
Pretty little sleepy souls!
All their heads beneath their wings,
Blind with sleep as moles!
_Sleep, sleep, sleep,_
_Under the wild, winged winds that fly_
_All night long across the sky,_
_Sleep, sweet, sleep!_
PUCK.
PUCK.
Ask not my master, Oberon, why still
He keeps among his train this freakish sprite:
For sooth to say, the elf intends no ill;
He never changed a word with Goblin Spite,
Else Oberon had banished him outright.
Not his to flee at cock-crow; he was born
Of blameless Mirth, and looks upon the morn.
“Good-fellow, and sweet Puck,” some folk do name him;
I pray you of your kindness not to blame him!
—Lo, while I would bespeak you, here he rides!
A columbine he bears upon his head
For jester’s cap, and for a steed he guides
A mocking catbird with a spider’s thread.
NARCISSUS IN CAMDEN.
A CLASSICAL DIALOGUE OF THE YEAR 1882.
(“_In the course of his lecture Mr. ⸺ remarked that the most
impressive room he had yet entered in America was the one in
Camden town where he met ⸺ ⸺. It contained plenty of fresh
air and sunlight.... On the table was a simple cruse of water._” ...)
PAUMANOKIDES. NARCISSUS.
PAUMANOKIDES.
Who may this be?
This young man clad unusually, with loose locks, languorous, glidingly
toward me advancing,
Toward the ceiling of my chamber his orbic and expressive eye-balls
uprolling,
As I have seen the green-necked wild-fowl the mallard in the thundering
of the storm,
By the weedy shore of Paumanok my fish-shaped island.
Sit down, young man!
I do not know you, but I love you with burning intensity,
I am he that loves the young men, whosoever and wheresoever they are or
may be hereafter, or may have been any time in the past,
Loves the eye-glassed literat, loves also and probably more the vender
of clams, raucous-throated, monotonous-chanting,
Loves the Elevated Railroad employee of Mannahatta, my city;
I suppress the rest of the list of the persons I love, solely because
I love you,
Sit down _élève_, I receive you!
NARCISSUS.
O clarion, from whose brazen throat
Strange sounds across the seas are blown,
Where England, girt as with a moat,
A strong sea-lion, sits alone!
A pilgrim from that white-cliffed shore,
What joy, large flower of Western land,
To seek thy democratic door,
With eager hand to clasp thy hand!
PAUMANOKIDES.
Right you are!
Take then the electric pressure of these fingers, O my Comrade!
I do not doubt you are the one I was waiting for, as I loaf’d here
enjoying my soul,
Let us two under all and any circumstances stick together from this out!
NARCISSUS.
Seeing that isle of which I spake but late
By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
The grand Greek limbs of young Democracy
Beckoned me thence to this ideal State,
Where maiden fields of life Hellenic wait
For one who in clear culture walks apart
(Avoiding all rude clamors of the mart
That mar his calm) to sow the seeds of great
Growths yet to be—the love of sacred Art,
And Beauty, of this breast queen consecrate,
Whose throne mean Science seeks to violate;
The flawless artist’s lunacy serene,
His purely passionate and perfect hate
And noble scorn of all things Philistine.
PAUMANOKIDES.
Hold up there, Camerado!
Beauty is all very good as far as it goes, and Art the perpetuator of
Beauty is all very good as far as it goes, but you can tell your
folks,
Your folks in London, or in Dublin, or in Rome, or where the Arno
flows, or where Seine flows,
Your folks in the picture-galleries, admiring the Raphaels, the
Tintorettos, the Rubenses, Vandykes, Correggios, Murillos,
Angelicos of the world,
(I know them all, they have effused to me, I have wrung them out,
I have abandoned them, I have got beyond them,)—
NARCISSUS (_aside, with tenderness_).
Ah, Burne-Jones!
PAUMANOKIDES.
Tell them that I am considerably more than Beauty!
I, representing the bone and muscle and cartilage and adipose tissue
and pluck of the Sierras, of California, of the double Carolinas,
of the Granite State, and the Narragansett Bay State, and the
Wooden Nutmeg State!
I, screaming with the scream of the bald-headed bird the eagle in the
primitive woods of America my country, in the hundred and sixth
year of these States!
Dear son, I have learned the secret of the Universe,
I learned it from my original _bonne_, the white-capped ocean,
I learned it from the Ninth-month Equinoctial, from the redwood tree,
and the Civil War, and the hermit-thrush, and the telephone, and
the Corliss engine,
The secret of the Universe is not Beauty, dear son, nor is it Art the
perpetuator of Beauty,
The secret of the Universe is to admire one’s self.
Camerado, you hear me!
NARCISSUS.
Ah, I too loitering on an eve of June
Where one wan Narciss leaned above a pool,
While overhead Queen Dian rose too soon,
And through the Tyrian clematis the cool
Night airs came wandering wearily, I too,
Beholding that pale flower, beheld Life’s key at last, and knew
That love of one’s fair self were but indeed
Just worship of pure Beauty; and I gave
One sweet, sad sigh, then bade my fond eyes feed
Upon the mirrored treasure of the wave,
Like that lithe beauteous boy in Tempe’s vale,
Whom hapless Echo loved—thou know’st the Heliconian tale!
And while heaven’s harmony in lake and gold
Changed to a faint nocturne of silvern-gray,
Like rising sea-mists from my spirit rolled
The grievous vapors of this Age of Clay,
Beholding Beauty’s re-arisen shrine,
And the white glory of this precious loveliness of mine!
PAUMANOKIDES.
I catch on, my Comrade!
—You allow that your aim is similar to mine, after all is said and done.
Well, there is not much similarity of style, and I recommend my style
to you.
Go gaze upon the native rock-piles of Mannahatta, my city,
Formless, reckless,
Marked with the emerald miracle of moss, tufted with the unutterable
wonder of the exquisite green grass,
Giving pasture to the spry and fearless-footed quadruped the goat,
Also patched by the heaven-ambitious citizens with the yellow handbill,
the advertisement of patent soaps, the glaring and vari-colored
circus poster:
Mine, too, for reasons, such arrays;
Such my unfettered verse, scorning the delicatesse of dilettantes.
Try it, I’ll stake you my ultimate dollar you’ll like it.
NARCISSUS (_gracefully waiving the point_).
Haply in the far, the orient future, in the dawn we herald like the
birds,
Men shall read the legend of our meeting, linger o’er the music of
our words;
Haply coming poets shall compare me then to Milton in his lovely youth,
Sitting in the cell of Galileo, learning at his elder’s lips the truth.
Haply they shall liken these dear moments, safely held in History’s
amber clear,
Unto Dante’s converse bland with Virgil, on the margin of that gloomy
mere!
PAUMANOKIDES.
Do not be deceived, dear son;
Amid the choruses of the morn of progress, roaring, hilarious, those
names will be heard no longer.
Galileo was admirable once, Milton was admirable,
Dante the _I_-talian was a cute man in his way,
But he was not the maker of poems, the Answerer!
I Paumanokides am the maker of poems, the Answerer,
And I calculate to chant as long as the earth revolves,
To an interminable audience of haughty, effusive, copious, gritty, and
chipper Americanos!
NARCISSUS.
What more is left to say or do?
Our minds have met; our hands must part.
I go to plant in pastures new
The love of Beauty and of Art.
I’ll shortly start.
One town is rather small for two
Like me and you!
PAUMANOKIDES.
So long!
THE SONG OF SIR PALAMEDE.
“_Came Palamede, upon a secret quest,_
_To high Tintagel, and abode as guest_
_In likeness of a minstrel with the king._
_Nor was there man could sound so sweet a string._
...
_To that strange minstrel strongly swore King Mark,_
_By all that makes a knight’s faith firm and strong,_
_That he, as guerdon of his harp and song,_
_Might crave and have his liking._
...’_O King, I crave_
_No gift of man that king may give to slave,_
_But this thy crowned queen only, this thy wife._’”
SWINBURNE. _Tristram of Lyonesse._
With flow exhaustless of alliterate words,
And rhymes that mate in music glad as birds
That feel the spring’s sweet life among light leaves
That ardent breath of amorous May upheaves
And kindles fluctuant to an emerald fire
Bright as the imperious seas that all men’s souls desire:
With long strong swell of alexandrine lines,
And with passion of anapæsts, like winds in pines
That moan and mutter in great gusts suddenly,
With whirl of wild wet wings of storms set free:
In mirth of might and very joy to sing,
Uplifting voice untired, I sound one sole sweet string.
Love, that is ever bitter as salt blown spray,
Yet sweet, yea sweet as wrath or wine alway,
As red warm mouths of Mænads subtly sweet;
Love, that is fleeter than the wind’s fleet feet
Soft-shod with snowflakes; love, that hath the name
And fury and force of swift bright shuddering flame:
Fate, that is foe to love and lovely life,
Yea foe implacable, and hath death to wife;
Fate, that is bitterer than the salt spray blown
And colder than soft snow yet hard as stone;
Fate, that makes daily fare of heart’s desire,
Being found thereunto a devouring fire:
Death, that is friend to fate and fair love’s foe;
Death, that makes waste the wolds of life with snow;
Death, harsh as spray of seas that wild winds blow:
Life, that is strangely one of all these three,
Being bitter as is the sharp salt spray of sea,
And thereto colder than the blown white rose
And soft brief blossom of unmothered snows,
And fiercer than the forceful feathered fire,
Fed as a flame with hope of heart and high desire:
All these I sing, and sound the same sweet string.
And as fresh-gathered leaves of bay I bring
Green praises to all dear dead lute-players,
Whom Pluto’s passionate queen holds fast as hers,
Yea all sad souls that have smiled and sinned and sung,
With whose gold-colored hairs and hoar this harp is strung.
And blame of the high great gods that do amiss,
Being cruel and crowned and bathed complete in bliss,
And careless if this world be out of tune,
And deaf to dithyrambs of bards that bay the moon:
And all perfections of all those I love,
Each bettering still the best and still above
The last this violent voice proclaimed the best,
And blown by stormy breath still starward o’er the rest;
And all large loathsomeness of all I hate,
Whose poisonous presence doth Caïna wait,
And better it were that they had ne’er been born,
I being dowered with hate of hate and scorn of scorn,
And shrinking not to name them newts and snakes,
Lepers and toads and frogs and hooting owls and crakes:
All these with ease of measureless might I sing,
And sound, though sheer stark mad, the same sweet string.
And many a theme I choose in wayfaring,
As one who passing plucks the sunflower
And ponders on her looks for love of her.
Yea, her flower-named whose fate was like a flower,
Being bright and brief and broken in an hour
And whirled of winds: and her whose lawless hand
Held flickering flame to fawn against the brand,
Till Meleager splendid as the sun
Shrank to a star and set, and all her day was done:
And her who lent her slight white virgin light
For death to dim, that Athens’ mastering might
Above all seas should shine, supernal sphere of night:
And her who kept the high knight amorous
Pent in her hollow hill-house marvelous,
And flame of flowers brake beauteous where she trod,
Her who hath wine and honey and a rod,
And crowneth man a king, and maketh man a slave
Her who rose rose-red from the rose-white wave:
And her who ruled with sword-blue blade-bright eyes
The helpless hearts of men in queenly wise,
And all were bowed and broken as on a wheel,
Yet no soft love-cloud long could sheath that stainless steel,
Her tiger-hearted and false and glorious,
With flower-sweet throat and float of warm hair odorous;
These sing I, and whatso else that burns and glows,
And is as fire and foam-flowers and the rose
And sun and stars and wan warm moon and snows.
Who hath said that I have not made my song to shine
With such bright words as seal a song to be divine?
Who hath said that I have not sweetness thereon spread
As gold of peerless honey is poured on bread?
Who hath said that I make not all men’s brains to ring,
And swim with imminent madness while I sing,
And fall as feeble dykes before strong tides of spring?
And now as guerdon of my great song I claim
The swan-white pearl of singers, yea Queen Fame,
Who shall be wed no more to languid lips and tame,
But clasp me and kiss and call me by my name,
And be all my days about me as a flame,
Though sane vain lame tame cranes sans shame make game and blame!
A MERRY JEST OF A MODERN MAID.
Miss Pallas Eudora Van Blurky,
She didn’t know chicken from turkey;
High-Spanish and Greek she could fluently speak,
But her knowledge of poultry was murky!