1.
Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses 'round brown temples, she
Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess:
Now Time grants night the more and day the less;
The gray decides; and brown
Dim golds and reds in dulling greens express
Themselves and broaden as the year goes down.
Sadder the croft where, thrusting gray and high
Their balls of seeds, the hoary onions die,
Where, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie:
Deeper each wilderness;
Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
The lonesome west; sadder the song
Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow,
Deeper and dreamier, aye!
Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky
Above lone orchards where the cider-press
Drips and the russets mellow.
Nature grows liberal; under woodland leaves
The beech-nuts' burs their little pockets poke,
Plump with the copper of the nuts that choke;
Above our bristling way the spider weaves
A glittering web for which the Dawn designs
Thrice twenty rows of sparkles. By the oak,
That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,
The acorn thimble, smoothly broke,
Shines by its saucer. On sonorous pines
The far wind organs; but the forest here
To no weak breeze hath woke;
Far off the wind, but crumbling near and near,--
Each tingling twig expectant, and the gray
Surmise of heaven pilots it the way,
Rippling the leafy spines,
Until the wildwood, one exultant sway,
Booms, and the sunlight, arrowing through it, shines
Visible applause you hear.
How glows the garden! though the white mists keep
The vagabond in flowers reminded of
Decay that comes to slay in open love,
When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep,
Unheeding such their cardinal colors leap
Gay in the crescent of the blade of death;
Spaced innocents in swaths he weeps to reap,
Waiting his scythe a breath,
To gravely lay them dead with one last sweep.--
Long, long admire
Their splendors manifold:--
The scarlet salvia showered with spurts of fire;
Cascading lattices, dark vines that creep,
Nightshade and cypress; there the marigold
Burning--a shred of orange sunset caught
And elfed in petals that eve's goblins brought
From elfland; there, predominant red,
The dahlia lifts its head
By the white balsams' red-bruised horns of honey,
In humming spaces sunny.
The crickets singing dirges noon and night
For morn-born flowers, at dusk already dead,
For dusk-dead flowers weep;
While tired Summer white,
Where yonder aster whispering odor rocks,--
The withered poppies knotted in her locks,--
Sighs, 'mong her sleepy hollyhocks asleep.
2.
The hips were reddening on the rose,
The haws hung slips of fire;
We went the woodland way that goes
Up hills of branch and briar.
The hooked thorn held her gown and seemed
Imploring her be staying
The sunlight of herself that beamed
Beside it gently swaying.
Low bent the golden saxifrage;
Its yellow bells like bangles
The foxglove fluttered. Like a page--
From out the rail-fence angles--
With crimson plume the sumach, hosed
In Lincoln green, attended
My lady of the elder, posed
In blue-black jewels splendid.
And as we mounted up the hill
The rocky path that stumbled
Spread smooth; and all the day was still
And odorous with umbled
Tops of wild-carrots drying gray;
And there, soft-sunned before us,
An orchard dwindling away
With dappled boughs bent o'er us.
An orchard where the pippin fell
Worm-bitten, bruised, and dusty;
And hornet-stung, each like a bell,
The Bartlett ripened rusty;
The smell of tawny peach and plum,
That offered luscious yellow;
Of wasp and bee the hidden hum,
Made all the warm air mellow.
And on we went where many-hued
Hung wild the morning-glory,
Their blue balloons in shadows, dewed
With frost-white dew-drops hoary;
In bush and burgrass far away
Beneath us stretched the valley,
Cleft by one creek that laughed with day
And babbled musically.
The brown, the bronze, the gray, the red
Of weed and briar ran riot
Flush to dark woodland walls that led
To nooks of whispering quiet.
Long, feathering bursts of golden-rod
Ran golden woolly patches--
Bloom-sunsets of the withered sod
The dying summer catches.
Then o'er the hills, loose-tumbling rolled--
O'erleaping expectation--
The sunset, flaming marigold,
A system's conflagration:
And homeward turning, she and I
Went as one self in being--
God met us in the earth and sky
And Love had purged our seeing.
3.
Say, my dear, O my dear,
These are the eves for speaking;
There is no wight will work us spite
Beneath the sunset's streaking.
Yes, my dear, O my dear,
These are the eves for telling;
To walk together in starry weather
Ere springs o' the moon are welling.
O my dear, yes, my dear,
These are the dusks for staying;
When twilight dreams of night who seems
Among long-purples praying.
"No, my dear!"--"Yes, my dear!"
These are the nights to kiss it
Times twice-a-twenty: they grow a-plenty
On lips that will not miss it.
4.
To dream where silence sleeps
A sorrow's sleep that sighs;
Where all heaven's azure peeps
Blue from one wildflower's eyes
Where, in reflecting deeps,--
Of cloudier woods and skies,--
Another gray world lies.
Divining God from things
Humble as weeds and bees;
From songs the free bird sings
Learn all are vain but these;
In light-delighted springs,
Wise, star-familiar trees,
Seek love's philosophies.
5.
Here where the days are dimmest,
Each old, big-hearted tree
Gives bounteous sympathy;
Here where dead nights sit grimmest
In druid company;
Here where the days are dimmest.
Leaves of my lone communion,
Leaves; and the listening sigh
Of silence wanders by;
While on my soul the union
Is--of the wood and sky--
Leaves of my lone communion.
And eyes with tears are aching,
While life waits wistfully
For love that may not be:
In visions vain of waking
Lives all it can not see.--
And eyes with tears are aching,
And eyes with tears are aching.
6.
And here alone I sit and see it so.
A vale of willows swelling into knobs,
A bulwark eastward. Sloping low
Westward the scooping waters flow
Under a rocky culvert's arch that throbs
With clanging wheels of transient trains that go
Screaming to north and south.
Here all the weary waters, stagnant stayed,
Sleep at the culvert's mouth;
The current's hungry hiccup still afraid,
Haply, that I should never know
The secret 'neath the striate scum o' the stream
The devil and the dream,
I, dropping gravels so the echo sob
Mocking and thin as music of a shade
In shades that wring from rocks a hollow woe,
Complaining phantoms of faint whispers rob.
There, up the valley where the lank grass leaps
Blades each a crooked kris,
The currents strike or miss
Dream melodies: No wide-belled mallow sleeps
Monandrous flowers oval as a kiss;
No mandrake curling convolutions up
Loops heavy blossoms, each a conical cup
That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent's hiss;
No tiger-lily, where the crayfish play,
Mirrors a savage face, a copper hue
Streaked with a crimson dew;
No dragon-fly in endless error keeps
Sewing the pale-gold gown of day
With tangled stitches of a burning blue,--
Whose brilliant body but a needle is,
An azurn and incarnate ray:--
But here, where haunted with the shade,
The dull stream stales and dies,
Are beauties none or few,
Such sinister and new;
And one at widest noon-gaze shrinks afraid
Beneath the timid skies;
So, if you ask me why I answer this:--
You know not; only where the kildees wade
There in the foamy scum,
There where the wet rocks ail,--
Low rocks to which the water-reptiles come,
Basking pied bodies in the brindled shade,--
Dim as a bubble's prism on the grail
Below, an angled sparkle rayed,
While lights and shadows aid
From breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss,
Deep down, a sense of wavy features quail
The heart; with lips that writhe and fade
And clench; tough, rooty limbs that twist and cross,
And flabby hair of smoky moss.
A brimstone sunset. And at night
The twinkling flies in will-o'-the-wisp dance wheel
Through copse and open, all a gnomish green.
I hear the water, and the wave is white
There where the boulder plants a keel,
And each taunt ripple 's sheen.--
Where instant insects dot
The dark with spurts of sulphur--bright,
Beneath the hazy height,
No bitter-almond trees make wan the night,
Building bloom ridges of a ghostly lustre,
But white-tops tossing cluster over cluster:
Huge-seen within that twilight spot--
As if a hill-born giant, half asleep,
Had dropped his night-cap while he drove his sheep
Foldward through fallow browns
And foxy grays,--a something crowns
The knoll--is it the odorous peak
Of one June-savory timothy stack?
Now, one dead ash behind,
A weak moon shows a withered cheek
Of Quaker quiet, wasted o'er the vines'
Appentice ruins roofing pillared pines:
Beyond these, back and back,
An oak-wood stretches black--
And here the whining were-wolves of the wind
Snuff snarling: but their eyes are blind,
Although their fangs are fierce;
And though they never pierce
Beyond the bad, bedevilled woodland streak,
I hear them, yes, I hear
A padding o' footsteps near,
A prowling pant in ear
And can not fly!--yes!--no!--
What horror holds me?--That uncoiling slow,
Sure, mastering chimera there,
Hooping firm unseen feelers 'round my neck
A binding, bruising coil ...
The waters burn and boil;
The fire-flies the dappled darkness fleck
With impish dabs of blazing wizard's oil ...
Deep, deep into the black eye of the beck
I stare, magnetic fixed, and little reck
If all the writhing shadow slips,
Dripping around me, to the eyes and hips,
Where grinning murder leers with lupine lips.
7.
What can it mean for me? what have I done to her?
I in our freedom of love as a sun to her;
She to our liberty goddess and slumberless
Moon of the stars shining silver and numberless:
Who on my life, that was thorny and showery,
Came--and made dewyness; smiled--and made flowery;
Mine! the affinitized one of humanity:
Mine! the elected of soul over vanity--
What have I done to her, what have I done!
What can it mean for me? what have I said to her?
I, who have idolized, worshipped, and pled to her;
Sung for her, laughed for her, sorrowed and sighed for her,
Lived for her, hated and gladly had died for her!
See; she has written me thus! she has written me--
Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me!
Would they had shrivelled or ever they'd read of it!
Eyes, that are wide to the bitterest dread of it--
What have I said to her, what have I said!
What shall I make of it, I, who am trembling
Fearful of loss?--Oh, enamored, dissembling
Flame!--of the candle that burning, but guttering,
Flatters the moth that comes circling and fluttering
Out of the summer night; trusting, importunate,
Quitting cool flowers for this--O unfortunate!--
Such has she been to me making me such to her,
Slaying me, saying I never was much to her--
What shall I make of it, what can I make!
Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless
Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless:
I, with no thought but the heavens that lock us in,
Set naked feet 'mid the cottonmouth, moccasin
Under wild-roses, the Cherokee, eying me:--
In the sweet blue with the egrets that, flying me,
Loosened like blooms from magnolias, rose slenderly
White and pale pink; where the mocking-bird tenderly
Sang, making vistas of mosses melodious,
Wandered unheeding my steps in the odious
Slime that was venom; I followed the fiery
Violet curve of thy star falling wiry--
So was I lost in night, thus am undone!...
Have I not told to her--living alone for her--
Purposed unfoldments of love I had sown for her
Here in the soil of my soul? their variety
Endless; and ever she answered with piety.--
See! it has come to this ... all the tale's suavity
At the ninth chapter grows stupid with gravity;
Duller than death all our beautiful history--
Close it!--the _finis_ is more than a mystery.--
Yes, I will tell her this; yes, I will tell.
8.
I seem to hear her speak and see
That blue-hung room. Her perfume comes
From lavender folds vined dreamily--
A-blossom with brocaded blooms,--
A stuff of Orient looms.
Again I hear her speak and back,
Where steals the showery sunlight, piles
A whatnot dainty bric-a-brac
Beside a tall clock; each glazed tile's
Blue-patterned profile smiles.
I hear her say, "Ah, had we known,
Could what has been have ever been?--
And now!"... How hurt the hard ache shone
In eyes whose sadness seemed to lean
On something far, unseen!
And as in sleep my own self seems
Outside my suffering self: I flush
In mists of undetermined dreams;
Behold her musing in that hush
Of lilac light and plush.
Smiling but tortured. Yes, I feel
Despite that face, not seeming sad,
In those calm temples thoughts like steel
Remorseless bore. I had gone mad
Had I once deemed her glad.
Unconsciously, with eyes that yearn
To pierce beyond the present far,
Searching some future hope, I turn;--
There in her garden one fierce star,
Beyond the window's bar,--
Vermilion as a storm-sunk sun,--
A phyllocactus?--all the life
Of torrid middays in but one
Rich crimson bloom--flames red as strife;
And near it, rankly rife--
Deep coreopsis?--heavy hues
Of soft seal-bronze and satiny gold,
Sway girandoles whose jets of dews
Burn points of starlight diamond-cold,
Warm-colored, manifold.
She dare not speak; I can not. Yet
An intercourse 'twixt brain and brain
Goes feverish on.--Crushed, smelling wet,
Through silken curtains drift again
Verbena-scents of rain.
I in the doorway turn and stay;
Angry her cameo beauty mark
Set in that smile--Oh! will she say
No farewell? no regret? one spark
Of hope to cheer the dark?
That sepia-sketch--conceive it so--
A roguish head with jaunty eyes
Laughing beneath a rose-chapeau,
Silk-masked, unmasking--it denies
The full-faced flower surprise;
Hung o'er her davenport.... We read
The true beneath the false; perceive
The smile that hides the ache.--Indeed!
_Whose_ soul unmasks?... not mine!--I grieve
Here, here, but laugh and leave....
9.
Beyond the knotty apple-trees
That fade about the old brick-barn,
Its tattered arms and tattered knees
A scare-crow tosses to the breeze
Among the shocks of corn.
All things grow gray in earth and sky;
The cold wind sounding drearily
Makes all the rusty branches fly;
The rustling leaves a-rotting lie;
The year is waning wearily.
At night I hear the far wild geese
Honk in frost-bitten heavens, under
Arcturus. Though I seem to cease
Outside myself and sleep in peace,
I drowse awake and wonder.
I know torn thistles by the creek
Hang hairy with the frost; the tented
Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak
And ghostly in the moonlight, weak
In hollows bitter-scented.
Dream back the ways we strolled at morn
Through woods of summer ever singing;
Moon-trysts beneath the crooked thorn,
The tasselled meads of cane and corn
Their restless shadows swinging....
I stand and oar our boat among
The dripping lilies of the river;
I reach her hat the grape-vine long
Struck in the stream; we sing a song,
That song ... I wake and shiver.
And then my feverish mind reverts
To our sad words and sadder parting
In days long gone; and, oh! it hurts
Within here, for the soul asserts
Mine the fool fault from starting.
And I must lie awake and think
Of her with such regrets as gladly
No unrebuking conscience shrink;
And hear the wild-fowls' clangor sink
Through plaintive starlight sadly.
When all are overflown and deep
The stoic night is left forsaken,
For company I well would weep,
Since all my spirit fears to sleep,
Sleep of such visions shaken.
Grave visions of dead deeds that flaw
Our waking hours, ever haunting;
Else were we, lacking love and law,
Rude scare-crow things of sticks and straw
Undaunted and undaunting.
10.
The sun a splintered splendor was
In sober trees that broke and blurred,
That afternoon we went together
In droning hum and whirling buzz,
Where hard the dinning locust whirred,
Through fields of golden-rod a-feather.
So sweet it was to look and lean
To your young face and feel the light
Of eyes that fondled mine unsaddened!
The laugh that left lips more serene;
The words that blossomed like the white
Life-everlasting there and gladdened.
Maturing Summer, you were fraught
With wiser beauties then than now
Parades rich Autumn's red November;
This stuns: there dreams no subtle thought
As then on hinting bush and bough--
But now I am alone, remember.
11.
Through iron-weeds and roses
And bronzing beech and oak,
Old porches it discloses,
Above the briars and roses
Fall's feeble sunbeams soak.
Neglected walks that tangle
The dodder-strangled grass;
Its chimney shows one angle
Heaped with dead leaves that spangle
The paths that round it pass.
The early mists that bury
And hide them in its rooms,
From spider closets--very
Dim with old webs--will hurry
Out in the raining glooms.
They haunt each stair and basement;
They stand on hearth and porch;
Lean from each paneless casement,
Or in the moonlight's lacement
Fly with a phantom torch.
There is a sense of frost here;
And gusts that sob away
Of something that was lost here,
Long, long ago was lost here,
But what, they can not say.
There croons no owl to startle
Despondency within;
No raven o'er its portal
To scare the daring mortal
And guard its cellared sin.
The creaking road descries it
This side the dusty toll;
The farmer passing eyes it;
None stops t' philosophize it,
This symbol of a soul.
12.
Though the dog-tooth violet come
With the shower,
And the wild-bee haunt and hum
Every flower,
We shall never wend as when
Love laughed leading us from men
Over violet vale and glen,
Where the red-bird sang an hour,
And we heard the partridge drum.
Here October shadows pray,
Till one stills
Joyance, where for buried May
Sob the rills:
So love's vision has arisen
Of the long ago: I listen--
Memory, tears in eyes that glisten
Points but Indiana hills
Fading dark-blue far away.