Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Kentuckiana Digital Library)
THE GARDEN OF DREAMS
MADISON CAWEIN
_Author of "Intimations of the Beautiful," "Undertones,"
and several other books of verse_
LOUISVILLE
JOHN P MORTON & COMPANY
MDCCCXCVI
COPYRIGHT, 1896,
JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY.
TO
MY BROTHERS.
_Not while I live may I forget
That garden which my spirit trod!
Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,
And beautiful as God._
_Not while I breathe, awake adream,
Shall live again for me those hours,
When, in its mystery and gleam,
I met her 'mid the flowers._
_Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,
Beneath mesmeric lashes, where
The sorceries of love and hope
Had made a shining lair._
_And daydawn brows, whereover hung
The twilight of dark locks; and lips,
Whose beauty spoke the rose's tongue
Of fragrance-voweled drips._
_I will not tell of cheeks and chin,
That held me as sweet language holds;
Nor of the eloquence within
Her bosom's moony molds._
_Nor of her large limbs' languorous
Wind-grace, that glanced like starlight through
Her ardent robe's diaphanous
Web of the mist and dew._
_There is no star so pure and high
As was her look; no fragrance such
At her soft presence; and no sigh
Of music like her touch._
_Not while I live may I forget
That garden of dim dreams! where I
And Song within the spirit met,
Sweet Song, who passed me by._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A Fallen Beech 1
The Haunted Woodland 3
Discovery 4
Comradery 5
Occult 6
Wood-Words 7
The Wind at Night 10
Airy Tongues 11
The Hills 13
Imperfection 14
Arcanna 15
Spring 15
Response 16
Fulfillment 16
Transformation 17
Omens 17
Abandoned 18
The Creek Road 19
The Covered Bridge 19
The Hillside Grave 20
Simulacra 20
Before the End 21
Winter 21
Hoar Frost 22
The Winter Moon 22
In Summer 23
Rain and Wind 24
Under Arcturus 25
October 27
Bare Boughs 28
A Threnody 30
Snow 31
Vagabonds 31
An Old Song 32
A Rose o' the Hills 33
Dirge 34
Rest 35
Clairvoyance 36
Indifference 37
Pictured 37
Serenade 38
Kinship 39
She is So Much 40
Her Eyes 41
Messengers 42
At Twenty-One 43
Baby Mary 44
A Motive in Gold and Gray 45
A Reed Shaken with the Wind 50
A Flower of the Fields 71
The White Vigil 73
Too Late 74
Intimations 74
Two 80
Tones 81
Unfulfilled 83
Home 86
Ashly Mere 87
Before the Tomb 88
Revisited 89
At Vespers 91
The Creek 92
Answered 93
Woman's Portion 95
Finale 97
The Cross 98
The Forest of Dreams 99
Lynchers 101
Ku Klux 102
Rembrandts 103
The Lady of The Hills 104
Revealment 106
Heart's Encouragement 107
Nightfall 108
Pause 108
Above the Vales 109
A Sunset Fancy 110
The Fen-Fire 110
To One Reading the Morte D'Arthure 111
Strollers 112
Haunted 114
Praeterita 115
The Swashbuckler 115
The Witch 116
The Somnambulist 116
Opium 117
Music and Sleep 118
Ambition 118
Despondency 119
Despair 119
Sin 120
Insomnia 120
Encouragement 121
Quatrains 122
A Last Word 123
THE GARDEN OF DREAMS
A FALLEN BEECH
Nevermore at doorways that are barken
Shall the madcap wind knock and the noonlight;
Nor the circle, which thou once didst darken,
Shine with footsteps of the neighboring moonlight,
Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken.
Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces,
Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter,
Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places;
Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor,
Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces.
And no more, between the savage wonder
Of the sunset and the moon's up-coming,
Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under
Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming
Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder.
Oft the satyr spirit, beauty-drunken,
Of the Spring called; and the music-measure
Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken
Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure
Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken.
And the germs, deep down in darkness rooted,
Bubbled green from all thy million oilets,
Where the spirits, rain-and-sunbeam-suited,
Of the April made their whispering toilets,
Or within thy stately shadow footed.
Oft the hours of blonde Summer tinkled
At the windows of thy twigs, and found thee
Bird-blithe; or, with shapely bodies, twinkled
Lissom feet of naked flowers around thee,
Where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam-sprinkled.
And the Autumn with his gipsy-coated
Troop of days beneath thy branches rested,
Swarthy-faced and dark of eye; and throated
Songs of hunting; or with red hand tested
Every nut-bur that above him floated.
Then the Winter, barren-browed, but rich in
Shaggy followers of frost and freezing,
Made the floor of thy broad boughs his kitchen,
Trapper-like, to camp in; grimly easing
Limbs snow-furred and moccasoned with lichen.
Now, alas! no more do these invest thee
With the dignity of whilom gladness!
They--unto whose hearts thou once confessed thee
Of thy dreams--now know thee not! and sadness
Sits beside thee where forgot dost rest thee.
THE HAUNTED WOODLAND
Here in the golden darkness
And green night of the woods,
A flitting form I follow,
A shadow that eludes--
Or is it but the phantom
Of former forest moods?
The phantom of some fancy
I knew when I was young,
And in my dreaming boyhood,
The wildwood flow'rs among,
Young face to face with Faery
Spoke in no unknown tongue.
Blue were her eyes, and golden
The nimbus of her hair;
And crimson as a flower
Her mouth that kissed me there;
That kissed and bade me follow,
And smiled away my care.
A magic and a marvel
Lived in her word and look,
As down among the blossoms
She sate me by the brook,
And read me wonder-legends
In Nature's Story Book.
Loved fairy-tales forgotten,
She never reads again,
Of beautiful enchantments
That haunt the sun and rain,
And, in the wind and water,
Chant a mysterious strain.
And so I search the forest,
Wherein my spirit feels,
In tree or stream or flower
Herself she still conceals--
But now she flies who followed,
Whom Earth no more reveals.
DISCOVERY
What is it now that I shall seek,
Where woods dip downward, in the hills?--
A mossy nook, a ferny creek,
And May among the daffodils.
Or in the valley's vistaed glow,
Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines,
Shall I behold her coming slow,
Sweet May, among the columbines?
With redbud cheeks and bluet eyes,
Big eyes, the homes of happiness,
To meet me with the old surprise,
Her hoiden hair all bonnetless.
Who waits for me, where, note for note,
The birds make glad the forest-trees?
A dogwood blossom at her throat,
My May among the anemones.
As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,
And dewdrops drink the moonlight's gleams,
My soul shall kiss her lips' perfumes,
And drink the magic of her dreams.
COMRADERY
With eyes hand-arched he looks into
The morning's face, then turns away
With schoolboy feet, all wet with dew,
Out for a holiday.
The hill brook sings, incessant stars,
Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast;
And where he wades its water-bars
Its song is happiest.
A comrade of the chinquapin,
He looks into its knotted eyes
And sees its heart; and, deep within,
Its soul that makes him wise.
The wood-thrush knows and follows him,
Who whistles up the birds and bees;
And 'round him all the perfumes swim
Of woodland loam and trees.
Where'er he pass the supple springs'
Foam-people sing the flowers awake;
And sappy lips of bark-clad things
Laugh ripe each fruited brake.
His touch is a companionship;
His word, an old authority:
He comes, a lyric at his lip,
Unstudied Poesy.
OCCULT
Unto the soul's companionship
Of things that only seem to be,
Earth points with magic fingertip
And bids thee see
How Fancy keeps thee company.
For oft at dawn hast not beheld
A spirit of prismatic hue
Blow wide the buds, which night has swelled?
And stain them through
With heav'n's ethereal gold and blue?
While at her side another went
With gleams of enigmatic white?
A spirit who distributes scent,
To vale and height,
In footsteps of the rosy light?
And oft at dusk hast thou not seen
The star-fays bring their caravans
Of dew, and glitter all the green,
Night's shadow tans,
From many starbeam sprinkling-cans?
Nor watched with these the elfins go
Who tune faint instruments? whose sound
Is that moon-music insects blow
When all the ground
Sleeps, and the night is hushed around?
WOOD-WORDS
I.
The spirits of the forest,
That to the winds give voice--
I lie the livelong April day
And wonder what it is they say
That makes the leaves rejoice.
The spirits of the forest,
That breathe in bud and bloom--
I walk within the black-haw brake
And wonder how it is they make
The bubbles of perfume.
The spirits of the forest,
That live in every spring--
I lean above the brook's bright blue
And wonder what it is they do
That makes the water sing.
The spirits of the forest.
That haunt the sun's green glow--
Down fungus ways of fern I steal
And wonder what they can conceal,
In dews, that twinkles so.
The spirits of the forest,
They hold me, heart and hand--
And, oh! the bird they send by light,
The jack-o'-lantern gleam by night,
To guide to Fairyland!
II.
The time when dog-tooth violets
Hold up inverted horns of gold,--
The elvish cups that Spring upsets
With dripping feet, when April wets
The sun-and-shadow-marbled wold,--
Is come. And by each leafing way
The sorrel drops pale blots of pink;
And, like an angled star a fay
Sets on her forehead's pallid day,
The blossoms of the trillium wink.
Within the vale, by rock and stream,--
A fragile, fairy porcelain,--
Blue as a baby's eyes a-dream,
The bluets blow; and gleam in gleam
The sun-shot dog-woods flash with rain.
It is the time to cast off care;
To make glad intimates of these:--
The frank-faced sunbeam laughing there;
The great-heart wind, that bids us share
The optimism of the trees.
III.
The white ghosts of the flowers,
The green ghosts of the trees:
They haunt the blooming bowers,
They haunt the wildwood hours,
And whisper in the breeze.
For in the wildrose places,
And on the beechen knoll,
My soul hath seen their faces,
My soul hath met their races,
And felt their dim control.
IV.
Crab-apple buds, whose bells
The mouth of April kissed;
That hang,--like rosy shells
Around a naiad's wrist,--
Pink as dawn-tinted mist.
And paw-paw buds, whose dark
Deep auburn blossoms shake
On boughs,--as 'neath the bark
A dryad's eyes awake,--
Brown as a midnight lake.
These, with symbolic blooms
Of wind-flower and wild-phlox,
I found among the glooms
Of hill-lost woods and rocks,
Lairs of the mink and fox.
The beetle in the brush,
The bird about the creek,
The bee within the hush,
And I, whose heart was meek,
Stood still to hear these speak.
The language, that records,
In flower-syllables,
The hieroglyphic words
Of beauty, who enspells
The world and aye compels.
THE WIND AT NIGHT
I.
Not till the wildman wind is shrill,
Howling upon the hill
In every wolfish tree, whose boisterous boughs,
Like desperate arms, gesture and beat the night,
And down huge clouds, in chasms of stormy white
The frightened moon hurries above the house,
Shall I lie down; and, deep,--
Letting the mad wind keep
Its shouting revel round me,--fall asleep.
II.
Not till its dark halloo is hushed,
And where wild waters rushed,--
Like some hoofed terror underneath its whip
And spur of foam,--remains
A ghostly glass, hill-framed; whereover stains
Of moony mists and rains,
And stealthy starbeams, like vague specters, slip;
Shall I--with thoughts that take
Unto themselves the ache
Of silence as a sound--from sleep awake.
AIRY TONGUES
I.
I hear a song the wet leaves lisp
When Morn comes down the woodland way;
And misty as a thistle-wisp
Her gown gleams windy gray;
A song, that seems to say,
"Awake! 'tis day!"
I hear a sigh, when Day sits down
Beside the sunlight-lulled lagoon;
While on her glistening hair and gown
The rose of rest is strewn;
A sigh, that seems to croon,
"Come sleep! 'tis noon!"
I hear a whisper, when the stars,
Upon some evening-purpled height,
Crown the dead Day with nenuphars
Of dreamy gold and white;
A voice, that seems t' invite,
"Come love! 'tis night!"
II.
Before the rathe song-sparrow sings
Among the hawtrees in the lane,
And to the wind the locust flings
Its early clusters fresh with rain;
Beyond the morning-star, that swings
Its rose of fire above the spire,
Between the morning's watchet wings,
A voice that rings o'er brooks and boughs--
"Arouse! arouse!"
Before the first brown owlet cries
Among the grape-vines on the hill,
And in the dam with half-shut eyes
The lilies rock above the mill;
Beyond the oblong moon, that flies
Its pearly flower above the tower,
Between the twilight's primrose skies,
A voice that sighs from east to west--
"To rest! to rest!"
THE HILLS
There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
Beckon our mutability
To follow and to gaze upon
Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
Meseems the very heavens are massed
Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
With all the skyey burden of
The winds and clouds and stars above.
Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
The laws that give all Beauty being!
Behold! to them, when dawn is near,
The nomads of the air appear,
Unfolding crimson camps of day
In brilliant bands; then march away;
And under burning battlements
Of twilight plant their tinted tents.
The faith of olden myths, that brood
By haunted stream and haunted wood,
They see; and feel the happiness
Of old at which we only guess:
The dreams, the ancients loved and knew,
Still as their rocks and trees are true:
Not otherwise than presences
The tempest and the calm to these:
One shouting on them, all the night,
Black-limbed and veined with lambent light:
The other with the ministry
Of all soft things that company
With music--an embodied form,
Giving to solitude the charm
Of leaves and waters and the peace
Of bird-begotten melodies--
And who at night doth still confer
With the mild moon, who telleth her
Pale tale of lonely love, until
Wan images of passion fill
The heights with shapes that glimmer by
Clad on with sleep and memory.
IMPERFECTION
Not as the eye hath seen, shall we behold
Romance and beauty, when we've passed away;
That robed the dull facts of the intimate day
In life's wild raiment of unusual gold:
Not as the ear hath heard, shall we be told,
Hereafter, myth and legend once that lay
Warm at the heart of Nature, clothing clay
In attribute of no material mold.
These were imperfect of necessity,
That wrought thro' imperfection for far ends
Of perfectness--As calm philosophy,
Teaching a child, from his high heav'n descends
To Earth's familiar things; informingly
Vesting his thoughts with that it comprehends.
ARCANNA
Earth hath her images of utterance,
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.
SPRING
First came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips;
A pursuivant who heralded a prince:
And dawn put on a livery of tints,
And dusk bound gold about her hair and hips:
And, all in silver mail, then sunlight came,
A knight, who bade the winter let him pass,
And freed imprisoned beauty, naked as
The Court of Love, in all her wildflower shame.
And so she came, in breeze-borne loveliness,
Across the hills; and heav'n bent down to bless:
Before her face the birds were as a lyre;
And at her feet, like some strong worshiper,
The shouting water paean'd praise of her,
Who, with blue eyes, set the wild world on fire.
RESPONSE
There is a music of immaculate love,
That breathes within the virginal veins of Spring:--
And trillium blossoms, like the stars that cling
To fairies' wands; and, strung on sprays above,
White-hearts and mandrake blooms, that look enough
Like the elves' washing, white with laundering
Of May-moon dews; and all pale-opening
Wild-flowers of the woods, are born thereof.
There is no sod Spring's white foot brushes but
Must feel the music that vibrates within,
And thrill to the communicated touch
Responsive harmonies, that must unshut
The heart of beauty for song's concrete kin,
Emotions--that be flowers--born of such.
FULFILLMENT
Yes, there are some who may look on these
Essential peoples of the earth and air--
That have the stars and flowers in their care--
And all 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 discourse there,
God's gospel of diviner mysteries:
To whom the waters shall divulge a word
Of fuller faith; the sunset and the dawn
Preach sermons more inspired even than
The tongues of Penticost; as, distant heard
In forms of change, through Nature upward drawn,
God doth address th' immortal soul of Man.
TRANSFORMATION
It is the time when, by the forest falls,
The touchmenots hang fairy folly-caps;
When ferns and flowers fill the lichened laps
Of rocks with color, rich as orient shawls:
And in my heart I hear a voice that calls
Me woodward, where the Hamadryad wraps
Her limbs in bark, or, bubbling in the saps,
Laughs the sweet Greek of Pan's old madrigals.
There is a gleam that lures me up the stream--
A Naiad swimming with wet limbs of light?
Perfume, that leads me on from dream to dream--
An Oread's footprints fragrant with her flight?
And, lo! meseems I am a Faun again,
Part of the myths that I pursue in vain.
OMENS
Sad o'er the hills the poppy sunset died.
Slow as a fungus breaking through the crusts
Of forest leaves, the waning half-moon thrusts,
Through gray-brown clouds, one milky silver side;
In her vague light the dogwoods, vale-descried,
Seem nervous torches flourished by the gusts;
The apple-orchards seem the restless dusts
Of wind-thinned mists upon the hills they hide.
It is a night of omens whom late May
Meets, like a wraith, among her train of hours;
An apparition, with appealing eye
And hesitant foot, that walks a willowed way,
And, speaking through the fading moon and
flowers,
Bids her prepare her gentle soul to die.
ABANDONED
The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms,
And on its mossy porch the lizard lies;
Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies,
And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms.
Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes
Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries
Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs
With ghostly lips among the attic glooms.
And now a heron, now a kingfisher,
Flits in the willows where the riffle seems
At each faint fall to hesitate to leap,
Fluttering the silence with a little stir.
Here Summer seems a placid face asleep,
And the near world a figment of her dreams.
THE CREEK-ROAD
Calling, the heron flies athwart the blue
That sleeps above it; reach on rocky reach
Of water sings by sycamore and beech,
In whose warm shade bloom lilies not a few.
It is a page whereon the sun and dew
Scrawl sparkling words in dawn's delicious speech;
A laboratory where the wood-winds teach,
Dissect each scent and analyze each hue.
Not otherwise than beautiful, doth it
Record the happ'nings of each summer day;
Where we may read, as in a catalogue,
When passed a thresher; when a load of hay;
Or when a rabbit; or a bird that lit;
And now a bare-foot truant and his dog.
THE COVERED BRIDGE
There, from its entrance, lost in matted vines,--
Where in the valley foams a water-fall,---
Is glimpsed a ruined mill's remaining wall;
Here, by the road, the oxeye daisy mines
Hot brass and bronze; the trumpet-trailer shines
Red as the plumage of the cardinal.
Faint from the forest comes the rain-crow's call
Where dusty Summer dreams among the pines.
This is the spot where Spring writes wildflower verses
In primrose pink, while, drowsing o'er his reins,
The ploughman, all unnoticing, plods along:
And where the Autumn opens weedy purses
Of sleepy silver, while the corn-heaped wains
Rumble the bridge like some deep throat of song.
THE HILLSIDE GRAVE
Ten-hundred deep the drifted daisies break
Here at the hill's foot; on its top, the wheat
Hangs meagre-bearded; and, in vague retreat,
The wisp-like blooms of the moth-mulleins shake.
And where the wild-pink drops a crimson flake,
And morning-glories, like young lips, make sweet
The shaded hush, low in the honeyed heat,
The wild-bees hum; as if afraid to wake
One sleeping there; with no white stone to tell
The story of existence; but the stem
Of one wild-rose, towering o'er brier and weed,
Where all the day the wild-birds requiem;
Within whose shade the timid violets spell
An epitaph, only the stars can read.
SIMULACRA
Dark in the west the sunset's somber wrack
Unrolled vast walls the rams of war had split,
Along whose battlements the battle lit
Tempestuous beacons; and, with gates hurled back,
A mighty city, red with ruin and sack,
Through burning breaches, crumbling bit by bit,
Showed where the God of Slaughter seemed to sit
With conflagration glaring at each crack.
Who knows? perhaps as sleep unto us makes
Our dreams as real as our waking seems
With recollections time can not destroy,
So in the mind of Nature now awakes
Haply some wilder memory, and she dreams
The stormy story of the fall of Troy.
BEFORE THE END
How does the Autumn in her mind conclude
The tragic masque her frosty pencil writes,
Broad on the pages of the days and nights,
In burning lines of orchard, wold, and wood?
What lonelier forms--that at the year's door stood
At spectral wait--with wildly wasted lights
Shall enter? and with melancholy rites
Inaugurate their sadder sisterhood?--
Sorrow, who lifts a signal hand, and slow
The green leaf fevers, falling ere it dies;
Regret, whose pale lips summon, and gaunt Woe
Wakes the wild-wind harps with sonorous sighs;
And Sleep, who sits with poppied eyes and sees
The earth and sky grow dream-accessories.
WINTER
The flute, whence Autumn's misty finger-tips
Drew music--ripening the pinched kernels in
The burly chestnut and the chinquapin,
Red-rounding-out the oval haws and hips,--
Now Winter crushes to his stormy lips
And surly songs whistle around his chin:
Now the wild days and wilder nights begin
When, at the eaves, the crooked icicle drips.
Thy songs, O Autumn, are not lost so soon!
Still dwells a memory in thy hollow flute,
Which, unto Winter's masculine airs, doth give
Thy own creative qualities of tune,
By which we see each bough bend white with fruit,
Each bush with bloom, in snow commemorative.
HOAR-FROST
The frail eidolons of all blossoms Spring,
Year after year, about the forest tossed,
The magic touch of the enchanter, Frost,
Back from the Heaven of the Flow'rs doth bring;
Each branch and bush in silence visiting
With phantom beauty of its blooms long lost:
Each dead weed bends, white-haunted of its ghost,
Each dead flower stands ghostly with blossoming.
This is the wonder-legend Nature tells
To the gray moon and mist a winter's night;
The fairy-tale, which her weird fancy 'spells
With all the glamour of her soul's delight:
Before the summoning sorcery of her eyes
Making her spirit's dream materialize.
THE WINTER MOON
Deep in the dell I watched her as she rose,
A face of icy fire, o'er the hills;
With snow-sad eyes to freeze the forest rills,
And snow-sad feet to bleach the meadow snows:
Pale as some young witch who, a-listening, goes
To her first meeting with the Fiend; whose fears
Fix demon eyes behind each bush she nears;
Stops, yet must on, fearful of following foes.
And so I chased her, startled in the wood,
Like a discovered Oread, who flies
The Faun who found her sleeping, each nude limb
Glittering betrayal through the solitude;
Till in a frosty cloud I saw her swim,
Like a drowned face, a blur beneath the ice.
IN SUMMER
When in dry hollows, hilled with hay,
The vesper-sparrow sings afar;
And, golden gray, dusk dies away
Beneath the amber evening-star:
There, where a warm and shadowy arm
The woodland lays around the farm,
To meet you where we kissed, dear heart,
To kiss you at the tryst, dear heart,
To kiss you at the tryst!
When clover fields smell cool with dew,
And crickets cry, and roads are still;
And faint and few the fire-flies strew
The dark where calls the whippoorwill;
There, in the lane, where sweet again
The petals of the wild-rose rain,
To stroll with head to head, dear heart,
And say the words oft said, dear heart,
And say the words oft said!
RAIN AND WIND
I hear the hoofs of horses
Galloping over the hill,
Galloping on and galloping on,
When all the night is shrill
With wind and rain that beats the pane--
And my soul with awe is still.
For every dripping window
Their headlong rush makes bound,
Galloping up, and galloping by,
Then back again and around,
Till the gusty roofs ring with their hoofs,
And the draughty cellars sound.
And then I hear black horsemen
Hallooing in the night;
Hallooing and hallooing,
They ride o'er vale and height,
And the branches snap and the shutters clap
With the fury of their flight.
Then at each door a horseman,--
With burly bearded lip
Hallooing through the keyhole,--
Pauses with cloak a-drip;
And the door-knob shakes and the panel quakes
'Neath the anger of his whip.
All night I hear their gallop,
And their wild halloo's alarm;
The tree-tops sound and vanes go round
In forest and on farm;
But never a hair of a thing is there--
Only the wind and storm.
UNDER ARCTURUS
I.
"I belt the morn with ribboned mist;
With baldricked blue I gird the noon,
And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed,
White-buckled with the hunter's moon.
"These follow me," the season says:
"Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs
Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways,
With gipsy gold that weighs their backs."
II.
A daybreak horn the Autumn blows,
As with a sun-tanned band he parts
Wet boughs whereon the berry glows;
And at his feet the red-fox starts.
The leafy leash that holds his hounds
Is loosed; and all the noonday hush
Is startled; and the hillside sounds
Behind the fox's bounding brush.
When red dusk makes the western sky
A fire-lit window through the firs,
He stoops to see the red-fox die
Among the chestnut's broken burs.
Then fanfaree and fanfaree,
Down vistas of the afterglow
His bugle rings from tree to tree,
While all the world grows hushed below.
III.
Like some black host the shadows fall,
And darkness camps among the trees;
Each wildwood road, a Goblin Hall,
Grows populous with mysteries.
Night comes with brows of ragged storm,
And limbs of writhen cloud and mist;
The rain-wind hangs upon her arm
Like some wild girl that will be kissed.
By her gaunt hand the leaves are shed
Like nightmares an enchantress herds;
And, like a witch who calls the dead,
The hill-stream whirls with foaming words.
Then all is sudden silence and
Dark fear--like his who can not see,
Yet hears, aye in a haunted land,
Death rattling on a gallow's tree.
IV.
The days approach again; the days,
Whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag;
When in the haze by puddled ways
Each gnarled thorn seems a crooked hag.
When rotting orchards reek with rain;
And woodlands crumble, leaf and log;
And in the drizzling yard again
The gourd is tagged with points of fog.
Oh, let me seat my soul among
Your melancholy moods! and touch
Your thoughts' sweet sorrow without tongue,
Whose silence says too much, too much!
OCTOBER
Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows
A tourney trumpet on the listed hill:
Past is the splendor of the royal rose
And duchess daffodil.
Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden's space,
Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold,
A ragged beggar with a lovely face,
Reigns the sad marigold.
And I have sought June's butterfly for days,
To find it--like a coreopsis bloom--
Amber and seal, rain-murdered 'neath the blaze
Of this sunflower's plume.
Here basks the bee; and there, sky-voyaging wings
Dare God's blue gulfs of heaven; the last song,
The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings
Upon yon pear-tree's prong.
No angry sunset brims with rosier red
The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed,
Pour in each blossom of this salvia-bed,
Where each leaf seems to bleed.
And where the wood-gnats dance, a tiny mist,
Above the efforts of the weedy stream,
The girl, October, tired of the tryst,
Dreams a diviner dream.
One foot just dipping the caressing wave,
One knee at languid angle; locks that drown
Hands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave,
Watching the leaves drift down.
BARE BOUGHS
O heart, that beat the bird's blithe blood,
The blithe bird's message that pursued,
Now song is dead as last year's bud,
What dost thou in the wood?
O soul, that kept the brook's glad flow,
The glad brook's word to sun and moon,
What dost thou here where song lies low
As all the dreams of June?
Where once was heard a voice of song,
The hautboys of the mad winds sing;
Where once a music flowed along,
The rain's wild bugles ring.
The weedy water frets and ails,
And moans in many a sunless fall;
And, o'er the melancholy, trails
The black crow's eldritch call.
Unhappy brook! O withered wood!
O days, whom death makes comrades of!
Where are the birds that thrilled the blood
When life struck hands with love?
A song, one soared against the blue;
A song, one bubbled in the leaves;
A song, one threw where orchards grew
All appled to the eaves.
But now the birds are flown or dead;
And sky and earth are bleak and gray;
The wild winds sob i' the boughs instead,
The wild leaves sigh i' the way.
A THRENODY
I.
The rainy smell of a ferny dell,
Whose shadow no sunray flaws,
When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds
Telling her beads
Of haws.
II.
The phantom mist, that is moonbeam-kissed,
On hills where the trees are thinned,
When Autumn leans at the oak-root's scarp,
Playing a harp
Of wind.
III.
The crickets' chirr 'neath brier and burr,
By leaf-strewn pools and streams,
When Autumn stands 'mid the dropping nuts,
With the book, she shuts,
Of dreams.
IV.
The gray "alas" of the days that pass,
And the hope that says "adieu,"
A parting sorrow, a shriveled flower,
And one ghost's hour
With you.
SNOW
The moon, like a round device
On a shadowy shield of war,
Hangs white in a heaven of ice
With a solitary star.
The wind is sunk to a sigh,
And the waters are stern with frost;
And gray, in the eastern sky,
The last snow-cloud is lost.
White fields, that are winter-starved,
Black woods, that are winter-fraught,
Cold, harsh as a face death-carved
With the iron of some black thought.
VAGABONDS
Your heart's a-tune with April and mine a-tune with June,
So let us go a-roving beneath the summer moon:
Oh, was it in the sunlight, or was it in the rain,
We met among the blossoms within the locust lane?
All that I can remember's the bird that sang aboon,
And with its music in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon.
A love-word of the wind, dear, of which we'll read the rune,
While we still go a-roving beneath the summer moon:
A love-kiss of the water we'll often stop to hear--
The echoed words and kisses of our own love, my dear:
And all our path shall blossom with wild-rose sweets that swoon,
And with their fragrance in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon.
It will not be forever, yet merry goes the tune
While we still go a-roving beneath the summer moon:
A cabin, in the clearing, of flickering firelight
When old-time lanes we strolled in the winter snows make white:
Where we can nod together above the logs and croon
The songs we sang when roving beneath the summer moon.
AN OLD SONG
It's Oh, for the hills, where the wind's some one
With a vagabond foot that follows!
And a cheer-up hand that he claps upon
Your arm with the hearty words, "Come on!
We'll soon be out of the hollows,
My heart!
We'll soon be out of the hollows!"
It's Oh, for the songs, where the hope's some one
With a renegade foot that doubles!
And a kindly look that he turns upon
Your face with the friendly laugh, "Come on!
We'll soon be out of the troubles,
My heart!
We'll soon be out of the troubles!"
A ROSE O' THE HILLS
The hills look down on wood and stream,
On orchard-land and farm;
And o'er the hills the azure-gray
Of heaven bends the livelong day
With thoughts of calm and storm.
On wood and stream the hills look down,
On farm and orchard-land;
And o'er the hills she came to me
Through wildrose-brake and blackberry,
The hill wind hand in hand.
The hills look down on home and field,
On wood and winding stream;
And o'er the hills she came along,
Upon her lips a woodland song,
And in her eyes, a dream.
On home and field the hills look down,
On stream and vistaed wood;
And breast-deep, with disordered hair,
Fair in the wildrose tangle there,
A sudden space she stood.
O hills, that look on rock and road,
On grove and harvest-field,
To whom God giveth rest and peace,
And slumber, that is kin to these,
And visions unrevealed!
O hills, that look on road and rock,
On field and fruited grove,
What now is mine of peace and rest
In you! since entered at my breast
God's sweet unrest of love!
DIRGE
What shall her silence keep
Under the sun?
Here, where the willows weep
And waters run;
Here, where she lies asleep,
And all is done.
Lights, when the tree-top swings;
Scents that are sown;
Sounds of the wood-bird's wings;
And the bee's drone:
These be her comfortings
Under the stone.
What shall watch o'er her here
When day is fled?
Here, when the night is near
And skies are red;
Here, where she lieth dear
And young and dead.
Shadows, and winds that spill
Dew; and the tune
Of the wild whippoorwill;
And the white moon;
These be the watchers still
Over her stone.
REST
Under the brindled beech,
Deep in the mottled shade,
Where the rocks hang in reach
Flower and ferny blade,
Let him be laid.
Here will the brooks, that rove
Under the mossy trees,
Grave with the music of
Underworld melodies,
Lap him in peace.
Here will the winds, that blow
Out of the haunted west,
Gold with the dreams that glow
There on the heaven's breast,
Lull him to rest.
Here will the stars and moon,
Silent and far and deep,
Old with the mystic rune
Of the slow years that creep,
Charm him with sleep.
Under the ancient beech,
Deep in the mossy shade,
Where the hill moods may reach,
Where the hill dreams may aid,
Let him be laid.
CLAIRVOYANCE
The sunlight that makes of the heaven
A pathway for sylphids to throng;
The wind that makes harps of the forests
For spirits to smite into song,
Are the image and voice of a vision
That comforts my heart and makes strong.
I look in one's face, and the shadows
Are lifted: and, lo, I can see,
Through windows of evident being,
That open on eternity,
The form of the essence of Beauty
God clothes with His own mystery.
I lean to one's voice, and the wrangle
Of living hath pause: and I hear
Through doors of invisible spirit,
That open on light that is clear,
The radiant raiment of Music
In the hush of the heavens sweep near.
INDIFFERENCE
She is so dear the wildflowers near
Each path she passes by,
Are over fain to kiss again
Her feet and then to die.
She is so fair the wild birds there
That sing upon the bough,
Have learned the staff of her sweet laugh,
And sing no other now.
Alas! that she should never see,
Should never care to know,
The wildflower's love, the bird's above,
And his, who loves her so!
PICTURED
This is the face of her
I've dreamed of long;
Here in my heart's despair,
This is the face of her
Pictured in song.
Look on the lily lids,
The eyes of dawn,
Deep as a Nereid's,
Swimming with dewy lids
In waters wan.
Look on the brows of snow,
The locks brown-bright;
Only young sleep can show
Such brows of placid snow,
Such locks of night.
The cheeks, like rosy moons,
The lips of fire;
Love thinks no sweeter tunes
Under enchanted moons
Than their desire.
Loved lips and eyes and hair,
Lo, this is she!
She, who sits smiling there
Over my heart's despair,
Never for me!
SERENADE
The pink rose drops its petals on
The moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn;
The moon, like some wide rose of white,
Drops down the summer night.
No rose there is
As sweet as this--
Thy mouth, that greets me with a kiss.
The lattice of thy casement twines
With jasmine vines, with jasmine vines;
The stars, like jasmine blossoms, lie
About the glimmering sky.
No jasmine tress
Can so caress
As thy white arms' soft loveliness.
About thy door magnolia blooms
Make sweet the glooms, make sweet the glooms;
A moon-magnolia is the dusk
Closed in a dewy husk.
However much,
No bloom gives such
Soft fragrance as thy bosom's touch.
The flowers, blooming now, shall pass,
And strew the grass, and strew the grass;
The night, like some frail flower, dawn
Shall soon make gray and wan.
Still, still above,
The flower of
True love shall live forever, love.
KINSHIP
I.
There is no flower of wood or lea,
No April flower, as fair as she:
O white anemone, who hast
The wind's wild grace,
Know her a cousin of thy race,
Into whose face
A presence like the wind's hath passed.
II.
There is no flower of wood or lea,
No Maytime flower, as fair as she:
O bluebell, tender with the blue
Of limpid skies,
Thy lineage hath kindred ties
In her, whose eyes
The heav'n's own qualities imbue.
III.
There is no flower of wood or lea,
No Juneday flower, as fair as she:
Rose,--odorous with beauty of
Life's first and best,--
Behold thy sister here confessed!
Whose maiden breast
Is fragrant with the dreams of love.
SHE IS SO MUCH
She is so much to me, to me,
And, oh! I love her so,
I look into my soul and see
How comfort keeps me company
In hopes she, too, may know.
I love her, I love her, I love her,
This I know.
So dear she is to me, so dear,
And, oh! I love her so,
I listen in my heart and hear
The voice of gladness singing near
In thoughts she, too, may know.
I love her, I love her, I love her,
This I know.
So much she is to me, so much,
And, oh! I love her so,
In heart and soul I feel the touch
Of angel callers, that are such
Dreams as she, too, may know.
I love her, I love her, I love her,
This I know.
HER EYES
In her dark eyes dreams poetize;
The soul sits lost in love:
There is no thing in all the skies,
To gladden all the world I prize,
Like the deep love in her dark eyes,
Or one sweet dream thereof.
In her dark eyes, where thoughts arise,
Her soul's soft moods I see:
Of hope and faith, that make life wise;
And charity, whose food is sighs--
Not truer than her own true eyes
Is truth's divinity.
In her dark eyes the knowledge lies
Of an immortal sod,
Her soul once trod in angel-guise,
Nor can forget its heavenly ties,
Since, there in Heaven, upon her eyes
Once gazed the eyes of God.
MESSENGERS
The wind, that gives the rose a kiss
With murmured music of the south,
Hath kissed a sweeter thing than this,--
The wind, that gives the rose a kiss--
The perfume of her mouth.
The brook, that mirrors skies and trees,
And echoes in a grottoed place,
Hath held a fairer thing than these,--
The brook, that mirrors skies and trees,--
The image of her face.
O happy wind! O happy brook!
So dear before, so free of cares!
How dearer since her kiss and look,--
O happy wind! O happy brook!--
Have blessed you unawares!
AT TWENTY-ONE
The rosy hills of her high breasts,
Whereon, like misty morning, rests
The breathing lace; her auburn hair,
Wherein, a star point sparkling there,
One jewel burns; her eyes, that keep
Recorded dreams of song and sleep;
Her mouth, with whose comparison
The richest rose were poor and wan;
Her throat, her form--what masterpiece
Of man can picture half of these!
She comes! a classic from the hand
Of God! wherethrough I understand
What Nature means and Art and Love,
And all the lovely Myths thereof.
BABY MARY
TO LITTLE M. E. C. G.
Deep in baby Mary's eyes,
Baby Mary's sweet blue eyes,
Dwell the golden memories
Of the music once her ears
Heard in far-off Paradise;
So she has no time for tears,--
Baby Mary,--
Listening to the songs she hears.
Soft in baby Mary's face,
Baby Mary's lovely face,
If you watch, you, too, may trace
Dreams her spirit-self hath seen
In some far-off Eden-place,
Whence her soul she can not wean,--
Baby Mary,--
Dreaming in a world between.
A MOTIVE IN GOLD AND GRAY
I.
To-night he sees their star burn, dewy-bright,
Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it,
Low in the west; a placid purple lit
At its far edge with warm auroral light:
Love's planet hangs above a cedared height;
And there in shadow, like gold music writ
Of dusk's dark fingers, scale-like fire-flies flit
Now up, now down the balmy bars of night.
How different from that eve a year ago!
Which was a stormy flower in the hair
Of dolorous day, whose sombre eyes looked, blurred,
Into night's sibyl face, and saw the woe
Of parting near, and imaged a despair,
As now a hope caught from a homing word.
II.
She came unto him--as the springtime does
Unto the land where all lies dead and cold,
Until her rosary of days is told
And beauty, prayer-like, blossoms where death was.--
Nature divined her coming--yea, the dusk
Seemed thinking of that happiness: behold,
No cloud it had to blot its marigold
Moon, great and golden, o'er the slopes of musk;
Whereon earth's voice made music; leaf and stream
Lilting the same low lullaby again,
To coax the wind, who romped among the hills
All day, a tired child, to sleep and dream:
When through the moonlight of the locust-lane
She came, as spring comes through her daffodils.
III.
White as a lily molded of Earth's milk
That eve the moon swam in a hyacinth sky;
Soft in the gleaming glens the wind went by,
Faint as a phantom clothed in unseen silk:
Bright as a naiad's leap, from shine to shade,
The runnel twinkled through the shaken brier;
Above the hills one long cloud, pulsed with fire,
Flashed like a great, enchantment-welded blade.
And when the western sky seemed some weird land,
And night a witching spell at whose command
One sloping star fell green from heav'n; and deep
The warm rose opened for the moth to sleep;
Then she, consenting, laid her hands in his,
And lifted up her lips for their first kiss.
IV.
There where they part, the porch's step is strewn
With wind-tossed petals of the purple vine;
Athwart the porch the shadow of a pine
Cleaves the white moonlight; and, like some calm rune
Heaven says to Earth, shines the majestic moon;
And now a meteor draws a lilac line
Across the welkin, as if God would sign
The perfect poem of this night of June.
The wood-wind stirs the flowering chestnut-tree,
Whose curving blossoms strew the glimmering grass
Like crescents that wind-wrinkled waters glass;
And, like a moonstone in a frill of flame,
The dew-drop trembles on the peony,
As in a lover's heart his sweetheart's name.
V.
In after years shall she stand here again,
In heart regretful? and with lonely sighs
Think on that night of love, and realize
Whose was the fault whence grew the parting pain?
And, in her soul, persuading still in vain,
Shall doubt take shape, and all its old surmise
Bid darker phantoms of remorse arise
Trailing the raiment of a dead disdain?
Masks, unto whom shall her avowal yearn,
With looks clairvoyant seeing how each is
A different form, with eyes and lips that burn
Into her heart with love's last look and kiss?--
And, ere they pass, shall she behold them turn
To her a face which evermore is his?
VI.
In after years shall he remember how
Dawn had no breeze soft as her murmured name?
And day no sunlight that availed the same
As her bright smile to cheer the world below?
Nor had the conscious twilight's golds and grays
Her soul's allurement, that was free of blame,--
Nor dusk's gold canvas, where one star's white flame
Shone, more bewitchment than her own sweet ways.--
Then as the night with moonlight and perfume,
And dew and darkness, qualifies the whole
Dim world with glamour, shall the past with dreams--
That were the love-theme of their lives--illume
The present with remembered hours, whose gleams,
Unknown to him, shall face them soul to soul?
VII.
No! not for her and him that part;---the Might-
Have-Been's sad consolation;--where had bent,
Haply, in prayer and patience penitent,
Both, though apart, before no blown-out light.
The otherwise of fate for them, when white
The lilacs bloom again, and, innocent,
Spring comes with beauty for her testament,
Singing the praises of the day and night.
When orchards blossom and the distant hill
Is vague with haw-trees as a ridge with mist,
The moon shall see him where a watch he keeps
By her young form that lieth white and still,
With lidded eyes and passive wrist on wrist,
While by her side he bows himself and weeps.
VIII.
And, oh, what pain to see the blooms appear
Of haw and dogwood in the spring again;
The primrose leaning with the dragging rain,
And hill-locked orchards swarming far and near.
To see the old fields, that her steps made dear,
Grow green with deepening plenty of the grain,
Yet feel how this excess of life is vain,--
How vain to him!--since she no more is here.
What though the woodland burgeon, water flow,
Like a rejoicing harp, beneath the boughs!
The cat-bird and the hermit-thrush arouse
Day with the impulsive music of their love!
Beneath the graveyard sod she will not know,
Nor what his heart is all too conscious of!
IX.
How blessed is he who, gazing in the tomb,
Can yet behold, beneath th' investing mask
Of mockery,--whose horror seems to ask
Sphinx-riddles of the soul within the gloom,--
Upon dead lips no dust of Love's dead bloom;
And in dead hands no shards of Faith's rent flask;
But Hope, who still stands at her starry task,
Weaving the web of comfort on her loom!
Thrice blessed! who, 'though he hear the tomb proclaim,
How all is Death's and Life Death's other name;
Can yet reply: "O Grave, these things are yours!
But that is left which life indeed assures--
Love, through whose touch I shall arise the same!
Love, of whose self was wrought the universe!"
A REED SHAKEN WITH THE WIND
I.
Not for you and me the path
Winding through the shadowless
Fields of morning's dewiness!
Where the brook, that hurries, hath
Laughter lighter than a boy's;
Where recurrent odors poise,
Romp-like, with irreverent tresses,
In the sun; and birds and boughs
Build a music-haunted house
For the winds to hang their dresses,
Whisper-silken, rustling in.
Ours a path that led unto
Twilight regions gray with dew;
Where moon-vapors gathered thin
Over acres sisterless
Of all healthy beauty; where
Fungus growths made sad the air
With a phantom-like caress:
Under darkness and strange stars,
To the sorrow-silenced bars
Of a dubious forestland,
Where the wood-scents seemed to stand,
And the sounds, on either hand,
Clad like sleep's own servitors
In the shadowy livery
Of the ancient house of dreams;
That before us,--fitfully,
With white intermittent gleams
Of its pale-lamped windows,--shone;
Echoing with the dim unknown.
II.
To say to hope,--Take all from me,
And grant me naught:
The rose, the song, the melody,
The word, the thought:
Then all my life bid me be slave,--
Is all I crave.
To say to time,--Be true to me,
Nor grant me less
The dream, the sigh, the memory,
The heart's distress;
Then unto death set me a task,
Is all I ask.
III.
I came to you when eve was young.
And, where the park went downward to
The river, and, among the dew,
One vesper moment lit and sung
A bird, your eyes said something dear.
How sweet it was to walk with you!
How, with our souls, we seemed to hear
The darkness coming with its stars!
How calm the moon sloped up her sphere
Of fire-filled pearl through passive bars
Of clouds that berged the tender east!
While all the dark inanimate
Of nature woke; initiate
With th' moon's arrival, something ceased
In nature's soul; she stood again
Another self, that seemed t' have been
Dormant, suppressed and so unseen
All day; a life, unknown and strange
And dream-suggestive, that had lain,--
Masked on with light,--within the range
Of thought, but unrevealed till now.
It was the hour of love. And you,
With downward eyes and pensive brow,
Among the moonlight and the dew,--
Although no word of love was spoken,--
Heard the sweet night's confession broken
Of something here that spoke in me;
A love, depth made inaudible,
Save to your soul, that answered well,
With eyes replying silently.
IV.
Fair you are as a rose is fair,
There where the shadows dew it;
And the deeps of your brown, brown hair,
Sweet as the cloud that lingers there
With the sunset's auburn through it.
Eyes of azure and throat of snow,
Tell me what my heart would know!
Every dream I dream of you
Has a love-thought in it,
And a hope, a kiss or two,
Something dear and something true,
Telling me each minute,
With three words it whispers clear,
What my heart from you would hear.
V.