Now sits the twilight palaced in the snow,
Hugging away beneath a fleece of gold
Her statue beauties, dumb and icy cold,
And fixing her blue steadfast eyes below;
Where in a bed of chilly waves afar,
With dismal shadows o’er her sweet face blown,
Tended to death by eve’s delicious star,
Lies the lost day alone.
Where late with red mists bound about his brows
Went the swart Autumn, wading to the knees
Through drifts of dead leaves shaken from the boughs
Of the old forest trees;
The gusts upon their baleful errands run
O’er the bright ruin, fading from our eyes,
And over all, like clouds about the sun,
A shadow lies.
For, fallen asleep upon a dreary wold,
Slant to the light, one late October morn,
From some rough cavern blew a tempest cold,
And tearing off his garland of ripe corn,
Twisted with blue grapes, sweet with luscious wine,
And Ceres’ drowsy flowers, so dully red,
Deep in his cavern leafy and divine,
Buried him with his dead.
Then, with his black beard glistening in the frost,
Under the icy arches of the north,
And o’er the still graves of the seasons lost,
Blustered the winter forth.
Spring, with your crown of roses budding new,
Thought-nursing and most melancholy fall,
Summer, with bloomy meadows wet with dew,
Blighting your beauties all.
O heart, your spring-time dream will idle prove,
Your summer but forerun the autumn’s death,
The flowery arches in the home of love
Fall, crumbling, at a breath;
And sick at last with that great sorrow’s shock,
As some poor prisoner pressing to the bars
His forehead, calls on mercy to unlock
The chambers of the stars:
You, turning off from life’s first mocking glow,
Leaning it may be still on broken faith,
Will down the vale of autumn gladly go
To the chill winter, death.
Hark! from the empty bosom of the grove
I hear a sob, as one forlorn might pine—
The white-limbed beauty of a god is thine,
King of the seasons, and the night that hoods
Thy brow majestic, brightest stars enweave—
Thou surely canst not grieve.
But only far away
Mak’st stormy prophecies—well lift them higher,
Till morning on the forehead of the day
Presses a seal of fire.
Dearer to me the scene
Of nature shrinking from thy rough embrace,
Than summer, with her rustling robe of green,
Cool blowing in my face.
The moon is up—how still the yellow beams
That slantwise lie upon the stirless air,
Sprinkled with frost, like pearl-entangled hair,
O’er beauty’s cheek that streams.
How the red light of Mars their pallor mocks.
And the wild legend from the old time wins,
Of sweet waves kissing all the drowning locks
Of Ilia’s lovely twins.
Come, Poesy, and with thy shadowy hands
Cover me softly, singing all the night—
In thy dear presence find I best delight;
Even the saint that stands
Tending the gate of heaven, involved in beams
Of rarest glory, to my mortal eyes
Pales from the blest insanity of dreams
That round thee lies.
Unto the dusky borders of the grove
Where gray-haired Saturn, silent as a stone,
Sat in his grief alone,
Or where young Venus, searching for her love,
Walked through the clouds, I pray,
Bear me to-night away.
Or wade with me through snows
Drifted in loose fantastic curves aside,
From humble doors where love and faith abide,
And no rough winter blows,
Chilling the beauty of affections fair,
Cabined securely there.
Where round their fingers winding the white slips
That crown his forehead, on the grandsire’s knees,
Sit merry children, teasing about ships
Lost in the perilous seas;
Or listening with a troublous joy, yet deep,
To stories about battles, or of storms,
Till weary grown, and drowsing into sleep,
Slide they from out his arms.
Where, by the log-heap fire,
As the pane rattles and the cricket sings,
I with the gray-haired sire
May talk of vanished summer-times and springs,
And harmlessly and cheerfully beguile
The long, long hours—
The happier for the snows that drift the while
About the flowers.
Winter, wilt keep the love I offer thee?
No mesh of flowers is bound about my brow;
From life’s fair summer I am hastening now.
And as I sink my knee,
Dimpling the beauty of thy bed of snow,
Dowerless, I can but say,
O, cast me not away!
* * * * *