Beneath the woodland tree,
The elder-blossoms knitting
In wreaths of witchery,
Between the glimpse and flitting,
What wouldst thou show to me,
Thou presence none may see?
III
O thou, who, haply, hidest,
A flower upon the tree;
Or in a color glidest,
Or murmur of a bee;
Or in a scent abidest,
A fragrance,--show to me
The things no man may see!
IV
If I should find thee dreaming
Upon the wild-rose lea,
The heart within thee gleaming
And breathing like a bee,
Between the real and seeming,
What wouldst thou say to me,
Thou presence none may see?
V
O thou, who, haply, tellest
To birds their wild wood glee;
Who in the water wellest
As murmuring melody;
And in the wood-wind dwellest
As music,--sing to me
Of that no man may see!
TEMPEST
The trees before the coming storm
Toss, wild as leaping Corybants
Who fling to Cybele an arm
Of rapture, and a face that pants
Through hair the ritual frenzy slants.
Vague, stormy shapes of tempest sit,
August, majestic, and immense,
Beneath the stars--as, lightning-lit,
A god might give wild audience
To awe and night and violence.
Storm is her signet; hers, who writes
Stern laws in flame; and, shadowy,
With thunder seals the rolled-out nights,
And sits in terrible mystery--
The mountain-crownéd Cybele.
REVELATION
I write these things that men may hear.
This was the word that gave me cheer:
There sate a dæmon at mine ear,
Who whispered me, “Man knoweth naught.--
First know thyself wouldst thou know aught.”
This was the word that brought me grace:
There fell a shape before my face,
Who motioned me, “All forms are sin’s.--
He aims above himself who wins.”
This was the word that made me wise:
There stood an angel at mine eyes,
Who looked, “The world lives selfishly.--
Give thy own self if thou wouldst see.”
These are the words they brought to me.
ANALOGIES
Of Rosamond the beautiful, of her
The joy and pride of Cunimund,--last king
Of the fierce Gepidæ,--a warrior
Such as the old-world minstrels loved to sing,
To Alboin, Prince of Lombardy,--at war
With Cunimund her father,--fame did bring
Report of such proud loveliness and grace
That he had loved her ere he saw her face.
War was between them and the hate of thrones:
For he had slain a son of Turismund
And brother of King Cunimund. His bones
Were as a wall between desire--unsunned
Of such encouragement as young Love owns;
Young Love, before the ruined lips that stunned
Appeal with dead defiance, and the grim
Confrontment mocking as the hopes of him.--
Such oft is Life! that, standing with despair,
Looks on some crime,--as looked the conqueror
Of Rosamond,--ere goaded on to dare
Fate through the stern arbitrament of war:
Death smiles within the danger of her hair;
Defeat, more deadly than the wild Avar,
Looks, armored, from her eyes; and in her mouth
An exarch marshals legions from the south.
Yet, should he so prevail against her might--
Her woman Pride, her hosts of beautiful
Angers and scorns--that she be forced, some night,
To pledge him faith in Hate’s full cup, a skull--
What though he sees Revenge writ, fiery white,
Upon her brow! revenge, that hides a dull
Poison for sleep, or dagger all prepared!--
Life writes not _Failure_ where Fate writes _He dared_.
MNEMONICS
It shall not be forgotten
Of any one who sees,--
The sorrel-flow’r amid the moss,
The wind-flow’r ’mid the trees.
Though I can but remember
All flowers by _her_ face,
That flow’r, which is my life’s perfume,
Kin to the wild-flow’r race.
It shall not be forgotten
Of any one who looks,--
The evening-star above the hills,
Its image in the brooks.
Though I can but remember
All planets by _her_ eyes,
Those stars, which are my destiny,
Bright sisters to the skies’.
And, oh, the song that follows
The wing-beat of the bird!--
It shall not be forgotten
When once such song is heard.
Though I can but remember
All music by _her_ words,
Her voice, which is my heart’s response,
Kin to the building bird’s.
How _can_ they be forgotten,
The fair and fugitive,
When in all birds and stars and flowers
Love’s intimations live!
ASSUMPTION
I
A mile of moonlight and the whispering wood:
A mile of shadow and the odorous lane:
One large, white star above the solitude,
Like one sweet wish: and, laughter after pain,
Wild roses wistful in a web of rain.
II
No star, no rose, to lesson him and lead,
No woodsman compass of the skies and rocks,--
Tattooed with stars and lichens,--doth love need
To guide him where, among the hollyhocks,
A blur of moonlight, gleam his sweetheart’s locks.
III
We name it beauty--that permitted part,
The love-elected apotheosis
Of Nature, which the god within the heart,
Just touching, makes immortal, but by this--
A star, a rose, the memory of a kiss.
PROEM TO “UNDERTONES”
Long are the days, and overlong the nights.
The weary hours are a heavy chain
Upon the feet of all Earth’s dear delights,
Holding them ever prisoners to pain.
What shall beguile me to believe again
In hope, that Faith within her parable writes
Of life, Care reads with eyes whose teardrops stain?
Shall such assist me to subdue the heights?
Long is the night, and overlong the day.--
The burden of all being!--Is it worse
Or better, lo! that they who toil and pray
May win no more than they who toil and curse
A little sleep, a little love, ah me!
And the slow weight up the soul’s Calvary!
UNQUALIFIED
Not his the part to win the goal,
The flaming goal that flies before,
Into whose course the apples roll
Of self that stay the feet the more.
Beyond himself he shall not win
Whose aim is as a driven dust,
That his own soul must wander in,
Seeing no farther than his lust.
UNENCOURAGED ASPIRATION
Mine is the part of no companion hand
Of help, except my shadow’s silent self:
A moonlight traveller in Fancy’s land
Of leering gnome and hollow-laughing elf:
Whose forests deepen and whose moon goes down,
When night’s blind shadow shall usurp my own;
And, ’midst the dust and wreck of some old town,
The City of Dreams, I grope and fall alone.
INTERPRETED
What magic shall solve us the secret
Of beauty that’s born for an hour?
That gleams, in the flight of an egret,
Or swoons, in the scent of a flower,
With death for a dower?
What leaps in the bosk but a satyr?
What pipes in the wind but a faun?
What blooms in the waters that scatter
But limbs of a nymph that is gone,
When we walk in the dawn?
What sings on the hills but a fairy?
Or sighs in the fields but a sprite?
What breathes through the leaves but the airy
Dim spirits of shadow and light,
When we walk in the night?
Behold how the world-heart is eager
To draw us and hold us and claim!
Through truths of the dreams that beleaguer
Her soul she makes ours the same,
And death but a name.
SECOND SIGHT
They lean their faces to me through
Green windows of the woods;
Their cool throats sweet with honey-dew
Beneath their leafy hoods--
No dream they dream but hath been true
Here in the solitudes.
Star trillium, in the underbrush,
In whom Spring bares her face;
Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush
Of Summer’s quiet grace;
Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush
Of Autumn’s tragic pace.
This one hath heard the dryad’s sighs
Behind the covering bark;
That one hath felt the satyr’s eyes
Gleam through the bosky dark;
And one hath seen the Naiad rise
In waters all a-spark.
I bend my soul unto them, stilled
In worship man hath lost:--
The old-world myths that science killed
Are living things almost
To me through these whose forms are filled
With Beauty’s pagan ghost.
And with new eyes I seem to see
The world these live within,--
A shuttered world of mystery,
Where unreal forms begin
Real forms of ideality
That have no unreal kin.
SUCCESS
How some succeed, who have least need,
In that they make no effort for!
And pluck, where others pluck a weed,
The burning blossom of a star,
Grown from no earthly seed.
For some shall reap who never sow;
And some shall toil and ne’er attain--
What boots it, in ourselves to know
Such labor here is not in vain,
When we still see it so!
THE HOUSE OF SONG
Unto the portal of the House of Song,
Symbols of wrong and emblems of unrest,
And mottoes of despair and envious jest,
And stony masks of scorn and hate belong.
Who enters here shall feel his soul denied
All welcome; where the chiselled form of Love
Stares down in marble on the shrine above
The tomb of Beauty where he dreamed and died.
Who enters here shall know no poppy flowers
Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;
Only sad ghosts of music and of scent
Shall mock his mind with their remembered powers.
Here must he wait till striving Patience carves
His name upon the century-storied floor;
His heart’s blood staining one dim pane the more
In Fame’s high casement while he sings and starves.
FLOWERS
Oh, why for us the blighted bloom,
The blossom that lies withering!--
Why has He, of Life’s changeless loom,
Created here no changeless thing?
Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace?
Through which the spirit manifests
The fact of an immortal place,
The dream on which religion rests.
Where buds the lily of our Faith?
That grows for us in unknown wise,
Out of the barren dust of death,
The pregnant bloom of Paradise.
In Heaven! so near that flowers know!
That flowers see how near!--and thus
Reflect the knowledge here below
Of love and life unknown to us.
DEAD SEA FRUIT
All things have power to hold us back.
Our very hopes build up a wall
Of doubt, whose shadow stretches black
O’er all.
The dreams, that helped us once, become
Dread disappointments, that oppose
Dead eyes to ours, and lips made dumb
With woes.
The thoughts that opened doors before
Within the mind’s house, hide away;
Discouragement hath locked the door
For aye.
Come, loss, more frequently than gain!
And failure than success! until
The spirit’s struggle to attain
Is still!
REQUIEM
I
No more for him, where hills look down,
Shall Morning crown
Her rainy brow with blossom bands!--
The Morning Hours, whose rosy hands
Drop wild-flowers of the breaking skies
Upon the sod ’neath which he lies.--
No more for him! No more! no more!
II
No more for him, where waters sleep,
Shall Evening heap
The long gold of the perfect days!
The Eventide, whose warm hand lays
Great poppies of the afterglow
Upon the turf he rests below.--
No more for him! No more! no more!
III
No more for him, where woodlands loom,
Shall Midnight bloom
The star-flow’red acres of the blue!
The Midnight Hours, whose dim hands strew
Dead leaves of darkness, hushed and deep,
Upon the grave where he doth sleep.--
No more for him! No more! no more!
IV
The hills, that Morning’s footsteps wake;
The waves that take
A brightness from the Eve; the woods,
The solitudes, o’er which Night broods,
Their Spirits have, whose parts are one
With his, whose mortal part is done.
Whose part is done; alas! is done.
AT LAST
What shall be said to him,
Now he is dead?
Now that his eyes are dim,
Low lies his head?
What shall be said to him,
Now he is dead?
One thing, he knew not of,
Sweet, in his ear
Whisper with all thy love--
Haply he’ll hear.
One thing, he knew not of,
Sweet, in his ear.
What shall be given him,
Now he is dead?
Now that his eyes are dim,
Low lies his head?
What shall be given him,
Now he is dead?
That which was long denied
Here, Sweet,--thy heart
Lay now his heart beside,
Never to part.
That which was long denied
Here, Sweet,--thy heart.
REMEMBERED
Here in the dusk I picture it again,
Her face, as ’twas before she fell asleep:
Renunciation glorifying pain
Of her soul’s inmost deep.
I shall not see its like again! the brow
Of marble, that the fair hair aureoled,--
Like some pale lily in the afterglow,--
With supernatural gold.
As if a rose should speak and, somehow heard
Thro’ some strange sense, the unembodied sound
Grow visible, her mouth was as a word
A sweet thought falters round.
So do I still remember eyes imbued
With far reflections--as the stars suggest
The silence, purity, and solitude
Of infinite peace and rest.
She was my all. I loved her as men love
A high desire, religion, an ideal--
The meaning purpose in the loss whereof
God shall alone reveal.
MONOCHROMES
I
The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down with many woes:
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.
The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide,
Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief:
So hope is gone, and doubt and loss abide.
An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost falls, subtle as a serpent’s breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a life brought face to face with death:
So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead.
II
Go your own ways. Who shall persuade me now
To look with high face for a star of hope?
Or up endeavor’s unsubduable slope
Advance a bosom of desire, and bow
A back of patience in a thankless task?
Alone beside the grave of love I ask,
Shalt thou? or thou?
Leave go my hands. Fain would I walk alone
The easy ways of silence and of sleep.
What though I go with eyes that can not weep,
And lips contracted with no uttered moan,
Through rocks and thorns, where every footprint bleeds,
A dead-sea path of desert night that leads
To one white stone!
Though sands be black and bitter black the sea,
Night lie before me and behind me night,
And God within far Heaven refuse to light
The consolation of the dawn for me,--
Between the shadowy bournes of Heaven and Hell,
It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell
With memory.
THE WORLD’S DESIRE
The roses of voluptuousness
Wreathe her dark locks and hide her eyes;
Her limbs are flower-like nakedness,
Wherethrough the fragrant blood doth press,
The blossom-blood of Paradise.
She stands with Lilith finger-tips,
With Lilith hands; and gathers up
The grapes of life; whose wine she sips,--
With Lilith-laughter-lightened lips,--
The soul, as from a curious cup.
What though she cast the cup away!
The empty bowl that flashed with wine!
Her lips’ wild kiss, that stained the clay,
Her hands’ hot clasp--shall these not stay,
That made its nothingness divine?
Through one again shall live the glow,
Immortalizing, of her touch;
And through the other, sweet to know
How life swept, flame once, ’neath the snow
Of her moon’d breasts--and this is much!
THE UNATTAINABLE
Mark thou! a shadow crowned with fire of hell.
Man holds her in his heart as night doth hold
The moonlight memories of day’s dead gold;
Or as a winter-withered asphodel
In its dead loveliness holds scents of old.
And looking on her, lo, he thinks ’tis well.
Who would not follow her whose glory sits,
Imperishably lovely, on the air?
Who, from the arms of Earth’s desire, flits
With eyes defiant and rebellious hair?--
Hers is the beauty that no man shall share.
He who hath seen, what shall it profit him?
He who doth love, what shall his passion gain?
When disappointment at her cup’s bright brim
Poisons the pleasure with the hemlock pain?
Hers is the passion that no man shall drain.
How long, how long since Life hath kissed her eyes,
Making their night clairvoyant! And how long
Since Love hath kissed her lips and made them wise,
Mixing their speech with prophecy and song!
Hope clad her nakedness in lovely lies,
Giving into her hands the right of wrong!
Lo! in her world she sets pale tents of thought,
Unearthly bannered; and her dreams’ wild bands
Besiege the heavens like a twilight fraught
With recollections of lost stars. She stands
Radiant as Lilith glowing from God’s hands.
The golden rose of patience at her throat
Drops fragrant petals--as a pensive tune
Drops its surrendered sweetness note by note;--
And from her hands the buds of hope are strewn,
Moon-flowers, mothered of the barren moon.
So in her flowers man seats him at her feet
In star-faced worship, knowing all of this;
And now to him to die seems very sweet,
Filled with the fire of her look and kiss;
While in his heart the blood’s tumultuous beat
Drowns, in her own, the drowsing serpent’s hiss.
He who hath dreamed but of her world shall give
All of his soul unto her restlessly:
He who hath seen but her far face shall live
No more for things we name reality:
Such is the power of her tyranny.
He, whom she wins, hath nothing ’neath the sun;
Forgetting all that she may not forget
He loves her, who still feeds his soul upon
Dreams and desires, and doubt and vain regret,--
Life’s bitter bread his heart’s fierce tears make wet.
What word of wisdom hast thou, Life, to wake
Him now! or song of magic now to dull
The dreams he lives in! or what charm to break
The spell that makes her evil beautiful!
What charm to show her beauty hides a snake,
Whose basilisk eyes burn dark behind a skull!
PROBLEMS
Man’s is the learning of his books--
What is all knowledge that he knows
Beside the wit of winding brooks,
The wisdom of the summer rose!
How soil distils the scent in flowers
Baffles his science: heaven-dyed,
How, from the sunshine and the showers,
They draw their colors, hath defied.
Nor hath he solved why light is white,
Yet paints with hues the dawns and noons,
Stains all the hollow edge of night
With glory as of molten moons.
What knows he of the laws of birth
Or death, or what these are and why!
Or what it is within the earth
That helps us live and helps us die!
THE BEAUTIFUL
I
Of moires of placid glitter
The moon is knitter,
Under dark trees, whose branches
The blue night blanches:
Upon yon stream’s swift arrow
Lights lie, as narrow
As is the glance of some pale sorceress,
Spell-haunted, watching in a wilderness.
And I, who, dreaming, wander,
Seem to behold her yonder,
My beautiful dream, my bodiless loveliness.
II
Upon this water’s glimmer
White sheets of shimmer
Glow outward, as if inner
Sea-castles,--thinner
Than peeléd pearl,--through curlings
And water whirlings,
Let spray the light of lucid dome and spire,
The smoldering silver of an inward fire.--
Perhaps her towers, enchanted,
Are there; on mountains planted
Of crystal:--hers! the soul of my desire!
III
Or there above the beeches,
On terraced reaches
Of rolling roses, towered
And moonbeam-bowered,
Is it her palace airy?--
Or dream of Fairy?--
Piled, full of melody and marble-white,
Its pointed casements lit with piercing light:
Wherein, all veiled and hidden,
She waits,--who long hath bidden
Me come to her,--her accoladed knight?
IV
The blue night’s sweetness settles--
Like hyacinth petals,
Bowed by their weight of rain-drops--
Around me: pain drops
From off my heart, the sadness
Of life to gladness
Of beauty turns, that was not born to die;
That whispers in my soul and tells me why
I, too, was born--to render
Her worship: feel her splendor
Expand me like a rose beneath God’s eye.
WORLD’S ATTAINMENT
A Lorelei full fair she sits
Above the Stream of Life that rolls;
And, hope-thrilled, with her wild harp knits
To her from year to year men’s souls.
They hear her harp, they hear her song,
Behold her beauty throned on high,
And gazing on her, sweep along,
Strike on the rocks and sink and die.
A BLOWN ROSE
Lay but a finger on
Its pallid petals sweet,
They flutter, gray and wan,
Beneath the passing feet.
But, soft! blown rose, although
Departed is thy bloom,--
Thy bud, thy youth, I know,
Had no such sweet perfume.
Thou art like one whose page
Of life is beauty-fraught,
Who grays to ripe old-age,
Sweet-mellowed through with thought:
Who, when his hoary head
Is wept into the tomb,
With dreams, that are not dead,
Still gives his name perfume.
NEPENTHE
Ah, it is well for men to strain
And strive and yearn to rise;
The soul’s salvation is in pain,
In toil and sacrifice.
The grandest souls that rose above,
Thought’s noblest heights to tread,
Found consolation in their love,
And life behind the dead.
A living glory in the tomb,
Whose night shall end in light;
An intense splendor veiled with gloom,
Too blinding for earth’s sight.
Nepenthe of this struggling world,
Whose knowledge comforts care,
And in the heart, where it is curled,
Conquers the snake, despair.
ON A DIAL
Look on my face: to-morrow
I am to-day.
From me you may not borrow
Or take away.
I mark life’s mirth and sorrow,
Birth and decay.
I know nor joy nor sadness:
I go, yet stay:
And men in me find gladness
And grief, they say:
I stay not for their madness,
Nor pass away.
UNUTTERABLE
There is a sorrow in the wind to-night
That haunteth me; she, like a penitent,
Heaps on rent hair the snow’s thin ashes white,
And moans and moans, her swaying body bent.
And Superstition, gliding softly, shakes
With wasted hands, that vainly grope and seek,
The rustling curtains; of each cranny makes
Wild, ghostly lips that, wailing, fain would speak.
QUESTIONINGS
Now that wan sunsets, wintery
With icy gold, paint bleak the sky;
Now nights are starless utterly,
And snow and sleet cut moaning by,
One’s memory keeps one company,
And sorrow puts its “when” and “why.”
Such inquisition, when alone,
Leads on to ways of doubt and dread,
Despair has miled with many a stone,
Carved with the faces of our dead,
Stamped on whose brows we read, “Unknown!
No further look, nor seek to tread.”
And, oh! that weariness of soul
That leans upon our dead, the clod
And air have taken, as a whole,
Through some mysterious period!--
Life! with its questions of control!
Death! with its unguessed laws of God!
FRAGMENTS
I
The curtains of my couch sway heavily:
’Tis death, who parts the curtains of my soul.--
Sleep, like a gray expression of ghost lips
Heard through the moonlight of a haunted room,
Seems near yet far away. Would God ’twere day!
II
“Stay not too long, love, stay not long away!”
Lightly my heart said when we kissed farewell.
But now my heart is heavy with hard news--
Oh! bitterness of kisses that were sweet!
III
Tear from my heart and under furious feet
Trample the golden record of our love,
Love’s book of golden days, despair! despair!
IV
Night is a grave physician, who contrives
The drug of sleep to heal day’s bruises with,
The drug of death for life’s delirium.--
V
On lost expanses of a phantom land
Life stands; and, overhead, one sinister star,
A baleful beacon, burns: heav’n seems a hand
Of jeweled darkness pointing her her way,
Mournful, through shadows of lugubrious hills
And rising tempest, to a house, a shape
Placid and pale and silent utterly.
VI
O undivulging, unresponsive fate,
Is gold another name for power and crime?
Life, dust long dedicated unto death?
And death? is it all darkness without light?
Whereto all things go groping, love and joy
And beauty, glow-worms, flickering each its spark?
Precious as gold does anything avail?
Steadfast as tablets of the eternal stars,
What deeds of man, when time hath touched them, last?
DEITY
No personal! No God divinely crowned
With gold and raised upon a golden throne,
Deep in a golden glory,--whence he nods
Man this or that,--and little more than man!
Thus I divine Him: When the soul, refined
Through love and wisdom through a thousand years,
Shall mount as pure intelligence and pierce
The separate cycles singing under God,--
Their iridescent evolutions orbed
Of wild electric splendor,--it shall see
(Through God-propinquity become a god)
Resplendencies of empyrean light
Swift-lightening out of spheric harmonies:
Prisms and facets of ten million beams
Starring a crystal of wild-rainbowed rays:
And in it--eyes: of burning sapphire, eyes
Deep as the music of the beautiful:
And o’er the eyes, limpid, hierarchal brows,
As they were lilies of seraphic fire:
Lips underneath of trembling ruby--lips,
Whose smile is light and each expression, song.
In multiplying myriads, forms of fire,
Cherubic faces of intensity,
Waiting His look, that is electric thought,
To work His will, spirits on spirits stand
Circling the Unit, God: Supremity
Creative and eternal.
And from Him
Man’s intellect, detached, expelled and breathed
Exaltant into flesh endowed with soul,--
One sparkle of the Essence clothed with clay,--
Is given to Earth for something more than earth,
Some purpose, some divine development,--
That protoplasmic evolution proves,--
That lifts him upward, heart and soul and mind,
From matter to ideal potencies,
Up to the source and fountain of all mind,
Beauty and truth and everlasting love,
To be resumed and re-absorbed in them--
One more expression of Eternity.
DISENCHANTMENT OF DEATH