THE MOONMEN

I stood in the forest on Huron Hill

When the night was old and the world was still.

The Wind was a wizard who muttering strode

In a raven cloak on a haunted road.

The Sound of Water, a witch who crooned

Her spells to the rocks the rain had runed.

And the Gleam of the Dew on the fern’s green tip

Was a sylvan passing with robe a-drip.

The Light of the Stars was a glimmering maid

Who stole, an elfin, from glade to glade.

The Scent of the Woods in the delicate air,

A wild-flower shape with chilly hair.

And Silence, a spirit who sat alone

With lifted finger and eyes of stone.

And it seemed to me these six were met

To greet a greater who came not yet.

And the speech they spoke, that I listened to,

Was the archetype of the speech I knew.

For the Wind clasped hands with the Water’s rush,

And I heard them whisper, “Hush, oh, hush!”

The Light of the Stars and the Dew’s cool Gleam

Touched lips and murmured, “Dream, oh, dream!”

The Scent of the Woods and the Silence deep

Sighed, bosom to bosom, “Sleep, oh, sleep!”

And so for a moment the six were dumb,

Then exulted together, “They come, they come!”

And I stood expectant and seemed to hear

A visible music drawing near.

And the first who came was the Captain Moon

Bearing a shield in God’s House hewn.

Then an Army of Glamour, a glittering host,

Beleaguered the night from coast to coast.

And the world was filled with spheric fire

From the palpitant chords of many a lyre,

As out of the East the Moonmen came

Smiting their harps of silver and flame.

More beauty and grace did their forms express

Than the God of Love’s white nakedness.

More chastity too their faces held

Than the snowy breasts of Diana swelled.

Translucent-limbed, I saw the beat

In their hearts of pearl of the golden heat.

And the hair they tossed was a crystal light,

And the eyes beneath it were burning white.

Their hands that lifted, their feet that fell,

Made the darkness blossom to asphodel.

And the heavens, the hills, and the streams they trod

Shone pale with th’ communicated God.

A placid frenzy, a waking trance,

A soft oracular radiance,

Wrapped forms that moved as melodies move,

Laurelled with Godhead and haloed with Love.

And there in the forest on Huron Hill

The Moonmen camped when the world was still.

* * * * *

What wonder that they who have looked on these

Are lost to the earth’s realities!

That they sit aside with a far-off look

Dreaming the dreams that are writ in no book!

That they walk alone till the day they die,

Even as I, yea, even as I!

PHANTOMS

This was her home; one mossy gable thrust

Above the cedars and the locust trees:

This was her home, whose beauty now is dust,

A lonely memory for melodies

The wild birds sing, the wild birds and the bees.

Here every evening is a prayer: no boast

Or ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth;

Here, through the twilight, like a pale flower’s ghost,

A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth;

And dusk spreads darkness like a dewy cloth.

In vagabond velvet, all the placid day

A stain of crimson, lolls the butterfly;

The south-wind sows with ripple and with ray

The pleasant waters; and the gentle sky

Looks on the homestead like a quiet eye.

Their melancholy quaver, lone and low,

When day is done, the gray tree-toads repeat:

The whippoorwills, far in the afterglow,

Complain to silence: and the lightnings beat,

In one still cloud, glimmers of golden heat.

He comes not yet: not till the dusk is dead,

And all the western glow is far withdrawn;

Not till,--a sleepy mouth love’s kiss makes red,--

The baby bud opes in a rosy yawn,

Breathing sweet guesses of the dreamed-of dawn.

When in the shadows, like a rain of gold,

The fireflies stream steadily; and bright

Along the moss the glow-worm, as of old,

A crawling sparkle--like a crooked light

In smoldering vellum--scrawls a square of night,--

Then will he come, and she will lean to him,--

She who is buried there, within that place,--

Between the starlight and his eyes; so dim

With suave control and soul-compelling grace,

He can not help but see her, face to face.

THE HOUSE OF DEATH

(A Dream)

I

Starless and still and lustreless

And sombre black, it seemed to me,

The heaven hung in hideousness

Of Hell’s serenity:

Indefinite and vague and old

As nothing that is ours,

It rose turrets, dark with mould,

And dark, colossal towers.

II

Infernal monsters crumbled ’mid

The trefoils of its dim façade,

And, hideous as murder, hid

Gnarled in the pillared shade.

And all below and overhead,

In cancerous blotches, grew

The gray gangrene of lichens dead,

And fungus, sickly blue.

III

Beneath the black, impending skies,

Like Death’s dead countenance it stood,

Hollow, with cavernous window-eyes

Staring on solitude.

The grass was black, and in it, white

The tombstones rose; and gray,

Long league on league, adown the night,

Like phantoms, stretched away.

IV

And I, who entered in, could hear

No organ notes resound and roll,

But silence, like an awful fear,

Made tumult in my soul.

And, lo! I saw, like Hell’s wild songs,

The vast interior carved

With shapes of stone, vague woman throngs,

Naked, obscene, and starved.

V

Medusa mouths and harpy hands,

And Gorgon eyes where death abode;

Like idols, wherein heathen lands

Image the Plague’s black god.

Round mighty door and window-frame,

On floor and vault, behold,

The chiselled forms were all the same--

Gray with exuding mold.

VI

And I, who entered in, in dread

Felt silence like some awful hymn--

Or was ’t the effluvia of the dead

That round me seemed to swim?

Miasms, from which had oozed its walls,

Had rotted, breath on breath,

This house, within whose haunted halls

Death sat and dreamed of death.

EIDOLONS

The white moth-mullein brushed its slim

Cool, fairy flowers against his knee;

In places where the way lay dim

The branches, arching hollowly,

Made tomb-like mystery for him.

The wild-rose and the elder, drenched

With rain, made pale a misty place,--

From which, as from a ghost, he blenched;

He walking with averted face,

And lips white-closed and teeth tight-clenched.

For far within the forest,--where

Weird shadows stood like phantom men,

And where the ground-hog dug its lair,

The she-fox whelped and had her den,--

The thing kept calling, buried there.

One dead trunk, like a ruined tower,

Dark green with toppling trailers, shoved

Its wild wreck o’er the brush; one bower

Looked like a dead man, capped and gloved,

The thing that haunted him each hour.

Now at his side he heard it: thin

As echoes of a thought that speaks

In sleep: and, listening with his chin

Upon his palm, unto his cheeks

He felt the moon’s slow silver win.

And now the voice was still: and lo,

With eyes that stared on naught but night,

He looked and saw--what none shall know!

The form of one, who long from sight

Had lain, here murdered long ago?...

And men who found him,--thither led

By the she-fox,--within that place

Saw in his stony eyes, ’tis said,

The thing he met there face to face,

The thing that left him staring dead.

IDENTITIES

I sat alone in the arrased room

Of Sin, wrapped pale in her winding shroud;

The night was stricken with glare and gloom,

And the wailing wind was loud.

I heard the gallop of one who rode

Like a rushing leaf on the wind that lisps;

The night with the speed of her steed was sowed

With streaming will-o’-the-wisps.

And I said to myself, “’Tis a long-lost Shame,

Who rides to my house through the night and rain!

She will blaze in the blackness a face of flame

When she opens the door again!”

I thought of the blame on her lips and brow;

And stared at the door she must enter in--

To sear my soul with her eyes and bow

My heart by the corpse of Sin.

As hushed as the mansion of death was night,

When, dark as a sob of the storm, she came--

But her face, like beautiful Sin’s, was white,

And her face and Sin’s--the same!

HALLOWE’EN

It was down in the woodland on last Hallowe’en,

Where silence and darkness had built them a lair,

That I felt the dim presence of her, the unseen,

And heard her still step on the hush-haunted air.

It was last Hallowe’en in the glimmer and swoon

Of mist and of moonlight, where once we had sinned,

That I saw the gray gleam of her eyes in the moon,

And hair, like a raven, blown wild on the wind.

It was last Hallowe’en where starlight and dew

Made mystical marriage on flower and leaf,

That she led me with looks of a love, that I knew

Was dead, and the voice of a passion too brief.

It was last Hallowe’en in the forest of dreams,

Where trees are eidolons and flowers have eyes,

That I saw her pale face like the foam of far streams,

And heard, like the night-wind, her tears and her sighs.

It was last Hallowe’en, the haunted, the dread,

In the wind-tattered wood, by the storm-twisted pine,

That I, who am living, kept tryst with the dead,

And clasped her a moment who once had been mine.

ANSWERED

Do you remember how that night drew on?

That night of sorrow, when the stars looked wan

As eyes that gaze, reproachful, in a dream;

Loved eyes, long dead, and sadder than the grave?

How through the heaven stole the moon’s gray gleam,

Like a nun’s ghost down a cathedral’s nave?--

Do you remember how that night drew on?

Do you remember the hard words then said?

The words of hate above my bowed-down head,

That left me dead, long, long before I died:

Those words, whose bitterness had stabbed and slain

My heart before I knew your love had lied,

Or pierced me with the dagger of disdain.--

Do you remember the hard words then said?

Do you remember?--now the night draws down,--

As on that night,--the heavens, lightnings crown

With wrecks of thunder; and the moon doth give

The clouds wild witchery,--as in a room,

Behind the sorrowful arras, still may live

The pallid secret of the haunted gloom.--

Do you remember, now the night draws down?

Do you remember, now it comes to pass

Your form is bowed as is the wind-swept grass?

And death hath won from you that confidence

Denied to life? now your sick soul rebels

Against your pride with tragic eloquence,

That self-crowned demon of the heart’s fierce hells.--

Do you remember, now it comes to pass?

Yea, you remember! Bid your soul be still!

Here passion hath surrendered unto will,

And flesh to spirit. Quiet your wild tongue

And wilder heart. Your kiss wakes naught in me.

The instrument love gave you lies unstrung,

Silent, forsaken of all melody.--

Yea, you remember! Bid your soul be still!

UNFULFILLED

In my dream last night it seemed I stood

With a boy’s glad heart in my boyhood’s wood.

The beryl green and the cairngorm brown

Of the day through the deep leaves sifted down.

The rippling drip of a passing shower

Rinsed wild aroma from herb and flower.

The splash and urge of a waterfall

Spread stairwayed rocks with a crystal caul.

And I waded the strip of the creek’s dry bed

For the colored keel and the arrow-head.

And I found the cohosh coigne the same

Tossing with torches of pearly flame.

The owlet dingle of vine and brier,

That the butterfly-weed flecked fierce with fire.

The elder bosk with its warm perfume,

And the yellow stars of the daisy bloom;

The moss, the fern, and the touch-me-not

I breathed, and the mint-smell keen and hot.

And I saw the bird, that sang its best,

In the tufted sumac building its nest.

And I saw the chipmunk’s stealthy face,

And the rabbit crouched in a grassy place.

And I watched the crows, that cawed and cried,

Harrying the hawk at the forest-side;

The bees that sucked in the blossoms slim,

And the wasps that built on the lichened limb.

And felt the silence, the dusk, the dread

Of the spot where they buried the unknown dead:

The water-murmur, the insect hum,

And a far bird calling, “Come, oh, come!"--

No sweeter music can mortals make

To ease the heart of its human ache!--

And it seemed in my dream,--that was all too true,--

That I met in the woods again with you.

A sun-tanned face and brown bare knees,

And hands stained red with dewberries.

And we stopped a moment some word to tell,

And then in the woods we kissed farewell.

But once I met you; yet, lo! it seems

Again and again we meet in dreams.

And I ask my soul what it all may mean:

If this is the love that should have been.

And oft and often I wonder, _Can

What Fate intends be changed by man_?

DIRGE

What shall her dreaming 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 blown;

Sounds of the wood-bird’s wings;

And the bee’s drone;

These be her comfortings

Round her headstone.

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 rune

Of the wild whippoorwill;

And the white moon;

These be the watchers still

Round her headstone.

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 quiet shade,--

Where the wood’s peace may reach

Him, as each bough is swayed,--

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 the 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,--

Filled full of eternity,--

The form of the essence of Beauty

God garments with mystery.

I hearken one’s voice, and the wrangle

Of living hath pause: and I hear,

Through doors of invisible spirit,--

Filled full of God’s light that is clear,--

The radiant raiment of Music,

In the hush of the heavens, sweep near.

THE IDEAL

Nor time nor all his minions

Of sorrow and of pain,

Shall dash with vulture pinions

The cup she fills again

Within the dream-dominions

Of life where she doth reign.

Clothed on with bright desire

And hope that makes her strong,

With limbs of frost and fire,

She sits above all wrong,

Her heart a living lyre,

And love its only song.

And in the waking pauses

Of weariness and care,

And when the dark hour draws his

Black dagger of despair,

Above effects and causes

I hear her music there.

The longing’s life hath near it

Of beauty we would see;

The dreams it doth inherit

Of immortality;

Are callings of her spirit

To something yet to be.

TO ONE READING THE MORTE D’ARTHURE

O daughter of our Southern sun,

Sweet sister of each flower,

Dost dream in terraced Avalon

A shadow-haunted hour?

Or stand with Guinevere upon

Some ivied Camelot tower?

Or, in the wind, dost breathe the musk

That blows Tintagel’s sea on?

Or ’mid the lists by castled Usk

Hear some wild tourney’s glee on?

Or ’neath the Merlin moons of dusk

Dost muse in old Caerleon?

Or now of Launcelot, and then

Of Arthur, ’mid the roses,

Dost speak with wily Vivien?

Or, where the shade reposes,

Dost walk with stately, armored men

In marble-fountained closes?

So speak the dreams within thy gaze,

The dreams thy spirit cages,

Would that Romance--which on thee lays

The spell of bygone ages--

Held me! a memory of those days,

A portion of those pages.

THE CROSS

The cross I bear no man shall know--

No man shall see the cross I bear!--

Alas! the thorny path of woe

Up the steep hill of care!

There is no word to comfort me;

No sign to ease my cross-bowed head:

Deep night is in the heart of me,

And in my soul is dread.

To strive, it seems, that I was born,

For that which others shall obtain;

The disappointment and the scorn

Alone for me remain.

One half my life is overpast;

The other half I contemplate--

Meseems the past doth but forecast

A darker future state.

Sick to the heart of that which makes

Me hope and struggle and desire,

The aspiration here that aches

With ineffectual fire:

While inwardly I know the lack

Of thought, the paucity of power,

Each past day’s retrospect makes black

Each onward-coming hour.

Now in my youth would I could die!

Would God that I could lay me down

And pass away without a sigh,

Oblivious of renown!

NIGHTFALL

O day, so sicklied o’er with night!

O dreadful fruit of fallen dusk!--

A Circe orange, golden-bright,

With horror ’neath its husk.--

And I, who gave the promise heed

That made life’s tempting surface fair,

Have I not eaten to the seed

Its ashes of despair!

O silence of the drifted grass!

And immemorial eloquence

Of stars and winds and waves that pass!

And God’s indifference!

Leave me alone with sleep that knows

Not anything that life may keep--

Not e’en the pulse that comes and goes

In germs that climb and creep.

Or if an aspiration pale

Must quicken there--oh, let the spot

Grow weeds! that dust may so prevail

Where spirit once could not!

PAUSE

Thou too art sick of dreams, that stain

The aisle, along which life must pass,

With hues of mystic-colored glass,

That fills the windows of the brain.

Thou too art sick of thoughts, that carve

The house of days with arabesques

And gargoyles, where the mind grotesques

In masks of hope and faith who starve.

Come, lay thy over-weary head

Upon my bosom! Do not weep!--

“He giveth His beloved sleep."--

Heart of my heart, be comforted.

ABOVE THE VALES

We went by ways of bygone days,

Up mountain heights of story,

Where, lost in vague, historic haze,

Tradition, crowned with battle-bays,

Sat ’mid her ruins hoary.

Where, wing to wing, the eagles cling

And torrents have their sources,

War rose with bugle voice to sing

Of woods of spears and swords a-swing,

And rush of men and horses.

Then deep below, where orchards show

A home here, there a steeple,

We heard a simple shepherd go,

Singing,--within the afterglow,--

A love-song of the people.

As ’mid the trees his song did cease,

With voice most sweet and holy,

Peace,--’mid the cornlands of increase

And rose-beds of love’s victories,--

Took up his music lowly.

INSOMNIA

It seems that dawn will never climb

The eastern hills;

And, clad in mist and flame and rime,

Make flashing highways of the rills.

The night is as an ancient way

Through some dead land,

Whereon the ghosts of Memory

And Sorrow wander, hand in hand.

By which man’s works ignoble seem,

Unbeautiful;

And grandeur, but the ruined dream

Of some dead queen, crowned with a skull.

A way, Past-peopled, dark and old,

That stretches far--

Its only real thing, the cold

Vague light of Sleep’s one fitful star.

ENCOURAGEMENT

To help our tired hope to toil,

Lo! have we not the council here

Of trees, that to my heart appear

As sermons of the soil?

To help our flagging faith to rise,

Lo! have we not the high advice

Of stars, that for my soul suffice

As gospels of the skies?

Sustain us, Lord! and help us climb,

With hope and faith made strong and great,

The rock-rough pathway of our fate,

The care-dark way of time.

WHICH?

The wind was on the forest,

And silence on the wold;

And darkness on the waters,

And heaven was starry cold;

When Sleep, with all her magic,

Made me this thing behold:

This side, an iron woodland;

That side, an iron waste;

Between which rose a tower,

Wherein a wan light paced,

A light, or phantom woman

Ice-eyed and icy-faced.

And through the iron tower

Of silence and of night,

My Soul and I went only,

My Soul, whose face was white,

Whose one hand signed me listen,

One bore a taper-light.

For, lo! a voice behind me

Kept sighing in my ear

The dreams my mind accepted,

My heart refused to hear--

Of one I loved and loved not,

Whose spirit now was near,

And, lo! a voice before me

Kept calling constantly

The hopes my heart accepted,

My mind refused to see--

Of one I loved and loved not,

Whose spirit spake to me.

This way the one would bid me;

This way the other saith:--

Sweet is the voice behind me

Of Life that followeth;

And sweet the voice before me

Of Life whose name is Death.

STORM

I looked into the night and saw

God writing with tumultuous flame

Upon the thunder’s front of awe,--

As on sonorous brass,--the Law,

Terrific, of His judgment name.

Weary of all life’s best and worst,

With hands of hate, I--who had pled,

I, who had prayed for death at first

And had not died--now stood and cursed

God, yet He would not strike me dead.

TIME AND DEATH AND LOVE

Last night I watched for Death--

So sick of life was I!--

When, in the street beneath,

I heard his watchman cry

The hour, while passing by.

I called. And in the night

I heard him stop below,

His owlish lanthorn’s light

Blurring the windy snow--

How long the time and slow!

I said, “Why dost thou cower

There at my door and knock?

Come in! It is the hour!

Cease fumbling at the lock!

Naught’s well! ’Tis no o’clock!”

Black through the door with him

Swept in the Winter’s breath;

His cloak was great and grim--

But he who smiled beneath

Had the face of Love not Death.

A PHANTASY

I know not where I found you

With your wild hair a-blow,

Nor why the world around you

Would never let me know:

Perhaps ’twas Heaven relented;

Perhaps ’twas Hell resented

My hope, and grimly vented

Its hate upon me so.

In Shadowland I met you

Where all life’s shadows meet;

Within my heart I set you,

A woman bitter-sweet:

No hope for me to win you,

Though I with soul and sinew

Strove on and on, when in you

There was no heart or heat.

Still always, aye, and ever,

Although I knew you lied,

I followed on, but never

Would your fair form abide:

With loving arms stretched meward,

As Sirens beckon seaward

To some frail vessel leeward,

Before me you would glide.

But like an evil fairy,

That mocks one with a light,

Now near, you led your airy,

Now far, your fitful flight:

With red-gold tresses blowing,

And eyes of sapphire glowing,

With raiment white and flowing,

You lured me through the night.

To some unearthly revel

Of mimes, a motley crew,

’Twixt Angel-land and Devil-,

You lured me on, I knew,

And lure me still! soft whiling

The way with hopes beguiling,

While dark Despair sits smiling

Behind the eyes of you.

WHEREFORE

I would not see, yet must behold

The lie they preach in church and hall;

And question thus,--Is death then all,

And life an idle tale that’s told?

The myriad wonders art hath wrought

Men deem eternal as God’s love:

No more than shadows these shall prove,

And insubstantial, too, as thought.

And love and labor, who have gone,

Hand in close hand, and civilized

The wilderness, these shall be prized

No more than if they had not done.

Then wherefore strive? Why strain and bend

Beneath a burden so unjust--

Our works are builded of the dust,

And dust our universal end.

TRISTRAM AND ISOLT

Night, and vast caverns of rock and of iron:

Voices like water, and voices like wind:

Horror, and tempests of hail that environ

Shapes and the shadows of two who have sinned.

Wan on the whirlwind, in loathing uplifting

Faces that loved once, forever they go,

Tristram and Isolt, the lovers, go drifting,

The simmer and laughter of Hell below.

NIGHT

Lo! where the champion, Day, down slopes of flame,

In golden armor, quits the evening skies!

And as his glowing steeds, with manes of fire,

Rush from the world, a dust of glimmering gold

From their fierce hoofs o’er heaven’s azure meads

Rolls to one star that blossoms near the moon.

With solemn tread and holy-stoled, star-bound,

Night, like a votaress, a shadowy nun,

Paces the lonely corridors of heaven,

The vasty-arched and ebon halls of sky.

How still! how beautiful! her raven locks

Pale-filleted with stars that dance their sheen

On her deep, vestal eyes, and woo the soul

To wonder, and to dream of far-off things.

How calm o’er this great river, in its flow

Silent and dark, smoothes Earth’s cold sister sphere

Her lunar chasteness, whiter than blown foam!

As o’er a troubled brow a hand of love:

As on a restless heart the balm of sleep,

Caressing softening all care away.