And flung it wide and, leaning outward, gazed:
Above, the night hung, moon and starlight chastened;
Below, with shadows mazed,
The garden bloomed. Around her and o’erhead
All seemed at pause--save one wild star that streamed,
One rose that fell.--And then she sighed and said,
“I must have dreamed, have dreamed.”
And then again she seemed to hear it speak,
A moth that murmured of a star attained,--
Or was it but the fountain whispering weak,
White where the moonbeams rained?
And still it grew; and still the sound insisted,
Louder and sweeter, burning into form,
Until at last a presence, starlight-misted,
It shone there rosy warm:
Crying, “Come down! long have I watched and waited!
Come down! draw near! or, like some splendid flower,
Let down thy hair! so I may climb as fated
Into thy heart’s high tower.
Lower! bend lower, so thy heart may hear me!
Thy soul may clasp me!... Beautiful above
All beautiful things, behold me, yea, draw near me;
Behold! for I am Love.”
THE VALE OF TEMPE
All night I lay upon the rocks:
And now the dawn comes up this way,
One great star trembling in her locks
Of rosy ray.
I can not tell the things I’ve seen,
The things I’ve heard I dare not speak
The dawn is breaking, gold and green,
O’er vale and peak.
My soul hath kept its tryst again
With _her_ as once in ages past,
In that lost life, I know not when,
Which was my last:
When she was dryad, I was faun,
And lone we loved in Tempe’s Vale,
Where once we saw Endymion
Pass passion-pale:
Where once we saw him clasp and meet
Among the pines, with kiss on kiss,
Moon-breasted and most heavenly sweet,
White Artemis.
Where often, Bacchus-borne, we heard
The Mænad shout, wild-revelling:
And filled with witchcraft, past all word,
The Limnad sing.
Bloom-bodied ’mid the twilight trees
We saw the Oread, who shone
Fair as the forms Praxiteles
Carved out of stone.
And oft, goat-footed, in a glade
We marked the Satyrs dance, and great,
Man-muscled, like the oaks that shade
Dodona’s gate,
Fierce Centaurs hoof a torrent’s bank
With wind-tossed manes, or leap a crag,
While swift, the arrow in its flank,
Swept by the stag.
And minnow-white the Naiad there
We watched, foam-shouldered, in her stream,
Wringing the moisture from her hair
Of emerald gleam.
We saw the oak unclose and, brown,
Sap-scented, from its door of bark
The Hamadryad young step down:
Or, crouching dark
Within the oak’s old heart, we felt
Her eyes, that pierced the fibrous gloom;
Her breath, that was the musk we smelt,
The wild perfume.
There is no flower that opens glad
Wide eyes of dawn and sunset hue,
As fair as the Leimoniad
We saw there too:
That flower-divinity, rose-born,
Of sunlight and white dew, whose blood
Is fragrance, and whose heart of morn
A crimson bud.
There is no star that rises white,
To tiptoe down the deeps of dusk,
Sweet as the moony Nymphs of Night
With breasts of musk,
We met among the mystery
And hush of forests, where, afar,
We watched their hearts beat glimmeringly,
Each heart a star.
There is no beam that rays the marge
Of mist that trails from cape to cape,
From panther-haunted gorge to gorge,
Bright as the shape
Of her, the one Auloniad,
That, born of wind and grassy gleams,
Silvered upon our sight, dim-clad
In foam of streams.
All, all of these I saw again,
Or dreamed I saw, as there, ah me!
Upon the cliffs, above the plain,
In Thessaly,
I lay, while Mount Olympus helmed
Its brow with moon-effulgence deep,
And, far below, vague, overwhelmed
With reedy sleep,
Peneus flowed, and, murmuring, sighed,
Meseemed, for its dead gods, whose ghosts
Through its dark forests seemed to glide
In whispering hosts....
’Mid whose pale shapes again I spoke
With her, my soul, as I divine,
Dim ’neath some gnarled Olympian oak,
Or Ossan pine,
Till down the slopes of heaven came
Those daughters of the Dawn, the Hours,
Clothed on with raiment blue of flame,
And crowned with flowers;
When she, with whom my soul once more
Had trysted--limbed of light and air--
Whom to my breast,--(as oft of yore
In Tempe there,
When she was dryad, I was faun)--
I clasped and held, and pressed and kissed,
Within my arms, as broke the dawn,
Became a mist.
THE BALLAD OF LOW-LIE-DOWN
John-a-dreams and Harum-Scarum
Came a-riding into town:
At the Sign o’ the Jug-and-Jorum
There they met with Low-lie-down.
Brave in shoes of Romany leather,
Bodice blue and gipsy gown,
And a cap of fur and feather,
In the inn sat Low-lie-down.
Harum-Scarum kissed her lightly,
Smiled into her eyes of brown,
Clasped her waist and held her tightly,
Laughing, “Lovely Low-lie-down!”
Then with many an oath and swagger,
As a man of great renown,
On the board he clapped his dagger,
Called for sack and sat him down.
So a while they laughed together;
Then he rose and with a frown
Sighed, “While still ’tis pleasant weather,
I must leave thee, Low-lie-down.”
So away rode Harum-Scarum,
With a song rode out of town;
At the Sign o’ the Jug-and-Jorum
Weeping lingered Low-lie-down.
Then this John-a-dreams, in tatters,
In his pocket ne’er a crown,
Touched her saying, “Wench, what matters!
Dry your eyes and, come, sit down.
“Here’s my hand: we’ll roam together,
Far away from thorp and town.
Here’s my heart,--for any weather,--
And my dreams, too, Low-lie-down.
“Some men call me dreamer, poet:
Some men call me fool and clown--
What I am but you shall know it,
Only you, sweet Low-lie-down.”
For a little while she pondered:
Smiled: then said, “Let care go drown!”
Rose and kissed him.... Forth they wandered,
John-a-dreams and Low-lie-down.
VAGABONDS
I
It’s ho, it’s ho! when haw-trees blow
Among the hills that Springtime thrills;
When huckleberries, row on row,
Hang out their blossom-bells of snow
Around the rills that music fills:
When haw-trees blow among the hills,
It’s ho, it’s ho! oh let us go,
My love and I, where fancy wills.
II
It’s hey, it’s hey! when daisies sway
Among the meads where Summer speeds;
When ripeness bends each fruited spray,
And harvest wafts adown the day
The feathered seeds of golden weeds:
When daisies sway among the meads,
It’s hey, it’s hey! oh, let’s away,
My heart and I, where longing leads.
III
It’s ay, it’s ay! when red leaves fly,
And strew the ways where Autumn strays;
When round the beech and chestnut lie
The sturdy burrs where creeks run dry,
And frosts and haze turn golds to grays:
When red leaves fly and strew the ways,
It’s ay, it’s ay! oh, let us hie,
My love and I, where dreaming says.
IV
Wassail! wassail! when snow and hail
Make white the lands where Winter stands;
When wild winds from the forests flail
The last dead leaves, and, in the gale,
The trees wring hands in ghostly bands:
When snow and hail make white the lands,
Wassail! wassail! oh, let us trail,
My heart and I, where love commands.
REVEALMENT
A sense of sadness in the golden air,
A pensiveness, that has no part in care,
As if the Season, by some woodland pool,
Braiding the early blossoms in her hair,
Seeing her loveliness reflected there,
Had sighed to find herself so beautiful.
A breathlessness, a feeling as of fear,
Holy and dim, as of a mystery near,
As if the World, about us, listening went,
With lifted finger and hand-hollowed ear,
Harkening a music, that we can not hear,
Haunting the quickening earth and firmament.
A prescience of the soul that has no name,
Expectancy that is both wild and tame,
As if the Earth, from out its azure ring
Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame,--
As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came,--
The swift, divine revealment of the Spring.
A YELLOW ROSE
The old gate clicks, and down the walk,
Between clove-pink and hollyhock,
Still young of face though gray of lock,
Among her garden’s flowers she goes,
At evening’s close,
Deep in her hair a yellow rose.
The old house shows one gable-peak
Above its trees; and sage and leek
Blend with the flowers’ their scent: the creek,
Leaf-hidden, past the garden flows,
That on it snows
Pale petals of the yellow rose.
The crickets pipe in dewy damps;
And everywhere the fireflies’ lamps
Flame like the lights of fairy camps;
While, overhead, the soft sky shows
One star that glows,
As, in gray locks, a yellow rose.
There is one spot she seeks for where
The roses make a fragrant lair,
A spot where once he kissed her hair,
And told his love, as each one knows,
Each flower that blows,
And pledged it with a yellow rose.
The years have turned her dark hair gray
Since that far time: and still, they say,
She keeps the tryst as on that day;
And through the garden softly goes,
At evening’s close,
Wearing for him that yellow rose.
WHIPPOORWILL TIME
I
Let down the bars; drive in the cows:
The west is barred with burning rose.
Unhitch the horses from the ploughs,
And from the cart the ox that lows,
And light the lamp within the house:--
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the locust blooms are falling
On the hill;
The sunset’s rose is dying,
And the whippoorwill is crying,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will;”
Soft, now shrill,
The whippoorwill is crying,
“Whip-poor-will.”
II
Unloose the watch-dog from his chain:
The first stars wink their drowsy eyes:
A sheep-bell tinkles in the lane,
And where the shadow deepest lies
A lamp makes bright the kitchen pane:--
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the berry-blooms are falling
On the rill;
The first faint stars are springing,
And the whippoorwill is singing,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will;”
Softly still
The whippoorwill is singing,
“Whip-poor-will.”
III
The cows are milked: the cattle fed:
The last far streaks of evening fade:
The farm-hand whistles in the shed,
And in the house the table’s laid,
Its lamp streams on the garden-bed:--
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the dogwood blooms are falling
On the hill:
The afterglow is waning,
And the whippoorwill’s complaining,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will;”
Wild and shrill,
The whippoorwill’s complaining,
“Whip-poor-will.”
IV
The moon blooms out, a great white rose;
The stars wheel onward towards the west;
The barnyard-cock wakes once and crows;
The farm is wrapped in peaceful rest;
The cricket chirrs; the firefly glows:--
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the bramble-blooms are falling
On the rill;
The moon her watch is keeping,
And the whippoorwill is weeping,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will:”
Lonely still,
The whippoorwill is weeping,
“Whip-poor-will.”
NOVEMBER
I
_Morning_
Deep in her broom-sedge, burrs, and ironweeds,
Her frost-slain asters and dead mallow-moons,
Where gray the wilding clematis balloons
The brake with puff-balls: where the slow stream leads
Her slower steps; decked with the scarlet beads,
Of hip and haw; through dolorous maroons
And desolate golds, she goes; the wailing tunes
Of all the winds about her like wild reeds.
The red wrought-iron hues that flush the green
Of blackberry briers, and the bronze that stains
The oak’s sere leaves, are in her cheeks: the gray
Of forest pools, thin-clocked with ice, is keen
In her cold eyes; and in her hair, the rain’s
Chill silver shimmers like a moonlight ray.
II
_Noon_
Lost in the sleepy grays and drowsy browns
Of woodlands, smoky with the autumn haze,
Where dull the last, leafed maples, smouldering, blaze
Like ghosts of sachem fires, the month uncrowns
Her frosty hair; and where the forest drowns
The road in darkness, in the rutted ways,
Filled full of freezing rain, her robe she lays
Of tattered gold, and seats herself and frowns.
And at her frown each wood and bosky hill
Shudders with prescience of approaching storm,
Her soul’s familiar fiend, who, with wild broom
Of wind and rain, works her resistless will,
Sweeping the world, and driving with fierce arm
The clouds, like leaves, through the tumultuous gloom.
III
_Evening_
The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs,
Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still;
Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill
Autumnal touch makes hectic red the rims
Of all the oak-leaves; desolating, dims
The ageratum’s blue that banks the rill;
And splits the milkweed’s pod upon the hill,
And shakes it free of the last seed that swims.
Down goes the day despondent to its close:
And now the sunset’s hands of copper build
A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars,
The Day, in fierce, barbarian repose,
Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled,
Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.
IV
_Night_
There is a booming in the forest boughs;
Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees:
The storm is at his wildman revelries,
And earth and heaven echo his carouse.
Night reels with tumult; and, from out her house
Of cloud, the moon looks,--like a face one sees
In nightmare,--hurrying, with pale eyes that freeze,
Stooping above with white, malignant brows.
The isolated oak upon the hill,
That seemed, at sunset, in terrific lands
A Titan head black in a sea of blood,
Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrill
To the vast fingering of innumerable hands--
Spirits of tempest and of solitude.
HALLOWMAS
All hushed of glee,
The last chill bee
Clings wearily
To the dying aster:
The leaves drop faster:
And all around, red as disaster,
The forest crimsons with tree on tree.
A butterfly,
The last to die,
Droops heavily by,
Weighed down with torpor:
The air grows sharper:
And the wind in the trees, like some sad harper,
Sits and sorrows with sigh on sigh.
The far crows call;
The acorns fall;
And over all
The Autumn raises
Dun mists and hazes,
Through which her soul, it seemeth, gazes
On ghosts and dreams in carnival.
The end is near:
The dying Year
Leans low to hear
Her own heart breaking,
And Beauty taking
Her flight, and all her dreams forsaking
Her soul, bowed down ’mid the sad and sere.
AUBADE
Awake! the Dawn is on the hills!
Behold, at her cool throat a rose,
Blue-eyed and beautiful she goes,
Leaving her steps in daffodils.--
Awake! arise! and let me see
Thine eyes, whose deeps epitomize
All dawns that were or are to be,
O love, all Heaven in thine eyes!--
Awake! arise! come down to me!
Behold! the Dawn is up: behold!
How all the birds around her float,
Wild rills of music, note on note,
Spilling the air with mellow gold.--
Arise! awake! and, drawing near,
Let me but hear thee and rejoice!
Thou, who bear’st captive, sweet and clear,
All song, O love, within thy voice!
Arise! awake! and let me hear!
See, where she comes, with limbs of day,
The Dawn! with wild-rose hands and feet,
Within whose veins the sunbeams beat,
And laughters meet of wind and ray.
Arise! come down! and, heart to heart,
Love, let me clasp in thee all these—
The sunbeam, of which thou art part,
And all the rapture of the breeze!—
Arise! come down! loved that thou art!
WOMAN’S LOVE
Sweet lies! the sweetest ever heard,
To her he said:
Her heart remembers every word
Now he is dead.
I ask:--“If thus his lies can make
Your young heart grieve for his false sake,
Had he been true what had you done,
For true love’s sake?"--
“Upon his grave there in the sun,
Avoided now of all--but one,
I’d lay my heart with all its ache,
And let it break, and let it break.”
And falsehood! fairer ne’er was seen
Than he put on:
Her heart recalls each look and mien
Now he is gone.
I ask:--“If thus his treachery
Can hold your heart with lie on lie,
What had you done for manly love,
Love without lie?"--
“There in the grass that grows above
His grave, where all could know thereof,
I’d lay me down without a sigh,
And gladly die, and gladly die.”
AT MOONRISE
Pale faces looked up at me, up from the earth, like flowers.
Pale hands reached down to me, out of the dusk, like stars,
As over the hills, robed on with twilight, the Hours,
The Day’s last Hours departed, and the Night put up her bars.
Pale fingers beckoned me on, pale fingers, like starlit mist;
Dim voices called to me, dim as the wind’s dim rune,
As up from the trees, like a Nymph from the amethyst
Of her waters, as silver as foam, rose the round, white
breast of the moon.
And I followed the pearly waving and beckon of hands,
The luring glitter and dancing glimmer of feet,
And the sibilant whisper of silence, that summoned to lands
Remoter than legend or faery, where Myth and Tradition meet.
And I came to a place where the shadow of ancient Night
Brooded o’er ruins, far wilder than castles of dreams,
Fantastic, a mansion of phantoms, where, wandering white,
I met with a shadowy presence whose voice I had followed it seems.
And the ivy waved in the wind and the moonlight laid,
Like a ghostly benediction, a finger wan
On the face of the one from whose eyes the darkness rayed,
The presence I knew for one I had known in the years long gone.
And she looked in my face and kissed me on brow and on cheek,
Murmured my name and wistfully smiled in my eyes;
And the tears welled up in my heart that was wild and weak,
And my bosom seemed bursting with yearning and my soul with sighs.
And there ’mid the ruins we sat.--Oh, strange were the
words that she said!
Distant and dim and strange:--and hollow the looks that she gave:--
And I knew her then for a joy, a joy that was dead,
A hope, a beautiful hope, that my youth had laid in its grave.
THE LAMP AT THE WINDOW
Like some gaunt ghost the tempest wails
Outside my door; its icy nails
Beat on my pane. And night and storm
Around the house, with furious flails
Of wind, from which the slant sleet hails,
Stalk up and down; or, arm in arm,
Stand giant guard; the wild-beast lair
Of their fierce bosoms black and bare....
My lamp is lit. I have no fear.
Through night and storm my love draws near.
Now through the forest how they go,
With whirlwind hoofs, and maned with snow,
The beasts of tempest! winter herds,
That lift huge heads of mist and low
Like oxen; beasts of air, that blow
Ice from their nostrils; winged like birds,
And bullock-breasted, onward hurled,
That shake with tumult all the world....
My lamp is set where love can see,
Who through the tempest comes to me.
I press my face against the pane,
And seem to see, from wood and plain,
In phantom thousands, stormy pale,
The ghosts of forests, tempest-slain,
Vast wraiths of woodlands, rise and strain
And rock wild limbs against the gale;
Or, borne in fragments overhead,
Sow night with horror and with dread....
He comes! My light is as an arm
To guide him onward through the storm.
I hear the tempest from the sky
Cry, eagle-like, its battle-cry;
I hear the night, upon the peaks,
Send back its condor-like reply;
And then again come booming by
The forest’s challenge, hoarse as speaks
Hate unto hate, or wrath to wrath,
When each draws sword and sweeps the path.--
But let them rage! through darkness far
My bright light leads him like a star.
The cliffs, with all their plumes of pines,
Bow down high heads: the battle-lines
Of all the hills, that iron seams,
Shudder through all their rocky spines:
And under shields of matted vines
The vales crouch down: and all the streams
Are hushed and frozen as with fear
As from the deeps the winds draw near....
But let them come! my lamp is lit!
Nor shall their fury flutter it.
Now round and round, with stride on stride,
In Boreal armor, tempest-dyed,
I hear the thunder of their strokes--
The heavens are rocked on every side
With all their clouds; and far and wide
The earth roars back with all its oaks....
Still at the pane burns bright my light
To guide him onward through the night,
To lead love through the night and storm
Where my young heart will make him warm.
ACHIEVEMENT
He held himself splendidly forward
Both early and late;
The aim of his purpose was starward,
To master his fate.
So he wrought and he toiled and he waited,
Till he rose o’er the hordes that he hated,
And stood on the heights, as was fated,
Made one of the great.
Then, lo! on the top of the mountain,
With walls that were wide,
A city! from which, like a fountain,
Rose voices that cried:--
“He comes! Let us forth now to meet him!
Both mummer and priest let us greet him!
In the city he built let us seat him
On the throne of his pride!”
Then out of the city he builded,
Of shadows it seems,
From gates that his fancy had gilded
With thought’s brightest beams,
Strange mimes and chimeras came trooping,
With moping and mowing and stooping--
And he saw with a heart that was drooping,
That these were his dreams.
He entered; and, lo! as he entered,
They murmured his name;
And led him where, burningly centered,
An altar of flame
Made lurid a temple,--erected
Of self,--where a form he detected--
The love that his life had rejected ...
And this was his fame!
MYSTERIES
Soft and silken and silvery brown,
In shoes of lichen and leafy gown,
Little blue butterflies fluttering around her,
Deep in the forest, afar from town,
There, where a stream was trickling down,
I met with Silence, who wove a crown
Of sleep whose mystery bound her.
I gazed in her eyes, that were mossy green
As the rain that pools in the hollow between
The twisted roots of a tree that towers;
And I saw the things that none has seen,--
That mean far more than facts may mean,--
The dreams, that are true, of an age that has been,
That God has thought into flowers.
I gazed at her lips, that were dewy gray
As the mist that clings, at the close of day,
To the wet hillside when the winds cease blowing:
And I heard the things that none may say,--
That are holier far than the prayers we pray,--
The murmured music God breathes alway
Through the hearts of all things growing.
Soft and subtle and vapory white,
In shoes of shadow and gown of light,
Crimson poppies asleep around her,
Far in the forest, beneath a height,
I came on Slumber, who wove from night
A wreath of silence, that, darkly bright,
With its mystic beauty crowned her.
I looked in her face, that was pale and still
As the moon that rises above the hill
Where the pines loom sombre as sorrow:
And the things that all have known and will,
I knew for a moment--the myths that fill
And people the past of the soul and thrill
Its hope with a far to-morrow.
I heard her voice, that was strange with pain
As a wind that whispers of wreck and rain
To the leaves of the autumn rustling lonely:
And I felt the things that are felt in vain
By all--the longings that haunt the brain
Of man, that come and depart again
And are part of his dreamings only.
A SONG OF THE SNOW
I
Roaring winds that rocked the crow,
High in his eyrie,
All night long, and to and fro
Swung the cedar and drove the snow
Out of the North, have ceased to blow,
And dawn breaks fiery.
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter dawn,
When the air is still and the clouds are gone,
And the snow lies deep on hill and lawn,
And the old clock ticks, “’Tis time! ’tis time!”
And the household rises with many a yawn--
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter dawn!
Sing, Ho!
II
Deep in the East a rosy glow
Broadens and brightens,
Glints through the icicles, row on row,
Flames on the panes of the farm-house low,
And over the miles of drifted snow
Silently whitens.
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter sky,
When the last star closes its icy eye,
And deep in the road the snow drifts lie,
And the old clock ticks, “’Tis late! ’tis late!”
And the flame on the hearth leaps red, leaps high--
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter sky!
Sing, Ho!
III
Into the heav’n the sun comes slow,
All red and frowsy:
Out of the shed the muffled low
Of the cattle comes; the rooster’s crow
Sounds strangely distant beneath the snow
And dull and drowsy.
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter morn,
When the snow makes ghostly the wayside thorn,
And hills of pearl are the shocks of corn,
And the old clock ticks, “Tick-tock, tick-tock;”
And the goodman bustles about the barn--
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter morn!
Sing, Ho!
IV
Now to their tasks the farm-hands go,
Cheerily, cheerily:
With ears a-tingle and cheeks a-glow,
She with her pail and he with his hoe,
To milk the cows and to path the snow,
Merrily, merrily.
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter day,
When ermine-capped are the stacks of hay,
And the wood-smoke pillars the air with gray,
And the old clock ticks, “To work! to work!”
And the goodwife sings as she churns away--
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter day!
Sing, Ho!
THE WOOD WATER
An evil, stealthy water, dark as hate,
Sunk from the light of day,
’Thwart which is hung a ruined water-gate,
Creeps on its stagnant way.
Moss and the spawny duckweed, dim as air,
And green as copperas,
Choke its dull current; and, like hideous hair,
Tangles of twisted grass.
Above it sinister trees,--as crouched and gaunt
As huddled Terror,--lean;
Guarding some secret in that nightmare haunt,
Some horror they have seen.