As once in the days of yore,
When love spoke sweetly to us,
The love that speaks no more:
The sound of your voice may help him
To speak in my heart once more.
Ah! over grieved my soul is,
And tired and sick for sleep,
As a poppy-bloom that withers,
Forgotten, where reapers reap:
As a harvested poppy-flower
That dies where reapers reap.
So bend to my face and kiss me
As once in the days of yore,
When the touch of your lips was magic
That restored to life once more:
The thought of your kiss, which awakens
To life that love once more.
XI
Sitting often I have, oh!
Often have desired you so--
Yearned to kiss you as I did
When your love to me you gave,
In the moonlight, by the wave,
And a long-remembered kiss
Pressed upon your mouth that chid,
Then upon each eye's sweet lid--
That, all passion-shaken, I
With love-language will address
Each dear thing I know you by,
Picture, needle-work, or frame;
Each suggestive in the same
Perfume of past happiness:
Till, meseems, the ways we knew
Now again I tread with you
From the old-time tryst: and there
Feel the pressure of your hair
Cool and young upon my cheek,
And your breath's aroma: bare
On my arm your hand,--as weak
As a lily on a stream:--
And once more you look at me
With the sometime witchery,
And again I hear you speak;
And remembered ecstasy
Sweeps my soul again.--I seem
Dreaming.... Would I thus might dream
Ever! and reality
Mix itself eternally
With such visions of the past,
Where my soul still holds you fast!
XII
When day dies, lone, forsaken,
And joy is kissed asleep;
When doubt's gray eyes awaken,
And love, with music taken
From hearts with sighings shaken,
Sits in the dusk to weep:
With ghostly-lifted finger
What memory then shall rise?
Of dark regret the bringer--
To tell the sorrowing singer
Of days whose echoes linger,
Till dawn unstars the skies.
When night is gone and, beaming,
Faith journeys forth to toil;
When hope's blue eyes wake gleaming,
And life is done with dreaming
The dreams that seem but seeming
Within the world's turmoil:
Who may forget the presence
Of death that walks unseen?
Whose scythe casts shadowy crescents
Around life's glittering essence,
As lessens, slowly lessens,
The space that lies between.
XIII
Bland was that October day,
Calm and balmy as the spring,
When we went a forest way,
Under beeches, lichen-gray,
To a valleyed opening;
Where the purple aster flowered,
And, like torches, savage-held,
Red the fiery sumac towered;
And, where gum-trees sentineled
Vistas, robed in gold and garnet,
Ripe the thorny chestnut shelled
Its brown plumpness. Bee and hornet
Droned around us; low the cricket,
Tireless in the wood-rose thicket,
Tremoloed; and, to the wind
All its moon-spun silver casting,
Swung the milkweed's pod, that thinned,
Where a butterfly seemed pinned:
And its clean flame on the sod
By the fading goldenrod,
Burned the white life-everlasting.--
It was not so much the time,
Nor the place, nor way we went,
That made all our moods to rhyme,
Nor the season's sentiment,
As it was the innocent
Carefree childhood of our hearts,
Reading each expression of
Death and change as life and love:
That impression joy imparts
Unto others and retorts
On itself, which then made glad
All the sorrow of decay,
As the memory of that day
Makes this day of autumn sad.
XIV
The pungent-breathed petunias
Hang riven of the rain;
And where the tiger-lily was
Now droops a tawny stain;
While in the twilight's purple pause
Earth dreams of heaven again.
When love sits down to sigh,
Where one lies all alone
Beneath the sod's green sky--
What boots it then to try,
Or to atone?
With ragged petals round its pod
The rain-wrecked poppy dies;
And where the hectic rose did nod
A crumbled crimson lies;
While distant as the dreams of God
The stars slip in the skies.
When love lies down to sleep,
When one is dead and gone--
Within the darkness deep
What boots it then to weep?
All's said and done.
XV
Holding both your hands in mine,
Often have we sat together,
While, outside, the boisterous weather
Hung the wild wind on the pine
Like a black marauder, and
With a sudden warning hand
At the casement rapped. The night
Wrote no line or glimmer of light,
Starbeam-syllabled, within
Her dark book of death and sin,
Cloudy-chaptered tragicly.--
Looking in your eyes, ah me!
Though I knew, I did not heed
What the night wrote there for us,
Threatening and ominous:
For love helped my heart to read
Forward to unopened pages
Of a coming day, that held
More for us than all the ages
Past, that it epitomized
In one sentence; where was spelled
What our present realized
Only--all the love that was
Past and still to be for us.
XVI
'Though in the garden, gray with dew,
All life lies withering,
And there's no more to say or do,
No more to sigh or sing,
Come back with me the ways we knew
When buds were opening.
Perhaps we shall not search in vain
Within its wreck and gloom;
'Mid roses ruined of the rain
There still may live one bloom;
One flower, whose heart may still retain
The long-lost soul-perfume.
And then, perhaps, will come to us
The dreams we dreamed of yore;
And song, who spoke so beauteous,
Will speak to us once more;
And love, with eyes all amorous,
Will gaze as once before.
So 'though the yard is gray with dew,
And flowers are withering,
And there's no more to say or do,
No more to sigh or sing,
Come back with me the ways we knew
When buds were opening.
XVII
Looking on the desolate street,
Where the first snow drifts and drives,
Trodden black of hurrying feet,
Where the athlete storm-wind strives
With each tree and dangling light,--
Centres, sphered with glittering white,--
Hissing in the dancing snow ...
Backward in my mind I go
To that tempest-haunted night
Of two autumns past, when we,
Hastening homeward, were o'ertaken
Of the storm; and 'neath a tree,
With its wild leaves tempest-shaken,
Sheltered us in that forsaken,
Sad and ancient cemetery,--
Where folk came no more to bury.--
Haggard gravestones, mossed and crumbled,
Tottered round us, or o'ertumbled
In their sunken graves; and some,
Urned and obelisked above
Iron-fenced-in tombs, stood dumb
Records of forgotten love.
And again I see the west
Yawning inward to its core
Of electric-spasmed ore,
Swiftly, without pause or rest:
And a great wind sweeps the dust
Up abandoned sidewalks; and,
In the rotting trees, the gust
Shouts again--a voice that would
Make its gaunt self understood
Moaning over Death's lean land.--
And we sat there, hand in hand;
On the granite; where we read,
By the instant skies o'erhead,
Something of one young and dead.
Yet the words begot no fear
In our souls: you leaned your cheek
Smiling on mine: very near
Were our lips: we did not speak.
XVIII
And suddenly alone I stood
With scared eyes gazing through the wood,
For some still sign of ill or good
To lead me from the solitude.
The day was at its twilighting;
One cloud o'erhead spread a vast wing
Of rosy thunder; vanishing
Behind the far hills' sullen ring.
Some stars shone timidly o'erhead;
And towards the west's cadaverous red--
Like some wild dream that haunts the dead
In limbo--the lean moon was led.
Upon the sad, debatable
Vague lands of twilight slowly fell
A silence that I knew too well,
A sorrow that I can not tell.
What way to take, what path to go,
Whether into the east's gray glow,
Or where the west burnt red and low--
What way to choose I did not know.
So, hesitating, there I stood
Lost in my soul's uncertain wood;
One sign I craved of ill or good
To lead me from its solitude.
XIX
It was autumn: and a night
Full of whispers and of mist,
With a gray moon, wanly whist,
Hanging like a phantom light
O'er the hills. We stood among
Windy fields of weed and flower,
Where the withered seed-pod hung,
And the chill leaf-cricket sung.
Melancholy was the hour
With the mystery and loneness
Of the year, that seemed to look
On its own departed face--
As our love then, in its oneness,
All its dead past did retrace,
And from that sad moment took
Presage of approaching parting.--
Sorrowful the hour and dark:
Low among the trees, now darting,
Now concealed, a lamp's pale spark--
Like a fen-fire--winked and lured
Shut among the shadows, where
All was doubtful, unassured,
Immaterial; and bare
Facts of unideal day
Changed to substance such as dreams.
And meseemed then, far away--
Farther than remotest gleams
Of the stars--lost, separated,
And estranged and out of reach,
Grew our lives away from each,
Far away as it was fated.
XX
There is no gladness in the day
Now you're away;
Dull is the morn, the noon is dull,
Once beautiful;
And when the sunset fills the skies
With dusking dyes,
With tired eyes and tired heart
I sit alone, I sigh apart,
And wish for you,
For only you.
Ah! darker now the night comes on
Since you are gone;
Sad are the stars, the moon is sad,
Once wholly glad;
And when the stars and moon are set,
And earth lies wet,
With heart's regret and soul's hard ache,
I dream alone, I lie awake,
And think of you,
Of only you.
These, who once spake me, speak no more,
Now all is o'er;
Day hath forgot the language of
Its hopes of love;
Night, whose sweet lips were burdensome
With dreams, is dumb;
Far different from what used to be
With grief and loss they speak to me,
They speak of you,
Of only you.
XXI
So it ends--the path that crept
Through a land all slumber-whist;
Where the faded moonlight slept
Like a pale antagonist.
Now the star that led me onward,--
Reassuring with its light,--
Fails and falters; dipping downward
Leaves me wandering in night,
With old doubts, like hounds unchained,
Baying at my back, in flight....
So it ends. The woods attained--
Where our hearts' Desire builded
A fair temple, fire-gilded,
With Hope's marble shrine within,
(Where the lineaments of our love
Shone, with lilies clad and crowned,
Under marble reared above
Sorrow and her sister, Sin,
Columned, wreathed and ribbon-wound,)--
In the forest I have found
But a ruin! All around
Lie the shattered capitals,
And vast fragments of the walls ...
Like a climbing cloud,--that plies,
Wind-wrecked, o'er the moon that lies
'Neath its blackness,--taking on
Gradual certainties of wan,
Soft assaults of easy white,
(Till its huge cocoon, that holds
Like a moth the moon, unfolds,
And it passes) and the skies'
Emptiness and hungry night
Claim its bulk again, while she
Rides in lonely purity:--
So I found our temple broken;
And a musing moment's space
Love, whose latest word was spoken,
Seemed to meet me face to face,
Making bright that ruined place
With a white effulgence--then
Passed, and all was dark again.
WOMAN'S PORTION
I
The leaves are shivering on the thorn,
Drearily;
And sighing wakes the sad-eyed morn,
Wearily.
I press my thin face to the pane,
Drearily;
But never will he come again.
Wearily.
The rain hath sicklied day with haze,
Drearily;
My tears run downward as I gaze,
Wearily.
The mist and morn spake unto me,
Drearily:--
"What is this thing God gives to thee,
Wearily?"
I said unto the morn and mist,
Drearily:--
"The babe unborn whom sin hath kissed,
Wearily."
The morn and mist spake unto me,
Drearily:--
"What is this thing which thou dost see,
Wearily?"
I said unto the mist and morn,
Drearily:--
"The shame of man and woman's scorn,
Wearily."
"He loved thee not," they made reply,
Drearily.--
I said, "Would God had let me die!"
Wearily.
II
My hopes are as a closed-up book,
Drearily,
Upon whose clasp of love I look
Wearily.
All night the rain raved overhead,
Drearily;
All night I wept, awake in bed,
Wearily.
I heard the wind sweep wild and wide,
Drearily;
And turned upon my face and sighed
Wearily.
The wind and rain spake unto me,
Drearily:--
"What is this thing God takes from thee,
Wearily?"
I said unto the rain and wind,
Drearily:--
"The love, for which my body sinned,
Wearily."
The rain and wind spake unto me,
Drearily:--
"What are these things that burden thee,
Wearily?"
I said unto the wind and rain,
Drearily:--
"Past joys, and dreams whose ghosts remain,
Wearily."
"Thou lov'st him still," they made reply,
Drearily.--
I said, "Would God that I could die!"
Wearily.
KU KLUX
We have sent him seeds of the melon's core,
And nailed a warning upon his door:
By the Ku Klux laws we can do no more.
Down in the hollow, 'mid crib and stack,
The roof of his low-porched house looms black;
Not a line of light at the door-sill's crack.
Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
The clouds blow heavy toward the moon.
The edge of the storm will reach it soon.
The kildee cries and the lonesome loon.
The clouds shall flush with a wilder glare
Than the lightning makes with its angled flare,
When the Ku Klux verdict is given there.
In the pause of the thunder rolling low,
A rifle's signal--who shall know
From the wind's fierce hurl and the rain's black blow?
Only the signature, written grim
At the end of the message brought to him--
A hempen rope and a twisted limb.
So arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
AT DAWN
Far off I heard dark waters rush:
The sky was cold: the dawn broke green:
And wrapped in twilight and strange hush
The gray wind moaned between.
A voice rang through the House of Sleep,
And through its halls there went a tread;
Mysterious raiment seemed to sweep
Around one lying dead.
And then I knew that I had died,
I, who had suffered so and sinned--
And 'twas myself I stood beside
In the gray dawn and wind.
PRÆTERITA
I
Low belts of rushes ragged with the blast;
Lagoons of marish reddening with the west;
And o'er the marsh the water-fowl's unrest
While daylight dwindles and the dusk falls fast.
Set in sad walls, all mossy with the past,
An old stone gateway with a crumbling crest;
A garden where death drowses manifest;
And in gaunt yews the shadowy house at last.
Here, like an unseen spirit, silence talks
With echo and the wind in each gray room
Where melancholy slumbers with the rain:
Or, like some gentle ghost, the moonlight walks
In the dim garden, which her smile makes bloom
With all the old-time loveliness again.
II
When slow the twilight settles o'er its roof,
And from the haggard oaks unto its door
The rain comes, wild as one who rides before
His enemies that follow, hoof to hoof;
And in each window's gusty curtain-woof
The rain-wind sighs, like one who mutters o'er
Some tale of love and crime; and, on the floor,
The sunset spreads red stains as bloody proof:--
From hall to hall and haunted stair to stair,
Through all the house, a dread, that drags me to'ard
The ancient dusk of that avoided room,
Wherein she sits with ghostly golden hair,
And eyes that gaze beyond her soul's sad doom,
Waking the ghost of that old harpsichord.
IN SHADOW
I
A moth sucks at a flaming flower:
The moon beams on the old church-tower:
I watched the moth and rising moon,
One silver tip
Of glimmer, slip
Through ghostly tree-tops, deep with June,
To dream above the church an hour.
II
The gray moth on the dewy pod
Dreams; and the sleepy poppies nod
Their drugged heads in the languid breeze,
That whispers low
Of some dim woe,
And spirit-like among the trees,
Strews snowy petals on the sod.
III
My soul dreams at life's blood-red heart
Of that thou art: of thee, who art
All silence: saying something fair
As phantoms know
When moon-flowers blow
And spirits meet: the beauty rare
Of which thou, too, hast grown a part.
IV
My heart, behold, is but a bloom
A pale thought clings to by a tomb,
A tomb that holds the one I love,
All wan of cheek,
Whom, wild and weak,
My heart bows down and breaks above,
Grief-haunted in the moonlit gloom.
IN THE OWL-LIGHT
I
Uplifted darkness and the owl-light breaks,
Scuds the wild land, pursuing patch with patch,
As when deep daisy fields a swift wind shakes.--
How clumsily I raised the crazy latch!...
So.--When yon black cloud, light-absorbing, rakes
Again the moon's bald disk--
Out! and the storm will snatch
Again my hair, made lank with wind and rain
Two hours since.... There! from the ragged plain
A great cloud-besom sweeps the beams again!--
Out! out!... No fear of risk?...
II
First, past the fellside, where the bramble-hollow
Whines, wolf-like, with the wind; gaunt wind, that grieves
Through the one sickly ash, whose withered leaves
Worry and mutter, shriveled as the lips
Of bent hags kissing. Then--the slope that whips
The face with brush; and where a gnarled vine slips,
Snake-like, from off a rock, that seems to wallow,--
One mass of briers,--a humpbacked hulk of hair,
A gorgon head of writhings, huge, that heaves,
When, heaped abruptly on it, _flare_!
Burst rain and tempest-glare.--
This passed, I follow
A thorny slip of path until
I reach the storm-scarred summit of the hill.
III
Let me not think of it!--as I go thence,--
That thought I can not kill!
Ungovernable! that dogs my footsteps still,
Like something real and living; which my will
Is powerless against.--Ah! when that fence,
Dividing the dark ridges of the hill,
Is passed, shall I not then be breathless? ill
With sinking sense
Of ghastly things to come?--Some sterner strength
Sustain my soul!--Beyond the hill the dense
Dead wood's to pass, and then ... that livid length
Of mooning water, spectral and immense
With sullen storm and night....
There, if the ghoulish wind,--
That knows well as I know how I have sinned,--
Will cease to curse me in its hag-like spite,
Alone with all the horror of my soul,
I shall behold,
Now this way, and now that way rolled,
Lifeless, among cramped reeds, the storm has thinned,--
With wide, white eyes, metallic in the light
Of the impassive moon:--in gusty roll
Of washing ripples, webby, slippery locks
Dabbling and dark; and,--wedged between sharp rocks,--
Two rocks, two iron fangs,
Whereon the lake's mad lip, pale-foaming clangs,--
Wild-pinched and water-strangled white,
His murdered face! that mocks.
ASHLY MERE
Come! look in the shadowy water here,
The stagnant water of Ashly Mere:
Where the stirless depths are dark but clear,
What is the thing that lies there?--
A lily-pod, half-sunk from sight?
Or spawn of the toad, all water-white?
Or ashen blur of the moon's wan light?
Or a woman's face and eyes there?
Now lean to the water a listening ear,
The haunted water of Ashly Mere:
What is the sound that you seem to hear
In the ghostly hush of the deeps there?--
A withered reed, that the ripple lips?
Or a night-bird's wing, that the surface whips?
Or the rain in a leaf that drips and drips?
Or a woman's voice that weeps there?
Now look and listen! but not too near
The lonely water of Ashly Mere!--
For so it happens this time each year
As you lean by the Mere and listen:
And the moaning voice I understand,--
For oft I have watched it draw to land,
And lift from the water a ghastly hand
And a face whose dead eyes glisten.
And this is the reason why every year
To the hideous water of Ashly Mere
I come when the woodland leaves are sear,
And the autumn moon hangs hoary:
For here by the Mere was wrought a wrong
But the old, old story is overlong--
And woman is weak and man is strong,
And the Mere's and mine is the story.
THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN
On the black road through the wood,
As I rode,
There the Headless Horseman stood,
By the dark pool in the wood,
As I rode.
From the shadow of an oak,
As I rode,
Demon steed and rider broke;
By the thunder-riven oak,
As I rode.
On the wild way through the plain,
As I rode,
At my back he whirled like rain;
On the tempest-blackened plain,
As I rode.
Four black hoofs shod red with fire,
As I rode,
Woke the wild rocks, dark and dire;
Eyes and nostrils streaming fire,
As I rode.
On the deep path through the rocks,
As I rode,
I could touch his horse's locks;
Through the echo-hurling rocks,
As I rode.
And again I looked behind,
As I rode--
Dark as night and swift as wind,
Towering, he rode behind,
As I rode.
On the steep road through the dell,
As I rode,
Far away I heard a bell,
In the church beyond the dell,
As I rode.
And my soul cried out in prayer,
As I rode--
Lo! the demon went in air,
When my soul called out in prayer,
As I rode.
THE WEREWOLF
_She_
Nay; still amort, my love?--Why dost thou lag?
_He_
The strix-owl cried.
_She_
Nay! 'twas yon stream that leaps
Hoarse from the black pines of the Hakel steeps;
Its moon-wild water glittering down the crag.--
Why so aghast, sweetheart? Why dost thou stop?
_He_
The Demon Huntsman passed with hooting horn!
_She_
Nay! 'twas the blind wind sweeping through the thorn
Around the ruins of the Dumburg's top.
_He_
My limbs are cold.
_She_
Come! warm thee in my arms.
_He_
My eyes are weary.
_She_
Rest, them, love, on mine.
_He_
I am athirst.
_She_
Quench, on my lips, thy thirst.--
O dear belovéd, how thy last kiss warms
My blood again!
_He_
Off!... How thy eyeballs shine!--
Thou beast!... thou--Ah!... thus do
I die, accursed!
THE SEA SPIRIT
Ah me! I shall not waken soon
From dreams of such divinity!
A spirit singing 'neath the moon
To me.
Wild sea-spray driven of the storm
Is not so wildly white as she,
Who beckoned with a foam-white arm
To me.
With eyes dark green, and golden-green
Long locks, that sparkled drippingly,
Out of the green wave she did lean
To me.
And sang; till Earth and Heaven were
A far, forgotten memory;
Till more than Heaven seemed in her
To me:--
Sleep, sweeter than love's face or home,
And death's immutability,
And music of the plangent foam,
Ah me!
Sweep over her with all thy ships,
With all thy stormy tides, O sea!
The memory of immortal lips,
And me!
THE VAMPIRE
A lily in a twilight place?
Or moonflower in the lonely night?--
Strange beauty of a woman's face
Of wildflower-white!
The rain that hangs a star's green ray
Slim on a leaf-point's restlessness,
Is not so glimmering green and gray
As was her dress.
I drew her dark hair from her eyes,
And in their deeps beheld a while
Such shadowy moonlight as the skies
Of Hell may smile.
She held her mouth up, redly wan
And burning cold:--I bent and kissed
Such rosy snow as some wild dawn
Makes of a mist.
God shall not take from me that hour,
When round my neck her white arms clung!
When 'neath my lips, like some fierce flower,
Her white throat swung!
Nor words she murmured while she leaned!
Witch-words, she holds me softly by,--
The spell that binds me to a fiend
Until I die.
WILL-O'-THE-WISP
I
There in the calamus he stands
With frog-webbed feet and bat-winged hands;
His glow-worm garb glints goblin-wise;
And elfishly, and impishly,
Above the gleam of owlet eyes,
A death's-head cap of downy dyes
Nods out at me, and beckons me.
II
Now in the reeds his face looks white
As witch-down on a witches' night;
Now through the dark, old, haunted mill,
All eerily, all flickeringly
He flits; and with a whippoorwill
Mouth calls, and seems to syllable,
"Come follow me! oh, follow me!"
III
Now o'er the sluggish stream he wends,
A slim light at his fingers' ends;
The spotted spawn, the toad hath clomb,
Slips oozily, sucks slimily;
His easy footsteps seem to come--
Like bubble-gaspings of the scum--
This side of me; that side of me.
IV
There by the stagnant pool he stands,
A foxfire lamp in flickering hands;
The weeds are slimy to the tread,
And mockingly, and gloatingly,
With slanted eyes and pointed head,
He leans above a face long dead,--
The face of me! of me! of me!
REVISITED
It was beneath a waning moon when all the woods were sear,
And winds made eddies of the leaves that whispered far and near,
I met her on the bramble bridge we parted at last year.
At first I deemed her but a mist that faltered in that place,
An autumn mist beneath the trees the moon's thin beams did lace,
Until I neared and in the moon beheld her face to face.
The crinkle of the summer heat above the drouth-burnt leas;
The shimmer of the thistle-drift adown the silences;
The gliding of the fairy-fire between the swamp and trees:
All qualified her presence as a sorrow may a dream--
The vague suggestion of a self; the glimmer of a gleam;
The actual and unreal of the things that are and seem.
Where once she came with welcome and glad eyes, all loving-wise,
She passed, and gave no greeting that my heart could recognize,
With far, set face, unseeing, and sad, unremembering eyes.
It was beneath a waning moon when woods were bleak and sear,
And winds made whispers of the leaves that eddied far and near,
I met her ghost upon the bridge we parted at last year.
THE OLD HOUSE