To the river's banks: in the rush-flowers' ranks
I heard the Necken their songs repeat:
A music all made of the water's beat,
Of moss and of whispering winds that meet,
On St. John's Eve.
They called my name;
And I saw them there, in their beauty rare,
On the moonlit waves whence the music came,
With their harps of gold, and their locks of flame
Blown over pale brows, sans sin or blame,
On St. John's Eve.
'Twas nearing morn
When I turned me home; and a wizen'd gnome,
A Nis, all gray with flailing the corn,
And strong with the scent of byre and barn,
Scowled at me under the haunted thorn,
On St. John's Eve.
To end it all,
As I passed the hill by the ruined mill,
The hill rose up on pillars tall,
Crimson pillars that ranked a hall,
Where the Dwarfs and the Trolls were holding a ball,
On St. John's Eve.
One reached to me
A goblet of gold of a vintage old,
And I drank, and mixed with their mirth and glee,
And danced with them for an hour, may be.--
But they tell me now 'tis a year, you see,
Since St. John's Eve.
THE NIXIES
Deep down, beneath the waves,
Great emerald-curving caves
Dark-domed above it,
Dim-walled with pearl and gold
Glimmers their city old--
Hast thou heard of it?--
Where, through the long green nights, the spangling spars
Twinkle like misty stars.
Where the wind-ripple rays,
And the white water sprays
Over the rocks,
Sitting, they comb their hair;
Singing, with fingers fair
Braiding their locks;
While round their loveliness of naked limbs
The moon's gold glamour swims.
Or, on some stormy night,
Seen through the glow-worm light
Haunting the sands,
Thou canst behold them drift
Wild thro' the foam, and lift
Pale arms and hands;
Or, in the lightning's leap, along the lake,
Dance in the tempest's wake.
Singing: "Come join our dance!
Come, while the lightnings glance,
Or when the moon
Spills all her flowers of light
At the dark feet of night;
And soon, ah, soon,
Within our shadowy halls thou shalt forget
Earth's fever and its fret."
THE WATER-FAIRY
Stars above her, stars beneath,
White she rose, as white as death,
Where the waters glassed the splendor
Of a thousand thousand stars,
Twinkling where the lilies slender
Rocked above the ripple-bars.
Slow she oared a shining shoulder
To a blossom-crested boulder.
With slim fingers, long and milky,
From the wave and water-lilies,
Up the rock she drew her silky
Beauty, wild as any rill is
Flashing from a hilly height.
Sitting, dripping in the night,
Sweet she sang unto the lilies,
Sang unto the listening lilies,
Till arose the wool-white moon
In the silken hush of heaven;
Then she wreathed her brow with seven
Lily-buds, all sweet with June;
Belted, wreathed with lilies seven,
Then again upon the boulder,
Dark locks on a milk-white shoulder,
Wild she sang; a wilder ditty
To the wool-white moon;
To the lilies and the moon:
Beautiful and without pity,
Sang, and sang an elfin tune;
Till a youth, who wandered far,
Saw her sitting like a star;
Heard her singing to the moon;
Found her sitting, starry white,
On the flower-crested boulder,
Dark locks on a milky shoulder,
In the low moon's lilied light,
'Neath the wool-white moon....
And the creature wrapped her hair
Round his white throat, sitting there
Singing, smiled into his eyes,
While she wrapped her raven hair
Slowly round his throat; and then
Laughed and whispered to the skies,
Kissed him once and then again;
Smiled; and left him stark and strangled
In the water-lilies tangled,
Staring up, with open eyes,
At the moon with open eyes.
THE MORNING-GLORIES
They swing from the garden-trellis
In Ariel-airy ease;
And their aromatic honey
Is sought by the earliest bees.
The rose, it knows their secret,
And the jessamine also knows:
And the rose told me the secret,
That the jessamine told the rose.
And the jessamine said: At midnight,
Ere the red cock woke and crew,
The Fays of Queen Titania
Came here to bathe i' the dew.
And the yellow moonlight glistened
On braids of elfin hair:
And fairy feet on the flowers
Fell lighter than any air.
And their petticoats, gay as bubbles,
They hung up, every one,
On the morning-glory's tendrils,
Till their moonlight bath were done.
But the barn-cock crew too early,
And the Fairies fled in fear,
Leaving their petticoats, one and all,
Like blossoms hanging here.
THE GLADIOLES
As tall as the lily, as rich as the rose,
And deep as the bloom of the hollyhock,
They lift their blossoms in furbelows
Of flame that the warm winds rock.
And some are red as the humming-bird's throat,
And some are pied as the butterfly's wings,
And each is shaped like an elfin coat,
Or a goblin cap that swings.
Freaked with fire or red as blood,
They nod at me in my garden old,
Each flower a pixy helm or hood,
Lace-lined with fairyland gold.
For you know the goblins that come at dusk,--
Whose firefly eyes you have seen,--each one,
(When is sprinkled the dew and scattered the musk,)
Hangs here his cap when done.
THE TIGER-LILY
Tall in his tawny turban,
A sultan 'mid his bands,
In my garden, old and urban,
The tiger-lily stands.
The poppies there that glisten,
Whose gaudy garments glow,
Are eunuchs who guard and listen
Round his seraglio
Of roses, myrrhed and musky;
Some whiter than a dove,
And others, deep and dusky,
His odalisks of love.
Circassian-white and slender,
His dancing-girls and slaves,
To the August-lilies tender,
His haughty hand he waves.
While he watches them, nothing missing,
In her bower of bloom on high,
His favorite rose is kissing
A Bedouin butterfly.
THE MOTH, THE ROSE, AND THE PINK
White as snow I saw it sink
On the pungent-petaled pink
Through the moonlit dusk;
Moth? or fairy? or, who knows?--
Ghost, perhaps, of some dead rose
'Mid the roses' musk.
Then it seemed I heard a sweet
Tinkle as of elfin feet
Underneath the blooms,
Where one rose hung desolate,
Sick of heart and filled with hate,
Dead with its perfumes.
"Thou, for whom I died to-day,"
So I seemed to hear it say,
"Listen, lovely pink:
Vampire-like, unto thy heart
Now I send, through my white art,
My pale ghost to drink."
GLAMOUR
With fall on fall, from wood to wood,
The brook pours mossy music down--
Or is it, in the solitude,
The murmur of a Faery town?
A town of Elfland filled with bells
And holiday of hurrying feet:
Or traffic now, whose small sound swells,
Now sinks from busy street to street.
Whose Folk I often recognize
In wingéd things that hover round,
Who to men's eyes assume disguise
When on some Faery errand bound.--
The bee, that haunts the touch-me-not,
Big-bodied, making braggart din,
Is elfin brother to that sot,
Jack Falstaff of the Boar's Head Inn.
The dragon-fly, whose wings of black
Are mantle for his garb of green,
Is Ancient to this other Jack,
Another Pistol, long and lean.
The butterfly, in royal tints,
Is Hal, mad Hal in cloth of gold,
Who passes these, as once that Prince
Passed his companions boon of old.
FAERY MORRIS
I
The winds are whist; and, hid in mist,
The moon hangs o'er the wooded height:
The bushy bee, with unkempt head,
Hath made the sunflower's disk his bed,
And sleeps half-hid from sight.
The owlet makes us melody--
Come dance with us in Faery,
Come dance with us to-night.
II
The dew is damp; the glow-worm's lamp
Blurs in the moss its tawny light:
The great gray moth sinks, half-asleep,
Where, in an elfin-laundered heap,
The lily-gowns hang white.
The crickets make us minstrelsy--
Come dance with us in Faery,
Come dance with us to-night.
III
With scents of heat, dew-chilled and sweet,
The new-cut hay smells by the bight:
The ghost of some dead pansy bloom
The butterfly seems, in the gloom,
Its pied wings folded tight.
The world is drowned in fantasy--
Come dance with us in Faery,
Come dance with us to-night.
THE LITTLE PEOPLE
I
When the lily nods in slumber,
And the roses are all sleeping;
When the night hangs deep and umber,
And the stars their watch are keeping:
When the clematis uncloses
Like a hand of snowy fire;
And the golden-lipped primroses,
To the tiger-moths' desire,
Each a mouth of musk unpuckers--
Silken pouts of scented sweetness,
Which they sip with honey-suckers:--
Shod with hush and winged with fleetness,
You may see the Little People,
Round and round the drowsy steeple
Of a belfried hollyhock,--
Clad in phlox and four-o'-clock,
Gay of gown and pantaloon,--
Dancing by the glimmering moon,
Till the cock, the long-necked cock,
Crows them they must vanish soon.
II
When the cobweb is a cradle
For the dreaming dew to sleep in;
And each blossom is a ladle
That the perfumed rain lies deep in:
When the flaming fireflies scribble
Darkness as with lines flame-tragic,
And the night seems some dim sibyl
Speaking gold, or wording magic
Silent-syllabled and golden:
Capped with snapdragon and hooded
With the sweet-pea, vague-beholden,
You may see the Little People
Underneath the sleepy steeple
Of a towering mullein stock,
Trip it over moss and rock
To the owlet's elvish tune,
And the tree-toad's gnome-bassoon;
Till the cock, the barnyard cock,
Crows them they must vanish soon.
III
When the wind upon the water
Seems a boat of ray and ripple,
That some fairy moonbeam-daughter
Steers, with sails that drift and dripple;
When the sound of grig and cricket,
Ever singing, ever humming,
Seems a goblin in the thicket
On his elfin viol strumming;
When the toadstool, coned and milky,
Heaves a roof for snails to clamber,
Thistledown- and milkweed-silky,
With loose locks of jade and amber,
You may see the Little People,
Underneath the pixy steeple
Of a doméd mushroom, flock,
Quaint in wildflower vest and frock,
Whirling by the waning moon
To the whippoorwill's weird tune,
Till the cock, the far-off cock,
Crows them they must vanish soon.
THE SEA-KING
In green sea-caverns dim,
Deep down,
Foam-bearded,--gray and grim
Beneath his crown,--
He sits where sea-things swim
And dead men frown.
In green sea-caverns dim
Deep down.
Around him mermaids sing,
Foam-clad,
And comb long locks and cling,
And sing so sad
Their song's wild murmuring
Drives mortals mad.
Around him mermaids sing,
Foam-clad.
There vast the sea-snakes lair
And yawn;
Great bulks cloud by; and there
Huge shells and spawn,
Weird weeds, fantastic fair,
Drift scarlet wan.
There vast the sea-snakes lair
And yawn.
Of wrecks of ships and hulls
And bones,
Sunk gold the water dulls,
And precious stones,
Anchors, and deadmen's skulls,
He builds gaunt thrones.
Of wrecks of ships and hulls
And bones.
Men's tears are dear to him,
Deep down.
Set in the foamy rim
Of his pale crown,
Their pearléd sorrows swim
Above his frown.
Men's tears are dear to him,
Deep down.
For him no tempests sweep
And sever
The league-long waves that leap;
The sun shines never:
In caverns vast and deep
He sits forever.
For him no tempests sweep,
Never, ah, never.
THE NEREID
I
I saw one night a Nereid white
Arise from her coral caves:
Her sea-green curls were pale with pearls,
And her limbs were veiled with the waves.
Through the moonlit foam I saw her come
Up the billow-haunted shore--
And faint and sweet I heard her feet,
Foam-like, through the surf's long roar;
While ever the wind and the rolling waves
Kept time to her song of ocean caves,
That she sang to her harp of mist and moon,
Of moonbeam shell: this ocean tune:--
II
"Come follow, come follow, to caverns hollow,
That sound with the sighing sea!
Come follow me o'er the waters hoar!--
Come away, come away with me!
Come follow, oh, follow, to grottoes hollow,
And caves that are ocean-whist,
Where the sea-weeds twine and the star-fish shine,
And the rosy corals twist.
"Come follow me home on the wandering foam,
That rolls my world above!
My bosom shall bear thee safely where
The Sea-nymphs dream of love.
They will lie at thy feet and thy heart shall beat
To the music of their sighs;
They will lean to thy face and, like stars, thou shalt trace
Their radiant, love-lit eyes.
"Come away, come away! where, under the spray,
The haliötis glows,
The nautilus gleams and the sponge-grove dreams,
And the crimson dulse like sunset streams,
And the coral-forest grows.
Come away to my caves, my emerald caves,
From the moon and the sun deep hid!
Forget the world, down under the waves,--
The world of man that sighs and slaves,--
Forget the world, there under the waves,
In the arms of a Nereid!"
THE MERMAID
The moon in the east was glowing
When I sought the moaning sea;
The winds from the sea were blowing,
And they brought strange dreams to me.
The waves at my feet were breaking;
The stars in the sky were wan;
And I watched a white mist making
For the shore and glimmering on.
And was it a sound of wailing
That the sea-wind bore to me?
Did I hear a footstep trailing?
Or was it a wave of the sea?
The night hung pale above me
Upon her starry throne,
And a voice said, "Youth, come love me!
For my heart for thee makes moan."
And out of the mist came slipping
A mermaid, tall and fair;
Her limbs with sea-dew dripping,
And moonlight in her hair.
Her locks, with the salt sea dripping,
She wrung with a snowy hand;
Her gown hung, thinly clipping
Her breasts the sea-wind fanned.
Amort from the sea came speeding
This creature samite-clad;
And my heart for her was bleeding,
But its beating I forbade.
On the strand where the sand was rocking
She stood and sang an air;
And the winds in her hair kept locking
Their fingers cool and bare.
Soft in her arms did she fold me,
And evermore she moaned,
While her love and her grief she told me,
And the ocean sighed and groaned.
But I stilled my heart's wild beating,
For I knew her love was dim;
Oh, cold, oh, cold was my greeting,
Though my love burnt in each limb.
To her bosom white she pressed me
With arms of foam and mist;
With her arms and her lips caressed me,
And smiled in my eyes and kissed.
But ever I kept repeating,
"A mermaid false is she!"
And cold, oh, cold was my greeting,
Though the heart beat wild in me.
To my ears she laid her sighing
Sweet mouth, like a rosy shell;
Her arms round my neck were lying,
And her bosom rose and fell.
With her kisses soft did she woo me,
But I hushed my heart's wild beat;
With her lips and her eyes did she sue me,
But met in my own defeat.
With the cloud of her sea-dipped tresses
She veiled her beautiful face--
And, oh, how I longed for her kisses,
And sighed for her soft embrace!
But out in the mist she went wailing
When dawn besilvered the night,
Her robes of samite trailing
The foam-flowers, sad and white.
Like a spirit lost went sighing
In the twilight over the sea;
And it seemed the night was crying--
Or was it the heart in me?
Then she turned to me and, weeping,
Faded into the night;
And I saw the wild waves leaping
Under the haunted height.
I heard a far-off sobbing,
A sound of agony--
Oh, was it the ocean throbbing?
Or was it the heart in me?
But I hushed my heart's wild beating,
With "a mermaid false is she!"
While ever I kept repeating,
"Would she'd return to me!"
Oh, heart, so full of yearning
For a loveliness that's gone,
A beauty unreturning,
Be still! or break with dawn!
CHILDREN O' THE MOON
I
To-night, perhaps, after the rain is done,
Led by a moonbeam or the flickering torch
The firefly flares, amid the loneliness,
The hereditary loneliness of the trees,
I, too, may see,--as sees the star that peeps
Through interlacing boughs, the toadstools heave
Their white roofs through the ferns, like goblin huts,
An elfin town; and, squatting on their tops,
Punch-bellied things, peak-kneed, their knees up-drawn
To perpendicular eyes of glow-worm flame,
And arms akimbo i' the light o' the moon,
Watching the dew-drops tag the toadstools' rims,
Or from the mushroom roll the orbéd rain:
Or, where the tall weed drips and spunkwood smells
Make musk the underwoods, slim woodland imps,--
Snail-eyed, frog-footed,--oust the sleeping bees
From rocking cradles of the wild flowers' bells
Belfrying, with foxglove-purple, a moonbeam space.
II
On the road in the April wood,
Under the oaks I stopped and stood,
Watching the mole that stealthily heaved
The soft loose clay of its barrow:
The oaks above were auburn-leaved;
And near me bloomed the yarrow;
When down from a leaf a gray snail fell,
Its long stilt-eyes thrust out of its shell:
And I thought, "This color is worn of the fays,
Whose fashion runs to dimmish grays:
A snail-brown tunic each elfin eunuch
Wears in the harem the Elf King keeps:
And a snail-gray gown each fairy clown
Dons when the elf dance whirls and leaps
In the light of the moon on the upland down.
A snail-shell house for his ouphen spouse
Each elfin builds by the snail-white moon,
Where his fairykin love he boards and beds,
Under the dandelion's wisp-white heads,
Where ever he pipes his cricket tune."
III
The sphinx-moth, clothed in downy hues,
In woolly whites and fawns and blues,
Goes fluttering through the evening dews.
Above the nicotiana's blooms'
Narcotic horns it waves its plumes,
Made drowsy with the drugged perfumes.
It seems some Fairy Queen who goes
'Mid trumpets lifted in long rows
Of white whereon the Elfworld blows.
Attendant and triumphant strains
Of fragrance, greeting her who reigns,
Who takes the air in fairy lanes
Of flowers, that the moonlight stains.
A MOTIVE IN GOLD AND GRAY
I
To-night he sees their star bead, dewy bright,
Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it,
Low in the west--a placid purple lit
At its far edge with warm auroral light:
Love's planet hangs above a cedared height;
And there in shadow, like gold music writ
Of dusk's dark fingers, scale-like fireflies flit
Now up, now down the balmy bars of night.
How different from that eve a year ago!
Which was a stormy flower in the hair
Of dolorous day, whose sombre eyes looked blurred
Into night's sibyl face, and saw the woe
Of parting here, and imaged a despair,
As now a hope caught from a homing word.
II
She came unto him--as the springtime does
Unto the land where all lies dead and cold,
Until her rosary of days is told
And beauty, prayer-like, blossoms where death was.--
Nature divined her coming; yea, the dusk
Seemed thinking of that happiness: behold,
No cloud it had to blot its marigold
Moon--great and golden--o'er the slopes of musk;
Whereon earth's voice made music; tree and stream
Lilting the same low lullaby again,
To coax the wind, who romped among the hills
All day--a tired child--to sleep and dream:
When through the moonlight of the locust-lane
She came, as spring comes through her daffodils.
III
White as a lily molded of Earth's milk
That eve the moon bloomed in a hyacinth sky;
Soft in the gleaming glens the wind went by,
Faint as a phantom clothed in unseen silk:
Bright as a Naiad's limbs, from shine to shade
The runnel twinkled through the shaken brier;
Above the hills one long cloud, pulsed with fire,
Flashed like a great enchantment-welded blade.
And when the western sky seemed some weird land,
And night a witch's spell, at whose command
One sloping star fell green from heav'n; and deep
The warm rose opened, for the moth to sleep;
Then she, consenting, laid her hands in his,
And lifted up her lips for their first kiss.
IV
There where they part the porch's steps are strewn
With wind-dropped petals of the purple vine;
Athwart the porch the shadow of a pine
Cleaves the white moonlight; and, like some calm rune
Heaven says to Earth, shines the majestic moon;
And now a meteor draws a lilac line
Across the welkin, as if God would sign
The perfect poem of this night of June.
The wood-wind stirs the flowering chestnut-tree,
Whose curving blossoms strew the glimmering grass
Like crescents that wind-wrinkled waters glass;
And, like a moonstone in a frill of flame,
The dewdrop trembles in the peony,
As in a lover's heart his sweetheart's name.
V
In after years shall she stand here again,
In heart regretful? and with lonely sighs
Think on that night of love, and realize
Whose was the fault whence grew the parting pain?
And, in her soul, persuading still in vain,
Shall doubt take shape, and all its old surmise
Bid darker phantoms of remorse arise
Trailing the raiment of a dead disdain?
Masks, unto whom shall her avowal yearn
With looks clairvoyant, seeing how each is
A different form with eyes and lips that burn
Into her heart with love's last look and kiss?--
And, ere they pass, shall she behold them turn
To her a face which evermore is his?
VI
In after years shall he remember how
Dawn had no breeze sweet as her murmured name?
And day no sunlight that availed the same
As her bright smile or beauty of her brow?
Nor had the conscious twilight's golds and grays
Her soul's allurement, that was free from blame,--
Nor dusk's advances, soft with starry flame,
More young bewitchment than her own sweet ways.--
Then as the night with moonlight and perfume,
And dew and darkness, qualifies the whole
Dim world with glamour, shall the past with dreams--
That were the love-theme of their lives--illume
The present with remembered hours, with gleams,
Long lost to him, that bring them soul to soul?
VII
No! not for her and him that part--the Might-
Have-Been's sad consolation! where had bent,
Haply, in prayer and patience penitent,
Both, though apart, before no blown-out light.
The otherwise of fate for them, when white
The lilacs bloom again, and, innocent,
Spring comes with beauty for her testament,
Singing the praises of the day and night.
When orchards blossom and the distant hill
Is pale with haw-trees as a ridge with mist,
The moon shall see him where a watch he keeps
By her young form that lieth white and still,
With lidded eyes and passive wrist on wrist,
While by her side he bows himself and weeps.
VIII
What pain for him to see the blooms appear
Of haw and dogwood in the spring again;
The primrose dragging with its weight of rain,
And hill-sloped orchards swarming far and near.
To see the old fields, that her steps made dear,
Grow green with deepening plenty of the grain,
Yet feel how this excess of life is vain,--
How vain to him!--since she no more is here.
What though the woodland bourgeon, water flow,
Like a rejoicing harp, beneath the boughs!
The cat-bird and the oriole arouse
Day with the impulsive music of their love!
Beneath the graveyard sod she will not know,
Nor what his heart is all too conscious of!
IX
How bless'd is he who, gazing in the tomb,
Can yet behold beneath the investing mask
Of mockery,--whose horror seems to ask
Sphinx-riddles of the soul within the gloom,--
Upon dead lips no dust of Love's dead bloom;
And in dead hands no shards of Faith's rent flask;
But Hope, who still stands at her starry task,
Weaving the web of promise on her loom!
Thrice bless'd! who, 'though he hear the tomb proclaim
How all is Death's and Life Death's other name,
Can yet reply: "O Grave, these things are yours!
But that is left which life indeed assures--
Love, through whose touch I shall arise the same!
Love, of whose self was wrought the universe!"
INTIMATIONS
I
Is it uneasy moonlight,
On the restless field, that stirs?
Or wild white meadow-blossoms
The night-wind bends and blurs?
Is it the dolorous water,
That sobs in the wood and sighs?
Or heart of an ancient oak-tree,
That breaks and, sighing, dies?
The wind is vague with the shadows
That wander in No-Man's-Land;
The water is dark with the voices
That weep on the Unknown's strand.
O ghosts of the winds that call me!
O ghosts of the whispering waves!
Sad as forgotten flowers
That die upon nameless graves!
What is this thing you tell me
In tongues of a twilight race,
Of death, with the vanished features,
Mantled, of my own face?
II
The old enigmas of the deathless dawns,
And riddles of the all immortal eves,--
That still o'er Delphic lawns
Speak as the gods spoke through oracular leaves--
I read with new-born eyes,
Remembering how, a slave,
They buried me, a living sacrifice,
Once in a dead king's grave.
Or, crowned with hyacinth and helichrys,
How, towards the altar in the marble gloom,--
Hearing the magadis
Dirge through the pale amaracine perfume,--
'Mid chanting priests I trod,
With never a sigh or pause,
To give my life to pacify a god,
And save my country's cause.
Again: Cyrenian roses on wild hair,
And oil and purple smeared on breasts and cheeks,
How, with mad torches there,--
Reddening the cedars of Cithæron's peaks,--
With gesture and fierce glance,
Lascivious Mænad bands
Once drew and slew me in the Pyrrhic dance
With Bacchanalian hands.
III
The music now that lays
Dim lips against my ears,
Some far-off thing it says,--
Unto my soul,--of years
Long passed into the haze
Of tears.