WINTER
We, whom God sets a task,
Striving, who ne’er attain,
We are the curst!--who ask
Death, and still ask in vain.
We, whom God sets a task.
I
_In the silence of his room. After many days_:
All, all are shadows. All must pass
As writing in the sand or sea:
Reflections in a looking-glass
Are not less permanent than we.
The days that mold us--what are they?
That break us on their whirling wheel?
What but the potters! we the clay
They fashion and yet leave unreal.
Linked through the ages, one and all,
In long anthropomorphous chain,
The human and the animal
Inseparably must remain.
Within us still the monstrous shape
That shrieked in air and howled in slime,
What are we?--partly man and ape--
The tools of fate, the toys of time!
II
_The bitterness of his bereavement speaks in him_:
Vased in her bedroom window, white
As her glad girlhood, never lost,
I smelt the roses--and the night
Outside was fog and frost.
What though I claimed her dying there!
God nor one angel understood
Nor cared, who from sweet feet to hair
Had changed to snow her blood.
She had been mine so long, so long!
Our harp of life was one in word--
Why did death thrust his hand among
The chords and break one chord!
What lily lilier than her face!
More virgin than her lips I kissed!
When morn, like God, with gold and grace,
Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist!
III
_Her dead face seems to rise up before him_:
The face that I said farewell to,
Pillowed a flower on flowers,
Comes back, with its eyes to tell to
My soul what my heart should quell to
Calm, that is mine at hours.
Dear, is your soul still daggered
There by something amiss?
Love--is _he_ ever laggard?
Hope--is _her_ face still haggard?
Tell me what it is!
You, who are done with to-morrow!
Done with these worldly skies!
Done with our pain and sorrow!
Done with the griefs we borrow!
Joys that are born of sighs!
Must we say “gone forever?”
Or will it all come true?
Does mine touch your thought ever?
And, over the doubts that sever,
Rise to the fact that ’s you?
Love, in my flesh so fearful,
Medicine me this pain!--
Love, with the eyes so tearful,
How can my soul be cheerful,
Seeing its joy is slain!...
Gone!--’t was only a vision!--
Gone! like a thought, a gleam!--
Such to our indecision
Utter no empty mission;--
Truth is in all we dream!
IV
_He sinks into deep thought_:
There are shadows that compel us,
There are powers that control:
More than substance these can tell us,
Speaking to the human soul.
In the moonlight, when it glistened
On my window, white of glow,
Once I woke and, leaning, listened
To a voice that sang below.
Full of gladness, full of yearning,
Strange with dreamy melody,
Like a bird whose heart was burning,
Wildly sweet it sang to me.
I arose; and by the starlight,
Pale beneath the summer sky,
There I saw it, full of far light,--
My dead joy go singing by.
In the darkness, when the glimmer
Of the storm was on the pane,
Once I sat and heard a dimmer
Voice lamenting in the rain.
Full of parting and unspoken
Heartbreak, faint with agony,
Like a bird whose heart was broken,
Moaning low it cried to me.
I arose; and in the darkness,
Wan beneath the winter sky,
There I saw it, cold to starkness,--
My dead love go wailing by.
V
_He arouses from his abstraction, buries his face in his hands and
thinks_:
So long it seems since last I saw her face,
So long ago it seems,
Like some sad soul in unconjectured space,
Still seeking happiness through perished grace
And unrealities, a little while
Illusions lead me, ending in the smile
Of Death, triumphant in a thorny place,
Among Love’s ruined roses and dead dreams.
Since she is gone, no more I feel the light,--
Since she has left all dark,--
Cleave, with its revelation, all the night.
I wander blindly, on a crumbling height,
Among the fragments and the wrecks and stones
Of Life, where Hope, amid Life’s skulls and bones,
With weary face, disheartened, wild and white,
Trims her pale lamp with its expiring spark.
Now she is dead, the Soul, naught can o’erawe,--
Now she is gone from me,--
Questions God’s justice that seems full of flaw,
As is His world, where misery is law,
And all men fools, too willing to be slaves.--
My House of Faith, built up on dust of graves,
The wind of doubt sweeps down as made of straw,
And all is night and I no longer see.
VI
_He looks from his window toward the sombre west_:
Ridged and bleak the gray, forsaken
Twilight at the night has guessed;
And no star of dusk has taken
Flame unshaken in the west.
All day long the woodlands, dying,
Moaned, and drippings as of grief
Rained from barren boughs with sighing
Death of flying twig and leaf.
Ah, to live a life unbroken
Of the flings and scorns of fate!
Like that tree, with branches oaken,
Strength’s unspoken intimate.--
Who can say that we have never
Lived the life of plants and trees?--
Not so wide the lines that sever
Us forever here from these.
Colors, odors, that are cherished,
Haply hint we once were flowers:
Memory alone has perished
In this garnished world that’s ours.
Music,--that all things expresses,
All for which we’ve sought and sinned,--
Haply in our treey tresses
Once was guesses of the wind.
But I dream!--The dusk, dark braiding
Locks that lack both moon and star,
Deepens; and, the darkness aiding,
Earth seems fading, faint and far.
And within me doubt keeps saying--
“What is wrong, and what is right?
Hear the cursing! hear the praying!
All are straying on in night.”
VII
_He turns from the window, takes up a book, and reads_:
The soul, like Earth, hath silences
Which speak not, yet are heard:
The voices mute of memories
Are louder than a word.
Theirs is a speech which is not speech;
A language that is bound
To soul-vibrations, vague, that reach
Deeper than any sound.
No words are theirs. They speak through things,
A visible utterance
Of thoughts--like those some sunset brings,
Or withered rose, perchance.
The heavens that once, in purple and flame,
Spake to two hearts as one,
In after years may speak the same
To one sad heart alone.
Through it the vanished face and eyes
Of her, the sweet and fair,
Of her the lost, again shall rise
To comfort his despair.
And so the love that led him long
From golden scene to scene,
Within the sunset is a tongue
That speaks of what has been.--
How loud it speaks of that dead day,
The rose whose bloom is fled!
Of her who died; who, clasped in clay,
Lies numbered with the dead.
The dead are dead; with them ’tis well
Within their narrow room;--
No memories haunt their hearts who dwell
Within the grave and tomb.
But what of those--the dead who live!
The living dead, whose lot
Is still to love--ah, God forgive!--
To live and love, forgot!
VIII
_The storm is heard sounding wildly outside with wind and hail_:
The night is wild with rain and sleet;
Each loose-warped casement claps or groans:
I hear the plangent woodland beat
The tempest with long blatant moans,
Like one who fears defeat.
And sitting here beyond the storm,
Alone within the lonely house,
It seems that some mesmeric charm
Holds all things--even the gnawing mouse
Has ceased its faint alarm.
And in the silence, stolen o’er
Familiar objects, lo, I fear--
I fear--that, opening yon door,
I ’ll find my dead self standing near,
With face that once I wore.
The stairway creaks with ghostly gusts:
The flue moans; all its gorgon throat
One wail of winds: ancestral dusts,--
Which yonder Indian war-gear coat
With gray, whose quiver rusts,--
Are shaken down.--Or, can it be,
That he who wore it in the dance,
Or battle, now fills shadowy
Its wampumed skins? and shakes his lance
And spectral plume at me?--
Mere fancy!--Yet those curtains toss
Mysteriously as if some dark
Hand moved them.--And I would not cross
The shadow there, that hearthstone’s spark,
A glow-worm sunk in moss.
Outside ’t were better!--Yes, I yearn
To walk the waste where sway and dip
Deep, dark December boughs--where burn
Some late last leaves, that drip and drip
No matter where you turn.
Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,
Fills oozy footprints--but the blind
Night there, though like the frown of God,
Presents no fancies to the mind,
Like those that have o’erawed.--
The months I count: how long it seems
Since summer! summer, when with her,
When on her porch, in rainy gleams
We watched the flickering lightning stir
In heavens gray as dreams.
When all the west, a sheet of gold,
Flared,--like some Titan’s opened forge,--
With storm; revealing, manifold,
Vast peaks of clouds with crag and gorge,
Where thunder-torrents rolled.
Then came the wind: again, again
Storm lit the instant earth--and how
The forest rang with roaring rain!--
We could not read--where is it now?--
That tale of Charlemagne:
That old romance! that tale, which we
Were reading; till we heard the plunge
Of distant thunder sullenly,
And left to watch the lightning lunge,
And storm-winds toss each tree.
That summer!--How it built us there,
Of sorcery and necromance,
A mental-world, where all was fair;
A land like one great pearl, a-trance
With lilied light and air.
Where every flower was a thought;
And every bird, a melody;
And every fragrance, zephyr brought,
Was but the rainbowed drapery
Of some sweet dream long sought.
’Mid which we reared our heart’s high home,
Fair on the hills; with terraces,
Vine-hung and wooded, o’er the foam
Of undiscovered fairy seas,
All violet in the gloam.
O land of shadows! shadow-home,
Within my world of memories!
Around whose ruins sweeps the foam
Of sorrow’s immemorial seas,
To whose dark shores I come!
How long in your wrecked halls, alone
With ghosts of joys must I remain?
Between the unknown and the known,
Still hearing through the wind and rain
My lost love moan and moan.
IX
_He sits by the slowly dying fire. The storm is heard with increased
violence_:
Wild weather. The lash of the sleet
On the gusty casement, clapping--
The sound of the storm like a sheet
My soul and senses wrapping.
Wild weather. And how is she,
Now the rush of the rain falls serried
There on the turf and the tree
Of the place where she is buried?
Wild weather. How black and deep
Is the night where the mad winds scurry!--
Do I sleep? do I dream in my sleep
That I hear her footsteps hurry?
Hither they come like flowers--
And I see her raiment glisten,
Like the robes of one of the hours
Where the stars to the angels listen.
Before me, behold, how she stands!
With lips high thoughts have weighted,
With testifying hands,
And eyes with glory sated.
I have spoken and I have kneeled:
I have kissed her feet in wonder--
But, lo! her lips--they are sealed,
God-sealed, and will not sunder.
Though I sob, “Your stay was long!
You are come,--but your feet were laggard!--
With mansuetude and song
For the heart your death has daggered.”
Never a word replies,
Never, to all my weeping--
Only a sound of sighs,
And of raiment past me sweeping....
I wake; and a clock tolls three--
And the night and the storm beat serried
There on the turf and the tree
Of the place where she is buried.
RED LEAVES AND ROSES
I
And he had lived such loveless years
That suffering had made him wise;
And she had known no graver tears
Than those of girlhood’s eyes.
And he, perhaps, had loved before--
One, who had wedded, or had died;--
So life to him had been but poor
In love for which he sighed.
In years and heart she was so young
Love paused and beckoned at the gate,
And bade her hear his songs, unsung;
She laughed that “love must wait.”
He understood. She only knew
Love’s hair was faded, face was gray--
Nor saw the rose his autumn blew
There in her heedless way.
II
If he had come to her when May
Danced down the wildwood,--every way
Marked with white flow’rs, as if her gown
Had torn and fallen,--it might be
She had not met him with a frown,
Nor used his love so bitterly.
Or if he had but come when June
Set stars and roses to one tune,
And breathed in honeysuckle throats
Clove-honey of her spicy mouth,
His heart had found some loving notes
In hers to cheer his life’s long drouth.
He came when Fall made mad the sky,
And on the hills leapt like a cry
Of battle; when his youth was dead;
To _her_, the young, the wild, the white;
Whose symbol was the rose, blood-red,
And his the red leaf pinched with blight.
He might have known, since youth was flown,
And autumn claimed him for its own;
And winter neared with snow, wild whirled,
His love to her would seem absurd;
To youth like hers; whose lip had curled
Yet heard him to his last sad word.
Then laughed and--well, his heart denied
The words he uttered then in pride;
And he remembered how the gray
Was his of autumn, ah! and hers,
The rose-hued colors of the May,
And May was all her universe.
And then he left her: and, like blood,
In her deep hair, the rose; whose bud
Was badge to her: while unto him,
His middle-age, must still remain
The red-leaf, withering at the rim,
As symbol of the all-in-vain.
III
“Such days as these,” she said, and bent
Among her marigolds, all dew,
And dripping zinnia stems, “were meant
For spring not autumn; days we knew
In childhood; _these_ endearing those;
Much dearer since they have grown old:
Days, once imperfect with the rose,
Now perfect with the marigold.”
“Such days as these,” he said, and gazed
Long with unlifted eyes that held
Sad autumn nights, “our hopes have raised
In futures that are mist-enspelled.
And so it is the fog blows in
Days dearer for the death they paint
With hues of life and joy,--as sin,
At death, puts off all earthly taint.”
IV
Like deeds of hearts that have not kept
Their riches, as a miser, when
Sad souls have asked, with eyes that wept,
Among the toiling tribes of men,
The summer days gave Earth sweet alms
In silver of white lilies, while
Each night, with healing, outstretched palms
Stood Christ-like with its starry smile.
Will she remember him when dull
Months drag their duller hours by?
With feet that crush the beautiful
And leave the beautiful to die?
Or never see? nor sit with lost
Dreams withered, ’mid hope’s empty husks,
And wait, heart-counting-up the cost
Of love’s illusions ’mid life’s dusks?
V
He is as one who, treading salty scurf
Of lonely sea-sands, hears the roaring rocks
Of some lost isle of misty crags and lochs;
Who sees no sea, but, through a world of surf,
Gray ghosts of gulls and screaming petrel flocks:
When, from the deep’s white ruin and wild wreck,
Above the fog, beneath the ghostly gull,
The iron ribs of some storm-shattered hull
Loom, packed with pirate treasure to the deck
A century rotten: feels his wealth replete,
When long-baulked ocean claims it; and one dull
Wave flings, derisive at despondent feet,
A skull, one doubloon rattling in the skull.
VI
And when full autumn sets the dahlia stems
On fire with flowers, and the chill dew turns
The maple trees, above geranium urns,
To Emir tents, and strings with flawless gems
The moon-flower and the wahoo-bush that burns;
Calmly she sees the year grow sad and strange,
And stands with one among the wilted walks
Of the old garden of the gray, old grange,
And feels no sorrow for the frost-maimed stalks
Since--though the wailing autumn to her talks--
Youth marks swift spring on life’s far mountain-range.
Or she will lean to her old harpsichord;
A youthful face beside her; and the glow
Of hickory on the hearth will balk the blow
Of blustering rain that beats the casement hard;
And sing of summer and so thwart the snow.
“Haply, some day, she yet may sit alone,”
He thinks, “within the shadow-saddened house,
When round the gables stormy echoes moan,
And in the closet gnaws the lonesome mouse;
And Memory come stealing down the stair
From dusty attics where is piled the Past--
Like so much rubbish that we hate to keep--
And turn the knob; and, framed in frosty hair,
A grave, forgotten face look in at last,
And she will know, and bow her head and weep.”
WILD THORN AND LILY
I
That night, returning to the farm, we rode
Before a storm. Uprolling from the west,
Incessant with distending fire, loomed
The multitudes of tempest: towering here
A shadowy Shasta, there a cloudy Hood,
Veined as with agonies, aurora-born,
Of torrent gold; resplendent heaven to heaven,
Far peak to peak, terrific spoke; the vast
Sierras of the storm, within which beat
The caverned thunder like a mighty stream:
Vibrating on, with rushing wind and flame,
Now th’ opening welkin shone, one livid sheet
Of instantaneous gold, a giant’s forge,
Wild-clanging; now, with streak on angled streak
Of momentary light, a labyrinth
Where shouting Darkness stalked with Titan torch:
Again the firmament hung hewn with fire
Whence leapt the thunder; and it seemed that hosts
Of Heaven rushed to war with blazing shields
And swords of splendor. And before the storm
We galloped, while the frantic trees above
Went wild with rain, through whose mad limbs and leaves
Splashed black the first big drops. On, on we drove,
And gained the gates, pillaring the avenue
Of ancient beech, at whose far, flickering end,
At last, beaconed the lights of home.
And she?
Was it the lightning that lent lividness
And terror to her countenance? or fear
Of her own heart? revulsion? memory?
Did deep regret, that, now the thing _was_ done,
That she was mine, a yearning to be free,
Away from me, assail her? or, the thought,
The knowledge, that she did not love the man
Whom she had wedded? knowing better now
That all her heart was Julien’s from the first,
And would be Julien’s until the end.
And did she now look backward on the past?
Or forward--on the barrier that the church
For all the future years had placed between
The possible and impossible? God knows!
Yet I had won her honestly with words
Love, only, uttered out of its soul’s truth;
Had won her--was it openly?--perhaps!--
Although engaged to Julien.--What else
Had led us to elopement?--Well, ’t was done!
The whole, mad, lovely, miserable affair
Of love and youthful folly. Being done
We must abide the reckoning. That is,
_I_ would; and she?--she saw her duty there
Beside her husband. And within myself,
When we alighted from the carriage, thus,--
Beneath the porch,--my mind resolved the thing:
“I am her husband now, and she my wife.
Less than her husband, I, much less a man,
Were I not able to regain and keep
The love she gave me, that she thinks is his,
That is not his. ’T is pity merely now
That makes her pensive. I am pensive, too,
For Julien, the poet and the friend;
The dreamer and the lover.--But all ’s fair
In love they say; and I,--well, willingly
I’ll bear the burthen of the blame of all.”
Scarce had we entered when high heaven oped
Vast gates of bronze and doors of booming brass
That dammed a deluge, and the deluge poured.--
I thought of him still; for I felt that she
Was thinking too of Julien and his moods,
That often swept his soul with storm like this,
Yet oftener with sunlight than with storm;
That soul of sun and tempest, ray and rain,
My school-friend Julien! whom once she won
To think she loved--I know not how. My play
Was open as the morning, and as fair.
His poverty and genius here, and here
My wealth and--platitude; and I had won.
But it was hard for him. I did not dream
That it would end so. And when Gwendolyn
Used every gentleness--and that is much--
I did not dream his poet’s temperament
Were so affected of a love affair,
A wrong or right; he, whose sole aim seemed song.
I did not dream he ’d take it desperately,
And end so tragically. Who ’d have thought
His character, although so sensitive,
Would fall into extremes of morbidness
And melancholy! Had it now been I,
Whose heart had lost in the great game of love,
None would have wondered; for I am of those
Whose vigorous iron does not bend, but break
At one decisive blow: _his_ should have sprung--
Or so I think, not broken as it had--
Elastic as fine-tempered steel that bends
And then resumes its usual usefulness.
A pale smile strained the corners of her mouth
When, from the porch, into the parlor’s blaze
I led her. And her mother met us there,
Her mother and her father. And I saw
The slow reflection of their happiness
Make glad her eyes, as their approval grew
From half-severe rebukes, that were well meant,
To open, glad avowal of their joy.
She had done well, and we were soon forgiven....
But I resumed _his_ letter when alone:
His letter written her three months before,
When all was over, and we two were one,
And well upon our way to Italy
For six sweet months of honeymoon. His word,
His letter, all of her, that came to me
At Venice, that I opened in mistake,
Amid a lot of papers sent from home.
She had not read, and never should while I
Had power to conceal until I ’d read.
I would not let the dead scrawl mar or soil
My late-won joy, my testament of love.
No! I would read it, afterwards destroy.
Thoughts made of music for a last farewell,
When he knew all and asked her to perpend
Expressions of past things her gift of love
Had given speech to in the happy days.
And so I read:--
II
“The rhyme is mine, but yours
The thought and all the music, springing from
The rareness of the love that dawned on me
A little while to make my sad life glad.
Should I regret the sunset it refused,
Since all my morn was richer than the world?
Or that my day should stride without a change
Of crimson, or of purple, or of gold,
Into the barren blackness where the moon
And all God’s stars lay dead? Should I complain,
Upbraid or censure or one moment curse,
_I_ with my morning? ’T is a memory
That stains the midnight now: one wild-rose ray
Laid like a finger pointing me the path
I follow, and I go rejoicingly.
Our love was very young (nor had it aged--
If we had lived long lifetimes--here in me),
When one day, strolling in the sun, you spoke
Words I perceived should hint a coming change:
I made three stanzas of the thought, you see:
But now ’t is like the sea-shell that suggests,
And still associates us with the sea
In its vague song and elfland workmanship.
Yet it has lost a something that it had
There by the far sand’s foaming; something rare,
A different beauty like an element:
I wonder on what life will do
When love is loser of all love;
When life still longs to love anew
And has not love enough:--
I ’ll turn my heart into a ray,
And wait--a day?
I wonder on what love will hold
When life is weary of all life;
And life and love have both grown old
With scars of sin and strife:--
I’ll change my soul into a flower,
And wait--an hour?
I wonder on why men forget
The life that love made laugh; and why
Weak women will remember yet
The life that love made sigh:--
I’ll sing my thought into a song,
And wait--how long?
III
“And once you questioned of our mocking-bird,
And of the German nightingale, and I
Knowing a sweeter bird than those sweet two,
Made fast associates of birds and brooks
And learned their numbers. Middle April made
The path of lilac leading to your porch
A rift of fallen Paradise; a blue
So full of fragrance that the birds that built
Among the lilacs thought that God was there,
And of God’s goodness they would sing and sing,
Till every throat seemed bursting with its song,
Note on wild note, diviner each than each.
And waiting by the gate, that reached the lane,
For you, who gave sweet eloquence to all,
The afternoon, the lilacs and the spring,
My heart was singing and it sang of you:
Two glow-worms are the jewels in
Her ears; and underneath her chin
A diamond like a firefly:
There is no starlight in the sky
When Gwendolyn stands in the maze
Of woodbine, near the portico;
For all the stars are in her gaze,
The night and stars I know.
A clinging dream of mist the lawn
She wears; and like a bit of dawn
Her fan with one red jewel pinned:
Among the boughs there breathes no wind
When Gwendolyn comes down the path
Of lilacs from the portico;
For all the breeze her coming hath,
The beam and breeze I know.
Two locust-blooms her hands; and slips
Of eglantine her cheeks and lips;
Her hair, a hyacinth of gloom:
The balmy buds give no perfume
When Gwendolyn draws near to me,
The gate beyond the portico;
For all aroma sweet is she,
All fragrance that I know.
Life, love, and faith are in her face,
And in her presence all their grace:
And my religion is a word,
A wish of hers. No mocking-bird,
When Gwendolyn laughs near, dare float
One bubble from the portico;
For all of song is in her throat,
All music that I know.
IV
“The mocking-bird! and then weird fancy filled
My soul with vision, and I saw a song
Pursue a bird that was no bird--a voice
Concealed in dim expressions of the spring,--
Who sits among the forests and the fields,
With dark-blue eyes smiling to life the flowers,--
Where we strolled happy as the April hills:
A sunbeam, all the day that fell
Upon the fountain,--
Like laughter gurgling in the dell
Below the mountain,--
Drank, with its sparkle, one by one,
The water-words that, in the sun,
Made melody,--the sun-rays tell,--
That never yet was done.
A moon-ray, that had gone astray
’Mid wildwood alleys,
Where Echo haunts the forest way
Among the valleys,
The livelong night upon the rocks
Slept, hid among girl Echo’s locks,
And stole her voice,--the moonbeams say,--
That mocks and only mocks.
A shadow, that had made its seat
Amid the roses
And thorns--the bitter and the sweet
That life discloses--
Mixed with the rose-balm and the dew
And crimson thorns that pierced it through,
Until its soul,--the shades repeat,--
Was portion of them, too.
A Fairy found the beam of gold,
And ray of glitter;
The shadow, whose dim soul did hold
Both sweet and bitter;
And made a bird, that haunts the morn
And night; that flits from flower to thorn,
A voice of laughter,--it is told,--
Love, mockery, and scorn.
V
“Among the white haw-blossoms, where the creek
Droned under drifts of dogwood and of haw,
The red-bird, like a crimson blossom blown
Against the snow-white bosom of the Spring,
The chaste confusion of her lawny breast,
Sang on, prophetic of serener days,
As confident as June’s completer hours.
And I stood listening like a hind, who hears
A wood-nymph breathing in a forest flute
Among gray beech-trees of myth-haunted ways:
And when it ceased, the memory of the air
Blew like a syrinx in my brain: I made
A lyric of the notes that men might know:
He flies with flirt and fluting--
As flies a falling star
From flaming star-beds shooting shooting--
From where the roses are.
Wings past and sings; and seven
Notes, sweet as fragrance is,--
That turn to sylphs in heaven,--
Float round him full of bliss.
He sings; each burning feather
Thrills, throbbing at his throat;
A song of glow-worm weather,
And of a firefly boat:
Of Elfland and a princess
Who, born of a perfume,
His music lulls,--where winces
That rose’s cradled bloom.
No bird is half so airy,
No bird of dusk or dawn,
O masking King of Fairy!
O red-crowned Oberon.
VI
“Alas! the nightingale I never heard.
Yet I, remembering how your voice would thrill
Me with exalted expectation, felt
The passion-throated nightingale would win
Into my soul in some wild way like this,
With reminiscences of dusks long dead,
Presentiments of nights, that mate the flowers
And the prompt stars, and marry them with song.
Of such,--love whispered me when deep in dreams,--
I made my nightingale. It is a voice
Heard in the April of our year of love:
Between the stars and roses
There lies a path no man may see,
Where every breeze that blows is
A wandering melody;
Down which each bright star gazes
Upon each rose that raises
Its face up lovingly,
As if with prayers and praises.
The star and rose are wiser
Than all but love beneath the skies;
No hoard of any miser
Is rich as these are wise:
No bee may reach or rifle,
No mist may cloud or stifle
Their love that never dies,
That knows nor trick nor trifle.
There is a bird that carries
Love-messages; and comes and goes
Between each star that tarries,
And every rose that blows:
A bird that can not tire,
Whose throat ’s a throbbing lyre,
Whose song is now a rose,
And now a starry fire.
VII
“O May-time woods! O May-time lanes and hours!
And stars, that knew how often there at night
Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew
Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk,--
When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon
Hung, silvering long windows of your room,--
I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.
I watched and waited for--I know not what--
Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf’s
Unfolding to caresses of the spring:
A rustle of your footsteps: or the dew
That softly rolled, a syllable of love,
In sweet avowal, from a rose’s lips
Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word
Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose--
The word young lips half murmur in a dream:
Serene with sleep, light visions load her eyes;
And underneath her window blooms a quince.
The night is a sultana who doth rise
In slippered caution, to admit a prince,
Love, who her eunuchs and her lord defies.
Are these her dreams? or is it that the breeze
Pelts me with petals of the quince, and lifts
The Balm-of-Gilead buds? and seems to squeeze
Aroma on aroma through sweet rifts
Of Eden, dripping from the rainy trees?
Along the path the buckeye trees begin
To heap their hills of blossoms.--Oh, that they
Were Romeo ladders, whereby I might win
Her chamber’s sanctity,--where love must pray
And guard her soul!--so stainless of all sin!
There might I see the balsam scent erase
Its sweet intrusion; and the starry night
Conclude majestic pomp; the virgin grace
Of every bud abashed before the white,
Pure passion-flower of her sleeping face.
VIII
“And once, in early May, a sparrow sang
Among the garden bushes; and you asked
If the suave song stayed knocking at my heart.
I smiled some answer, and, behold, that night
Found that my heart had locked this fancy in:
Rain, rain, and a ribbon of song
Uncurled where the blossoms are sprinkled;
The song-sparrow sings, and I long
For, the silver-sweet throat, that has tinkled,
To sing in the bloom and the rain,
Sing again, and again, and again,
Under my window-pane.
Rain, rain, and the trickling tips
Of the million pink blooms of the quinces;
And I hear the song rill from the lips,
The lute-haunted lips of my princess:
O love! in the rain and the bloom,
Sing again in the pelting perfume,
Sweetheart, under my room.
Rain, rain, and the dripping of drops
From cups of the blossoms they load, or
Tilt over with tipsiest tops:
And eyes as of sun-beam and odor,
There, under the bloom-blowing tree--
A face like a flower to see,
Love is looking at me.
IX
“Once in the village I had heard a song,
A melody which I wrote down for you,
And which you sang. But, there among your hills,
The dawns and sunsets and the serious stars
Made trite its thought and words, that seemed as stale
As musty parlors of the commonplace.
I changed its words, and here and there its thought,
But, though you praised, you never sang it more,
And so I knew, like some poor poet, it
Had fallen on disfavor, God knows why,
With its high patron. Thus its metre ran:
Look, happy eyes, and let me know
The timid flower her love hath cherished
Fades not before the fruit shall show,
Seen in the clear truth of your glow
Where naught of love hath perished.
Lift, happy lips, and let me take
The sacred secret of her spirit
To mine in kisses, that shall make
Mute marriage of our souls, and wake
The heart’s sweet silence near it.
X
“And so I wrote another filled with birds,
Deliberate twilight and eve’s punctual star;
And made the music of that song obey
The metre of my own and melody:
Only to hear that you love me,
Only to feel it is true;
Stars and the gloaming above me,
I in the gloaming with you.
Staining through violet fire,
A sunset of poppy and gold,
Red as a heart with desire,
Rich with a secret untold.
Deep where the shadows are doubled,
Deep where the blossoms are long,
Listen!--deep love in the bubbled
Breath of a mocking-bird’s song.
You, who have made them the dearer,
Drawing them near from afar!--
Stars and the heaven the nearer,
Sweet, through the joy that you are.
XI
“Confronted with the certainty that I
Had no approval for my love from you,
No visible sign, but my own prompting hope’s,
Conforming with my heart’s one wild desire,
Who had not dreaded disappointment there!
The shadow of a heart’s unformed denial,
That should take form and soon confirm the doubt:
The doubt that would content itself with this:
If I might hold her by the hand,--
Her hands so full of soothing peace!--
Her heart would hear and understand
My heart’s demand,
And all her idling cease.
If she would let my eyes look in
Her eyes, whose deeps are full of truth,
Her soul might see how mine would win
Her, without sin,
In all her happy youth.
If I might kiss her mouth, and lead
The kiss up to her eyes and hair,
There is no prayer that so could plead,--
And find sure heed,--
My love’s divine despair.
XII
“And, uninstructed, smiled and wrote ‘despair,’
Enamoured, yet fearful of the shade that should
Some day come stealing through my silent door
To sit unbidden through the lonely hours.--
I cast the shudder off, and in the fields
Found hope again, and beauty born of dreams:
For it was summer, and all living things,
The common flowers and the birds and bees,
Became interpreters of love for me:
Say that he can not tell her how he loves her--
Words, for such adoration, often fail,--
When but a bow of ribbon, glove that gloves her,
Clothes her fair femininity in mail.
So many ways and wisdoms to express what
To th’ language of devotion is denied;
Ambassadors to make the maiden guess what
Before her heart’s high fortress long has sighed.
A bird to sing his secret--she’ll perpend him:
A bee to bid her soul to hear and see:
A blossom, like a sweet appeal, to bend him,
Before her there, upon a worshiping knee.
XIII
“So was my love confessed to you. I thought
You loved me as love led me to believe:
And so, no matter where I, dreaming, went
Among the hills, the woods, and quiet fields,
All had a poetry so intimate,
So happy and so ready that, for me,
’Twas but to stoop and gather as I went,
As one goes reaching roses in the June.
Three withered wild ones that I gathered then
I send you now. Their scent and bloom are dust:
1
What wild-flower shows perfection
Such as thy face, no blemish mars?
I leave to the selection
Of all the wild-flower stars:
To every wildwood bloom that blows,
Wild phlox, wild daisy, and wild rose.
What cascade hath suspicion
O’ the marvel that thy whiteness is?
I leave to the decision
Of each proclaiming breeze:
To winds that kiss the buds awake,
And roll the ripple on the lake.
What bird can sing the naming
Of all the music that thou art?
I leave to the proclaiming
Of that within my heart:
My heart, wherein, the whole day long,
Sits adoration rapt in song.
2
What witch then hast thou met,
Who wrought this amulet?
This charm, that makes each look, love,
Of thine a rose;
Thy face an open book, love,
Where beauty gleams and glows,
And thought to music set.
What fairy of the wood,
To whom thou once wast good,
Gave thee this gift?--Thy words, love,
Should be pure gold;
And all thy songs as bird’s, love,
Sweet as the Mays of old
With youth and love imbued.
What elfin of the glade
This white enchantment made,
That filled thee with the essence
Of all the Junes?
That made thy soul, thy presence,
Like to the moon’s
Above a far cascade.
What wizard of the cave
Hath made my heart thy slave?
That dreams of thee when sleeping,
And, when awake,
My anxious spirit keeping
’Neath spells I can not break,
Sweet spells, whence naught can save.
3
Dear, (though given conclusion to),
Songs,--no memory surrenders,--
Still their music breathe in you;
Silence meditation renders
Audible with notes it knew.
Sweet, when all the flowers are dead,
Perfumes,--that the heart remembers
Made of them a marriage-bed,--
Shall not fail me in December’s
Gloom, but from your face be shed.
Dear, when night denies a star,
Darkness will not suffer, seeing
Song and fragrance are not far;
Starlight of the summer being
In the loveliness you are.
XIV
“Revealing distant vistas where I thought
I saw your love stand as ’mid lily blooms,
Long, angel goblets molded out of stars,
Pouring aroma at your feet: and life
Took fire with thoughts your soul must help you read:
A song; and songs (who does not know?)
Reveal no music but is thine.
Thou singest, and the waters flow,
The breezes blow,
The sunbeams shine,
And all the earth grows young, divine.
Low laughter; and I look away;
Whate’er the time of year, I dream
I walk beneath sweet skies of May
On ways where play
Both gloom and gleam,
And hear a bird and forest stream.
A thought; and straight it seems to me,
However dark, the stars arise,
And rain down memories of thee,--
As, it may be,
From Paradise
One feels an angel-lover’s eyes.
XV
“But is it well to tell you what I felt
When I beheld no change beyond the moods
That gloomed or glistened in your raven eyes?
When I sat singing ’neath one steadfast star
Of morning with no phantoms of strange fears
To slay the look or word that helped me sing:
When song came easier than come buds in spring,
That make the barren boughs one pomp of pearls:
Oh, let the happy day go past,
And let the night be short or long,
When life and love are one at last,
And hearts are full of song,
’Tis sweet midsummer of the dream,
And all the dreams thou hast
Are truer than they seem.
And once I dreamt in autumn of
Death with cadaverous eyes that gazed
From out a shadow.... It was love
Whose deathless eyes were raised
From the deep darkness that unrolled
Wild splendor; and, amazed,
Thy soul I did behold.
And then it seemed that some one said,
The dead are nearer than dost know.
And when they tell thee love is dead,--
Although it seems ’t is so,--
Still shalt thou feel in every beat
And heart-throb of thy woe
Love breathing, bitter-sweet.
XVI
“One evening when I came to talk with you,
Impatience hurt me in your brief replies.
And I who had refused,--because we dread
Approaching horror of our lives made maimed,--
The inevitable, could not help but see
Some change in you to’ards me.--That night I dreamed
I wandered ’mid old ruins, where the snake
And scorpion crawled in poison-spotted heat;
Plague-bloated bulks of hideous vine and root
Wrapped fallen fanes; and bristling cacti bloomed
Blood-red and death-white on forgotten tombs.
And from my soul went forth a bitter cry
That pierced the silence that was packed with death
And pale presentiment. And so I went,
A white flame beckoning before my face,
And in my ears sounds of primordial seas
That boasted preadamic gods and men:
A flame before me and, beyond, a voice:
But, lo, the white flame when I reached for it
Became thin ashes like a dead man’s dust;
And when I thought I should behold the sea,
Stagnation, turned to filth and rottenness,
Rolled out a swamp: the voice became a stench.
If we should pray together now
For sunshine and for rain,
And thou shouldst get fair weather now,
And I the clouds again,
Would ray and rain keep single,
Or for the rainbow mingle?
Dear, if this should be made to me,
That I had asked for light,
And God had given shade to me,
And all to thee that’s bright,
Wouldst thou go by with scorning,
Refusing darkness morning?
If all my life were winter, love,
And all thy life were spring,
And mine with frost should splinter, love,
While thine with birds should sing,
Wouldst thou walk past and glitter,
Forgetful mine is bitter?
XVII
“Still on the anguish of a dying hope
An infant hope was nourished; all in vain.
For, at the last, although we parted friends,
The friendship lay like sickness on my soul,
That saw all gladness perish from the world
With loss of thee; and, ’mid the future years,
Love building high a sepulchre for hope.
Ah, could you learn forgetfulness,
And teach my heart how to forget;
And I unlearn all fretfulness,
And teach your soul that still will fret;
The mornings of the world would burn
Before us and we would not turn,
For we would not regret.
Did you but know what sorrow keeps,
That drives the joy of life away,
And I what each to-morrow keeps
For us until it is to-day;
No grief or change would then surprise
Our lives with what our lives were wise,
And nothing could betray.
If you could be interior to
My dreams that are all love’s desire;
And I could be superior to
Myself and such in you inspire;
Long stairways would the years unroll
To lift us upward, soul to soul,
To what celestial fire!
XVIII
“There came no words of comfort from your lips.
Not that I asked for pity! that had been
As fire unto the scalded or dry bread
Unto the famished fallen ’mid the sands!
But all your actions said that I was wrong,
But how, I know not and have ceased to care;
Still standing like one stricken blind at noon,
Who gropes and fumbles, feeling all grow strange
That once was so familiar; cursing God
Who locks him in with darkness and despair.--
Your judgment had been juster had it had
A lesser love than mine to judge.--O love,
Where lay the justice of thy judge in this?--
‘If thou hadst praised thy God as long
As thou hast praised a woman’s eyes,
Perhaps thou hadst not suffered wrong,
As now, and sat with sighs:
But, through thy prayer and praise made strong,
Perhaps thou hadst grown wise.
‘If thou hadst bade thy God be more
Than I, thy life had not been sad;
His love to thee had not been poor
As mine. But thou wast mad,
And cam’st, a beggar, to my door,
And had more than I had.
‘If thou hadst taught me how to love,
Nor played with love as monarchs play,
My heart had learned right soon enough,
From thine, love’s lowlier way.
But all thy love stood far above,
Nor touched my soul to sway.’
XIX
“Thus did you write me, or in words like these,
When all was over and your heart was led,
Through pity, haply, thus to justify
Yourself, that needed not to justify,
Since all your reason lay in four small words,
Enough to wreck my world and all my life,
_You did not love_: what more is there to tell?--
Yet, haply, it was this: One soul, that still
Demanded more than it could well return;
And, searching inward, yet could never pierce
Beyond its superficiality.
You did not know; yet I had felt in me
The rich fulfillment of a rare accord,
And could not, though the longing lay like song
And music on me, win your soul’s response.
Were it well, lifting me
Eyes that give heed,
Down in your soul to see
Thought, the affinity
Of act and deed?
Knowing what naught may tell
Of heart and soul:
Yet were the knowledge whole,
And were it well?
Were it well, giving true
Love all enough,
Still to discover new
Depths of true love for you,
Infinite love?
Feeling what naught may tell
Of heart and soul:
Yet were the knowledge whole,
And were it well?
XX
“What else but, laboring for some good, to lift
Ourselves above the despotism of self,
All egoism strangling strength and hope,
To work and work, and, in the love of work,
Which takes the place, in some, of love’s real self,
To quench the flame that eats into the heart?
Art, our intensest and our truest love,
Immaculateness that has never led
One of her lovers wrong, his love all soul!
I followed beauty, and my ardor prayed
Your memory would, feature and form and face,
Be blotted out within me; rise no more
To mar the labor that I owed to Art.
I prayed, yea, to forget you, you I loved:
I prayed; and, see!--how Heaven answered me:
I have no song to tell thee
The love that I would sing;
The song that should enspell thee
With words, and so compel thee
That thou, with love, must wing
Into my life to-morrow--
For all my songs are sorrow.
My strength is not a giant
To hold thee with strong hands,
To make thee less defiant;
Thy spirit more compliant
With all my love demands:
Alas! my love is meekness,
And all my strength is weakness.
What hope have I to hover--
When wings refuse to rise--
Within thy heart’s close cover,
And there to play the lover,
Concealed from mortal eyes?
What hope! to give me boldness,
When all thy looks are coldness?
XXI
“I prayed; and for a time felt strong as strength,
And held both hands out to the loveliness
That lured in the ideal. And I felt
Compelling power upon me that would lift
My face to heaven, now, to see the stars,
Now bend it back to earth to see the flowers.
I learned long lessons ’twixt a look and look:
Breezes and linden blooms,
Sunshine and showers;
Rain, that the May perfumes,
Cupped in the flowers:
Clouds and the leaves that patter
Raindrops that glint and glare--
Or be they gems that scatter?
Sapphires the sylphides shake,
When their loose fillets break,
Out of their radiant hair?
Now is my heart a lute!
Now doth it pinion
Song in love’s swift pursuit
In thought’s dominion!
Dreaming of all thou meanest,
Thou, with uneager eyes,
Nature! of worlds thou queenest,
Whither thy mother hand
Draws us from land to land,
Far from the worldly wise!
XXII
“Thus would I scatter grain around my life,
Gold grain of song, to lure them down to me,
Cloud-colored doves of peace to fill my soul,
And find them turn to ravens while they flew,
Black ravens of despair that would not out.
The old, dull, helpless aching at the heart,
As if some scar had turned a wound again.
While idle grief stared at the brutal past,
Which held a loss that made the past more rich
Than all Earth’s arts: that marveled how it came
Such puny folly should usurp love’s high
Proud pedestal of life that held your form,
In Parian, sculptured by the hands of thought.
And oft I shook myself,--for nightmares weighed
Each sense,--and seemed to wake; yet evermore
Beheld a death’s-head grinning at my eyes.
So when the opening of the door doth thrill
My soul with sudden knowledge death is come,
Let me forget you or remember still,
It will not matter then that life went ill,
When death bends to me and my lips are dumb.
Then I shall not remember: and shall leave
No memory behind me, and no trace
Of aught my life accomplished. Let none grieve.
There is no heart my passing will bereave;
And there are thousands who can fill my place.
Who knocks?--The night camps on each hill and heath:
And round my door are minions of the night:
And like a weapon, riven from its sheath,
The wind sweeps, and the tempest grinds its teeth
Around me and my wild, hand-hollowed light.
Who knocks?--the door is open!--And I see
The Darkness threatening, with distorted fists
Of cloudy terror, Courage on her knee:
Shine far, O candle! for it so may be
Love is bewildered in the night and mists.--
No wandering wisp art thou, that haunts the rain
With pallid flicker, fading as it flies!--
The door is open!--Will he knock again?--
The door is open!--Shall it be in vain?--
Come in! delay not! thou, whose ways are wise!
Who knocked has entered: let the darkness pass,
The door be closed!--Now morning lights shall thrust
It open; and the sunlight shine and mass
Its splendor here where once but darkness was,
And in its rays--motes and a little dust.”
* * * * *
XXIII
And I had read, read to the bitter end;
Half hearing lone surmises of the rain
And trouble of the wind. At last I rose
And went to Gwendolyn. She did not know
The kiss I gave her had a shudder in it;
Nor how the form of Julien rose between
Me and her lips, a blood-stain o’er his heart.
THE IDYLL OF THE STANDING-STONE
I
She knows its windings and its crooks;
The wildflowers of its lovely woods;
The crowfoot’s golden sisterhoods,
That crowd its sunny nooks:
The iris, whose blue blossoms seem
Mab’s bonnets; and, each leaf a-gleam,
The trillium’s fairy-books.
He knows its shallows and its pools,
Its stair-like beds of rock that go,
Foaming, with waterfall and flow,
Where dart the minnow schools;
Its grassy banks that herons haunt,
Or where the woodcock call; and gaunt
The mushrooms lift their stools.
She seeks the columbine and phlox,
The bluebell, where the bushes fill
The old stones of the ruined mill;
She wades among the rocks:
Her feet are rose-pearl in the stream;
Her eyes are bluet-blue; a beam
Lies on her nut-brown locks.
He comes with fishing-reel and line
To angle in the darker deeps,
Where the reflected forest sleeps
Of sycamore and pine:
And now and then a shadow swoops
Above him of a hawk that stoops
From skies as clear as wine.
And will he see, if they should meet,
That she is fairer than each flower
Her apron fills? and in that hour
Feel life less incomplete?...
He stops below: she walks above--
The brook floats down, as white as love,
One blossom to his feet.
And she?--should she behold the tan
Of manly face and honest eyes,
Would all her soul idealize
Him? make him more than man?...
She dropped one blossom when she heard
Soft whistling--was it man or bird,
Whose notes so sweetly ran?
[Illustration:
Where the woodcock call Page 161
_The Idyll of the Standing-Stone_]
They knew before they came to meet;
For some divulging influence
Had touched them thro’ the starry lens
God holds to bring in beat
Two hearts--her heart one haunting wish,
And his--forgetful of the fish,
Her flower at his feet.
II
The sassafras twigs had just lit up
The yellow stars of their fragrant candles,
And the dogwood brimmed each blossom-cup
With spring to its brown-tipped handles;
When down the orchard, ’mid apple blooms--
Say, ho, the hum o’ the honey-bee!--
A glimpse of Spring in the sprinkled glooms?
Or only a girl? with the warm perfumes
Blown round her breezily.
The maple, as red as the delicate flush
Of an afterglow, was airy crimson;
And the haw-tree, white in the wing-whipped hush,
Gleamed cool as a cloud that the moonlight dims on;
And under the oak, whose branches strung--
Say, heigh, the rap o’ the sapsuckér!--
Gray buds in tassels that sweetly swung,
They stood and listened a bird that sung,
As glad as the heart in her.
Yellow the bloom of the rattle-weed,
And white the bloom of the plum and cherry;
And red as a stain the red-bud’s brede,
And clover the color of sherry:
And a wren sings there in the orchard drift,--
And, ho! the dew from the web that slips!--
And a thrush sings there in the woodland rift,
Where he to his face her face doth lift,
Her face with the willing lips.
For a while they sat on the moss and grass,
Where the forest bloomed a great wild garden;--
Then the beam from the hollow--it seemed to pass,
And the ray on the hills to harden,
When she rose to go, and his joy fell flat;--
And, heigh, the wasp i’ the pawpaw bell!--
As she waved her hand--why, it seemed at that
’Twas Spring’s own self he was gazing at,
And the life of his life as well.
III
The teasel and the horsemint spread
The hillsides, as with sunset sown,
Blooming along the Standing-Stone
That ripples in its rocky bed:
There are no treasuries that hold
Gold yellower than the marigold
That crowds its mouth and head.
’T is harvest-time: a mower stands
Among the morning wheat and whets
His scythe, and for a space forgets
The labor of the ripening lands;
Then bends, and through the dewy grain
His long scythe hisses, and again
He swings it in his hands.
And she beholds him where he mows
On acres whence the water sends
Faint music of reflecting bends
And falls that interblend with flows:
She stands among the old bee-gums,--
Where all the apiary hums,--
Like some sweet bramble-rose.
She hears him whistling as he leans,
And, reaping, sweeps the ripe wheat by;
She sighs and smiles and knows not why:--
These are but simple country scenes:
He whets his scythe again, and sees
Her smiling near the hives of bees
Beneath the flowering beans.
The peacock-purple lizard creeps
Along the rail; and deep the drone
Of insects makes the country lone
With summer where the water sleeps:
She hears him singing as he swings
His scythe; he thinks of other things--
Not toil, and, singing, reaps.
IV
Into the woods they went again,
Over the wind-blown oats;
Out of the acres of golden grain,
In where the light was a violet stain,
In where the lilies’ throats
Were brimmed with the summer rain.
Hung on a bough a reaper’s hook,
Over the wind-blown oats;
A girl’s glad laugh and a girl’s glad look,
And the hush and ripple of tree and brook,
And a wild bird’s silvery notes,
And a kiss that a strong man took.
Out of the woods the lovers went,
Over the wind-waved wheat;
She with a face, where love was blent,
Like to an open testament;
He, from his head to feet,
Dazed with his hope that was eloquent.
Here how oft had they come to tryst,
Over the wind-waved wheat!
Here how oft had they laughed and kissed!
Talked and tarried where no one wist,
Here where the woods are sweet,
Dim and deep as a dewy mist.
V
Her pearls are blossoms-of-the-vale,
Her only diamonds are the dews;
Such jewels never can grow stale,
Nor any value lose.
Among the millet beards she stands:
The languid wind lolls everywhere:
There are wild roses in her hands,
One wild rose in her hair.
To-morrow, where the shade is warm,
Among the unmown wheat she’ll stop,
And from one daisy-loaded arm
One ox-eyed daisy drop.
She’ll meet his brown eyes, true and brave,
With blue eyes, false yet dreamy sweet:
He is her lover and her slave,
Who mows among the wheat.
* * * * *
When buds broke on the apple trees
She wore an apple-blossom dress,
And laughed with him across the leas,
And love was all a guess.
When goose-plums ripened in the rain,
Plum-colored was her gown of red;
He kissed her in the creek-road lane--
She was his life, he said.
When apples thumped the droughty land,
A russet color was her gown:
Another came, and--won her hand?--
Nay! carried off to town....
When grapes hung purple in the hot,
None missed her and her simple dress,
Save one, whom, haply, she forgot,
Who loved her none the less.
When snow made white each harvest sheaf,
He sought her out amid her show;
Her rubies, redder than the leaf
That autumn forests sow.
Not one regret her shame reveals;
She smiles at him, then puts him by;
He pleads; and she? she merely steels
Her heart and--lives her lie.
VI
And he returned when poppies strewed
Their golden blots o’er moss and leaf,--
Blond little Esaus of the wood,
So fair of face, of life so brief.--
Did he forget?--Not he, in truth!--
“No month,” he thought, “holds so much grace,
No month of spring, such grace and youth,
As the sweet April of her face.”
In fall the frail gerardia
Hung hints of sunset and of dawn
On root and rock, as if to draw
Her lips, remind him of one gone:--
Of one unworthy, in pursuit
Of butterflies, who does not dream
A flower, broken by her foot,
Sweeps, helpless, with her down the stream.
SOME SUMMER DAYS
I
If you had seen her waiting there
Among the tiger-lily blooms,--
That sowed their jewels everywhere
Among the woodland gleams and glooms,--
You had confessed her very fair,
And sweeter than the wood’s perfumes.
A country girl with bare brown feet,
She waits, while day slopes down the deeps:
The afternoon is dead with heat,
And all the weary shadow sleeps
Like toil, arm-pillowed in the wheat,
Beside the scythe with which he reaps.
There is no sound more distant than
The cow-bell on the vine-hung hill;
No nearer than the locust’s span
Of noise that makes the silence shrill:
And now there comes a sun-browned man
Through tiger-lilies of the rill.
Long will they talk: till, in the end,
The clear west glows, the east grows pale;
Until the glow and pallor blend
Like moonlight on a shifting sail;
And then he ’ll clasp her; she will bend
Her head, consenting. Day will fail:
The west will flame, then fade away
Through heavy orange, rose, and red,
And leave the heavens violet gray
Above a gypsy-lily bed:
Then they will go; and he will say
Such words to her as none has said.
A million stars the night will win
Above them; and one firefly
Pulse like a tangled starbeam in
The cedar dark against the sky:
Then he will lift her dimpled chin
And take the kiss she ’ll not deny.
And when the moon, like the great book
Of Judgment, golden with the light
Of God, lies open o’er yon nook
Of darkest wood and wildest height,
Together they will cross the brook
And reach the gate and kiss good night.
II
And now he wipes his hand along
The beaded fire of his brow
Hard toil has heated; and the strong
Face flushes fuller health as now
He fills his hay-fork to the prong,
And, tossing it, again doth bow.
And now he rests, and looks away
Across the sun-fierce hills and meads
No rolling cloud has cooled to-day;
And from his face the brawny beads
Drip; and he marks the heaps of hay,
The fields of corn, the fields of weeds.
At last he sees the tempest build
Black battlements along the west,
Black breastworks that are thunder filled;
And bares his brow; and on his chest
The sweat of toil is cooled; and stilled
The pulse of toil within his breast.
A strong wind brings the odorous death
Of far hay-meadows, and the scent
Is good within his nostrils’ breath:
The mighty trees are bowed, that leant
For no man, as when Power saith
“Bow down!” and stalwart men are bent.
He laughs, long-gazing as he goes
Along the elder-sweetened lane:
He feels the storm wind as it blows
Across the sheaves of golden grain,
And stops to pull one bramble-rose,
And watch the swiftly coming rain.
And there, ’mid locust trees, the farm
Dreams in a martin-haunted place:
He marks the far-off streaks of storm
That, driven of the thunder, race:
He sees his child upon her arm,
And in the door his wife’s fair face.
III
Below the sunset’s range of rose,
Below the heaven’s bending blue,
Down woodways where the balsam blows,
And milkweed tufts hang, gray of hue,
A Jersey heifer stops and lows--
The cows come home by one, by two.
There is no star yet: but the smell
Of hay and pennyroyal mix
With herb-aromas of the dell;
And the root-hidden cricket clicks:
Among the ironweeds a bell
Clangs near the rail-fenced clover-ricks.
She waits upon the slope beside
The windlassed well the plum-trees shade,
The well-curb that the goose-plums hide;
Her light hand on the bucket laid,
Unbonneted she waits, glad-eyed,
Her dress as simple as her braid.
She sees fawn-colored backs among
The sumacs now; a tossing horn;
A clashing bell of brass that rung:
Long shadows lean upon the corn,
And all the day dies scarlet-stung,
The cloud in it a rosy thorn.
Below the pleasant moon, that tips
The tree-tops of the hillside, fly
The evening bats; the twilight slips
Some fireflies like spangles by;
She meets him, and their happy lips
Touch; and one star leaps in the sky.
He takes her bucket, and they speak
Of married hopes while in the grass
The plum lies glowing as her cheek;
The patient cows look back or pass;
And in the west one golden streak
Burns like a great cathedral glass.
IV
The skies are amber, blue, and green
Before the coming of the sun;
And all the deep hills sleep, serene
As if enchanted; every one
Is ribbed with morning mists that lean
On woods through which vague whispers run.
Birds wake: and on the vine-hung knobs,
Above the brook, a twittering
Confuses songs; one warbler robs
Another of its note; a wing
Beats by; and now a wild throat throbs
Triumphant; all the woodlands sing.
The sun is up: the hills are heaped
With instant splendor; and the vales
Surprised with shimmers that are steeped
In purple where the thin mist trails;
The water-fall, the rock it leaped,
Are burning gold that foams and fails.
He drives his horses to the plow
Along the vineyard slopes, where bask
Dew-heavy grapes, half-ripened now,
In sun-shot shafts of shade: no mask
Of joy he wears; his face and brow
Glow as he enters on his task.
Before him, soaring through the mist,
The gray hawk wildly wings and screams;
Its dewy back gleams, sunbeam-kissed,
Above the wood that drips and dreams;
He guides the plow with one strong fist;
The soil rolls back in level seams.
Packed to the right the sassafras
Lifts leafy walls of spice that shade
The blackberries, whose tendrils mass
Big berries in the coolness made;
And drop their ripeness on the grass
Where trumpet-flowers fall and fade.
White on the left the fence and trees
That mark the garden; and the smoke,
Uncurling in the early breeze,
Tells of the roof beneath the oak;
He turns his team, and, turning, sees
The damp, dark soil his coulter broke.
Bees hum; and o’er the berries poise
Lean-bodied wasps; loud blackbirds turn
Following the plow: there is a noise
Of insect wings that buzz and burn;--
And now he hears his wife’s low voice,
The song she sings to help her churn.
V
There are no clouds that drift around
The moon’s pearl-kindled crystal, (white
As some sky-summoned spirit wound
In raiment lit with limbs of light),
That have not softened like the sound
Of harps when Heaven forgets to smite.
The vales are deeper than the dark,
And darker than the vales the woods
That shadowy hill and meadow mark
With broad, blurred lines, whereover broods
Deep calm; and now a fox-hound’s bark
Upon the quietude intrudes.
And though the night is never still,
Yet what we name its noises makes
Its silence:--now a whippoorwill;
A frog, whose hoarser tremor breaks
The hush; then insect sounds that fill
The night; an owl that hoots and wakes.
They lean against the gate that leads
Into the lane that lies between
The yard and orchard; flowers and weeds
Smell sweeter than the odors keen
That day distils from hotness; beads
Of dew make cool the gray and green.
Their infant sleeps. They feel the peace
Of something done that God has blessed,
Still as the pulse that will not cease
There in the cloud that lights the west:
The peace of love that shall increase
While soul to soul still gives its best.
AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK
I
The wild brook gleams on the sand and ripples
Over the rocks of the riffle; brimming
Under the elms like a nymph who dripples,
Dips and glimmers and shines in swimming:
Under the linns and the ash-trees lodging,
Loops of the limpid waters lie,
Shaken of schools of the minnows, dodging
The glancing wings of the dragon-fly.
Lower, the loops are lines of laughter
Over the stones and the crystal gravel;
Afar they gloom, like a face seen after
Mirth, where the waters slowly travel;
Shadowy slow where the Fork is shaken
Of the dropping bark of the sycamore,
Where the water-snake, that the footsteps waken,
Slides like a crooked root from shore.
Peace of the forest; and silence, dimmer
Than dreams. And now a wing that winnows
The willow leaves, with their shadows slimmer
In the shallow there than a school of minnows:
Calm of the creek; and a huge tree twisted,
Ringed, and turned to a tree of pearl;
A gray-eyed man, who is farmer-fisted,
And a dark-eyed, sinewy country girl.
The brow of the man is gnarled and wrinkled
With the weight of the words that have just been spoken;
And the girl has smiled and her eyes have twinkled,
Though the bonds and the bands of their love lie broken:
She smiles, nor knows how the days have knotted
Her to the heart of the man who says:
“Let us follow the paths that we think allotted.
I will go my ways and you your ways.
“And the man between us is your decision.
Worse or better he is your lover.--
Shall I say he ’s worse since the sweet Elysian
Prize he wins where I discover
Only the hell of the luckless chooser?--
Shall I say he ’s better than I, or more,
Since he is winner and I am loser,
His life ’s made rich and mine made poor?”
“I tell you now as I oft and ever
Have told,” she answered, the laughter dying
Down in her eyes, “that his arms have never
Held me!--no!--but you think me lying,
And you are wrong. And I think it better
To part forever than still to dwell
With the sad distrust, like an evil tetter,
On our lives forever, and so farewell.”
And she turned away; and he watched her going,
The girlish pride in her eyes a-smoulder:
He saw her go, and his lips were glowing
Fever that parched. And he stood, one shoulder
Slouched to the tree; and he saw her stooping,
There by the bank, with a reckless foot;
Straighten; and tear from her breast his drooping
Lilies and fasten the pleurisy-root.
With its orange fire he saw her passing
On and on; and the blood beat, burning
His brain to madness; and seemingly massing
The weight of the world on his heart in yearning ...
Butterflies swarmed in the moist sand-alleys;
A fairy fleet of Ionian sails
They seemed with their wings, or of pirate galleys,
Maroon and yellow, for Elfland gales.
He watched her going; and harder, thicker
The pulse of his breath and his heart’s hard throbbing.--
How should he know that her heart was sicker?
How should he know that her soul was sobbing?--
She never looked back: and he saw her vanish
In swirls of the startled butterflies,
Like a storm of flowers; and he could not banish
The thought he had lost his all through lies.
II
He heard the cocks crow out the lonely hours.
How long the night! how far away the dawn!
It seemed long months since he had seen the flowers,
The leaves, the sunlight, and the bee-hived lawn;
Had heard the thrush flute in the tangled showers.
His burning eyes ached, staring at the black
Stolidity of midnight. Would God send
No cool relief unto his mind,--a rack
Of inquisition,--tortures to unbend,
That stretched him forward and now strained him back?
Incomprehensible and undivulged,
The thought that took him back, retraced their walks,
Through woods, on which the sudden perfumes bulged,
The bird-songs and the brilliant-blossomed stalks;
And all the freedom which their talk indulged.
Oh, strong appeal! And he would almost yield;
When, firmly forward, he could feel her fault
Oppose the error of a rock-like shield,
And to resisting phalanxes cry halt--
And, lo! bright cohorts broken on the field.
O mulct of morning! to the despot night
Count down unminted gold, and let the day
Walk free from dungeons of the dark; delight
Herself on mountains of the violet ray,
Clad in white maidenhood and morning white!
A melancholy coast, plunged deep in dream
And death and silence, stretched the drowsy dark,
Wherein he heard a round-eyed screech-owl scream,
In lamentation, and a watch-dog bark,
Vague as oblivion, lost in night’s deep stream.
And then hope moved him to divide the blinds
To see if those bright sparkles were a star’s,
Or but his feverish eyelids, which the mind’s
Commotion weighed.--No hint of morning bars
With glimmer heaven’s swart tapestry he finds.
So he remained, impatient, till the first
Exploring crevices of Aztec morn,
Dim cracks of treasure, Eldorados burst:
Then could he face his cowardice and scorn
His jealousy that thus his life had cursed.
Love knew no barriers now. And where he went
Each woodland path was musical with birds;
Each flow’r was richer, more divine of scent;
For love sought love with such expressive words
That dawn’s delivery was less eloquent.
III
Who is it hunts with his dog
There where the heron is flying
Gray through the feathering fog
Over the Fork, where is lying,
Bridge-like, a butternut log,
There where the horsemint is drying?
Who is it hunts in the brush,
Under the linns and the beeches,
Here where the water-falls rush,
Dark, where the noon never reaches?
Here where the Fork is one crush
Of flags with a bloom like the peach’s?
He is handsome and supple and tall,
Blond-haired and vigorous-chested,
Blue-eyed as the bud by the fall
Where he listens,--his rifle half rested,
Half leaned on the crumbling stone wall,--
Whose briers he lately has breasted.
He waits; and the sun on the dew
Of the cedars and leaves of the bushes
Strikes glittering frostiness through ...
If a covey of partridges flushes
What good will a Winchester do,
Or the dog to his feet that he crushes?
Then a man breaks strong through the weeds
Where the buck-bushes toss and the spires
Of the white-blossomed cohosh; ’mid reeds
Wild-carrots, and trammelling briers:
It is he! to his loved one who speeds--
And the man in the bushes--he fires....
From leaves of the wind-shaken wood
The dew of the dawn is still falling:
He is gone from the place where he stood,
Just there where the black crow is calling:
There is blood on the weeds: is it blood
On the face of the man who is crawling?
Red blood or a smudge of the dawn?--
Now he lies with his gray eyes wide, staring,
Stiff, still at the sun: he has drawn
His limbs in a heap: and the faring
Bee-martins light near or pass on,
Not one of them knowing or caring.
It is noon: and the wood-dove is deep
In the calm of its cooing: and over
The tops of the forest trees sweep
The shadows of buzzards that hover:
Wide-winged they sail on as asleep:
And the bob-white is whistling from cover.
It is dusk: and the heat, that made wilt
The leaves and the wildflowers’ faces,
Gives place to the dew-drops that tilt
With coolness the weeds where are traces
Of horror and darkness and guilt,
That nothing can wash from those places.
It is night: and the hoot-owlet mocks
The dove of the day with wild weeping,
The Fork is scarce heard on its rocks
Where the man is so quietly sleeping:
Through the woods snaps the bark of a fox;
The lightning is fitfully leaping.
IV
All day, ’twixt hope and fear,
She waited at the gate,
Looking for him, more dear
Now that he made her wait:
Day went and night draws near:
Stormy it grows and late.
Still, still she waits: great limbs
The winds rend from the ridge;
Each swollen shallow swims
Head-deep below the bridge;
The drift, that breaks and brims
Swirls lighter than the midge.
The night grows wildly gray
With lightning-litten rain;
The forests sound and sway,
An oak is rent in twain;
The thunder rolls away
Like some vast bolt and chain.
The Fork is whirling wreck
Of field and farm and wood;
And many a foaming fleck
Drives where the rock-fence stood;--
A torrent sweeps break-neck
Above the washed-out blood.
Night deepens: still she waits
Expectant in despair:
The Fork has reached the gates,
The wood’s wreck everywhere.
But when the storm abates,
She thinks, he will be there.
She sees the lightning rush
Its blazing hells above;
She hears the thunder crush
Heaven as if earthquake-clove--
Loud in the tempest’s hush
She calls with all her love.
He comes, she feels; and stands
The rushing waters o’er
Her feet, and on her hands
And hair the wild down-pour,
The lightnings are wild brands
To light him to her door.
Night deepens: but she knows
God will not fail to send
Her love to soothe her woes,
And one day’s errors mend.--
The wild stream foams and flows
Booming in fall and bend.
Again the lightnings light
The night like some wild torch;
The waters foam and fight;
And one uprooted larch
Sweeps down, with something white
Wedged in it, by her porch.
She stoops: the lurid rain
Beats on her back and head--
Ay! he hath come again!
With livid lips once red!
A bullet in his brain
The night hath brought him--dead!
A NIELLO
I
It is not early spring and yet
Of bloodroot blooms along the stream,
And blotted banks of violet,
My heart will dream.
Is it because the wind-flower apes
The beauty that was once her brow,
That the white thought of it still shapes
The April now?
Because the wild-rose learned its blush
From her fresh cheeks of maidenhood,
Their thought makes June of barren brush
And empty wood?
And then I think how young she died--
Straight, barren death stalks down the trees,
The hard-eyed hours by his side
That kill and freeze.
II
When orchards are in bloom again
My heart will bound, my blood will beat,
To hear the red-bird so repeat,
On boughs of rosy stain,
His blithe, loud song,--like some far strain
From out the past,--among the bloom,--
(Where bee, and wasp, and hornet boom)--
Fresh, redolent with rain.
When orchards are in bloom once more,
Invasions of lost dreams will draw
My feet, like some insistent law,
Through blossoms to her door:
In dreams I’ll ask her, as before,
To let me help her at the well;
And fill her pail; and long to tell
My love as once of yore.
I shall not speak until we quit
The farm-gate, leading to the lane
And orchard, all in bloom again,
’Mid which the wood-doves sit
And coo; and through whose blossoms flit
The cat-birds crying while they fly:
Then tenderly I’ll speak, and try
To tell her all of it.
And in my dream again she’ll place
Her hand in mine, as oft before,--
When orchards are in bloom once more,--
With all her old-time grace:
And we will tarry till a trace
Of sunset dyes the heav’ns; and then--
We’ll part, and, parting, I again
Will bend and kiss her face.
And homeward, dreaming, I will go
Along the cricket-chirring ways,
While sunset, like one crimson blaze
Of blossoms, lingers low:
And my lost youth again I’ll know,
And all her love, when spring is here--
Hers! hers! now dead this many a year
Whose love still haunts me so.
III
I would not die when Springtime lifts
The white world to her maiden mouth,
And heaps its cradle with gay gifts,
Breeze-blown from out the singing South:
Too full of life and loves that cling,
Too heedless of all mortal woe,
The young, unsympathetic Spring,
That death should never know.
I would not die when Summer shakes
Her daisied locks below her hips,
And, naked as a star that takes
A cloud, into the silence slips.
Too rich is Summer; poor in needs;
Wrapped in her own warm loveliness
Her pomp goes by, and never heeds
If one be more or less.
But I would die when Autumn goes,
The sad rain dripping from her hair,
Through forests where the wild wind blows
Death and the red wreck everywhere:
Sweet as love’s last farewells and tears
’T would be to die, when heavens are gray,
In the old autumn of my years,
Like a dead leaf borne far away.
DEEP IN THE FOREST
I
SPRING ON THE HILLS
Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,
The Spring, as wild wings follow?
Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,
Crab-apple trees the hollow,
Haunts of the bee and swallow?
In red-bud brakes and flowery
Acclivities of berry;
In dogwood dingles, showery
With dew, where wrens make merry?
Or drifts of swarming cherry?
In valleys of wild-strawberries,
And of the clumped May-apple;
Or cloud-like trees of hawberries,
With which the south-winds grapple,
That brook and pathway dapple?
With eyes of far forgetfulness,--
Like some white wood-thing’s daughter,
Whose feet are bee-like fretfulness,--
To see her run like water
Through boughs that slipped or caught her.
O Spring, to seek, yet find you not,
To search and still continue;
To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not,
To lose and then to win you,
All sweet evasion in you.
In pearly, peach-blush distances
You gleam; the woods are braided
Of myths, of dream-existences;--
There, where the brook is shaded,
Some splendor surely faded.
O presence, like the primrose’s,
Once more I feel your power!
In rainy scents of dim roses
I breathe you for an hour,
Elusive as a flower.
II
THE WOOD SPIRIT
Ah me! I still remember
How flushed, before the shower,
The dusk was; like a scarlet rose,
Or blood-red poppy-flower.
Now heaven is starred; the moonlight
Lays blurs upon the grain--
You may not know it from white frost,
The moonlight on the rain.
And all the forest utters
A restless moan in rest,
For all the deep, dark shadow lies
Like iron on its breast.
I mark the moveless shadow,
I mark the unreaped corn,
Then something whispers overhead,
“Come to me, mortal-born.”
I sit alone and listen;
The low leaves sound and sigh;
The dew drips from the bearded grain,
A mist slips from the sky.--
I hear her whisper, whisper,
And breathe in some dim place;
Her feet are easier than the dew,
And than the mist her face.
I may not clasp her ever,
This spirit made for song,
Who dwelleth in the young, young oak
The old, old oaks among.
Her limbs are molded moonlight;
Her breasts are silver moons:
She glimmers and she glitters where
The purple shadow swoons.
And since she knows I love her,
She says my soul has died,
And laughs and mocks me in the mist
That haunts the forest-side.
When winds run mad in woodlands
And all the great boughs swing,
I see her wild hair blow and blow
Black as a raven’s wing.
When winds are tamed and tethered
And stars are keen as frost,
I search and seek within the wood,
There where my soul was lost.
I seek her, and she flies me;
I follow; and the whole
Dim woodland echoes with her voice,
Soft calling to my soul.
III
OWL ROOST
The slope is a mass of vines:
If you walk in the daylight there,
A gleam as of twilight shines
Through the vines massed everywhere:
Each trunk, that a creeper twines,
Is a column, strong to bear
The dome of its leaves that wave,
Cathedral-dim and grave.
Black moss makes silent the feet:
And, above, the fox-grapes lace
So thick that the noonday heat
Is chill as a murdered face:
And the winds for miles repeat
The fugue of a rolling bass:
The deep leaves twinkle and turn
But over no flower or fern.
An angular spider weaves
Great webs between the trees,
Webs that are witches’ sieves:
And honey-and bumblebees
Go droning among the leaves,
Like the fairies’ oboës:
At dark the owlets croon
To the stars and the sickle-moon.
At dark I will not go
There where the branches sigh;
Where naught but the glow-worms glow,
Each one like a demon’s eye:
O’er which, like a battle-bow,
With an arrow that it lets fly,
The new-moon and one star
Hang and glimmer afar.
At dawn, if my mood be dim,
And the day be a cloudless one,
There where the sad winds hymn
I ’ll walk, but its shade will shun;
Its shade, where I feel the grim
Horror of something done
Here in the years long past,
That the place conceals to the last.
IV
MOSS AND FERN
Where rise the brakes of bramble there,
Wrapped with the trailing rose,
Through cane where waters ramble, there
Where deep the green cress grows,
Who knows?
Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man,
Hides Pan.
Perhaps the creek, whose pebbles make
A foothold for the mint,
May bear,--where soft its trebles make
Confession,--some vague hint--
(The print,
Goat-hoofed, of one who lightly ran)--
Of Pan.
Where, in the hollow of the hills
Ferns deepen to the knees,
What sounds are those above the hills,
And now among the trees?--
No breeze!--
The syrinx, haply, none may scan,
Of Pan.
In woods where waters break upon
The hush like some soft word;
Where sun-shot shadows shake upon
The moss, who has not heard--
No bird!--
The flute, as breezy as a fan,
Of Pan?
Far in, where mosses lay for us
Still carpets, cool and plush;
Where bloom and branch and ray for us
Swoon in the noonday flush,
The hush
May sound the satyr hoof a span
Of Pan.
In woods where thrushes sing to us,
And brooks dance sparkling heels;
Where wild aromas cling to us,
And all our worship kneels,--
Who steals
Upon us, haunch and face of tan,
But Pan?
V
WOODLAND WATERS
Through leaves of the nodding trees,
Where blossoms sway in the breeze,
Pink bag-pipes made for the bees,
Whose slogan is droning and drawling:
Where the columbine scatters its bells,
And the wild bleeding-heart its shells,
O’er mosses and rocks of the dells
The brook of the forest is falling.
You can hear it under the hill
When the wind in the wood is still,
And, strokes of a fairy drill,
Sounds the bill of the yellow-hammer:
By the solomon’s-seal it slips,
Cohosh and the grass that drips--
Like the words of an Undine’s lips,
Is the sound of its falls that stammer.
I lie in the woods: and the scent
Of the honeysuckle is blent
With the sound: and a Sultan’s tent
Is my dream, with the East enmeshéd:--
A slave-girl sings; and I hear
The languor of lute-strings near,
And a dancing-girl of Cashmere
In the harem of good Er Reshid.
From ripples of Irak lace
She flashes the amorous grace
Of her naked limbs and her face,
While her golden anklets tinkle:
Then over mosaic floors
Open seraglio doors
Of cedar: by twos, by fours,--
Like stars that tremble and twinkle,--
While the dulcimers sing, unseen,
The handmaids come of the Queen
’Neath silvern lamps, one sheen
Of jewels of Afrite treasure:
And I see the Arabia rise
Of the Nights that were rich and wise,
Beautiful, dark, in the eyes
Of Zubeideh, the Queen of Pleasure.
VI
THE THORN-TREE
The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold,
And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old,
Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the fairy people know,
With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow,
Whom the boyish South-wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping rain,
Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again;
She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew,
That could change the dew to glow-worms and the glow-worms into dew.
There’s a thorn-tree in the forest, and the fairies know the tree,
With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;
But the May-time brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white,
Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light.
And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn
How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn:
How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness
Till he told her demon secrets that but made his magic less.
How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree’s thorns to lie
Forever with his passion that should never dim or die:
And with wicked laughter looking on this thing that she had done,
Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun;
How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard,
All in mockery, at parting, and mock pity of his weird:
But her magic had forgotten that “who bends to give a kiss
Will bring down the curse upon them of the person whose it is”:
So the silence tells the secret.--And at night the fairies see
How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,
In the thorny arms of Merlin, who, forever, is the tree.
VII
THE HAMADRYAD
She stood among the longest ferns
The valley held; and in her hand
One blossom like the light that burns,
Vermilion, o’er a sunset land;
And round her hair a twisted band
Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms:
And darker than dark pools, that stand
Below the star-communing glooms,
Her eyes beneath her hair’s perfumes.
I saw the moon-pearl sandals on
Her flower-white feet, that seemed too chaste
To tread pure gold: and, like the dawn
On splendid peaks that lord a waste
Of solitude lost gods have graced,
Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped,
Bound with the cestused silver,--chased
With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped
With oak-leaves,--whence her chiton slipped.
Limbs that the gods call loveliness!--
The grace and glory of all Greece
Wrought in one marble form were less
Than her perfection!--’Mid the trees
I saw her; and time seemed to cease
For me--And, lo! I lived my old
Greek life again of classic ease,
Barbarian as the myths that rolled
Me back into the Age of Gold.
WRECKAGE
I
Love and the drift of many dreams,
Under the moon of a Florida night,
Over the beach with its silvery seams
White as a sail is white.
Love that entered into two lives
Out of the dreams that the nights have borne,
Over the waves where the vapor drives,
Mists that the stars have torn.
Love that welded two hearts and hands
There by the sea, ’neath the shell-white moon,
Like to the stars and the mists and the sands
Setting two lives in tune.
Nights of love that one still keeps
Sacred;--nights, that the faith of one
Heartened there in the treacherous deeps,
Under a tropic sun.
II
Parting he said to her: “Let us be true to them,--
All of our dreams, of the night, of the morning:
What is our present, its hope, but a clew to them?
What is our past but a dream and a warning?
Have you considered the life that regretfully
Foldeth weak arms to the fate it might master?--
Had I been true to my dreams, never fretfully
Halted, my future and joy had been faster.”
They had come down to the ocean that, bellowing,
Boiled on the sand and the shells that were broken;
All of the summer was fading and yellowing;
Now they must part and their vows had been spoken.
It had befallen that heaven was lowering;
Over the sea, like the wraith of a wrecker,
Clamored the gull; and the mist in the showering
East seemed the ghost of a lofty three-decker.
Infinite foam; and the boom of the hollowing
Breakers that buried the rocks to their shoulders;
Battle and boast of the deep in the wallowing
World of the waves where the red sunset smoulders.
Long was the leap of the foam on the thunderous
Beach; and each end of the beach was a flying
Fog of the spray: and she said, “Let it sunder us!
Still we will love, for love is undying!”
Yet, if it comes to the thing he has said to her?--
Wreckage and death?--the love she has given
Turned into sorrow?--Oh, that was a dread to her!
He, like a weed, by the waters far driven!
Weeping, her bosom with shudders was shaken as
She for a moment hard clung to her sailor,
Kissed him and--parted. His boat had been taken; as
Paler it grew the woman grew paler.
III
All day the rain drove, falling
Upon the sombre sea;
All day, his wet sail hauling,
The sailor tacked a-lea;
And through the wild rain calling,
What was it?--was it he?
At dusk the gull clanged, drifting
Above the boiling brine;
And, through the wan west sifting,
Streamed one red sunset line;
And in its wild light shifting,
His far sail seemed to shine.
All night the wind wailed, sighing
Along the wreck-strewn coast;
All night the surf, defying,
Rolled thunder in and boast;
All night she heard a crying--
The sea? or some lost ghost?
IV
The balm of the night and the glory,
The music and scent of the sea,
Are as song to her heart or a story
Of the never-to-be.
The stars and the night and the whiteness
Of foam on the stretch of the sand;
Faint foam that is tossed, like the brightness
Of a mermaiden’s hand.
No sail on the ocean; no sailor
On shore, and the winds all asleep;
And her face in the starlight far paler
Than women who weep.
A mist on the deep; and the ghostly
White moon in the deep of the night;
And a light that is neither; that mostly
Is shadow not light.
No sea-gull, that vanished with gleaming
Of wings, in the swing of the spray;
Perhaps it was only her dreaming,
Or merely a ray
Of moonlight; the glimmering essence
Of all that is grayest and dim--
But never his face, or his presence
That dripped in each limb.
And she cried through the night, “Let perish!
O God, let me die of despair!
If he whom I love, whom I cherish,
Is weltering there!”
She seemed but a sea-mist made woman,
And he but a sound of the sea
Made man where nothing was human,
And never would be.
V
Long he sailed the deep that glasses
The face of God and His majesty;
Passed the Horn and the Seas of Grasses,
Drifting aimlessly.
Time went by with its days that ever
Burden the hearts of those who be
Far away from their love; whom sever
Leagues of the shapeless sea.
Land at last, whose reefs rolled broken
Foam of the balked waves everywhere;
Land; one tangle of weeds and oaken
Wreck and of rocks laid bare.
Here and there the sand stretched livid
Leagues of famine, one blinding glare;
Crags, o’er which gaunt birds winged vivid,
Harsh in the earthquake air.
A little cloud in the sunset’s splendor;
A little cloud that the sunset stains:
Night, and a wisp of a moon that, slender,
Dreams of the hurricanes.
Winds that stride as with sounding sandals;
Winds that the tempest has loosed from chains:
Light that leaps like a spear he handles,
Shaking his thunder-manes.
Wrenching the world in wreck asunder,
Black rebellion of hell and night;
Wrath and roar of the rocks and thunder,
Flame and the winds that fight ...
Beating the drift and the hush together,
Waves and winds that the morn makes white;
Calm and peace of the tropic weather
After the typhoon’s might.
Clouds blow by and the storm’s forgotten.
Savage coasts where the sea-cow feeds.
Wash of weeds and the sea-weeds rotten.
And a dead face in the weeds.
None to know him or name him brother;
Only the savage in feathers and beads;
The South-Sea Islander, fitting another
Barb in the shaft he speeds.
Far away where the sea-gulls gather;
Far away where the evening falls,
Lone she stands where the wild waves lather,
Rolling the sea in walls.--
Who shall tell her, the lonely tryster?
Tell her of him on whom she calls?--
Suns that beat on his face and blister?
Stars? or the sea that crawls?
VI
She dreamed that there, beside the ocean sitting,
Alone she watched, when, at her feet, behold!
Between the foam-ridge and the sea-gull’s flitting,
His body rolled.
All was not as it was before they parted;
She dreamed he had remembered, she forgot;
He ’d said he would forget her, angry-hearted,
And yet could not.
And then it seemed that, had she known, she surely
Had given pity when she could not give
Her love to him, who loved her madly, purely,
And bade him live.
And then she dreamed she looked upon the slanted
Hulk of a wreck: and high above the wave,
Worn of the wind and of the cactus planted,
His nameless grave.
SIREN SANDS
I
The rhododendrons bloom and shake
Their petals wide and gleam and sway
Among palmettoes, by the lake,
Beyond the bay.
Shores where we watched the eve reveal
Her cloudy sanctuaries, while
The bay lay lavaed into steel
For mile on mile.
We watched the purple coast confuse
Soft outlines with the graying light;
And towards the gulf a vessel lose
Itself in night.
We saw the sea-gulls dip and soar;
The wild-fowl gather past the pier;
And from rich skies, as from God’s door,
Gold far and near.
Two foreign seamen passed and we
Heard mellow Spanish; like twin stars,
Where they lounged smoking, we could see
Their faint cigars.
Night; and the heavens stained and strewn
With stars the waters idealized,
Until their light the rising moon
Epitomized.
Morn; and the pine-wood balms awake;
Winds roll the dew-drop from the rose;
The wide lake burns; and, on the lake,
The ripple glows.
Far coasts detach deep purple from
The blue horizon, and the day
Beholds the sunburnt sailor come
And sail away.
The bird that slept at dusk, at dawn
Awakes again within the thorn.--
Sweet was the night to it, now gone;
And sweet is morn.
II
Through halls of columned scarlet,
Like some dark queen, the Dusk
Trails skirts of myrrh and musk,
Hung in each ear, a starlet
Gleams,--gems the clouds’ gaunt Jinn
Guard; and, beneath her chin,
The moon, an opal tusk.
There lies a ghostly glory
Upon the sea and sand;
A gleam, as of a hand,
Stretched from the realms of story,
Of rosy golden ray;
Pointing the world the way
To some far Fairyland.
As fades the west’s vermilion
Above the distant coasts,
The stars come out in hosts;
Within the night’s pavilion,
As flower speaks to flower,
Dim hour calls to hour,
Pale with the past’s sweet ghosts.
III
Music that melts through moonlight,
Faint on the summer breeze;
Fireflies, moonlight, and foaming
Susurrus of the seas.
Music that drifts like perfume,
And touches like a hand;
Dreams and stars and the ocean,
And we alone on the sand.
Glimmers and vague reflections,
And the white swirl of the foam;
Pale on the purple a vessel,
And a light that beckons home.
And I seem to see the music,
On a moonbeam bar that floats,
For the music is moonlight magic,
And the flies are its golden notes.
And I seem to hear one singing
Of a brown old coast and sea,
Of lives that were filled with passion,
And old-world tragedy.
And I hear the harsh reef’s calling
For a noble ship at sea,
And the winds of the ocean singing
A dirge for the dead to be.
Till it seems that I am the pilot,
And you are the mermaidén,
Who lures him on to the wrecking
And into her arms again.
_Song_
Over the hills where the winds are waking
All is lone as the soul of me;
Over the hills where the stars are shaking,
Breton hills by the sea.
These were with me to tell me often
How she pined in her Croisic home,
Winds that sing and the stars that soften
Over the miles of foam.
Fishers’ nets and the sailor faces;
Sad salt marshes and granite piers;
Brown, loud coast where the long foam races--
And a parting full of tears.
A gray sail’s ghost where the autumn lies on
Wraiths of the mist and the squall-blown rain;
Her dark girl eyes that search the horizon,
Grave with a haunting pain.
Stars may burn and the wild winds whistle
Over the rocks where the sea-gulls rave--
My heart is bleak as the wind-worn thistle
on her seaside grave.
IV
Sad as sad eyes that ache with tears
The stars of night shine through the leaves;
And shadowy as the Fates’ dim shears
The weft that twilight weaves.
The summer sunset marched long hosts
Of gold adown one golden peak,
That flamed and fell; and now gray ghosts
Of mist the far west streak.
They seem the shades of things that weep,
Wan things the heavens would conceal;
Blood-stained; that bear within them, deep,
Red wounds that will not heal.
Night comes, and with it storm, that slips
Wild angles of the jagged light:--
I feel the wild rain on my lips,--
A wild girl is the Night.
A moaning tremor sweeps the trees;
And all the stars are packed with death:--
She holds me by the neck and knees,
I feel her wild, wet breath.
Hell and its hags drive on the rain:--
Night holds me by the hair and pleads;
Her kisses fall like blows again;
My brow is dewed with beads.
The thunder plants wild beacons on
Each volleying height.--My soul seems blown
Far out to sea. The world is gone,
And night and I alone.
Tampa, Florida, February, 1893.
WAR-TIME SILHOUETTES.
I
THE BATTLE
The night had passed. The day had come,
Bright-born, into a cloudless sky:
We heard the rolling of the drum,
And saw the war-flags fly.
And noon had crowded upon morn
Ere Conflict shook her red locks far,
And blew her brazen battle-horn
Upon the hills of War.
Noon darkened into dusk--one blot
Of nightmare lit with hell-born suns;--
We heard the scream of shell and shot
And booming of the guns.
On batteries of belching grape
We saw the thundering cavalry
Hurl headlong,--iron shape on shape,--
With shout and bugle-cry.
When dusk had moaned and died, and night
Came on, wind-swept and wild with rain,
We slept, ’mid many a bivouac light,
And vast fields heaped with slain.
II
IN HOSPITAL
Wounded to death he lay and dreamed
The drums of battle beat afar,
And round the roaring trenches screamed
The hell of war.
Then woke; and, weeping, spoke one word
To the kind nurse who bent above;
Then in the whitewashed ward was heard
A song of love.
The song _she_ sang him when she gave
The portrait that he kissed; then sighed,
“Lay it beside me in the grave!”
And smiled and died.
III
THE SOLDIER’S RETURN
A brown wing beat the apple leaves and shook
Some blossoms on her hair. Then, note on note,
The bird’s wild music bubbled. In her book,
Her old romance, she seemed to read. No look
Betrayed the tumult in her trembling throat.
The thrush sang on. A dreamy wind came down
From one white cloud of afternoon and fanned
The dropping petals on her book and gown,
And touched her hair, whose braids of quiet brown
Gently she smoothed with one white jeweled hand.
Then, with her soul, it seemed, from feet to brow
She felt him coming: ’t was his heart, his breath
That stirred the blossom on the apple bough;
His step the wood-thrush warbled to. And now
Her cheek went crimson, now as white as death.
Then on the dappled page his shadow--yes,
Not unexpected, yet her haste assumed
Fright’s startle; and low laughter did confess
His presence there, soft with his soul’s caress
And happy manhood, where the rambo bloomed.
Quickly she rose and all her gladness sent
Wild welcome to him. Her his unhurt arm
Drew unresisted; and the soldier leant
Fond lips to hers. She wept. And so they went
Deep in the orchard towards the old brick farm.
IV
THE APPARITION
A day of drought, foreboding rain and wind,
As if stern heaven, feeling earth had sinned,
Frowned all its hatred. When the evening came,
Along the west, from bank on bank unthinned
Of clouds, the storm unfurled its oriflamme.
Then lightning signaled, and the thunder woke
Its monster drums, and all God’s torrents broke.--
She saw the wild night when the dark pane flashed;
Heard, where she stood, the disemboweled oak
Roar into fragments when the welkin crashed.
Long had she waited for a word. And, lo!
Anticipation still would not say “No:”
He has not written; he will come to her;
At dawn!--to-night!--Her heart hath told her so;
And so expectancy and love aver.
She seems to hear his fingers on the pane--
The glass is blurred, she can not see for rain:
Is _that_ his horse?--the wind is never still:
And _that_ his cloak?--ah, surely that is plain!--
A torn vine tossing at the window-sill.
She hurries forth to meet him; pale and wet,
She sees his face; the war-soiled epaulet;
A sabre-scar that bleeds from brow to cheek;
And now he smiles, and now their lips have met,
And now ... Dear heart, he fell at Cedar Creek!
V
WOUNDED
It was in August that they brought her news
Of his bad wounds; the leg that he must lose.
And August passed, and when October raised
Red rebel standards on the hills that blazed,
They brought a haggard wreck; she scarce knew whose,
Until they told her, standing stunned and dazed.
A shattered shadow of the stalwart lad,
The five-months husband, whom his country had
Enlisted, strong for war; returning this,
Whose broken countenance she feared to kiss,
While health’s remembrance stood beside him sad,
And grieved for that which was no longer his.
They brought him on a litter; and the day
Was bright and beautiful. It seemed that May
In woodland rambles had forgot her path
Of season, and, disrobing for a bath,
By the autumnal waters of some bay,
With her white nakedness had conquered Wrath.
Far otherwise she wished it: wind and rain;
The sky, one gray commiserative pain;
Sleet, and the stormy drift of frantic leaves;
To match the misery that each perceives
Aches in her hand-clutched bosom, and is plain
In eyes and mouth and all her form that grieves.
Theirs, a mute meeting of the lips; she stooped
And kissed him once: one long, dark side-lock drooped
And brushed against the bandage of his breast;
With feeble hands he held it and caressed;
Then all his happiness in one look grouped,
Saying, “Now I am home, I crave but rest.”
Once it was love! but then the battle killed
All that sweet nonsense of his youth, and filled
His heart with sterner passion.--Ah, well! peace
Must balm its pain with patience; whose surcease
Means reconcilement; e’en as God hath willed,
With war or peace who shapes His ends at ease.--