The poems of Madison Cawein

What deity for dozing Laziness
Devised the lounging leafiness of this
Secluded nook?—And how!—did I distress
His musing ease that fled but now? or his
Communion with some forest-sister, fair
And shy as is the whippoorwill-flower there,
Did I disturb?—Still is the wild moss warm
And fragrant with late pressure,—as the palm
Of some hot Hamadryad, who, a-nap,
Props her hale cheek upon it, while her arm
Is wildflower-buried; in her hair the balm
Of a whole spring of blossoms and of sap.—

II

See, how the dented moss, that pads the hump
Of these distorted roots, elastic springs
From that god's late reclining! Lump by lump
Its points, impressed, rise in resilient rings,

As stars crowd, qualming through gray evening skies.—
Invisible presence, still I feel thy eyes
Regarding me, bringing dim dreams before
My half-closed gaze, here where great, green-veined leaves
Reach, waving at me, their innumerable hands,
Stretched towards this water where the sycamore
Stands burly guard; where every ripple weaves
A ceaseless, wavy quivering as of bands

III

Of elfin chivalry, that, helmed with gold,
Invisible march, making a twinkling sound.—
What brought thee here?—this wind, that steals the old
Gray legends from the forests and around
Whispers them now? Or, in those purple weeds
The hermit brook so busy with his beads?—
Lulling the silence with his prayers all day,
Droning soft Aves on his rosary
Of bubbles.—Or, that butterfly didst mark
On yon hag-taper, towering by the way,
A witch's yellow torch?—Or didst, like me,
Watch, drifting by, these curled, brown bits of bark?

IV

Or con the slender gold of this dim, still
Unmoving minnow 'neath these twisted roots,
Thrust o'er the smoky topaz of this rill?—
Or, in this sunlight, did those insect flutes,
Sleepy with summer, drowsily forlorn,
Remind thee of Tithonos and the Morn?
Until thine eyes dropped dew, the dimpled stream
Crinkling with crystal o'er the winking grail?—
Or didst perplex thee with some poet plan
To drug this air with beauty to make dream,—
Presence unseen, still watching in yon vale!—
Me, wildwood-wandered from the haunts of man!

LOVELINESS

I

Now let us forth to find the young witch Spring,
Seated amid her bow'rs and birds and buds,
Busy with loveliness.—And, wandering
Among old forests that the sunlight floods,
Or vales of hermit-holy solitudes,
Dryads shall beckon us from where they cling,
Their limbs an oak-bark brown; their hair—wild woods
Have perfumed—wreathed with earliest leaves: and they,
Regarding us with a dew-sparkling eye,
Shall whispering greet us, as the rain the rye,
Or from wild lips melodious welcome fling,
Like hidden waterfalls with winds at play.

II

Let us surprise the Naiad ere she slips—
Nude at her toilette—in her fountain's glass;
With damp locks dewy and evasive hips,
Cool-dripping, but an instant seen, alas!

When from indented moss and plushy grass—
Fear in her great eyes' rainbow-blue—she dips,
Irised, the cloven water; as we pass
Making a rippled circle that shall hide,
From our exploring eyes, what watery path
She gleaming took; what crystal haunt she hath
In minnowy freshness, where her murmurous lips,
Bubbling, make merry 'neath the rocky tide.

III

Then we may meet the Oread, whose eyes
Are dewdrops where twin heavens shine confessed:
She, all the maiden modesty's surprise
Rosying her temples,—to slim loins and breast
Tempestuous, brown, bewildering tresses pressed,—
Shall stand a moment's moiety in wise
Of some delicious dream, then shrink, distressed,
Like some wild mist that, hardly seen, is gone,
Footing the ferny hillside without sound;
Or, like storm sunlight, her white limbs shall bound,

A thistle's instant, towards a woody rise,
A flying glimmer o'er the dew-drenched lawn.

IV

And we may see the Satyrs in the shades
Of drowsy dells pipe, and, goat-footed, dance;
And Pan himself reel rollicking through the glades;
Or, hidden in bosky bow'rs, the Lust, perchance,
Faun-like, that waits with heated, animal glance
The advent of the Loveliness that wades
Thigh-deep through flowers, naked as Romance,
All unsuspecting, till two hairy arms
Clasp her rebellious beauty, panting white,
Whose tearful terror, struggling into might,
Beats the brute brow resisting, but evades
Not him, for whom the gods designed her charms.

WAITING

Were it but May now, while
our hearts are yearning,
How they would bound and smile,
The young blood burning!
Around the tedious dial
No slow hands turning.

Were it but May now!—say,
What joy to go,
Your hand in mine all day,
Where blossoms blow!
Your hand, more white than May,
May's flowers of snow.

Were it but May now!—think,
What wealth she has!
The bluet and wild-pink,
Wild flowers,—that mass
About the wood-brook's brink,—
And sassafras.

Nights, that the large stars strew,
Heaven on heaven rolled;
Nights, pearled with stars and dew,
Whose heavens hold
Aromas, and the new
Moon's curve of gold.

So mad, so wild is March!—
I long, oh, long
To see the redbud's torch
Flame far and strong;
Hear, on my vine-climbed porch,
The bluebird's song.

How slow the Hours creep,
Each with a crutch!—
Ah, could my spirit leap
Its bounds and touch
That day, no thing would keep—
Or matter much!

But now, with you away,
Time halts and crawls,
Feet clogged with winter clay,
That never falls,
While, distant still, that day
Of meeting calls.

LONGINGS

Now when the first wild violets peer
All rain-filled at blue April skies,
As on one smiles one's sweetheart dear
With the big teardrops in her eyes:

Now when the May-apples, I wis,
Bloom white along lone, greenwood creeks,
As bashful as the cheeks you kiss,
As waxen as your sweetheart's cheeks:

Within the soul what longings rise
To stamp the town-dust from the feet!
Fare forth to gaze in Spring's clean eyes,
And kiss her cheeks so cool and sweet!

THE SWEET O' THE YEAR

I

How can I help from laughing, while
The daffodillies at me smile?
The dancing dew winks tipsily
In clusters of the lilac-tree,
And crocus' mouths and hyacinths'
Storm through the grassy labyrinths
A mirth of pearl and violet;
While roses, bud by bud,
Laugh from each dainty-lacing net
Red lips of maidenhood.

II

How can I help from singing when
The swallow and the hawk again
Are noisy in the hyaline
Of happy heavens, clear as wine?
The robin, lustily and shrill,
Pipes on the timber-belted hill;

And o'er the fallow skim the bold,
Mad orioles that glow
Like shining shafts of ingot gold
Shot from the morning's bow.

III

How can I help from loving, dear,
Since love is of the sweetened year?—
The very insects feel his power,
And chirr and chirrup hour on hour;
The bee and beetle in the noon,
The cricket underneath the moon:—
What else to do but follow too,
Since youth is on the wing,
Lord Life who follows through the dew
Lord Love a-carolling.

IN MIDDLE SPRING

Now the fields are rolled into turbulent gold,
And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent
With the emerald surges of wood and of wold,
A flower-foam bursting redolent:
Now the dingles and deeps of the woodland old
Are glad with a sibilant life new sent,
Too rare to be told are the manifold,
Sweet fancies that quicken, eloquent,
In the heart that no longer is cold.

How it knows of the wings of the hawk ere it swings
From the drippled dew scintillant seen!
Where the redbird hides, ere it flies or sings,
In melodious quiverings of green!
How the sun to the dogwood such kisses brings
That it laughs into blossoms of wonderful sheen;
While the wind, to the strings of his lute that rings,
Makes love to apple and nectarine,
Till the sap in them rosily springs.

Go seek in the ray for a sworded fay,
The chestnut's buds into blooms that rips;
And look in the brook, that runs laughing gay,
For the Nymph with the laughing lips;
In the brake for the Dryad whose eyes are gray,
From whose bosom the perfume drips;
The Faun hid away, where the branches sway,
Thick ivy low down on his hips,
Pursed lips on a syrinx at play.

So, ho! for the rose, the Romeo rose,
And the lyric it hides in its heart!
And, oh, for the epic the oak-tree knows,
Sonorous as Homer in art!
And it's ho! for the prose of the weed that grows
Green-writing Earth's commonest part!—
What God may propose let us learn of those,
The songs and the dreams that start
In the heart of each blossom that blows.

A SPRING SHOWER

We stood where the fields were beryl,
The redolent woodland was warm;
And the heaven above us, now sterile,
Was alive with the pulse-winds of storm.

We had watched the green wheat brighten
And gloom as it winced at each gust;
And the turbulent maples whiten
As the lane blew gray with dust.

White flakes from the blossoming cherry,
Pink snows of the peaches were blown,
And star-bloom wrecks of the berry
And dogwood petals were sown.

Then instantly heaven was sullied,
And earth was thrilled with alarm,
As a cloud, that the thunder had gullied,
Thrust over the sunlight its arm.

The birds to dry coverts had hurried,
And hid in their leafy-built rooms;
And the bees and the hornets had buried
Themselves in the bells of the blooms.

Then down from the clouds, as from towers,
Rode slant the tall lancers of rain,
And charged the fair troops of the flowers,
And trampled the grass of the plain.

And the armies of blossoms were scattered;
Their standards hung draggled and lank;
And the rose and the lily were shattered,
And the iris lay crushed on its bank.

But high in the storm was the swallow,
And the rock-loud voice of the fall,
From its ramparts of forest, rang hollow
Defiance and challenge o'er all.

But the storm and its clouds passed over,
And left but one cloud in the west,
Wet wafts that were fragrant with clover,
And the sun slow-sinking to rest.

Rain-drippings and rain in the poppies,
And scents as of honey and bees;
A touch of wild light on the coppice,
That turned into flames the drenched trees.

Then the cloud in the sunset was riven,
And bubbled and rippled with gold,
And over the gorges of heaven,
Like a gonfalon vast was unrolled.

HEPATICAS

In the frail hepaticas—
That the early Springtide tossed,
Sapphire-like, along the ways
Of the woodlands that she crossed—
I behold, with other eyes,
Footprints of a dream that flies.

One who leads me; whom I seek:
In whose loveliness there is
All the glamour that the Greek
Knew as wind-borne Artemis.—
I am mortal. Woe is me!
Her sweet immortality!

Spirit, must I always fare,
Following thy averted looks?
Now thy white arm, now thy hair,
Glimpsed among the trees and brooks?
Thou who hauntest, whispering,
All the slopes and vales of Spring.

Cease to lure! or grant to me
All thy beauty! though it pain,
Slay with splendor utterly!
Flash revealment on my brain!
And one moment let me see
All thy immortality!

SPIRITS OF SPRING

I

Over the summer seas,
From the Hesperides,
Warm as the southern breeze,
Gather the Spirits,
Clad on with sun and rain,
Fire in each ardent vein,
Who, with a wild refrain,
Waken the germs that the Season inherits.

II

See, where they come, like mist,
Gleaming with amethyst,
Trailing the light that kissed
Vine-tangled mountains
Looming o'er tropic lakes,
Where every wind, that shakes
Tamarisk coverts, makes
Music that haunts like the falling of fountains.

III

You may behold the beat
Of their wild hearts of heat,
And their rose-flashing feet
Flying before us:
Hear them among the trees
Whispering like far-off seas,
Waking the drowsy bees,
Wild-birds and flowers and torrents sonorous.

IV

You may behold their eyes,
Star-like, that sapphire dyes,
To which the blossoms rise
Star-like; and shadows
Flee from: and, golden deep,
As through the woods they sweep,
See their wild curls that keep
Asphodel memories that kindle the meadows.

V

Music of forest-streams,
Fragrance and dewy gleams,
Daybreak and dawn and dreams,
High things and lowly,

Mix in their limbs of light,
Which, what they touch of blight,
Quicken to blossom white,
Raise to be beautiful, perfect, and holy.

VI

Come! do not sit and wait
Now that once desolate
Fields are intoxicate
With birds and flowers!
And all the woods are rife
With resurrected life,
Passion and purple strife
Of the warm winds and the turbulent showers.

VII

Come! let us lie and dream
Here by the wildwood stream,
Where many a twinkling gleam
Falls on the rooty
Banks; and the forest glooms
Rain down their redbud blooms,
Armfuls of wild perfumes—
Winds! or Auloniads busy with beauty.

MIRABILE DICTU

I

There dwells a goddess in the West,
An Island in death-lonesome seas;
No towered towns are hers confessed,
No castled forts or palaces;
Hers, simple worshipers at best,
The buds, the birds, the bees.

II

And she hath wonder-words of song,
So heavenly beautiful and shed
So sweetly from her honeyed tongue,
The savage creatures, it is said,
Hark, marble-still, their wilds among,
And nightingales fall dead.

III

I know her not, nor have I known:
I only feel that she is there:

For when my heart is most alone,
Her deep communion fills the air,—
Her influence calls me from my own,—
Miraculously fair.

IV

Then fain am I to sing and sing,
And then again to fly and fly,
Beyond the flight of cloud or wing,
Far under azure arcs of sky;
My love at her chaste feet to fling,
Behold her face and—die.

A DREAMER OF DREAMS

He lived beyond men, and so stood
Admitted to the brotherhood
Of beauty; dreams, with which he trod
Companioned as some sylvan god.
And oft men wondered, when his thought
Made all their knowledge seem as naught,
If he, like Uther's mystic son,
Had not been born for Avalon.

When wandering 'mid the whispering trees,
His soul communed with every breeze;
Heard voices calling from the glades,
Bloom-words of the Leimoniads;
Or Dryads of the ash and oak,
Who syllabled his name and spoke
With him of presences and powers
That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.

By every violet-hallowed brook,
Where every bramble-matted nook

Rippled and laughed with water sounds,
He walked like one on sainted grounds,
Fearing intrusion on the spell
That kept some fountain-spirit's well,
Or woodland genius, sitting where
Red, racy berries kissed his hair.

Once when the wind, far o'er the hill,
Had fall'n and left the wildwood still
For Dawn's dim feet to glide across,—
Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss,
The air around him golden ripe
With daybreak,—there, with oaten pipe,
His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan,
Goat-bearded, and half-brute, half-man;
Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme
Blew in his reed to rudest time;
And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye—
Beneath the slowly silvering sky,
Whose light shone through the forest's roof—
Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof
The branch was snapped, and, interfused
Between great roots, the moss was bruised.

And often when he wandered through
Old forests at the fall of dew—
A new Endymion who sought

A beauty higher than all thought—
Some night, men said, most surely he
Would favored be of deity:
That in the holy solitude
Her sudden presence, long pursued,
Unto his gaze would be confessed;
The awful moonlight of her breast
Come, high with majesty, and hold
His heart's blood till his heart were cold,
Unpulsed, unsinewed, and undone,
And snatch his soul to Avalon.

PAN

I

Haunter of green intricácies
Where the sunlight's amber laces
Deeps of darkest violet;
Where the shaggy Satyr chases
Nymphs and Dryads, fair as Graces,
Whose white limbs with dew are wet:
Piper in hid mountain places,
Where the blue-eyed Oread braces
Winds which in her sweet cheeks set
Of Aurora rosy traces;
While the Faun from myrtle mazes
Watches with an eye of jet:
What art thou and these dim races,
Thou, O Pan, of many faces,
Who art ruler yet?

II

Tell me, piper, have I ever
Heard thy hollow syrinx quiver
Trickling music in the trees?

Where the hazel copses shiver,
Have I heard its dronings sever
The warm silence, or the bees?
Ripple murmurings that never
Could be born of fall or river,
Or the whispering breeze.

III

Once in tempest it was given
Me to see thee,—where the leven
Lit the craggy wood with glare,—
Dancing, while,—like wedges driven,—
Thunder split the deeps of heaven,
And the wild rain swept thy hair.—
What art thou, whose presence, even
While with fear my heart was riven,
Healed it as with prayer?

A STORMY SUNSET

I

Soul of my body! what a death
For such a day of grief and gloom,
Unbroken sorrow of the sky!—
'Tis as if God's own loving breath
Had swept the piled-up thunder by,
And, bursting through the tempest's sheath,
Cleft from its pod a giant bloom.

II

See how the glory grows! unrolled,
Expanding length on radiant length
Of cloud-wrought petals.—Vast, a rose
The western heavens of flame unfold,
Where, sparkling thro' the splendor, glows
The evening star, fresh-faced with strength—
A raindrop in its heart of gold.

A WOODLAND GRAVE

White moons may come, white moons may go,
She sleeps where early blossoms blow;
Knows nothing of the leafy June,
That leans above her, night and noon,
Crowned now with sunbeam, now with moon,
Watching her roses grow.

The downy moth at evening comes
And flutters round their honeyed blooms:
Long, languid clouds, like ivory,
That isle the blue lagoons of sky,
Grow red as molten gold and dye
With flame the pine-dark glooms.

Dew, dripping from wet fern and leaf;
The wind, that shakes the blossom's sheaf;
The slender sound of water lone,
That makes a harp-string of some stone,
And now a wood-bird's twilight moan,
Seem whisp'rings there of grief.

Her garden, where the lilacs grew,
Where, on old walls, old roses blew,
Head-heavy with their mellow musk,
Where, when the beetle's drone was husk,
She lingered in the dying dusk,
No more shall know that knew.

Her orchard,—where the Spring and she
Stood listening to each bird and bee,—
That, from its fragant firmament,
Snowed blossoms on her as she went,
(A blossom with their blossoms blent)
No more her face shall see.

White moons may come, white moons may go,
She sleeps where early blossoms blow;
Around her headstone many a seed
Shall sow itself; and briar and weed
Shall grow to hide it from men's heed,
And none will care or know.

THE OLD BYWAY

Its rotting fence one scarcely sees
Through sumac and wild blackberries,
Thick elder and the bramble-rose,
Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees
Hang droning in repose.

The little lizards lie all day
Gray on its rocks of lichen-gray;
And there, gay Ariels of the sun,
The butterflies make bright its way,
And paths where chipmunks run.

Its lyric there the redbird lifts,
While, overhead, the swallow drifts
'Neath sun-soaked clouds of palest cream,—
In which the wind makes azure rifts,—
And there the wood-doves dream.

The brown grasshoppers rasp and bound
'Mid weeds and briars that hedge it round;
And in its grass-grown ruts,—where stirs
The harmless snake—mole-crickets sound;
O'erhead the locust whirs.

At evening, when the sad west turns
To lonely night a cheek that burns,
The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing;
And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns
The wind wakes, whispering.

THE WOODPATH

Here Spring her first frail violets blows;
Broadcast her whitest wind-flowers sows
Through starry mosses amber-fair,
And fronded ferns and briar-rose,
Hart's-tongue and maidenhair.

Here fungus life is beautiful;
Slim mushroom and the thick toadstool,—
As various colored as are blooms,—
Dot their damp cones through shadows cool,
And breathe forth rain perfumes.

Here stray the wandering cows to rest;
The calling cat-bird builds its nest
In spicewood bushes dark and deep;
Here raps the woodpecker its best,
And here young rabbits leap.

Beech, oak, and cedar; hickories;
The pawpaw and persimmon trees;
And tangled vines and sumac-brush,
Make dark the daylight, where the bees
Drone, and the wood-springs gush.

Here to pale melancholy moons,
In haunted nights of dreamy Junes,
Wails wildly the weird whippoorwill,
Whose strains, like those the owlet croons,
Wild woods with phantoms fill.

THE SOUND OF THE SAP

When the ice was thick on the flower-beds,
And the sleet was caked on the briar;
When the frost was down in the brown bulb's heads,
And the ways were clogged with mire:

When the snow on syringa and spiræa-tree
Seemed the ghosts of perished flowers;
And the days were sorry as sorry could be,
And Time limped, cursing his fardel of hours:

Heigh-ho! had I not a book and the logs,
That chirped with the sap in the burning?—
Or was it the frogs in the far-off bogs?
Or the bush-sparrow's song at the turning?

And I strolled by ways that the Springtime knows,
In her mossy dells, and her ferny passes;
Where the earth was holy with lily and rose,
And the myriad life of the grasses.

And I spoke with the Spring as a lover, who speaks
To his sweetheart; to whom he has given
A kiss that has kindled the rose of her cheeks,
And her eyes with the laughter of heaven.

The sound of the sap!—What a simple thing!—
But the sound of the sap had the power
To make the song-sparrow come and sing,
And the winter woodlands flower!

THE DRYAD

I have seen her limpid eyes,
Large with gradual laughter, rise
In the wild-rose nettles;
Slowly, like twin flowers, unfold,
Smiling,—when the wind, behold!
Whisked them into petals.

I have seen her hardy cheek,
Like a molten coral, leak
Through the leaves around it
Of thick Chickasaws; but so,
When I made more certain, lo!
A red plum I found it.

I have found her racy lips,
And her roguish finger-tips,
But a haw or berry;
Glimmers of her there and here,
Just, forsooth, enough to cheer,
And to make me merry.

Often from the ferny rocks
Dazzling rimples of her locks
At me she hath shaken;
And I've followed—but in vain!—
They had trickled into rain,
Sunlit, on the braken.

Once her full limbs flashed on me,
Naked, where a royal tree
Checkered mossy places
With soft sunlight and dim shade,—
Such a haunt as myths have made
For the Satyr races.

There, it seemed, hid amorous Pan;
For a sudden pleading ran
Through the thicket, wooing
Me to search and, suddenly,
From the swaying elder-tree,
Flew a wild-dove, cooing.

A DEAD LILY

The South saluted her mouth
Till her breath was sweet with the South.

The North in her ear breathed low,
Till her veins ran crystal and snow.

The West 'neath her eyelids blew,
Till her heart beat honey and dew.

And the East with his magic old
Changed her body to pearl and gold.

And she stood like a beautiful thought
That a godhead of love had wrought. . . .

How strange that the Power begot it
Only to kill it and rot it!

THE DEAD OREAD

Her heart is still and leaps no more
With holy passion when the breeze,
Her whilom playmate, as before,
Comes with the language of the bees,
Sad songs her mountain cedars sing,
And water-music murmuring.

Her calm, white feet,—once fleet and fast
As Daphne's when a god pursued,—
No more will dance like sunlight past
The gold-green vistas of the wood,
Where every quailing floweret
Smiled into life where they were set.

Hers were the limbs of living light,
And breasts of snow, as virginal
As mountain drifts; and throat as white
As foam of mountain waterfall;
And hyacinthine curls, that streamed
Like mountain mists, and gloomed and gleamed.

Her presence breathed such scents as haunt
Deep mountain dells and solitudes,
Aromas wild,—like some wild plant
That fills with sweetness all the woods;—
And comradeship with stars and skies
Shone in the azure of her eyes.

Her grave be by a mossy rock
Upon the top of some high hill,
Removed, remote from men who mock
The myths, the dreams of life they kill;
Where all of love and naught of lust
May guard her solitary dust.

PAX VOBISCUM

I

I know that from thine eyes
The Spring her violets grew;
Those bits of April skies,
On which the green turf lies,
Whereon they blossom blue.

II

I know that Summer wrought
From thy sweet heart that rose,
With such faint fragrance fraught,—
Its pale, poetic thought
Of peace and deep repose.—

III

That Autumn, like some god,
From thy delicious hair,—
Lost sunlight 'neath the sod,—
Shot up this goldenrod
To toss it everywhere.

IV

That Winter from thy breast
The snowdrop's whiteness stole—
Much kinder than the rest—
Thy innocence confessed,
The pureness of thy soul.

AT REST

I heard the dead man, where he lay
Within the open coffin, say:—

“Why do they come to weep and cry
Around me now?—Because I lie
So silent, and my heart's at rest?
Because the pistons of my blood
No more in this machinery thud?
And on these eyes, that once were blessed
With magnetism and fire, are pressed
The soldered eyelids, like a sheath?
On which the icy hand of Death
Hath laid invisible coins of lead
Stamped with the image of his head?

“Why will they weep and not have done?
Why sorrow so? and all for one,
Who, they believe, hath found the best
God gives to us,—and that is rest.
Why grieve?—Yea, rather let them lift

The voice in thanks for such a gift,
That leaves the worn hands, long that wrought,
And weary feet, that sought and sought,
At peace; and makes what came to naught,
In life, more real now than all
The good men strive for here on Earth:
The love they seek; the things they call
Desirable and full of worth;
Yea, wisdom ev'n; and, like the South,
The dreams that dewed the soul's sick drouth,
And heart's sad barrenness.—God's rest,
With every sigh and every tear,
By them who weep above me here,
Despite their Faith and Hope, 's confessed
A doubt; a thing to dread and fear.

“Before them peacefully I lie.
But, haply, not for me they sigh,
But for themselves,—their loss. The round
Of daily labor still to do
For them, while for myself 'tis through;
And all the unknown, too, is found,
The bourn for which all hopes are bound,
Where dreams are all made manifest:
For this they grieve, perhaps. 'Tis well;
Since 'tis through grief the soul is blessed,
Not joy;—and yet, we can not tell,

We do not know, we can not prove,
We only feel that there is love,
And something we call Heaven and Hell.

“Howbeit, here, you see, I lie,
As all shall lie—for all must die—
A cast-off, useless, empty shell,
In which an essence once did dwell;
That once, like fruit, the spirit held,
And with its husk of flesh compelled:
The mask of mind, the world of will,
That laughed and wept and labored till
The thing within, that never slept,
The life essential, from it stept;
The ichor-veined inhabitant
Who made it all it was; in all
Its aims the thing original,
That held its course, like any star,
Among its fellows; or a plant,
Among its brother plants; 'mid whom,—
The same and yet dissimilar,—
Distinct and individual,
It grew to microcosmic bloom.”

These were the words the dead man said
To me who stood beside the dead.

DISTANCE

I

I dreamed last night once more I stood
Knee-deep on purple clover leas;
Her old home glimmered through its wood
Of dark and melancholy trees:
And on my brow I felt the breeze
That blew from out the solitude,
With sounds of waters that pursued,
And sleepy hummings of the bees.

II

And ankle-deep in violet blooms
Methought I saw her standing there,
A lawny light among the glooms,
A crown of sunlight on her hair;
The wood-birds, warbling everywhere,
Above her head flashed happy plumes;
About her clung the wild perfumes,
And woodland gleams of shimmering air.

III

And then she called me: in my ears
Her voice was music; and it led
My sad soul back with all its fears;
Recalled my spirit that had fled.—
And in my dream it seemed she said,
“Our hearts keep true through all the years;”
And on my face I felt the tears,
The blinding tears of her long dead.

DEFICIENCY

Ah, God! were I away, away
By woodland-belted hills!
There might be more in this bright day
Than my poor spirit thrills.

The elder coppice, banks of blooms;
The spicewood brush; the field
Of tumbled clover, and perfumes
Hot, weedy pastures yield.

The old rail-fence, whose angles hold
Bright briar and sassafras;
Sweet, priceless wildflowers, blue and gold,
Starred through the moss and grass.

The ragged path that winds unto
Lone, bird-melodious nooks,
Through brambles to the shade and dew
Of rocks and woody brooks.

To see the minnows flash and gleam
Like sparkling prisms; all
Shoot in gray schools adown the stream
Let but a dead leaf fall!

To feel the buoyance and delight
Of floating, feathered seeds!
Capricious wisps of wandering white
Born of silk-bearing weeds.

Ah, God! were I away, away
Among wild woods and birds,
There were more soul in this bright day
Than one could bless with words.

MIDSUMMER

The red blood stings through her cheeks and clings
In their tan with a fever that lightens;
And the clearness of heaven-born mountain springs
In her dark eyes dusks and brightens:
Her limbs are the limbs of an Atalanta who swings
With the youths in the sinewy games,
When the hot wind sings through the hair it flings,
And the circus roars hoarse with their names,
As they fly to the goal that flames.

Her voice is as deep as the waters that sweep
Through the musical reeds of a river;
A voice as of reapers who bind and reap,
With the ring of curved scythes that quiver:
A voice, singing ripe the orchards that heap
With crimson and gold the ground;

That whispers like sleep, till the briars weep
Their berries, all ruby round,
And vineyards are purple-crowned.

Right sweet is the beat of her glowing feet,
And her smile, as Heaven's, is gracious;
The creating might of her hands of heat
As a god's or a goddess's spacious:
The odorous blood in her heart a-beat
Is rich with a perishless fire;
And her bosom, most sweet, is the ardent seat
Of a mother who never will tire,
While the world has a breath to suspire.

Wherever she fares her soft voice bears
Fecundity; powers that thicken
The fruits,—as the wind made Thessalian mares
Of old mysteriously quicken:—
The apricots' honey, the milk of the pears,
The wine, great grape-clusters hold,
These, these are her cares, and her wealth she declares
In the corn's long billows of gold,
And flowers that jewel the wold.

So, hail to her lips, and her sun-girt hips,
And the glory she wears in her tresses!

All hail to the balsam that dreams and drips
From her breasts that the light caresses!
Midsummer! whose fair arm lovingly slips
Round the Earth's great waist of green,
From whose mouth's aroma his hot mouth sips
The life that is love unseen,
And the beauty that God may mean.

DIURNAL

I

With molten ruby, clear as wine,
The East's great cup of daybreak brims;
The morning-glories swing and shine;
The night-dews bead their satin rims;
The bees are busy in flower and vine,
And load with gold their limbs.

Sweet Morn, the South
A loyal lover,
Kisses thy mouth,
Thy rosy mouth,
And over and over
Wooes thee with scents of wild-honey and clover.

II

Beside the wall the roses blow
That Noon's hot breezes scarcely shake;

Beside the wall the poppies glow,
So full of fire their deep hearts ache;
The drowsy butterflies fly slow,
Half sleeping, half awake.

Sweet Noontide, Rest,—
A reaper sleeping,—
His head on thy breast,
Thy redolent breast,
Dreams of the reaping,
While sounds of the scythes all around him are sweeping.

III

Along lone paths the cricket cries,
Where Night distils dim scent and dew;
One mad star 'thwart the heaven flies,
A glittering curve of molten blue;
Now grows the big moon in the skies;
The stars are faint and few.

Sweet Night, the vows
Of love long taken,
Against thy brows
Lay their pale brows,
Till thy soul is shaken
Of amorous dreams that make it awaken.

THE FAMILY BURYING GROUND

A wall of crumbling stones doth keep
Watch o'er long barrows where they sleep,
Old, chronicled grave-stones of its dead,
On which oblivion's mosses creep
And lichens gray as lead.

Warm days, the lost cows, as they pass,
Rest here and browse the juicy grass
That springs about its sun-scorched stones;
Afar one hears their bells' deep brass
Waft melancholy tones.

Here the wild morning-glory goes
A-rambling, and the myrtle grows;
Wild morning-glories, pale as pain,
With holy urns, that hint at woes,
The night hath filled with rain.

Here are the largest berries seen,
Rich, winey-dark, whereon the lean
Black hornet sucks; noons, sick with heat,
That bend not to the shadowed green
The heavy, bearded wheat.

At night, for its forgotten dead,
A requiem, of no known wind said,
Through ghostly cedars moans and throbs,
While to the starlight overhead
The shivering screech-owl sobs.

CLOUDS

All through the tepid summer night
The starless sky had poured a cool
Monotony of pleasant rain
In music beautiful.

And for an hour I sat to watch
Clouds moving on majestic feet;
And heard down avenues of night
Their hearts of thunder beat.

Prodigious limbs, far-veined with gold,
Pulsed fiery life o'er wood and plain,
While, scattered, fell from giant hands
The largess of the rain.

Beholding at each lightning flash
Their generous silver on the sod,
In meek devotion bowed, I thanked
These almoners of God.

THE HERON

I
EVENING

A vein of flame, the long creek crawls
Beneath dark brows of woodland walls,
Red where the sunset's crimson falls.
One wiry leg drawn to his breast,
Neck-shrunk, at solitary rest,
The heron stands among the bars.

II
NIGHT

The whimpering creek breaks on the stone,
Where for a while the new moon shone
With one white star and one alone.
Lank haunter of lone marshy lands
The melancholy heron stands,
Then, clamoring, dives into the stars.

AVATARS

I

When the moon hangs low
Over an afterglow,
Lilac and lily;
When the stars are high,
Wisps in a windless sky,
Silverly stilly:—

He, who will lean, his inner ear compelling,
May hear the spirit of the forest stream
Its story to a wildwood flower telling,
That is no flower but some ascended dream.

II

When the dawn's first lines
Show dimly through the pines
Along the mountain;
When the stars are few,
And starry lies the dew
Around the fountain:—

Who will, may hear, within her leafy dwelling,
The spirit of the oak-tree, great and strong,
Its romance to the wildwood streamlet telling,
That is no stream but some descended song.

LILLITA

Can I forget how, when you stood
'Mid orchards whence the bloom had fled,
Stars made the orchards seem a-bud,
And weighed the sighing boughs o'er-head
With shining ghosts of blossoms dead?

Or when you bowed, a lily tall,
Above your drowsy lilies, slim,
Transparent pale, that by the wall
Like cups of moonlight seemed to swim,
Brimmed with faint fragrance to the brim?

And in the cloud that lingered low—
A silent pallor in the west—
There stirred and beat a golden glow,
Like some great heart that could not rest,
A heart of gold within its breast.

Your heart, your soul were in the wild:
You loved to hear the whippoorwill

Lament its love, when, dewy mild,
The harvest scent made musk the hill.
You loved to walk, where oft had trod
The red deer, o'er the fallen hush
Of Fall's torn leaves, when th' ivy-tod
Hung frosty by each berried bush.

Still do the whippoorwills complain
Above your listless lilies, where
The moonlight their white faces stain;
Still flows the dreaming streamlet there,
Whispering of rest an easeful air. . . .

O music of the falling rain,
At night unto her painless rest
Sound sweet not sad! and make her fain
To feel the wildflowers on her breast
Lift moist, pure faces up again
To breathe a prayer in fragrance blessed.

Thick-pleated beeches long have crossed
Old, gnarly arms above her tomb,
Where oft I sit and dream her ghost
Smiles, like a blossom, through the gloom;
Dim as a mist,—that summer lost,—
Of tangled starbeam and perfume.

MIRIAM

White clouds and buds and birds and bees,
Low wind-notes, piped down southern seas,
Brought thee, a rose-white offering,
A flower-like baby with the spring.

She, with her April, gave to thee
A soul of winsome witchery;
Large, heavenly eyes and sparkling whence
Shines the young mind's soft influence;
Where love's eternal innocence,
And smiles and tears of maidenhood,
Gleam with the dreams of hope and good.

She, with the dower of her May
Gave thee a nature strong to sway
Man's higher feelings; and a pride
Where all pride's smallness is denied.
Limbs wrought of lilies; and a face
Made of a rose-bloom; and the grace
Of water, that thy limbs express
In each chaste billow of thy dress.

She, with her dreamy June, brought down
Night-deeps of hair that are thy crown;
A voice like low winds musical,
Or streams that in the moonlight fall
O'er bars of pearl; and in thy heart,—
True gold,—she set Joy's counterpart,
A gem, that in thy fair face gleams,
All radiance, when it speaks or dreams;
And in thy soul the jewel Truth
Whose beauty is perpetual youth.

TWO DAYS

I

The slanted storm tossed at their feet
The frost-nipped autumn leaves;
The park's high pines were caked with sleet,
And ice-spears armed the eaves.
They strolled adown the pillared pines,
To part where wet and twisted vines
About the gate-posts blew and beat.
She watched him riding through the rain
Along the river's misty shore,
And turned with lips that laughed disdain:
“To meet no more!”

II

'Mid heavy roses weighed with dew
The chirping crickets hid;
I' the honeysuckle avenue
Sang the green katydid.
Soft southern stars smiled through the pines.

Through stately windows, draped with vines,
The drifting moonlight's silver blew.
She stared upon a face, now dead,
A soldier calm that wore;
Despair sobbed on the lips that said,
“To meet no more.”

MOONRISE AT SEA

I

With lips that had hushed all their fury
Of foam and of winds that were strewn,
Of storm and of turbulent hurry,
The ocean sighed; heralding soon
A ship of miraculous glory,
Of pearl and of fire—the moon.

II

And up from the East, with a slipping
And shudder and clinging of light,
With a loos'ning of clouds and a dipping,
Outbound for the Havens of Night,
With a silence of sails and a dripping,
The vessel came, wonderful white.

III

Then heaven and ocean were sprinkled
With splendor; for every sheet
And spar, and its hollow hull twinkled
With mother-of-pearl. And the feet
Of spirits, that followed it, crinkled
The billows that under it beat.

IN NOVEMBER

No windy white of wind-blown clouds is thine!
No windy white, but low and sodden gray,
That holds the melancholy skies and kills
The wild song and the wild-bird. Yet, ah me!
Thy melancholy skies and mournful woods,
Brown, sighing forests dying that I love!
Thy long, dead leaves, deep, deep about my feet,
Slow, dragging feet that halt or wander on;
Thy deep, sweet, crimson leaves that burn and die
With silent fever of the sickened wood.

I love to hear in all thy wind-swept coignes,
Rain-wet and choked with bleached and ruined weeds,
The withered whisper of the many leaves,
That, fallen on barren ways—like fallen hopes—
Once held so high upon the Summer's heart
Of stalwart trees, now seem the desolate voice
Of Earth lamenting in hushed undertones
Her green departed glory vanished so.

IN LATE FALL

O days, that break the wild-bird's heart,
That slay the wild-bird and its songs!
Why should death play so sad a part
With you to whom such sweet belongs?

Why are your eyes so filled with tears,
As with the rain the frozen flowers?
Why are your hearts so swept with fears,
Like winds among the ruined bowers?

Farewell! farewell! for she is dead,
The old gray month; I saw her die:
Go, light your torches round her head,
The last red leaves, and let her lie.

WITH THE SEASONS

I

You will not love me, sweet,
When this brief year is past;
Or love, now at my feet,
At other feet you'll cast,
At fairer feet you'll cast.
You will not love me, sweet,
When this brief year is past.

II

Now 'tis the Springtime, dear,
And crocus-cups hold flame,
Brimmed to the pregnant year,
All bashful as with shame,
Who blushes as with shame.
Now 'tis the Springtime, dear,
And crocus-cups hold flame.

III

Soon Summer will be queen,
At her brown throat one rose,
And poppy-pod, and bean,
Will rustle as she goes,
As down the garth she goes.
Soon Summer will be queen,
At her brown throat one rose.

IV

Then Autumn come, a prince,
A gipsy crowned with gold;
Gold weight the fruited quince,
Gold strew the leafy wold,
The wild and wind-swept wold.
Then Autumn come, a prince,
A gipsy crowned with gold.

V

Then Winter will be king,
Snow-driven from feet to head;
No song-birds then will sing,
The winds will wail instead,
The wild winds weep instead.
Then Winter will be king,
Snow-driven from feet to head.

VI

Then shall I weep, who smiled,
And curse the coming years,
You and myself, and child,
Born unto shame and tears,
A mother's shame and tears.
Then shall I weep, who smiled,
And curse the coming years.

TYRANNY

What is there now more merciless
Than such fast lips that will not speak;
That stir not if one curse or bless
A God who made them weak?

More maddening to one there is naught
Than such white eyelids sealed on eyes,
Eyes vacant of the thing named thought,
An exile in the skies.

Ah, silent tongue! ah, dull, closed ear!
What angel utterances low
Have wooed you? so you may not hear
Our mortal words of woe!

WHAT YOU WILL

I

When the season was dry and the sun was hot,
And the hornet sucked, gaunt on the apricot,
And the ripe peach dropped, to its seed a-rot,
With a lean, red wasp that stung and clung:
When the hollyhocks, ranked in the garden plot,
More seed-pods had than blossoms, I wot,
Then all had been said and been sung,
And meseemed that my heart had forgot.

II

When the black grape bulged with the juice that burst
Through its thick blue skin that was cracked with thirst,
And the round, ripe pippins, that summer had nursed,
In the yellowing leaves o' the orchard hung:

When the farmer, his lips with whistling pursed,
To his sun-tanned brow in the corn was immersed,
Then something was said or was sung,
And I remembered as much as I durst.

III

Now the sky of December gray drips and drips,
And eaves of the barn the icicle tips,
And the cackling hen on the snow-path slips,
And the cattle shiver the fields among:
Now the ears of the milkmaid the north-wind nips,
And the red-chapped cheeks of the farm-boy whips,
What, what shall be said or be sung,
With my lips pressed warm to your lips!

MIDWINTER

The dewdrop from the rose that drips
Hath not the sparkle of her lips,
My lady's lips.

Than her long braids of yellow hold
The dandelion hath not more gold,
Her braids of gold.

The blue-bell hints not more of skies
Than do the flowers of her eyes,
My lady's eyes.

The sweet-pea bloom shows not more grace
Of delicate pink than doth her face,
My lady's face.

So, heigh-ho! then, though skies be gray,
Spring blossoms in my heart to-day,
This winter day!

University of Virginia Library

[BLOOMS OF THE BERRY]

[Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing]

THE WOOD GOD

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