Fantasy and Passion :: :: University of Virginia Library

The salt sea-wind is a merry-maker,
Rippling the wild bluff's daisied reach;
The quick surf glides from the arching breaker
And foams on the tawny beach.

Out where the long reef glooms and glances
And tosses sunward its diamond rains,
Morn has pierced with her golden lances
The dizzy light-house panes.

Gladdened by sounds of infinite surges,
Heedless what billow or gale may do,
The white gulls float where the ocean-verges
Blend with a glimmer of blue.

I watch how the curtaining vapor settles
Dim on their tireless plumes far-borne,
Till faint they gleam as a blossom's petals
Blown through the spacious morn!

REVERIE.

Below the headland, with its cedar plumes,
A lapse of spacious water twinkles keen;
An ever-shifting play of gleams and glooms,
And flashes of clear green.

The sumach's garnet pennons, where I lie,
Are mingled with the tansy's faded gold;
Fleet hawks are screaming in the light-blue sky
And fleet airs rushing cold.

The plump peach steals the dying rose's red;
The yellow pippin ripens to its fall;
The dusty grapes, to purple fulness fed,
Droop from the garden-wall.

And yet where rainbow foliage crowns the swamp,
I hear in dreams an April robin sing,
And memory, amid this Autumn pomp,
Strays with the ghost of Spring!

AN INTERIOR.

(After Willems.)

A chamber where the wainscot woods
Are rich with dark shapes, odd of mold,
And where the time-touched arras hangs
In blendings of blue, green, and gold.

And dimly pictured, gleam the walls,
With here bluff huntsmen, all at tryst;
Here mounted knights; a falcon, here,
Wide-winged upon a lady's wrist.

But also the quaint chamber holds
A living lady, large and fair,
In luminous satin whitely clad,
With mild pearls in her auburn hair.

Near a low table doth she sit,
Whose thick stiff cloth, of massive size,
Wears in its mossy woof what seem
A hundred splendid tangled dyes.

There fruits in luscious color glow,
All that the daintiest whim could ask,
And garnet wine that brightly fills
A frail fantastic crystal flask.

And crouching at her feet, a hound,
Lean, sleek, and pale-gray like a dove,
Whines wistfully, and seeks her face
With starry eyes that look their love.

AN OLD TEA-CUP.

Frail dainty toy that time so gently saves
To float unshattered on its wasteful waves,

And reach, through storms of ruin and dismay,
Hands that uplift thee lovingly to-day,

Good thanks for sparing from oblivion dim
These painted dames who beam about thy brim!

The lips that touched thee once have lent an art
To murmur memories through my dreaming heart!

I see rich chambers draped with pink and gold,
Where sportive cherubs gleam in gilded mold;

Where thick on cabinet and on mantel range
Rare gaudy Chinese monsters, grim and strange;

Where lights from massive candelabra fall
On satined prince and scarlet cardinal;

Where blooming ladies gayly group, arrayed
In fleecy wig, rouge, patch, and stiff brocade;

And where the royal Louis, suave and bland,
Bows low to kiss one jewel-burdened hand! ...

Ah, me! those merry courtiers and their King
No more with mirth make Trianon's alleys ring;

His plumes no more the sworded gallant airs
In statued shrubbery and on marble stairs;

And lovely laughing ladies move no more
Down fountained court or sculptured corridor!

And thou, poor cup, art loyal to thy past,
And sick of change, the cold iconoclast!

But since no longer those dear hours exist,
Pictured patrician, bright legitimist,

Then, if benignant aid be not in vain
To soothe the longings of thy lonely pain,

Oh, learn that shortly thou shalt treasured be
By one whose beauty is so sweet to see,

Her dazzling charms might thrill with envy pure
The shapeless dust that once was Pompadour!

AFFINITIES.

I.

Speeding across blank wastes of lonely snow
From your pale palace, reared with wild device
In a wild shadowy land of Arctic ice,
O North-wind, bitter North-wind, whither do you blow?

“Southward to find my tender languid love,
Who drowses in a clime of tropic haze,
Where, through the heavy-odored stagnant nights,
Great mellow fervid stars beam out above,
And where one sees, through sultry golden days,
The mighty Indian temples rear proud heights
And the rich-crested palm her green plume raise!

And I, the spirit strong to wreck and kill,
I, the stern North-wind, terrible to chill,
When her warm kisses through these cold lips thrill,
I have no will that is not her sweet will!”

II.

Bearing to lavish leaves your cadence low,
From far off indolent lands of bloomful ease,
Of gaudy birds and iridescent seas,
O South-wind, fragrant South-wind, whither do you blow?

“Northward to find my cruel white-limbed love,
Who dwells where all strange polar glories blaze;
Where, through the scintillant-starred long-lasting nights,
Auroral splendors up the dark heaven move,
And where one sees, through scant-lit freezing days,
Colossal ice-plinths, full of emerald lights,
House the huge walrus in their crystal maze!
And I, the spirit whom all soft dreams fill,
I, the bland South-wind, that can work no ill,
When her cold kisses through these warm lips thrill,
My life grows her life, and my will her will!”

TO THE EVENING STAR.

Again, pale noiseless prophetess of night,
I watch you dawn, your immemorial way,
And watch again your calm immaculate light
Beam wistful on the dying smile of day!

Star wherewith dusk so chastely is impearled,
If that you live for love indeed be true,
This yearning sorrowing sinful weary world
Hath deep unutterable need of you!

Does Love in truth make your white bloom his own
And thrill to blander gleams your luminous breast,
Meek silver lily, blossoming all alone
In those dim flowerless meadows of the West?

Aloof your glimmering kindred burn and beat,
High up in boundless quietudes of space,
And gazing on their dark domain, we meet
The cold and awful infinite face to face!

But you are rich with radiance more divine,
And pulsing as with balmiest pity's birth,
And tenderer, like a star not proud to shine,
And lowlier, like a star that loves the earth!

And I, who watch your splendors quivering clear,
Dream, ere from heavenly distance you depart,
Of some invisible mercy's falling tear,
Of some invisible mercy's throbbing heart!

A HUMMING-BIRD.

When the mild gold stars flower out,
As the summer gloaming goes,
A dim shape quivers about
Some sweet rich heart of a rose.

If you watch its fluttering poise,
From palpitant wings will steal
A hum like the eerie noise
Of an elfin spinning-wheel!

And then from the shape's vague sheen,
Quick lustres of blue will float,
That melt in luminous green
Round a glimmer of ruby throat!

But fleetly across the gloom
This tremulous shape will dart,
While searching for some fresh bloom,
To quiver about its heart.

Then you, by thoughts of it stirred,
Will dreamily question them:
“Is it a gem, half bird,
Or is it a bird, half gem?”

TO AN ORIOLE.

How falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly
In tropic splendor through our Northern sky?

At some glad moment was it nature's choice
To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?

Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black,
In some forgotten garden, ages back,

Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard,
Desire unspeakably to be a bird?

HEAT-LIGHTNING.

The land is bathed in drowsy light,
And breezes move, with drowsy sigh,
From out that primrose West where now
The long day takes so long to die!

I watch the deepening dusk, I watch,
With soul to languid fancies given,
Night close the starry flowers on earth
And ope the flowerlike stars in heaven!

Not seen with more than transient look
If random glances near it stray,
Huge in the hueless East there hangs
One rounded cloud of stagnant gray.

The moments pass; a rapid bat
Traces black zigzags on the sky;
A beetle, bringing us his deep
Basso profundo, journeys by.

Down in the dim swamp, firefly throngs
A brilliant soundless revel keep,
As though beneath their radiant rain
Another Danaë slept her sleep!

The mild night grows; through meadowed ways
The globing dew makes odor sweet,
And slowly now, in that dark cloud,
A pulse of gold begins to beat!

With fitful brightenings, brief to last,
The tender flashes come and fly,
Each winning forth from vapory depths
A dreamy picture, rich of dye.

Drenched to its core with gentle fire,
The cloud, at every mellowing change,
Shows tranquil lakes and lovely vales
And massive mountains, range on range!

And standing in the summer gloom,
With placid rapture I behold
These luminous Andes of the air,
These ghostly Switzerlands of gold!

CLOUDS.

What change with happiest thrill my pulse may start,
Of all the unnumbered changes that I view
In these brief-loitering moods of heaven's deep heart,
These tireless pilgrims of the buoyant blue?

Is it when drowsily through halcyon air
They float in pillowy fleeces chaste as snow?
Or when against the horizon they loom fair,
In towering Alpine peak and pale plateau?

Is it when shadowy as the vaguest dream
Their pearly gossamers film the skies afar?
Or when like isles in quiet seas they gleam,
Purple below the tremulous evening star?

Or yet when beauteous dawn, with rosy speed,
Sunders their drapery where it darkly falls?
Or when from earth to sunset lands they lead,
As stately stairways to imperial halls?

Or when like scales on fabulous dolphins' backs,
They fleck with loveliest color evening gray?
Or when they move in grim tempestuous wracks,
And through them javelins of hot lightning play?

Ah, no! whatever of joy such changes wake,
That change above all others my soul sets,
Of when beneath some full-globed moon they make
On sapphire calms their ghostly silhouettes!

For then, as through this dubious gloom they stray,
Spirits they seem, with garments fluttering white,
Whose noiseless feet, in some miraculous way,
Walk the great awful emptiness of the night!

A STRAGGLER.

I left the throng whose laughter made
That wide old woodland echo clear,
While forth they spread, in breezy shade,
Their plethoric hamperfuls of cheer.

Along a dark moss-misted plank
My way in dreamy mood I took,
And crossed, from balmy bank to bank,
The impetuous silver of the brook.

And wandering on, at last I found
A shadowy tranquil gladelike place,
Full of mellifluous leafy sound,
While midmost of its grassy space

A lump of rugged granite gleamed,
A tawny-lichened ledge of gray,
And up among the boughs there beamed
One blue delicious glimpse of day!

In fitful faintness on my ear
The picnic's lightsome laughter fell,
And softly while I lingered here,
Sweet fancy bound me with a spell!

In some bland clime across the seas
Those merry tones I seem to mark,
While dame and gallant roamed at ease
The pathways of some stately park.

And in that glimpse of amethyst air
I seemed to watch, with musing eye,
The rich blue fragment, fresh and fair,
Of some dead summer's morning sky!

And that rough mass of granite, too,
From graceless outlines gently waned,
And took the sculptured shape and hue
Of dull old marble, deeply stained.

And then (most beauteous change of all!)
Strown o'er its mottled slab lay low
A glove, a lute, a silken shawl,
A vellum-bound Boccaccio!

WATER-LILIES.

Up in the loftier leafage, dense and dim,
Of pines that slope to meet the lifeless pool,
And with still spicy coverts clothe its rim,
The silvery fitful breeze comes fluting cool;
But rarely does it steal to this grave spot,
Dank with foul mire and rank with woody rot.

From half-sunk logs the sluggish turtles peer,
The flabby emerald bull-frogs leap and pause;
The erratic dragon-flies float there and here,
With rosy flashes in their wings of gauze;
And now a snake its sinuous way will thread,
With flickering tongue and small dark lifted head.

But out upon the central pool there blow
The lily-legions these dull waters hold,
With hollowed petals dropping curves of snow
Back from large fragrant stars of mossy gold,
All gleaming stainless on the unbroken sheen
Of heart-shaped leaves, in blended bronze and green.

And as I watch them, in serene array,
And muse, while scenting their delicious balm,
Of how they burst from soilure and decay
In taintlessness of alabaster calm,
And blossoming from this grim half-stagnant lake,
What sweet pure incongruity they make,

I dream of gloomy souls within whose deeps
Crawls many a cold uncanny reptile thought;

Where black hate lurks and torpid envy sleeps,
And yet wherein some saving grace has wrought
Some heavenly touch that all their darkness dowers
With the chaste charm of these immaculate flowers!

FANTAISIE DE PRINTEMPS.

In the aisles of the orchard fair blossoms are drifting,
The white petals drop one by one,
And the tulip's pale stalk from the garden is lifting
A goblet of gems to the sun!

Come ramble awhile through this exquisite weather
Of days that are fleet to pass,
When the stem of the willow shoots out a green feather,
And buttercups burn in the grass!

When, pushing the soil from her bonny pink shoulders,
The clover glides forth to the world,
And the fresh mosses gleam on the gray rugged boulders,
With delicate May-dew impearled!

The brook in the pasture has hidden its pebbles,
Full-flooded with April rain,
And listen, my love, to the silvery trebles
That ring from the blossoming lane!

What vows to their sweethearts the gay robins utter!
No marvel such wooers are heard!
Heigh ho! how the bosoms that scorn us would flutter,
If man could make love like a bird!

ANALOGIES.

I lounge against my garden gate;
On one side heaven the sun hangs low;
Down one side crawls the exhausted storm
That flashed and crashed an hour ago.
I lounge and see, with musing eye,
Two roses and a butterfly.

One is a sumptuous languid rose
That bows its heavy lovely head,
While each fresh petal's velvet curve
Burns with the same deep drowsy red;
Circe, her subtle self (who knows?)
Plotting new sorceries in a rose!

One is a pale pure bloom, with leaves
Like satin in their lustres mild,
Half-closed, and faintlier flushed than looks
The chaste palm of a little child;
Or pink as some late sunsets are,
That yearn to feel the evening star!

The butterfly's quick-quivering wings
Wear each the blendings of such hues
As lurk in some old tapestry's
Dim turmoil of golds, crimsons, blues;
Wings where dull smoldering color lies,
Lit richly with two peacock-eyes!

I watch this satrap of the air,
Whose gorgeous rule hath such brief term,
This pirate of a floral sea,
This beauteous burlesque of a worm,
In flower-like plumes, in bird-like power,
Kinned equally with bird or flower!

He cannot leave the great red rose;
He flutters near her, loath to part
From all the fragrant charm which girds
This blood-drop warm from summer's heart!
But on the pale rose, glimmering near,
The rain has left one radiant tear!

RARITY.

In dreams I found a wondrous land,
Radiant with roses on each hand.

No grasses, trees, nor shrubs were there,
But roses blossoming everywhere!

Great velvet-petalled blooms were these;
Red millions trembled in each breeze!

They swept toward the horizon's verge
In many a splendid ample surge;

They spread on all sides one intense
Monotony of magnificence! ...

Then suddenly, where my pathway ran,
Loomed the vague presence of a man.

And in his clasp, with strange delight,
I saw one daisy, glimmering white!

Such daisies bloom, in slender sprays,
By throngs among June's meadowed ways.

Yet all my soul, at this weird hour,
Leaned out to that one simple flower!

For chastely, delicately fair,
And better still, supremely rare,

It wore a pastoral charm so sweet,
This lovely lissome marguerite,

That seeing it was like dear repose
To me, whose whole heart loathed a rose!

VIOLETS IN WINTER.

While now the desolate lands are blank with snow,
How sweet it is to know
Fierce winter dared by fragile foes like you,
Fresh beauteous lives that ever win the grace
Of bathing each pure face
Mysteriously in heaven's own deeps of tender blue!

As the asters breathe of Autumn, so you bring
Bland memories of new Spring,
And while your faint delicious balm one meets,
His spirit steals down blossoming orchard-ways,
By warbling brooks he strays,
Or moves through calm campagnas of pale marguerites!

I know not where, mild flowers, I know not whence
Is the dear difference
Between your blooms and many a one that blows!
Ah! delicate personality unknown,
Ye are yourselves alone!
What is it makes the star a star, the rose a rose?

But in your chaste hearts Nature surely sets,
Exquisite violets,
Meekness and lowlihead all traits above,
And seems through your soft faces to have smiled
Like some young white-souled child,
Whose touch is benediction and whose looks are love!

IMMORTELLES.

Just as when summer laughed they linger yet,
Here in my chamber while the world is cold,
Their pale-gold brittle petals primly set
About dry brittle hearts of deeper gold.

Is it but fancy that an aching need
Lives in the wan inanimate looks they lift,
And that Tithonus-like they dumbly plead
The awful goddess to revoke her gift?

Yes, if I read their joyless calm aright,
Mere immortality can ill repay
This sluggish veto on corruption's blight,
This dull and charmless challenge to decay!

For surely these are flowers that well might sleep
Near Stygian waves and shiver in the breath
Of long disconsolate breezes when they sweep
Out from the dreamy meadowlands of death!

Ah! where in this white urn they dimly smile,
Full oft, I doubt not, each poor bloom has sighed
To have been some odorous radiance that erewhile
Divinely was a rose, although it died!

TO A TEA-ROSE.

Deep-folded flower, for me your race
Bears what no kindred blooms have borne
That gleam in memory's vistas,—
A charm, a chastity, a grace
The loveliest roses have not worn,
Of all your lovely sisters!

Half tinged like some dim-yellow peach,
Half like a shell's pink inward whorl
That sighs its sea-home after,
Your creamy oval bud lets each
Pale outer petal backward curl,
Like a young child's lip in laughter!

And yet no mirthful trace we see;
Rather the grave serene repose
Of gentlest resignation;
So that you sometimes seem to be
(If one might say it of a rose)
In pensive meditation!

Ah! how may earthly words express
This placid sadness round you cast,
Delicate, vague, unspoken?
As though .... some red progenitress,
In some old garden of the past,
Had had her young heart broken!

WILD ROSES.

On long serene midsummer days
Of ripening fruit and yellowed grain,
How sweetly, by dim woodland ways,
In tangled hedge or leafy lane,
Fair wild-rose thickets, you unfold
Those pale pink stars with hearts of gold!

Your sleek patrician sisters dwell
On lawns where gleams the shrub's trim bosk,
In terraced gardens, tended well,
Near pebbled walk and quaint kiosk.
In costliest urns their colors rest;
They beam on beauty's fragrant breast!

But you in lowly calm abide,
Scarce heeded save by breeze or bee.
You know what splendor, pomp and pride
Full oft your brilliant sisters see;
What sorrows, too, and bitter fears;
What mad farewells and hopeless tears!

How some are kept in old dear books,
That once in bridal wreaths were worn;
How some are kissed, with tender looks,
And later tossed aside with scorn;
How some their taintless petals lay
On icy foreheads, white as they!

So, while these truths you vaguely guess,
Abloom in many a lonesome spot,
Shy roadside roses, may you bless
The fate that rules your modest lot,
Like rustic maids that meekly stand
Below the ladies of their land!

A TUBEROSE.

Chaste waxen shape, in whose clear chalice dwell
Odors that tell
Of moans and tears and chambers gloomed with grief,
Wan sister of the tulip's laughing bloom,
What primal doom
Fashioned the lifeless pallor of your leaf?

As winds down dreamy gardens came to sigh
“The year must die,”
At some old immemorial twilight hour,
Did you, the incarnate terror and unrest
Of summer's breast,
First bathe in chilling dews your ghostly flower?

Or did the moon, through some sweet night long-dead,
Her splendor shed
On some rich tomb, while silence held its breath,
Till one pure sculptured blossom thrilled and grew
Strangely to you,
Cold child of moonbeams, marble, and white death!

IVY.

Ill canst thou bide in alien lands like these,
Whose home lies overseas,
Among manorial halls, parks wide and fair,
Churches antique, and where
Long hedges flower in May and one can hark
To carollings from old England's lovely lark!

Ill canst thou bide where memories are so brief,
Thou that hast bathed thy leaf
Deep in the shadowy past, and known strange things
Of crumbled queens and kings;
Thou whose green kindred, in years half forgot,
Robed the gray battlements of proud Camelot!

Through all thy fibres' intricate expanse
Hast thou breathed sweet romance;
Ladies that long are dust thou hast beheld
Through dreamy days of eld;
Watched in broad castle-courts the merry light
Bathe gaudy banneret and resplendent knight!

And thou hast seen, on ancient lordly lawns,
The timorous dappled fawns;
Heard pensive pages with their suave lutes play
Some low Provençal lay;
Marked beauteous dames through arrased chambers glide,
With lazy graceful staghounds at their side!

And thou hast gazed on splendid cavalcades
Of nobles, matrons, maids,
Winding from castle gates on breezy morns,
With golden peals of horns,
In velvet and brocade, in plumes and silk,
With falcons, and with palfreys white as milk!

Through convent-casements thou hast peered, and there
Viewed the meek nun at prayer;
Seen, through rich panes dyed purple, gold, and rose,
Monks read old folios;
On abbey-walls heard wild laughs thrill thy vine
When the fat tonsured priests quaffed ruby wine!

O ivy, having lived in times like these,
Here art thou ill at ease;
For thou art one with ages passed away,
We are of yesterday!
Short retrospect, slight ancestry is ours,
But thy dark leaves clothe history's haughty towers!

HEMLOCKS.

(Terza Rima.)

I knew a forest, tranquil and august,
Down whose green deeps my steps would often stray
When leisure met my life as dew meets dust!

Proud spacious chestnuts verged each winding way,
And hickories in whose dry boughs winds were shrill,
And tremulous white-boled birches. Here, one day,

Strolling beside the scarce-held steed of will,
I found a beautiful monastic grove
Of old primeval hemlocks, living still!

Round it the forest rustled, flashed, and throve,
But here was only silence and much gloom,
As though some sorcerer in dead days had wove.

With solemn charms and muttered words of doom,
A cogent spell that said to time “Depart!”
And locked it in the oblivion of a tomb!

Thick was its floor, where scant ferns dared to start,
With tawny needles, and an old spring lay
Limpid as crystal in its dusky heart!

Vaguely enough can language ever say
What sombre and fantastic dreams, for me,
Held shadowy revel in my thought that day!

How stern similitudes would dimly be
Of painted braves that grouped about their king;
Or how, in crimson firelight, I would see

Some ghostly war-dance whose weak cries took wing
Weirdly away beyond the grove's dark brink;
Or how I seemed to watch, by that old spring,

The timid phantom deer steal up to drink!

THE ACORN.

I find you nestling in the balmy grass,
Here where the knotty oak so stoutly stands,
While tremulous breezes with rich fragrance pass,
Like ghosts with viewless flowers in viewless hands!

Frail germ of strength, I scan with eager heed,
As from the summer sward I lift you up,
The tawny oval of your polished bead
Bulging so smoothly from its rugged cup.

And now with heart where happy fancies meet,
I stoop, and in the yielding meadow make
A grave wherefrom, with resurrection sweet,
Some future sun shall win you to awake!

And while I plant you thus, I seem to plant
Flutings of silver winds in ample boughs
That weave a gloom where sunbeams richly slant,
Bees murmur, and the lazy cattle browse.

And now I seem to plant, below the green
Of these fair ungrown boughs, at eve or morn,
The first delicious thrilling kiss between
Two fond young lovers that are yet unborn!

FERNS.

If trees are Nature's thoughts or dreams,
And witness how her great heart yearns,
Then she has only shown, it seems,
Her lightest fantasies in ferns.

Those low green boughs, what shapely grace,
What slender lissome charm they wear,
Delicate, supple, frail as lace,
And pliant to each passing air!

Though sweet to see when there or here,
Along some common meadowed way,
They throng in feathery jungles, near
Some stolid boulder's bulk of gray,

Yet ah! no light their spray so serves
As when, where cloistering branches cross,
I meet its shadowy silvered curves
On spaces of dark moonlit moss!

For here quick fancy finds a bower
Where she can watch, in pictured wise,
An Oberon squeeze the fatal flower
On poor Titania's drowsing eyes!

And nimble fay and pranksome elf
Flash vaguely past at every turn,
Or, weird and wee, sits Puck himself,
With legs akimbo, on a fern!

MOSS.

Strange tapestry, by Nature spun
On viewless looms, aloof from sun,
And spread through lonely nooks and grots
Where shadows reign and leafy rest,—
O moss, of all your dwelling spots,
In which one are you loveliest?

Is it when near grim roots that coil
Their snaky black through mellow soil?
Or when you wrap, in woodland glooms,
The great prone pine-trunks, rotted red?
Or when you dim, on sombre tombs,
The requiescats of the dead?

Or is it when your lot is cast
In some quaint garden of the past,
On some gray crumbled basin's brim,
Where mildewed Tritons conch-shells blow,
While yonder, through the poplars prim,
Looms up the turreted château?

Nay, loveliest are you when time weaves
Your emerald films on low dark eaves,
Above where pink porch-roses peer
And woodbines break in fragrant foam,
And children laugh ... and you can hear
The beatings of the heart of Home!

LEAVES.

Οιη περ φυλλων γενεη, τοιηδε και ανδρων.

Deep among forest-quietudes of green
My steps have wandered, and about me now,
In soft complexities of shade and sheen,
On many a lavish-clad midsummer bough,
The innumerous breezy leaves, above, around,
Move with melodious and aerial sound.

I pause to look, in meditative mood,
Where all their murmurous myriads richly throng,
And think what touches of similitude,
What dark or bright analogies belong
(As bonds that Nature's mystic shuttle weaves)
Between the lives of men and lives of leaves!

Some in the loftiest places burst their buds,
And get the sun's gold kiss while they uncurl;
They front the stars and the proud moon that floods
Pure domes of limpid heaven with airy pearl.
They see the damask of cool dawns; they gaze
On smiles that light the lips of dying days!

And some in lowlier places must abide,
And gain but glimpses, perishably dear,
Of altering cloud and meadow glimmering wide,
And the large lovely world beyond their sphere!
And some have rare dews thrill each thirsty stem,
Or rarelier yet, a bird's wing brushes them!

And some amid their perfect emerald prime
Are torn from nurturing boughs at storm's caprice,
And some turn old and sere before their time,
And flutter down as if in glad release.
And all to Autumn's bleak dismantling blast,
Even all, inevitably yield at last!

But when I mark how some that once were fair,
From edge to edge in flawless gloss arrayed,
Must feel the worm's fang gnaw them through, like care,
I seem to have dimly guessed why God has made
So many tremulous leaves, for their frail parts,
Wear, as they throb, the shapes of human hearts!

CLOVER.

Wild rustic cousins of the dainty rose,
Whose fragrant banquets lure the greedy bees,
Haytime's pink prophecies while young June goes,
How brightly spread your many-blossoming seas,
Rippled whichever way the warm winds please!

Laughterful children feel your tufts of bloom
Brush their soft limbs, alert with merry leaps.
The iridescent humming-bird's low boom
With mellow music thrills your balmy deeps,
Where dew that was born yesterday still sleeps!

Here, too, the massive lazy cow, star-eyed,
Thrusts down her dark moist nose, and all day long,
By your delicious feast unsatisfied,
Crops with rough florid tongue your honeyed throng,
Lashing off flies with her tail's restless thong.

Or sometimes from your cool bournes, where it hid,
A butterfly soars fluttering, breeze-assailed,
Gay as those flowery gondolas that slid
Through sculptured Venice in old days, and trailed
Brocades and velvets where they softly sailed!

O clover, tended by the shining showers
Until your lavish color gladlier beams,
Or, through the yellow calms of morning hours,
Dappled with interchange of glooms and gleams,
Like vague recurrences of differing dreams,

Does Nature act in you her frankest part,
And are you thoughts that she would simply say,
Speaking them right from her full-throbbing heart?
Or were you made some more mysterious way,
From damask blushes of young morns in May?

GRAPES.

Amid the arbor's amber-tarnished vine,
Faint-fluttering to the South-wind's languid sigh,
Under this drowsy haze of mellow sky,
The great grapes droop their dusty globes of wine!

And even amid these bland luxurious hours,
They seem like exiles reft of cherished rights,
Here in our treacherous North, whose Autumn nights
Drop chilly dews upon the dying flowers!

Ripe clusters, while our woods in ruin flame,
Do yearnings through your rich blood vaguely thrill
For glimmering vineyard, olive-mantled hill,
And Italy, which is summer's softer name?

Or do you dream of some old ducal board,
Blazing with Venice glass and costliest plate,
Where princely banqueters caroused in state,
And through the frescoed hall the long feast roared?

Or how brocaded dame and plumed grandee
Saw your imperial-colored fruit heaped up
On radiant salver or in chiselled cup,
Where some proud marble gallery faced the sea!

Or yet do your strange yearnings, loath to cease,
Go wandering on till dearer visions rise
Of the pale temples and the limpid skies,
The storied shores and haunted groves of Greece?

Greece, where the god was yours of such renown,—
That sleek-limbed revelling boy, supremely fair,
Who, with the ambrosial gold of his wild hair,
Would wreathe your purple opulence for a crown!

A TOAD.

Blue dusk, that brings the dewy hours,
Brings thee, of graceless form in sooth,
Dark stumbler at the roots of flowers,
Flaccid, inert, uncouth.

Right ill can human wonder guess
Thy meaning or thy mission here,
Gray lump of mottled clamminess,
With that preposterous leer!

But when I meet thy dull bulk where
Luxurious roses bend and burn,
Or some slim lily lifts to air
Its frail and fragrant urn,

Of these, among the garden-ways,
So grim a watcher dost thou seem,
That I, with meditative gaze,
Look down on thee and dream

Of thick-lipped slaves, with ebon skin,
That squat in hideous dumb repose,
And guard the drowsy ladies in
Their still seraglios!

WEEDS.

I lean across the sagging gate;
In rough neglect the garden lies,
Disfeatured and disconsolate
Below these halcyon skies.

O'er pleasant ways once trimly kept,
And blossoming fair at either verge,
Weeds in rank opulence have swept
Their green annulling surge!

Order's pure wisdom they have crushed,
With reckless feet, in rude disdain.
Like some gross rabble they have rushed
On beauty's bright domain!

But over them, as though in soft
Memory of bloom that no more blows,
A rose-bush rears one bough aloft,
Starred with one stainless rose!

Above these weeds whose ruffian power
So coarsely envies what is fair,
She bends her lightsome dainty flower
With such patrician air,

That while I watch this chaste young rose,
Some pale scared queen she seems to be,
Across whose palace-courtyard flows
The dark mob, like a sea!

A BAT.

Haphazard hybrid that one sees,
Half bird, half reptile, fluttering through
Those sultry twilights when the trees
Loom breezeless on the dreamy blue;
Strange blundering mongrel of the air,
At random war with here and there,
Now wheeling wild and swooping now;
In what mad mood did Nature please
Her sweet rich harmonies to scare
With such dark dissonance as thou?
Shape that unseemliest traits endow,
Grotesque, chimeric, cold, impure,
With Satan's wings in miniature!

Nay, is it that thou lingerest here
As the last-left weak heir of what
Survives from many a wrecking year
In shadowy fable, trusted not?
Does altered time in thee behold
One waif from horrors manifold,
Ghoul, griffon, dragon, ouph, gnome, sprite,
That living shook the world with fear,
And dying when the earth was old,
In mockery of their crumbled might
Foredoomed thy tortuous dismal flight
Where once by terror and dismay
Thine awful ancestry held sway?

BOX.

The path from porch to gate I rim,
In rounded clusters rising trim.
With changeless mien, I lift serene
My small bright leaves of dusky green.

I droop not under blinding heat,
Nor shrink from savage cold and sleet;
When o'er me flow pale shrouds of snow,
My patient verdure thrives below.

I cannot lure the dainty bee;
No breeze of summer sighs for me;
In sombre mood I drowse and brood,
With memory-haunted quietude.

For though I guard a sturdy strength,
My life has known unwonted length;
Fair days or dark I mutely mark,
The garden's tranquil patriarch.

That white-haired lady, frail of form,
Who seeks the porch when suns are warm,
Has near me smiled, a blithesome child,
With tangled ringlets tossing wild.

As years went on, with air sedate
She met her love at yonder gate.
I saw him bring, one night in Spring,
The precious gold betrothal-ring!

To church along this path she went,
A twelvemonth later, well-content.
With peerless charm, in sweet alarm,
She leaned upon her father's arm.

Again to church, when years had fled,
In widow's dress, with bended head,
I saw her guide at either side
Her black-robed children, pensive-eyed.

These children now are dames and men,
But I to-day am young as then;
And yet each rose that near me blows
Laughs lightly at my prim repose.

Ah, giddy flowers that briefly live,
Your thoughtless whispers I forgive,
Since calmly I, as years go by,
In damask thousands watch you die!

DEW.

Soft tears that Nature keeps to show,
In human way, her joys and pains,
Now shed when summer splendors glow,
Or now when gaudy Autumn reigns!

Chaste pearls, whose lustres love to hide
In deeps of grassy seas for hours!
Dear secrets that the skies confide
To the warm bosoms of the flowers!

Kind almoners, that hold as peers
Proud garden or wild woodland maze!
Beautiful nightly souvenirs
Of all the perished elves and fays!

Cool benedictions of the dawn!
Eve's lowlier starlight, vague and shy!
Profoundly is my spirit drawn
By your sweet spells to question why

So many hearts, as flowers might do,
Dry lips in thirsting pain must tend,
And though they dumbly plead for dew,
Must die without it in the end!

FIREFLIES.

I saw, one sultry night, above a swamp,
The darkness throbbing with their golden pomp!

And long my dazzled sight did they entrance
With the weird chaos of their dizzy dance!

Quicker than yellow leaves, when gales despoil,
Quivered the brilliance of their mute turmoil,

Within whose light was intricately blent
Perpetual rise, perpetual descent,

As though their scintillant flickerings had met
In the vague meshes of some airy net!

And now mysteriously I seemed to guess,
While watching their tumultuous loveliness,

What fervor of deep passion strangely thrives
In the warm richness of these tropic lives,

Whose wings can never tremble but they show
These hearts of living fire that beat below!

FOUR DAYS.

I.

Now are the moments, brief and rare,
When Nature warms with subtle bliss,
Like some chaste maiden, shy of air,
Who gives her lover the first kiss!

The willows o'er the flashing brook
Bow lissome, with fresh-mantled stem,
Like graceful ladies when they look
To find their mirrors praising them!

The orchard-aisles, that blooms array
In odorous mimicry of snow,
Are thrilled through every happy spray
With song's mellifluous overflow!

And all the world, with greens that shine,
With breaking buds and wings that flit,
Seems one expectancy divine
Of something God has promised it!

II.

White fleeces load the deep-blue day;
Long fitful breezes haunt its calm,
Like sweet thieves flying in dismay
From far Hesperides of balm!

The giddy bee, with murmur keen,
Reels o'er the garden's brightest reach;
The sly wasp hovers, black and lean,
Above the pink luxurious peach.

No gaudy currants drape their bough,
Erewhile with luscious crimson twined,
But here large velvet leaves o'erbrow
The yellowing melon's figured rind.

And here a pumpkin's lazy gold
Has slowly greatened more and more,
Till now its heart might almost hold
Cinderella's fairy coach-and-four!

III.

This broad wood, in whose blighted ways,
Along damp sward, I stroll and muse,
To winds of rapid vigor sways,
One halcyon tanglement of hues!

Yet I can never walk an hour
Where all these hollow grandeurs gleam,
And watch the land's great passion-flower
Of beauteous anguish, but I dream

How lofty lives have played their parts,
Feigning in splendor false content;
How gorgeous robes o'er broken hearts
Have made despair magnificent!

Or how, at Borgia feasts, long since,
Where lavish pomp spread costly signs,
Death, the dark slave of priest and prince,
Waited in those voluptuous wines!

IV.

Last night the air was dense with sleet,
And now I mark, with smothered sigh,
The pale blank meadows lapse to meet
A leaden monotone of sky!

O colorless and glacial gloom!
O earthly torpor, bleak and stern!
Have the blithe charms of bird or bloom
Gone forth to nevermore return? ...

What dreary mood has fancy found?
Steal up, dear love, and break the spell! ...
Her lightsome footsteps faintly sound ...
You come, dear love, and all is well!

For now your blushes look to me
Like June's first roses, freshly gay,
And in your deep eyes one can see
The violets tarrying till May!