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?
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 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.
