The poems of Madison Cawein

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the fragile wildflowers bloom;
Where the pensive silence pleaches
Green a roof of cool perfume,
Have you felt an awe imperious
As when, in a church, mysterious
Windows paint with God the gloom?

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the rock-ledged waters flow;
Where the sun's slant splendor bleaches
Every wave to foaming snow,
Have you felt a music solemn
As when minster arch and column
Echo organ worship low?

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the light and shade are blent;
Where the forest-bird beseeches,
And the breeze is brimmed with scent,—

Is it joy or melancholy
That o'erwhelms us partly, wholly,
To our spirit's betterment?

In the shadow of the beeches
Lay me where no eye perceives;
Where,—like some great arm that reaches
Gently as a love that grieves,—
One gnarled root may clasp me kindly
While the long years, working blindly,
Slowly change my dust to leaves.

A FALLEN BEECH

Nevermore at doorways that are barken
Shall the madcap wind knock and the moonlight;
Nor the circle which thou once didst darken,
Shine with footsteps of the neighboring moonlight,
Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken.

Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces,
Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter,
Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places;
Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor,
Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces.

And no more, between the savage wonder
Of the sunset and the moon's up-coming,
Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under
Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming
Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder.

Oft the Satyr-spirit, beauty-drunken,
Of the Spring called; and the music measure
Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken

Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure
Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken.

And the germs, deep down in darkness rooted,
Bubbled green from all thy million oilets,
Where the spirits, rain and sunbeam suited,
Of the April made their whispering toilets,
Or within thy stately shadow footed.

Oft the hours of blonde Summer tinkled
At the windows of thy twigs, and found thee
Bird-blithe; or, with shapely bodies, twinkled
Lissom feet of naked flowers around thee,
Where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam-sprinkled.

And the Autumn with his gypsy-coated
Troop of days beneath thy branches rested,
Swarthy-faced and dark of eye; and throated
Songs of hunting; or with red hand tested
Every nut-burr that above him floated.

Then the Winter, barren-browed, but rich in
Shaggy followers of frost and freezing,
Made the floor of thy broad boughs his kitchen,
Trapper-like, to camp in; grimly easing
Limbs snow-furred and moccasined with lichen.

Now, alas! no more do these invest thee
With the dignity of whilom gladness!
They—unto whose hearts thou once confessed thee
Of thy dreams—now know thee not! and sadness
Sits beside thee where, forgot, dost rest thee.

A COIGNE OF THE FOREST

The hills hang woods around, where green, below
Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss,
Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year's nuts;
The water hums one bar there; and a glow
Of gold lies steady where the trailers toss
Red, bugled blossoms and a rock abuts;
In spots the wild-phlox and oxalis grow
Where beech-roots bulge the loam, and welt across
The grass-grown road and roll it into ruts.

And where the sumach brakes grow dusk and dense,
Among the rocks, great yellow violets,
Blue-bells and windflowers bloom; the agaric
In dampness crowds; a fungus, thick, intense
With gold and crimson and wax-white, that sets
The May-apples along the terraced creek
At bold defiance. Where the old rail-fence
Divides the hollow, there the bee-bird whets
His bill, and there the elder hedge is thick.

No one can miss it; for two cat-birds nest,
Calling all morning, in the trumpet-vine;
And there at noon the pewee sits and floats
A woodland welcome; and his very best
At eve the red-bird sings, as if to sign
The record of its loveliness with notes.
At night the moon stoops over it to rest,
And unreluctant stars, in whose faint shine
There runs a whisper as of wind-swept oats.

A HOUSE IN THE HILLS

Old hearts that hold the saddest memories
Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet
Light, happy moods of younger natures which
Their sadness contacts and so sanctifies.

And such to me is an old gabled house,
Deserted, and neglected, and unknown,
Lost in the tangled hollow of its hills,
Dark, cedared hills, and dreamy orchard-lands;
With but its host of shrouded memories
Haunting its ruined rooms and desolate halls,—
Pathetic with their fallen finery,—
And whispering through its cob-webbed crevices
And roomy hearths, that sigh with ceaseless wind,
Undreamed of things that happened long ago.

Here in gray afternoons I love to sit,
And hear the running rain along the roof;
The creak and crack of noises that are born
Of silence or mysterious agencies;

The fitful footfalls of the wind adown
Grand, winding stairways, massy banistered;
A clapping door and then a sudden hush
As if the old house held its breath to see,—
Invisible to me,—a presence pass,
That brings a pleasant terror stiffening through
The tingling veins and staring from the eyes.
Then comes the rain again along the roof;
And in rain-rotted room and rain-stained hall
The drip and whisper of the wind and rain
Seem viewless footsteps of the sometime lords
And mistresses who lived here in the past.
And could the state material but assume
A state clairvoyant, then the dream-drugged eyes,
Perhaps, might see, from room to dusty room,
The ghosts of stately gentlemen glide by,
And glimmering ladies, all beruffled, trail
Long, haughty silks miraculously stiff.

THE WIND

“Wind of the East, if thou pass by the land where my loved ones dwell, I pray,
The fullest of greetings bear to them from me, their lover, and say
That I am the pledge of passion still.”—
FROM THE ARABIC.

The ways of the wind are eerie,
And I love them all:
The blithe, the mad, and the dreary,
Spring, winter, and fall.

When it tells to the waiting crocus
Its beak to show;
And hangs on the wayside locust
Bloom-bunches of snow.

When it comes like a balmy blessing
From the musky wood,
The half-grown roses caressing
Till their cheeks burn blood.

When it roars in the autumn season,
And whines with rain,
Or sleet, like a mind without reason,
Or a soul in pain.

When the woodways, once so spicy
With bud and bloom,
Are desolate, dead and icy
As the icy tomb.

When the puffed owl, crouched and frowsy,
In the hollow tree,
Sobs, dolorous, cold, and drowsy,
Its shuddering melody.

Then I love to sit in December
Where the big hearth sings,
And, dreaming, forget and remember
A host of things.

And the wind—I hear how it strangles,
And wails and sighs
On the roof's sharp, shivering angles
That front the skies.

How it shouts and romps and tumbles
In attics o'erhead;
In the great-throated chimney rumbles,
Then all at once falls dead;

Then comes like the footsteps stealing
Of a child on the stair,
Or a bent, old gentleman feeling
His slippered way with care.

And my soul grows anxious-hearted
For those once dear—
The long-lost loves, departed,
In the wind draw near.

And I seem to see their faces—
Not one estranged—
In their old accustomed places
Round the wide hearth ranged.

And the wind, that waits and poises
Where the shadows sway,
Seems their visionary voices
Calling me far away.

Then I wake in tears and hear it
Wailing outside my door,—
Or is it some wandering spirit
Weeping upon the moor?

RAIN IN THE WOODS

When on the leaves the rain persists,
And every gust brings showers down;
When copse and woodland smoke with mists,
I take the old road out of town
Into the hills through which it twists.

I find the vale where catnip grows,
Where boneset blooms, with moisture bowed;
The vale through which the red creek flows,
Turbid with hill-washed clay, and loud
As some wild horn a huntsman blows.

Around the root the beetle glides,
A burnished beryl; and the ant,
Large, agate-red, a garnet, slides
Beneath the rock; and every plant
Is roof for some frail thing that hides.

Like knots against the trunks of trees
The lichen-colored moths are pressed;
And, wedged in hollow blooms, the bees
Hang pollen-clotted; in its nest
The wasp has crawled and lies at ease.

The locust harsh, that sharply saws
The silence of the summer noon;
The katydid, that thinly draws
Its fine file o'er the bars of moon;
And grasshopper that drills each pause:

The mantis, long-clawed, furtive, lean—
Fierce feline of the insect hordes—
And dragonfly, gauze-winged and green,
Beneath the wild-grape's leaves and gourd's,
Have housed themselves and rest unseen.

The butterfly and forest-bird
Are huddled on the same gnarled bough,
From which, like some rain-voweled word
That dampness hoarsely utters now,
The tree-toad's guttural voice is heard.

I crouch and listen: and again
The woods are filled with phantom forms—
With shapes, grotesque in cloudy train,
That rise and reach to me cool arms
Of mist: dim, wandering wraiths of rain.

I see them come; fantastic, fair;
Chill, mushroom-colored: sky and earth
Grow ghostly with their floating hair
And trailing limbs, that have their birth
In wetness—fungi of the air.

O wraiths of rain! O ghosts of mist!
Still fold me, hold me, and pursue!
Still let my lips by yours be kissed!
Still draw me with your hands of dew
Unto the tryst, the dripping tryst.

HEAT

I

Now is it as if Spring had never been,
And Winter but a memory and a dream,
Here where the Summer stands, her lap of green
Heaped high with bloom and beam,
Among her blackberry-lilies, low that lean
To kiss her feet; or, freckle-browed, that stare
Upon the dragonfly which, slimly seen,
Like a blue jewel flickering in her hair,
Sparkles above them there.

II

Knee-deep among the tepid pools the cows
Chew a slow cud or switch a slower tail,
Half-sunk in sleep beneath the beechen boughs,
Where thin the wood-gnats ail.
From bloom to bloom the languid butterflies drowse;
The sleepy bees make hardly any sound;

The only things the sun-rays can arouse,
It seems, are two black beetles rolling round
Upon the dusty ground.

III

Within its channel glares the creek and shrinks,
Beneath whose rocks the furtive crawfish hides
In stagnant places, where the green frog blinks,
And water-strider glides.
Far hotter seems it for the bird that drinks,
The startled kingfisher that screams and flies;
Hotter and lonelier for the purples and pinks
Of weeds that bloom, whose sultry perfumes rise
Stifling the swooning skies.

IV

From ragweed fallows, rye-fields, heaped with sheaves,
From blistering rocks, no moss or lichens crust,
And from the road, where every hoof-stroke heaves
A cloud of burning dust,
The hotness quivers, making limp the leaves,
That loll like panting tongues. The pulsing heat

Seems a wan wimple that the Summer weaves,
A veil, in which she wraps,—as in a sheet,—
The shriveling corn and wheat.

V

Furious, incessant in the weeds and briers
The sawing weed bugs sing: and, heat-begot,
The grasshoppers, so many strident wires,
Staccato stinging hot:
A lash of whirling sound that never tires,
The locust flails the noon, where harnessed Thirst,
Beside the road-spring, many a shod hoof mires,
Into the trough thrusts his hot head; immersed,
Round which cool bubbles burst.

VI

The sad, sweet voice of some wood-spirit who
Laments while watching a loved oak-tree die,
From the deep forest comes the wood-dove's coo,
A long, lost, lonely cry.—
Oh, for a breeze! a mighty wind to woo
The woods to stormy laughter; sow like grain
The world with freshness of invisible dew,
And pile above far, fevered hill and plain
Cloud-bastions, black with rain.

YOUNG SEPTEMBER

I

With a look and a laugh where the stream was flowing,
September led me along the land;
Where the goldenrod and lobelia, glowing,
Seemed burning torches within her hand.
And faint as the thistle's or milkweed's feather
I glimpsed her form in the sparkling weather.

II

Now 'twas her hand and now her hair
That tossed me welcome everywhere;
That lured me onward through the stately rooms
Of forest, hung and carpeted with glooms,
And windowed wide with azure, doored with green,
Through which rich glimmers of her robe were seen—
Now, like some deep marsh-mallow, rosy-gold;

Now, like the great Joe-Pye-weed, fold on fold
Of heavy mauve; and now, like the intense
Massed ironweed, a purple opulence.

III

Along the bank in a wild procession
Of gold and sapphire the blossoms blew;
And borne on the breeze came their soft confession
In syllabled musk and honey-dew;
In words unheard that their lips kept saying,
Sweet as the lips of children praying.

IV

And so, meseemed, I heard them tell
How here her loving glance once fell
Upon this bank, and from its azure grew
The ageratum mist-flower's happy hue;
How from her kiss, as crimson as the dawn,
The cardinal-flow'r drew its vermilion;
And from her hair's blond touch th' elecampane
Evolved the glory of its golden rain;
While from her starry footsteps, redolent,
The aster pearled its flowery firmament.

THE VINTAGER

Among the fragrant grapes she bows;
Long violet clusters heap her hands:
And, with bright brows, on him bestows
Sweet looks, like soft commands.

And from her sunburnt throat, at times,
As bubbles burst on new-made wine,
A happy fit of merry rhymes
Rings down the hills of vine.

And in his heart, remorseless, sweet,
Grew big the red-grape, passion, there;
His heart, that, ever at her feet,
Was filled with love's despair.

But she, who ne'er the honeyed must
Of love had drained, a grown-up child,
Saw in him—merely one to trust,
And broke his heart, and smiled.

BLACK VESPER'S PAGEANTS

The day, all fierce with carmine, turns
An Indian face towards Earth and dies;
The west, like some gaunt vase, inurns
Its ashes under smoldering skies;
Athwart whose bowl one red cloud streams,
Wild as some dream an Aztec dreams.

Now shadows mass above the world,
And night comes on with wind and rain;
The mulberry-colored leaves are hurled
Like frantic hands against the pane.
And through the forests, bending low,
Night stalks like some gigantic Woe.

In hollows where the thistle shakes
A hoar bloom like a witch's light,
From weed and flower the rain-wind rakes
Dead sweetness—as a wildman might,
From autumn leaves, the woods among,
Dig some dead woman, fair and young.

Now let me walk the woodland ways,
Alone! except for thoughts, that are
Akin to such wild nights and days—
A portion of the storm that far
Fills Heaven and Earth tumultuously,
And my own soul with ecstasy.

A TWILIGHT MOTH

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state
Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed;
Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white,
Goes softly messengering through the night,
Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.

All day the primroses have thought of thee,
Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;
All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly
Veiled snowy faces,—that no bee might greet
Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;—
Keeping Sultana-charms for thee, at last,
Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's
Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks
The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays
Nocturnes of fragrance, thy wing'd shadow links

In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;
O bearer of their order's shibboleth,
Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks.

What dost thou whisper in the balsam's ear
That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,—
A syllabled silence that no man may hear,—
As dreamily upon its stem it rocks?
What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant,
Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant,
Some spectre of some perished flower of phlox?

O voyager of that universe which lies
Between the four walls of this garden fair,—
Whose constellations are the fireflies
That wheel their instant courses everywhere,—
'Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees
Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades,
Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air.

Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer,
Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest

Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her
His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.—
Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy,
That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me!
And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!

THE GRASSHOPPER

I

What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasizing dullness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water
In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp
Filing the stillness. Or,—as urchins beat
A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,—
Your switch-like music whips the midday heat.
O burr of sound caught in the Summer's hair,
We hear you everywhere.

II

We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles,
Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds,
Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds,
And by the wood, round which the rail-fence rambles,

Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw.
Or,—like to tomboy truants, at their play
With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw,—
You sing away the careless summer-day.
O brier-like voice that clings in idleness
To Summer's drowsy dress.

III

You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding,
Improvident, who of the summer make
One long green meal-time, and for winter take
No care, aye singing or just merely feeding!
Happy-go-lucky vagabond,—though frost
Shall pierce, ere long, your coat of green or brown,
And pinch your body,—let no song be lost,
But as you lived, into your grave go down—
Like some small poet with his little rhyme,
Forgotten of all time.

FOREST AND FIELD

I

Green, watery jets of light let through
The rippling foliage drenched with dew;
And golden glimmers, warm and dim,
That in the vistaed distance swim;
Where, round the wood-spring's oozy urn,
The limp, loose fronds of forest fern
Trail like the tresses, green and wet,
A wood-nymph binds with violet.
O'er rocks that bulge and roots that knot
The emerald-amber mosses clot;
From matted walls of brier and brush
The elder nods its plumes of plush;
And, Argus-eyed with bloom on bloom,
The wild-rose breathes its wild perfume;
May-apples, ripening yellow, lean
With oblong fruit, a lemon-green,
Near Indian-turnips, long of stem,
That bear an acorn-oval gem,
As if some woodland Bacchus there,—
While braiding locks of hyacinth hair

With ivy-tod,—had idly tossed
His thyrsus down and so had lost:
And blood-root, that from scarlet wombs
Puts forth, in spring, its milk-white blooms,
That then like starry footsteps shine
Of April under beech and pine;
At which the gnarléd eyes of trees
Stare, big as Fauns', at Dryadës,
That bend above a fountain's spar,
As white and naked as a star.

The stagnant stream flows sleepily
Thick-paved with lily-pads; the bee,—
Brown, honey-drunk, a Bassarid,—
Booms past the mottled toad, that, hid
In calamus and blue-eyed grass,
Beside the water's pooling glass,
Silenus-like, eyes stolidly
The Mænad-glittering dragonfly.
And pennyroyal and peppermint
Pour dry-hot odors without stint
From fields and banks of many streams;
And in their scent one almost seems
To see Demeter pass, her breath
Sweet with her triumph over death.—
A haze of floating saffron; sound
Of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground;

The dip and stir of twig and leaf;
Tempestuous gusts of spices brief
Borne over bosks of sassafras
By winds that foot it on the grass;
Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings,
That hint at untold, hidden things—
Pan and Sylvanus who of old
Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.
A wily light beneath the trees
Quivers and dusks with every breeze—
A Hamadryad, haply, who,—
Culling her morning meal of dew
From frail, accustomed cups of flowers,—
Now sees some Satyr in the bowers,
Or hears his goat-hoof snapping press
A brittle branch, and in distress
Shrinks back; her dark, dishevelled hair
Veiling her limbs one instant there.

II

Down precipices of the dawn
The rivers of the day are drawn,
The soundless torrents, free and far,
Of gold that deluge every star.
There is a sound of winds and wings
That fills the woods with carollings;

And, dashed on moss and flower and fern,
And leaves, that quiver, breathe and burn,
Rose-radiance smites the solitudes,
The dew-drenched hills, the dripping woods
That twitter as with canticles
Of bird and brook; and air that smells
Of flowers, and buds, and boisterous bees,
Delirious honey and wet trees.—
Through briers that trip them, one by one,
With swinging pails, that flash the sun,
A troop of girls comes—berriers,
Whose bare feet glitter where they pass
Through dewdrop-trembling tufts of grass.
And, oh! their laughter and their cheers
Wake Echo on her shrubby rocks
Who, answering, from her mountain mocks
With rapid fairy horns—as if
Each mossy vale and weedy cliff
Had its imperial Oberon,
Who, seeking his Titania, hid
In coverts caverned from the sun,
In kingly wrath had called and chid.

Cloud-feathers, oozing orange light,
Make rich the Indian locks of Night;
Her dusky waist with sultry gold
Girdled and buckled fold on fold.

One star. A sound of bleating flocks.
Great shadows stretched along the rocks,
Like giant curses overthrown
By some Arthurian champion.
Soft-swimming sorceries of mist
That streak blue glens with amethyst.
And, tinkling in the clover dells,
The twilight sound of cattle-bells.
And where the marsh in reed and grass
Burns, angry as a shattered glass,
The flies blur sudden gold, and shine
Like drops of amber-scattered wine
Spun high by reeling Bacchanals,
When Bacchus wreathes his curling hair
With vine-leaves, and from every lair
His worshippers around him calls.
They come, they come, a happy throng,
The berriers with lilt and song;
Their pails brimmed black to tin-bright eaves
With luscious fruit, kept cool with leaves
Of aromatic sassafras;
'Twixt which a berry often slips,
Like laughter, from the purple mass,
Wine-swollen as Silenus' lips.

III

The tanned and tired Noon climbs high
Up burning reaches of the sky;
Below the drowsy belts of pines
The rock-ledged river leaps and shines;
And over rainless hill and dell
Is blown the harvest's sultry smell:
While, in the fields, one sees and hears
The brawny-throated harvesters,—
Their red brows beaded with the heat,—
By twos and threes among the wheat
Flash their hot scythes; behind them press
The binders—men and maids who sing
Like some mad troop of piping Pan;—
While all the hillsides, echoing, ring
Such sounds of Ariel airiness
As haunted freckled Caliban.

“O ho! O ho! 't is noon I say.
The roses blow.
Away, away, above the hay,
To the song o' the bees the roses sway;
The love-lays that they hum all day,
So low! so low!
The roses' Minnesingers they.”

Up velvet lawns of lilac skies
The tawny moon begins to rise
Behind low, blue-black hills of trees,—
As rises up, in siren seas,
To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid,
A virgin-bosomed Oceanid.—
Gaunt shadows crouch by tree and scaur,
Dusk's shaggy Satyrs waiting for
The Nymphs of moon, the Dryads white,
Who take with loveliness the night,
And glorify it with their love.
The sweet, far notes I hear, I hear,
Beyond dim pines and mellow ways;
The song of some fair harvester,
The lovely Limnad of the grove,
Whose singing charms me while it slays.

“O deep! O deep! the earth and air
Are sunk in sleep.
Adieu to care! Now everywhere
Is rest; and by the old oak there
The maiden with the nut-brown hair
Doth keep, doth keep
Tryst with her lover the young and fair.”

IV

Like Atalanta's spheres of gold,
Within the orchard, apples rolled
From sudden hands of boughs that lay
Their leaves, like palms, against the day;
And near them pears of rusty brown
Rolled bruised; and peaches, pink with down,
And furry as the ears of Pan;
Or, like Diana's cheeks, a tan
Beneath which burnt a tender fire;
Or wan as Psyche's with desire.
And down the orchard vistas,—young,
A hickory basket by him swung,
A hat of straw against the sun
Drawn shadowy o'er his face,—he strode;
As if he looked to find some one,
His eyes searched every bend of road.
Before him, like a living burr,
Rattled the noisy grasshopper.
And where the cows' melodious bells
Trailed music up and down the dells,
Beside the spring, that o'er the ground
Went whimpering like a fretful hound,
He saw her waiting, fair and slim,
Her pail forgotten there, for him.

Yellow as sunset skies and pale
As fairy clouds that stay or sail
Through azure vaults of summer, blue
As summer heavens, the wildflowers grew;
And blossoms on which spurts of light
Fell laughing—like the lips one might
Feign once were Hebe's, or a girl's
That laughter lights with rows of pearls.
Long ferns, in murmuring masses heaped;
And mosses moist, in beryl steeped
And musk aromas of the wood
And silence of the solitude:
And everything that near her blew
The spring had showered thick with dew.—
Across the rambling fence she leaned,
Her fresh, round arms all white and bare;
Her artless beauty, bonnet-screened,
Simplicity from feet to hair.
A wood-thrush gurgled in a vine—
Ah! 't is his step, 't is he she hears;
The wild-rose smelt like some rare wine—
He comes, ah, yes! 't is he who nears.
And her brown eyes and happy face
Said welcome. And with rustic grace
He leant beside her; and they had
Some talk with youthful laughter glad:
I know not what: I know but this—
Its final period was a kiss.

SUMMER

I

Hang out your loveliest star, O Night! O Night!
Your richest rose, O Dawn!
To greet sweet Summer, her, who, clothed in light,
Leads Earth's best hours on.
Hark! how the wild birds of the woods
Throat it within the dewy solitudes!
The brook sings low and soft,
The trees make song,
As, from her heaven aloft,
Comes blue-eyed Summer like a girl along.

II

And as the Day, her lover, leads her in,
How bright his beauty glows!
How red his lips, that ever try to win
Her mouth's delicious rose!
And from the beating of his heart

Warm winds arise and sighing thence depart:
And from his eyes and hair
The light and dew
Fall round her everywhere,
And heaven above her is an arch of blue.

III

Come to the forest, or the treeless meadows
Deep with their hay or grain;
Come where the hills lift high their thrones of shadows,
And tawny orchards reign.
Come where the reapers whet the scythe;
Where golden sheaves are heaped; where berriers blithe,
With willow-basket and with pail,
Swarm knoll and plain;
Where flowers freckle every vale,
And Beauty goes with hands of berry-stain.

IV

Come where the dragonflies, a brassy blue,
Flit round the wildwood streams,
And, sucking at some horn of honey-dew,
The wild-bee hums and dreams.

Come where the butterfly waves wings of sleep,
Gold-disked and mottled, over blossoms deep:
Come where beneath the rustic bridge
The creek-frog cries;
Or in the shade the rainbowed midge,
Above the emerald pools, with murmurings flies.

V

Come where the cattle browse within the brake,
As red as oak and strong;
Where cattle-bells the echoes faintly wake,
And milkmaids sing their song.
Come where the vine-trailed rocks, with waters hoary,
Tell to the sun some legend old or story;
Or where the sunset to the land
Speaks words of gold;
Where Ripeness walks, a wheaten band
About her brow, making the buds unfold.

VI

Come where the woods lift up their stalwart arms
Unto the star-sown skies;
Knotted and gnarled, that to the winds and storms

Fling mighty rhapsodies:
Or to the moon repeat what they have seen,
When Night upon their shoulders vast doth lean.
Come where the dew's clear syllable
Slips from the rose;
And where the fireflies fill
The dark with golden music of their glows.

VII

Now while the dingles and the vine-roofed glens
Whisper their flowery tale
Unto the silence; and the lakes and fens
Unto the moonlight pale
Murmur their rapture, let us seek her out,
Her of the honey throat and peach-sweet pout,
Summer! and at her feet,
The love of old
Lay like a sheaf of wheat,
And of our hearts the purest gold of gold.

INDIAN SUMMER

The dawn is a warp of fever,
The eve is a woof of fire;
And the month is a singing weaver
Weaving a red desire.

With stars Dawn dices with Even
For the rosy gold they heap
On the blue of the day's broad heaven,
On the black of the night's wide deep.

It 's—“Reins to the blood!” and “Marry!”
The Season 's a prince who burns
With the teasing lusts that harry
His heart for a wench who spurns.

It 's—“Crown us a beaker with sherry,
To drink to the doxy's heels;
A tankard of wine o' the berry,
To lips like a cloven peel's.

“'S death! if a king be saddened,
Right so let a fool laugh lies:
But wine! when a king is gladdened,
And a woman's waist and her eyes.”

He hath shattered the loom of the weaver,
And left but a leaf that flits,
He hath seized heaven's gold, and a fever
Of mist and of frost is its.

He hath tippled the buxom beauty,
And gotten her hug and her kiss—
The wide world 's royal booty
To pile at her feet for this.

TO SORROW

I

O dark-eyed spirit of the marble brow,
Whose look is silence and whose touch is night,
Who walkest lonely through the world, O thou,
Who sittest lonely with Life's blown-out light;
Who in the hollow hours of night's noon
Criest like some lost child;
Whose anguish-fevered eyeballs seek the moon
To cool their pulses wild.
Thou who dost bend to kiss Joy's sister cheek,
Turning its rose to alabaster; yea,
Thou who art terrible and mad and meek,
Why in my heart art thou enshrined to-day?
Sorrow, O say! O say!

II

Now Spring is here and all the world is white,
I will go forth, and where the forest robes
Itself in green, and every hill and height

Crowns its fair head with blossoms,—spirit globes
Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with dew,—
I will forget my grief,
And thee, O Sorrow, gazing at the blue,
Beneath a last year's leaf,
Of some brief violet the south-wind woos,
Or bluet, whence the west-wind raked the snow;
The baby eyes of love, the darling hues
Of happiness, that thou canst never know,
Mother of pain and woe.

III

On some hoar upland, hoar with clustered thorns,
Hard by a river's windy white of waves,
I shall sit down with Spring,—whose eyes are morns
Of light; whose cheeks the rose of health enslaves,—
And so forget thee, braiding in Spring's hair
The snowdrop, tipped with green,
The cool-eyed primrose and the trillium fair,
And moony celandine.
Contented so to lie within her arms,

Forgetting all the sere and sad and wan,
Remembering Love alone, who, o'er earth's storms,
High on the mountains of perpetual dawn,
Leads the glad Hours on.

IV

Or in the peace that follows storm, when Even,
Within the west, stands dreaming, lone and far,
Clad on with green and silver, and the Heaven
Is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering star,
I will lie down beside a mountain lake,
Round which the tall pines sigh,
And, breathing musk of rain from boughs that shake
Storm balsam, blowing by,
Make friends of Dream and Contemplation high,
And Music, listening to the mocking-bird,—
Who through the hush sends its melodious cyr,—
And so forget a while that other word,
That all loved things must die.

NIGHT

Out of the East, as from an unknown shore,
Thou comest with thy children in thine arms,—
Slumber and Dream,—whom mortals so adore,—
Their flowing raiment sculptured to their charms:
Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest,
Laid like two roses in one balmy nest.
Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow.
There is no other presence like to thine,
When thou approachest with thy babes divine,
Thy shadowy face above them bending low,
Blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow.

Oft have I taken Sleep from thy dark arms,
And fondled her fair head, with poppies wreathed,
Within my bosom's depths, until its storms
With her were hushed and I but faintly breathed:
And then her sister, Dream, with frolic art

Arose from rest, and in my sleeping heart
Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost;
Worlds where my stranger soul looked down at me,
Or walked with spirits by a rainbowed sea,
Or smiled, an unfamiliar shape of frost,
Floating on gales of breathless melody.

Day comes to us in garish glory garbed;
But thou, thou bringest to the tired heart
Rest and sweet silence, wherein are absorbed
All the vain tumults of the mind and mart.
Whether thou comest with hands full of stars,
Or clothed in storm and cloud, the lightning bars,
Rolling the thunder like a mighty dress,
God moves with thee; we seem to hear His feet,
Wind-like, along the floors of Heaven beat;
To see His face, revealed in awfulness,
Through thee, O Night, to ban us or to bless.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

I

The shadows sit and stand about its door
Like uninvited guests and poor;
And all the long, hot summer day
The ceaseless locust dins its roundelay
In one old sycamore.
The squirrel leaves upon its rotting roof
Its wandering tracks
In empty hulls; and in its clapboard cracks
The spider weaves a windy woof,
And cells of clay the mud-wasp packs.
The she-fox whelps upon its floor;
And o'er its sun warped door
The owlet roosts; and where the mosses run,
The freckled snake basks in the sun.

II

The children of what fathers sleep
Beneath those melancholy pines?

The slow slugs slime their headstones there where creep
The doddered poison-vines.
The orchard, near the meadow deep,
Lifts up decrepit arms,
Black-lichened in a withering heap.
No sap swells up to make it leap
And shout against spring's storms;
No blossom lulls its age asleep;
The winds bring sad alarms.
Big, bell-round pears and pippins, russet-red,
No maiden gathers now;
The worm-bored trunks weep tears of gum instead,
Oozing from each old bough.

III

The woodlands around it are solitary
And fold it like gaunt hands;
The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary,
The hum of the country is lonesome and weary,
And the bees go by in bands
To gladder and lovelier lands.
The grasses are rotting in walk and in bower;

The loneliness,—dank and rank
As a chamber where lies for a lonely hour
An old-man's corpse with many a flower,—
Is hushed and blank.
And even the birds have passed it by,
Gone with their songs to a happier sky,
A happier sky and bank.

IV

In its desolate halls are lying,
Gold, blood-red, and browned,
Drifted leaves of autumn dying;
And the winds, above them sighing,
Turn them round and round,
Make a ghostly sound
As of footsteps falling, flying,
Ghostly footsteps, faintly flying
Through the haunted house.

V

Gazing down in her white shroud,
Wov'n of windy cloud,
Comes at night the phantom moon;
Comes, and all the shadows soon,
Crowding chambers of the house,
Haunting whispering rooms, arouse;—

Shadows, ghosts, her rays lead on,
Till beneath the cloud
Like a ghost she 's gone,
In her gusty shroud,
O'er the haunted house.

AUTUMN

I oft have met her slowly wandering
Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,
Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring,
As if on her the scarlet copse had smiled.
Or I have seen her sitting, dark and tall,—
Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,—
Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves
She wound great drowsy wreaths and let them fall;
The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim
Far out behind, brown as the rustling sheaves.

Or in the hill-lands I have often seen
The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between,
Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint.
Or I have met her 'twixt two beechen hills,
Within a dingled valley near a fall,

Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower;
Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills
Went babbling through the wildwood's arrased hall,
Where burned the beech and maples glared their power.

Or I have met her by a ruined mill,
Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine,
On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled, chill,
And watched her swinging in the wildgrapevine.
While Beauty, sad among the vales and mountains,
More sad than death, or all that death can teach,
Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms,
Where splashed the murmur of the forest's fountains:
With all her loveliness did she beseech,
And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms.

Once only in a hollow, girt with trees,
A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain,
I glimpsed her cheeks, red-berried by the breeze,
In her dark eyes the night's sidereal stain.

And once upon an orchard's tangled path,
Where all the goldenrod had turned to brown,
Where russets rolled and leaves lay sweet of breath,
I did behold her 'mid her aftermath
Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown,
Within her gaze the dreams of life and death.

ALONG THE OHIO

Athwart a sky of brass long welts of gold;
A river of flame the wide Ohio lies;
Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold,
The dark-blue hill-tops rise.

And, westering, dips the crescent of the moon
Through great cloud-feathers, flushed with rosy ray,
That close around the crystal of her lune
The redbird wings of Day.

A little skiff slips o'er the burnished stream;
A wake of flame, that broadens far behind,
Follows in ripples; and the paddles gleam
Against the evening wind.

Was it the boat, the solitude, and hush,
That with dead Indians peopled all the glooms?
That made each bank, meseemed, and every bush,
Start into eagle-plumes?

That made me seem to hear the breaking brush,
And, as the stag's great antlers swelled in view,
To hear the arrow twang from cane and rush,
That dipped to the canoe?

To see the glimmering wigwams by the waves?
And, wildly clad, around the camp-fires' glow,
The Shawnee chieftains with their painted braves,
Each with his battle-bow? . . .

But now the vision like the sunset fades,
The clouds of ribbéd gold have oozed their light;
And from the west, like sombre sachem shades,
Gallop the shades of night.

The broad Ohio glitters to the stars;
And many murmurs wander through its woods—
Is it the mourning of dead warriors
For their lost solitudes?

The moon is set; but, like another moon,
The crescent of the river shimmers there,
Unchanged as when the eyes of Daniel Boone
Beheld it flowing fair.

THE OLD INN

Red-winding from the sleepy town,
One takes the lone, forgotten lane
Straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown
Bubbles in thorn-flowers sweet with rain,
Where breezes bend the gleaming grain
And cautious drip of higher leaves
The lower dips that drip again,
Above the tangled trees it heaves
Its gables and its haunted eaves.

One creeper, gnarled and blossomless,
O'erforests all its eastern wall;
The sighing cedars rake and press
Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl;
While, where the sun beats, drone and drawl
The mud-wasps; and one bushy bee,
Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall
To crowd into a crack.—To me
The shadows seem too scared to flee.

Of ragged chimneys martins make
Huge pipes of music; twittering, here
They build and brood.—My footfalls wake
Strange stealing echoes, till I fear
I 'll see my pale self drawing near,
My phantom self as in a glass;
Or one, men murdered, buried—where?—
Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass
With lips that seem to moan “Alas!”

THE MILL-WATER

The water-flag and wild cane grow
Round banks whereon the sunbeams sow
Ephemeral gold when, on its shores,
The wind sighs through the sycamores.

In one green angle, just in reach,
Between a willow-tree and beech,
Moss-grown and leaky lies a boat
The thick-grown lilies keep afloat.

And through its waters, half-awake,
Slow swims the spotted water-snake;
And near its edge, like some gray streak,
Stands gaunt the still fly-up-the-creek.

Between the lily-pads and blooms
The water-spirits set their looms,
And weave the lace-like light that dims
The glimmering leaves of under limbs.

Each lily is the hiding-place
Of some dim wood-thing's elvish face,

That watches you with gold-green eyes
Where bubbles of its breathing rise.

I fancy, when the waxing moon
Leans through the trees and dreams of June;
And when the black bat slants its wing,
And lonelier the green-frogs sing;

I fancy, when the whippoorwill
In some old tree sings wildly shrill,
With glow-worm eyes that dot the dark,—
Each holding high a firefly spark,

To torch its way,—the wood-imps come:
And some float rocking here; and some
Unmoor the lily-leaves and oar
Around the old boat by the shore.

They climb through oozy weeds and moss;
They swarm its rotting sides and toss
Their firefly torches o'er its edge
Or hang them in the tangled sedge.

The boat is loosed. The moon is pale.
Around the dam they slowly sail.
Upon its bow, to pilot it,
A jack-o'-lantern flame doth sit.

Yes; I have seen it all in dreams:
Naught is forgotten—naught, it seems—
The strangled face, the matted hair,
Drown'd, of the woman trailing there.

THE DREAM

Thus did I dream:

It seemed the afternoon
Of some deep, tropic day; and yet the moon
Hung, round and bright with golden alchemy,
High in a heaven sapphire as the sea.
Long, lawny lengths of perishable cloud
Templed the west, o'er rolling forests bowed;
Clouds raining colors, gold and violet,
That, opening, seemed from inner worlds to let
Down hints of Parian beauty and lost charms
Of old romance, peopled with fairy forms.
And all about me fruited orchards grew,
Pear, quince, and peach, and plums of dusty blue;
Rose-apricots, and apples streaked with fire,
Kissed into ripeness by some sun's desire,
And big with juice. And on far, fading hills,
Down which it seemed a hundred torrent rills
Flashed silent silver, vines and vines and vines
Terraced the world with vintage, cooling wines,

Pleasant and fragrant as the heart of June,
Their delicate tang drawn from the wine-white moon.

And from the clouds o'er this sweet world there dripped
An odorous music, strange and feverish-lipped,
That swung and swooned and panted as with sighs;
Investing at each throb the air with eyes
And forms of sensuous spirits, limpid white,
Clad on with raiment as of starry night;
Fair, frail embodiments of melody,
From out whose hearts of crystal one could see
The music stream like light through delicate hands
Hollowing a lamp. And as on sounding sands
The ocean murmur haunts the rosy shells,—
Within whose convolutions beauty dwells,—
My soul became a harp of vibrant love
Reëchoing all the harmony above.

SPRING TWILIGHT

The sun set late; and left along the west
A furious ruby; o'er which billowy snows
Of clouds unrolled; each cloud a mighty breast
Blooming with almond-rose.

The sun set late; and wafts of wind beat down,
And cuffed the blossoms from the blossoming quince;
Scattered the petals of the poppy's crown,
And made the clover wince.

By dusking forests, through whose fretful boughs
In flying fragments shot the evening's flame,
Adown the tangled lane the quiet cows
With dreamy tinklings came.

The sun set late; but scarcely had he gone
When o'er the moon's gold-litten crescent there,
Bright Phosphor, polished as a precious stone,
Burned in fair deeps of air.

As from faint stars the glory waned and waned,
The crickets made the old-time garden shrill;
Beyond the luminous pasture-lands complained
The first far whippoorwill.

A SLEET-STORM IN MAY

On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breathing soft balm and clothed in cloudy white,
The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills,
Waking the crocus and the daffodils.
O'er the cold Earth she breathed a tender sigh—
The maples sang and flung their banners high,
Their crimson tasselled pennons, and the elm
Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm.
Beneath the musky rot of last year's leaves,
Under the forest's myriad naked eaves,
Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue,
Robed in the starlight of the twinkling dew.
With timid tread adown the barren wood
Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood
White-mantled Winter nodding his white head,
Stormy his brow and stormily he said:
“The God of Terror, and the King of Storm,
Must I remind thee how my iron arm
Raised rebel standards 'mid these conquered bowers,

Turning their green to crimson?—Thou, with flowers,
Thou wouldst supplant me! nay! usurp my throne!—
Audacious one!”—

And at her breast he tossed
A glittering spear of ice and piercing frost,
And struck her down, dead on th' unfeeling mold.
The fragile blossoms, gathered in the fold
Of her young bosom, fell in desolate rows
About her beauty; and, like fragrant snows,
Covered her lovely hands and beautiful feet,
Or on her lips lay like last kisses sweet
That died there. Lilacs, musky of the May,
And bluer violets and snowdrops lay
Entombed in crystal, icy faint and fair,
Like teardrops scattered through her heavenly hair.

Alas! sad heart, break not beneath the pain!
Time changeth all; the Beautiful wakes again.—
We should not question such; a higher power
Knows best what bud is ripest, or what flower,
Silently plucks it at the fittest hour.

THE HEART O' SPRING

Whiten, oh, whiten, O clouds of lawn!
Lily-like clouds that whiten above,
Now like a dove, and now like a swan,
But never, oh, never—pass on! pass on!—
Never as white as the throat of my love.

Blue-black night on the mountain peaks—
Oh, not so black as the locks o' my love!
Stars that shine through the evening's streaks
Over the torrent that flashes and breaks,
Brighter the eyes of my love, my love!

Moon in a cloud, as white as snow,
Mist in the vale where the rivulet bounds,
Dropping from ledge to ledge below,
Turning to gold in the sunset's glow,
Softer and sweeter her footstep sounds.

Sound o' May winds in the blossoming trees,
Oh, not so sweet as her laugh that rings;
Song o' wild birds on the morning breeze,
Birds and brooks and murmur o' bees,
Sweeter her voice when she laughs or sings.

The rose o' my heart is she; my dawn!
My star o' the east, my moon above!
My soul takes ship for the Avalon
Of her heart of hearts, and shall sail on
Till it anchors safe in its haven of love.

“A BROKEN RAINBOW ON THE SKIES OF MAY”

A broken rainbow on the skies of May,
Touching the dripping roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:—
So in the sorrow of her soul the ghost
Of one great love, of iridescent ray,
Spanning the roses gray of memory,
Against the tumult of life's rushing crowds—
A broken rainbow on the skies of May.

A flashing humming-bird among the flowers,
Deep-colored blooms; its slender tongue and bill
Sucking the calyxed and the honeyed myrrhs,
Till, sick of sweets, to other flow'rs it whirrs:—
Such was his love that won her heart's full bowers
To yield to him their all, their sweets in showers,
The flower from which he drank his body's fill—
A flashing humming-bird among the flowers.

A moon, moth-white, that through far mists, like fleece,
Moves amber-girt into a bulk of black,
And, lost to sight, rims all the black with froth:—
A love that swept its moon, like some great moth,
Across the heaven of her soul's young peace;
And, smoothly passing, in the clouds did cease
Of time, through which its burning light comes back—
A moon, moth-white, that moves through mists like fleece.

A bolt of living thunder downward hurled,
Momental blazing from the piled-up storm,
That etches out the mountains and the ocean,
The towering rocks, then blots the sight's commotion:—
Love, love that swiftly coming bared the world,
The deeps of life, round which fate's clouds are curled,
And, ceasing, left all night and black alarm—
A bolt of living thunder downward hurled.

ORGIE

On nights like this, when bayou and lagoon
Swoon in the moonlight's mystic radiance,
I seem to walk like one deep in a trance
With old-world myths born of the mist and moon.

Lascivious eyes and mouths of sensual rose
Smile into mine: and breasts of luring light,
And tresses streaming golden to the night,
Persuade me onward where the forest glows.

And then it seems along the haunted hills
There falls a flutter as of beautiful feet,
As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet
To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills.

And then I feel her limbs will be revealed
Like some great snow-white moth among the trees;
Her vampire beauty, waiting there to seize
And drag me downward where my doom is sealed.

THE FARMSTEAD

Yes, I love the Farmstead. There
In the spring the lilacs blew
Plenteous perfume everywhere;
There in summer gladioles drew
Parallels of scarlet glare.

And the moon-hued primrose cool,
Satin-soft and redolent;
Honeysuckles beautiful,
Filling all the air with scent;
Roses red or white as wool.

Roses, glorious and lush,
Rich in tender-tinted dyes,
Like the gay tempestuous rush
Of unnumbered butterflies,
Clustering o'er each bending bush.

Here japonica and box,
And the wayward violets;
Clumps of star-enameled phlox,
And the myriad flowery jets
Of the twilight four-o'-clocks.

Ah, the beauty of the place!
When the June made one great rose,
Full of musk and mellow grace,
In the garden's humming close,
Of her comely mother face!

Bubble-like the hollyhocks
Budded, burst, and flaunted wide
Gypsy beauty from their stocks;
Morning-glories, bubble-dyed,
Swung in honey-hearted flocks.

Tawny tiger-lilies flung
Doublets slashed with crimson on;
Graceful slave-girls, fair and young,
Like Circassians, in the sun
Alabaster lilies swung.

Ah, the droning of the bee;
In his dusty pantaloons
Tumbling in the fleurs-de-lis;
In the drowsy afternoons
Dreaming in the pink sweet-pea.

Ah, the moaning wildwood dove!
With its throat of amethyst

Rippled like a shining cove
Which a wind to pearl hath kissed,
Moaning, moaning of its love.

And the insects' gossip thin—
From the summer hotness hid—
In lone, leafy deeps of green;
Then at eve the katydid
With its hard, unvaried din.

Often from the whispering hills,
Borne from out the golden dusk,—
Gold with gold of daffodils,—
Thrilled into the garden's musk
The wild wail of whippoorwills.

From the purple-tangled trees,
Like the white, full heart of night,
Solemn with majestic peace,
Swam the big moon, veined with light,
Like some gorgeous golden-fleece.

She was there with me.—And who,
In the magic of the hour,
Had not sworn that they could view,
Beading on each blade and flower
Moony blisters of the dew?

And each fairy of our home,—
Firefly,—its taper lit
In the honey-scented gloam,
Dashing down the dusk with it
Like an instant-flaming foam.

And we heard the calling, calling,
Of the brown owl in the brake;
Where the trumpet-vine hung, crawling
Down the ledge, into the lake
Heard the sighing streamlet falling.

Then we wandered to the creek
Where the water-lilies, growing
Thick as stars, lay white and weak;
Or against the brooklet's flowing
Stooped and bathed a bashful cheek.

And the moonlight, rippling golden,
Fell in virgin aureoles
On their bosoms, half-unfolden,
Where, it seemed, the fairies' souls
Dreamed as perfume,—unbeholden;—

Lying sleeping, pearly-tented,
Baby-cribbed within each bud,

While the night-wind, pinewood-scented,
Swooning over field and flood,
Rocked them on the waters dented.

Then the low, melodious bell
Of a sleeping heifer tinkled,
In some berry-briered dell,
As her satin dewlap wrinkled
With the cud that made it swell.

And, returning home, we heard,
In a beech-tree at the gate,
Some brown, dream-behaunted bird,
Singing of its absent mate,
Of the mate that never heard.

And, you see, now I am gray,
Why within the old, old place,
With such memories, I stay:
Fancy out her absent face
Long since passed away.

She was mine—yes! still is mine:
And my frosty memory
Reels about her, as with wine
Warmed into young eyes that see
All the past that was divine.

Yes, I loved her, and have grown
Melancholy in that love,
And the memory alone
Of her loveliness whereof
She did sanctify each stone.

And where'er her flowers swing,
There she walks,—as if a bee
Fanned them with its airy wing,-
Down her garden, shadowy
In the hush the evenings bring.

THE BOY COLUMBUS

And he had mused on lands each bird,—
That winged from realms of Falerina,
O'er seas of the Enchanted Sword,—
In romance sang him, till he heard
Far foam on Islands of Alcina.

For rich Levant and old Castile
Let other seamen freight their galleys;
With Polo he and Mandeville
Through stranger seas a dreamy keel
Sailed into wonder-peopled valleys.

Far continents of flow'r and fruit,
Of everlasting spring; where fountains
'Mid flow'rs, with human faces, shoot;
Where races dwell, both man and brute,
In cities under golden mountains.

Where cataracts their thunders hurl
From heights the tempest has at mercy;
Vast peaks that touch the moon, and whirl
Wild torrents down of gold and pearl;
And forests strange as those of Circe.

Let rapiered Love lute, in the shade
Of royal gardens, to the Palace
And Court, that haunt the balustrade
Of terraces and still parade
Their vanity and guile and malice.

Him something calls, diviner yet
Than Love, more mighty than a lover;
Heroic Truth, that will not let
Deed lag; a purpose, westward set,
In eyes far-seeing to discover.

NORTH BEACH, FLORIDA

Surge upon surge, the miles of surf uncurl
Volutes of murmur; and the far shore foams;
The thundering billows, boiling into pearl,
The sea-wind clouds and combs.

Wave upon wave,—as when the Nereids pour,
With streaming tresses, landward, when the arms
Of Tritons reach them, racing towards the shore,—
Bursts on the beach that storms.

Oh, thou primeval solitude! that rolled
Out of creation when the world was young!
That shall roll on when man is not, and old
The ages yet unsung!

Time shall not flaw thy music!—thou hast heard
God's spirit on thy waters, and no night
Annuls the memory of that one Word
Which blossomed into light.

With such impression as upon thy face
The soaring seagulls make, man comes and came;
And countless myriads, race on warring race,
Have found thee thus—the same.

Thy part is—to destroy, and still remain
Immutable 'midst mutability:
The symbol of all change, that clothes again
Mystery in mystery.

THE STORM

Thor, Thor is out on the hills!
The frown of his fierce brow showing;
His breath through his red beard blowing,
With rain, through his beard that it fills.

The forests are taken;
The mightiest oaks
Are twisted and shaken
As by chariot-spokes,
Where mountains awaken
To th' hoofs of his yokes,
Reined sheer with the strength of his arm—
Ride forth, O Spirit of Storm!

What hope for the sparrow,
Or nest of the bird!
Where fords were once narrow,
What hope for the herd!
When arrow on arrow
He empties the third
Of his quiver against their alarm—
Descend, O Spirit of Storm!

You may measure the might that he brings
By the welkin that echoes his felloes;
By the fork of the lightning,—that yellows
The darkness,—the hammer he swings.

The cattle are scattered
And low from the shore;
The roses are shattered
That grew at the door;
The swallows look tattered,
And twitter and soar,
Made glad with the force of his form—
Rejoice, O Spirit of Storm!

On levels that sunder
The roar of the main
He ploughs with the thunder,
And sows with the rain:
No sunbeam shall blunder
Through black till the plain
Is planted with storm as a farm—
Sweep on, O Spirit of Storm!

His path is the abysm, which heaps
The wild wind behind him, and hovers
A whirlwind before, that uncovers
The hurricane-lair where he sleeps.

At night,—through the wrestle
Of winds that contend,—
To guard the good vessel
From rocks that would rend,
Like a star let it nestle,
The light, to defend
The seaman and his from all harm—
From thee, O Spirit of Storm!

ON THE JELLICO SPUR OF THE CUMBERLANDS

To ...

You remember how the mist,
When we climbed to Devil's Den,
Pearl-white in the mountain glen,
And above us, amethyst,

Throbbed and circled? then away,
Through the wildwoods opposite,
Torn and scattered, morning-lit,
Vanished into dewy gray?—

Vague as in romance we saw,
From the fog one riven trunk,
Talon-like with branches shrunk,
Thrust a monster dragon claw.

And we climbed for hours through
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To a wooded rock, whence those
Undulating leagues of blue

Summits,—mountain-chains that lie
Dark with forest, bar on bar,—
Ranged their wild, irregular,
Purple peaks beneath a sky

Ocean-azure. Range on range
Billowed their enormous spines,
Where the rocks and priestly pines
Sat eternal, without change.

We were sons of Nature then:
She had taken us to her,
Drawn us, bound with brier and burr,
Closer her than other men:

Intimates of all her moods,
From her bloom-anointed looks,
Wisdom of no man-made books
Learned we in those solitudes:

How the seed contained the flower;
How the acorn held the oak;
How within the vine awoke
The wild impulse still to tower:

How in fantasy or mirth,
Springing when she summoned there,

Sponge-like fungi everywhere
Bulged, exuded from the earth:

Coral-vegetable things,
That the underworld exhaled,
Bulbous, fluted, ribbed, and scaled,
Many colored and in rings,

Like the Indian-Pipe that grew
Pink and white in loamy cracks,
Flowers of a natural wax,
She had turned her fancy to.—

On that laureled precipice,
Where the chestnuts dropped their burrs,
Warm with balsam of the firs,
First we felt her mother-kiss

Full of heaven and the wind;
While the forests, wood on wood,
Murmured like a multitude
Giving praise where none hath sinned.—

Freedom met us there; we saw
Freedom giving audience;
In her face the eloquence,
Lightning-like, of love and law:

Round her, on majestic hips,
Lounged the giant mountains, where
Streaming cataracts tossed their hair,
God and thunder on their lips.—

Oft an eagle, or a hawk,
Or a scavenger, we knew
Winged above us through the blue
By its shadow on the rock.

Or a cloud of templed white
Moved, a lazy berg of pearl,
Through the sky's pacific swirl,
Shot with cool, cerulean light.

So we dreamed an hour upon
That high rock the lichens mossed,
While around us, glimmering, tossed
Golden mintings of the sun:

Then arose; and a ravine,
Which a torrent once had worn,
Made our roadway to the corn
In the valley, deep and green;

And the farm-house with its bees,
Where old-fashioned flowers spun

Gay rag-carpets in the sun,
Gray among the apple-trees.

Here we watched the evening fall:
O'er Wolf Mountain sunset made,
Huge, a rhododendron, rayed
Round the sun's cloud-calyxed ball.

Then through scents of herb and soil,
To the mining-camp we turned,
In the twinkling dusk discerned
With its white-washed homes of toil.

[OMITTED]

Ah, those nights!—We wandered forth
On some haunted mountain path,
When the moon rose late; and rathe
The large stars, sowed south and north,

Splashed with gold the purple skies;
And the milky zodiac,
Rolled athwart the belted black,
Seemed a path to Paradise.

And we walked or tarried till,
In the valley-land beneath,
Like the vapor of a breath
Breathed in frost, arose the still

Architecture of the mist:
And the moon-dawn's necromance
Touched the mist and made it glance
Terraced pearl and amethyst.

Then around us, sharp and brusque,
Night's shrill insects strident strung
Fairy viols that buzzed and sung,
Pixy music of the dusk.

And we seemed to hear soft sighs,
And hushed steps of ghostly things,
Fluttered feet and rustled wings
All around us. Fireflies,

Gleaming in the tangled glade,
Seemed the eyes of warriors,
Stealing under watching stars
To some phantom ambuscade;

To the tepees there that gloomed,
Wigwams of the mist, that slept
By the woodland side, whence crept
Shadowy Shawnees moonbeam-plumed.

When the moon rose, like a cup
Lay the valley, brimming shine

Of mesmeric mist, like wine,
To the sky's dim face held up.

As she rose from out the mines
Of the nacreous darkness, Night
Met her, clad in dewy light
'Mid Pine Mountain's sachem pines.

As through fragmentary fleece
Of the clouds her circle broke,
Orey-seamed, about us woke
Myths of Italy and Greece.

As, an orb of sparry quartz,
Her serene circumference grew,
Home we turned. And all night through
Slept the sleep of happy hearts.

THE WHIPPOORWILL

I

Above lone woodland ways that led
To dells the stealthy twilights tread
The west was hot geranium red;
And still, and still,
Along old lanes the locusts sow
With clustered pearls the Maytimes blow,
Deep in the crimson afterglow,
We heard the homeward cattle low,
And then, far off, like some far woe,
The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill.

II

Beneath the idle beechen boughs
We heard the slow bells of the cows
Come softly, jangling towards the house;
And still, and still,
Beyond the light that would not die
Out of the scarlet-haunted sky,
Beyond the evening-star's white eye

Of glittering chalcedony,
Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry
Of “whippoorwill,” of “whippoorwill.”

III

And in the city oft, when swims
The pale moon o'er the smoke that dims
Its disc, I dream of wildwood limbs,
And still, and still,
I seem to hear, where shadows grope
'Midst ferns and flowers that dewdrops rope,—
Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope
Above the clover-sweetened slope,—
Retreat, despairing, past all hope,
The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill.

IN THE WILDWOOD

I lie where silence sleeps,
And twilight dreams and sighs;
Where all heaven's azure peeps
Blue from one wildflower's eyes;
Where, in reflecting deeps,
A world, inverted, lies,
Of dimmer woods and skies:

Divining God from things
Humble as weed and bee;
From songs the wild bird sings
Guessing at poetry;
And from each flower that swings,
Each star-familiar tree,
Learning philosophy.

A HOLLOW OF THE HILLS

I

How oft the swallow darted
Above its deeps of blue,
Where leaves close clung or parted
To let the sunlight through!
Where roses, honey-hearted,
Hung full of living dew!

II

How oft, from out the heaven,
Upon me blew the balm
Of soft winds, summer-driven
From continents of calm!
With rustlings as of riven,
Sea-sounding pine and palm!

III

Oft from its leafy cover
I watched the red-bird slip;

And marked, like some rude lover,
The bee, with robber lip,
Bend down the snowy clover,
Or make the wild-rose dip.

IV

Still darts the soaring swallow
Above it; and the rose
Still blooms within its hollow
Where still the runnel flows;
The brook,—that I shall follow
No more,—that seaward goes.

V

There still the white moon shineth
At night through rifted trees;
Upon the stream that twineth
Through blooms that no one sees;
And on,—as I divineth,—
My soul that sighs for these.

BENEATH THE BEECHES

I

I long, oh, long to lie
'Neath beechen branches, twisted,
Green 'twixt the summer sky;
The woodland shadows nigh
Like dryads sunbeam-wristed:
The livelong day to dream
Beside a wildwood stream.

II

I long, oh, long to hear
The claustral forest breathing,
Sound soothing to the ear;
To see the wild-vine near
Its scarlet blooms unsheathing:
The livelong day to cross
Slow o'er the nut-strewn moss.

100

III

I long, oh, long to see
The nesting red-bird singing
Glad on the wood-rose tree:
To watch the breezy bee,
Half in the wildflower, swinging:
God's livelong day to pass
Deep in cool forest grass.

IV

Oh, soul, so builded in
With mart and booth and steeple,
Brick alley-ways of sin,
What hope for you to win
Ways free of pelf and people!
Ways of the leaf and root
And soft Mygdonian flute!

101

THE BRIDLE-PATH

I

Through meadows of the ironweeds,
Whose purple blooms hang, slipping
The morning dew in twinkling beads,
The thin path twists and, winding, leads
Through woodland hollows dripping;
Down to a creek of rocks and reeds;
On to a lilied dam that feeds
A mill, whose wheel through willow-bredes
Winks, the white water whipping.

II

It wends through meads of mint and brush
Where silvery seeds drift drowsy,
Or swoon along the heatful hush;
And where the bobwhite, in the bush,
The elder, blooming frowsy,
Keeps calling clear: then through a crush

102

Of crowded saplings, low and lush;
Then by a pool of flag and rush
With brier-rose petaled blowsy.

III

Thence, o'er the ragweed fallow-lot,
Whose low rail-fence encumbers
The dense-packed berries ripening hot;
Where, in the heaven, one far spot
Of gray, the gray hawk slumbers;
Then through the greenwood where the rot
Of leaves and loam smells cool; and, shot
With dotting dark, the touch-me-not
Swings curling horns in numbers.

IV

It winds round rocks that bulge and lie
Deep in damp ferns and mosses,—
Each like a giant on his thigh
Watching some forest quarry die;—
And thence it frailly crosses
A bramble-bridge; whence, whirring high,
A partridge startles,—'thwart the sky
A jarring light,—where, babbling by,
The brook its diamonds tosses.

103

V

And here the cohosh swings its snow,
Gaunt from the forest springing;
There gold the sorrel blossoms blow;
Here vari-colored toadstools sow,
Or swell the soil; and, swinging,
The trumpet-vine hangs red and low
Near boughs,—on which the beech-burrs glow,—
The woodland wind sways to and fro,
O'er waters wildly ringing.

VI

It leads us deep into the cane
Through spice-bush belts, where “tinkle”
One stray bell sounds, and then again,
Lost in some lone and leafy lane
Where smooth the clay ruts wrinkle . . .
A cloud looms up,—a grayish stain
Against the blue;—and wet with rain
The wind blows, denting down the grain
And leaves, the first drops sprinkle.

VII

The dust is drilled with raindrops.—One,
Then two quick gleams, then thunder;

104

And, scurrying with the dust, we run
Into a whiff of hay and sun,
Of cribs and barns; and under
Low martin-builded eaves,—where dun
The sparrows shelter,—watch the spun
Blue rain sweep down, that seems to stun
The world with wind and wonder.

VIII

A crashing wedge of stormy light,
Vibrating, blinds, and dashes
A monster elm to splinters white:
Then roaring rain: then, blinding bright,
A bolt again that crashes. . . .
The storm is over. Left and right
The clouds break; and, with green delight,
Fresh rain scents blow from wood and height
Where each blade drips and flashes.

IX

A ghostly gold burns slowly through
The chasm'd clouds; and blended
With rainy rose and rainy blue,
The heavens, pearled with many a hue,
Die like a dolphin splendid. . . .

105

High-buoyed in wrack, now one or two
Slight stars peep out—the pirate clue
To night's rich hoard.—In dusk and dew
Here is our pathway ended.

106

THE OLD FARM

Dormered and verandaed, cool,
Locust-girdled on the hill,
Stained with weather-wear; at Yule
And Midsummer every sill
Thresholding the beautiful,

Still I see it standing there,
Brown above the woodland deep,
Wrapped in lights of lavender,
And slow shadows, rocked asleep
By the warm wind everywhere.

I remember how the spring,
Liberal-lapped, bewildered its
Acred orchards, murmuring,
With the blossoms' budded bits,
Where the wood-thrush came to sing.

Barefoot Spring, at first who trod,
Like a beggarmaid, adown

107

The wet woodland, where the god,
With the bright sun for a crown
And the firmament for rod,

Met her; clothed her; wedded her;
Her Cophethua: when, lo!
All the hill, one breathing blur,
Burst in blossom, gleam and glow,
Peach and pearl and lavender.

Seckel, blackheart, palpitant,
Rained their bleaching strays; and white
Snowed the damson, bent aslant;
Rambow-tree and romanite
Seemed beneath deep drifts to pant.

And it stood there, brown and gray,
In the bee-boom and the bloom,
In the shadow and the ray,
In the passion and perfume,
Grave as age among the gay.

Sweet with laughter romped the clear
Boyish voices round its walls;
Rare wild-roses were the dear
Girlish faces in its halls,
Music-haunted all the year.

108

Far before it meadows full
Of green pennyroyal sank;
Clover-dotted as with wool
Here and there; and now a bank
Of wild color: and the cool

Dark blue shadows undefined
Of the clouds rolled overhead;
Clouds, from which the summer wind
Blew with rain, and freshly shed
Dew upon the flowerkind.

Where, through mint and gypsy-lily,
Runs the rocky brook away,
Musical among the hilly
Solitudes,—its flashing spray
Sunbeam-dashed or shadow-stilly,—

Buried in thick sassafras,
Memory follows up the hill
Still some cowbell's mellow brass,
Where the ruined water-mill
Looms, half-hid in cane and grass.

Ah, the old farm! is it set
On the hilltop still? 'mid musk

109

Of the meads? where, violet,
Deepens all the dreaming dusk,
And the locust trees hang wet?

While the sunset, far and low,
On its westward windows dashes
Primrose or pomegranate glow?
And above, in lilac splashes,
Faint, first stars the heavens sow?

Sleeps it still among its roses,
Yellow roses? while the choir
Of the lonesome insects dozes?
And the white moon, filled with fire,
O'er its mossy roof reposes—
Sleeps it still among its roses?

110

TO SUMMER

I

Thou sit'st among the sunny silences
Of terraced hills and woodland galleries,
Thou utterance of all calm melodies,
Thou lutanist of Earth's most fecund lute,—
Where no false note intrudes
To mar the silent music,—branch and root,
Playing the fields ripe, orchards and deep woods,
To song similitudes
Of flower and seed and fruit.

II

Oft have I felt thee, in some sensuous air,
Bewitch the wide wheat-acres everywhere
To imitated gold of thy rich hair:
The peach, by thy red lips' delicious trouble,
Blown into gradual dyes
Of crimson, have I seen: have watched thee double—

111

With interluded music of thine eyes—
The grapes' rotundities,
Bubble by purple bubble.

III

Deliberate uttered into life intense,
Out of thy song's melodious eloquence
Beauty evolves its just preëminence:
The lily, from some pensive-smitten chord
Drawing significance
Of purity, a visible hush stands: starred
With splendor, from thy passionate utterance,
The rose tells its romance
In blushing word on word.

IV

As star by star day harps in evening,
The inspiration of all things that sing
Is in thy hands and from their touch takes wing:
All brooks, all birds,—whom song can never sate,—
Even the wind and rain,
And frogs and insects, singing soon and late,
Thy sympathies inspire, thy heart's refrain,
Whose sounds invigorate
With rest life's weary brain.

112

V

And as the night, like some mysterious rune,
Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon,
Thou lutest us no immaterial tune:
But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn,
By thy still strain made strong,
Earth's awful avatar,—in whom is born
Thy own deep music,—labors all night long
With growth, assuring morn
Assumes like onward song.

113

A GRAY DAY

I

Long volleys of wind and of rain,
And the rain on the drizzled pane,
And the day ends chill and murk;
But on yesterday's eve, I trow,
The new-moon's thorn-thin bow
Stabbed rosy through gold and through glow,
Like a rich, barbaric dirk.

II

The throats of the snapdragons,—
Cool-colored with gold like the dawns
That come with spring o'er the hills,—
Are filled with a sweet rain, fine,
Of starry, scintillant shine,
A faery vat of thin wine,
That the rain for the elfins fills.

114

III

Dabbled the poppies shrink,
And the coxcomb and the pink;
And the candytuft's damp crown
Droops, dribbled, low bowed i' the wet;
And rows of the mignonette
Little musk-sacks open set,
Which the weight o' the dew drags down.

IV

Stretched taunt 'twixt the blades of grass,
A gossamer-fibered glass,
That the garden-spider spun,
The web, where the round rain clings
In the sag o' its middle, swings—
A hammock for elfin things
When the stars succeed the sun.

V

And, mark, where the pale gourd grows
As high as the climbing rose,
How the tiger-moth is pressed
To that wide leaf's under side.—
And I know where the red wasps hide,
And the brown bees,—that defied
The first strong gusts,—distressed.

115

VI

Yet I feel that the gray will blow
Aside for an afterglow;
And the wind, on a sudden, toss
Drenched boughs; a pattering shower
Athwart the red dusk in a glower,
Big drops heard hard on each flower,
The grass and the flowering moss.

VII

And then for a minute, may be,—
A pearl, hollow-worn, of the sea,—
A glimmer of moon will smile,
And a star, rinsed clean, through the dusk:
And a freshness of moonlit musk
O'er the showery lawns blow brusque
As spice from an Indian Isle.

116

THE MOOD O' THE EARTH

My heart is high as the day is clear,
As the wind in the wood that blows;
My heart is high with a mood that 's cheer,
And glows like a sun-blown rose.

My heart is high, and up and away
Like a bird in the skies' deep blue;
My heart goes singing through the day,
As glad as a bee i' the dew.

My heart, my heart is high; its beat
Is wild as the scent o' the wood,
The wild sweet wind, with its pulse of heat,
And its musk of blossom and bud.

My heart is high; and it leads my feet
Where the sense of summer is full,
To woods and waters where lovers meet
To hills where the creeks run cool.

117

My heart is one, is one with the heart,
With the joy o' the bee that comes
And sucks i' the flowers, that dip apart
For his dusty body that hums.

My heart is glad as the glad redstart,
The flame-flecked bird, the spotted bird,
Whose lilt my soul has got by heart,
Fitting each note with a word.

God's love! I tread the wind and air!
Am one with the hoiden wind;
And the stars that swim in the blue, I swear,
Right soon in my hair I'll find.

To live high up, a life o' the mist,
With the cloud-things in white skies,—
With their limbs of pearl and of amethyst,—
That laugh cerulean eyes!

To creep and to suck, like an elfin thing,
In the aching heart of a rose;
In the bluebell's ear to cling and swing,
And whisper what no one knows!

To live on wild-honey, as fresh, as thin
As the rain that 's left in a flower!

118

And roll forth, golden from feet to chin,
In the pollen's Danaë-shower!

Or free, bird-hearted, bend back the throat,
With a vigorous look at the blue,
And launch from my soul one wild, true note,
Is the thing that my heart would do!

God's life! the blood o' the earth is mine!
And the mood o' the earth I'll take,
And brim my soul with her wonderful wine,
And sing till my heart doth break!

119

NOONING

I

Weak winds that make the waters wink;
White clouds that sail from lands of Fable
To white Utopias, vague, that brink
Sky-gulfs of blue unfathomable:
Their rolling shadows drifting
O'er hills of forest, lifting
Wild peaks of purple range, that loom and sink.

II

Warm knolls, whereon the Summer dreams;
And droning dells, where all her brightness
Lies, lulled with hymns of mountain-streams'
Far-foaming falls of windy whiteness:
Where, from the glooming hollow,
With cawing crows that follow,
The hunted hawk wings wearily and screams.

120

III

Dry-buzzing heat and drought that shrills
With one harsh locust's lonesome whirring;
No voice amid the answering hills
Recedes in echoes far-recurring;
As when, with twilight wimpled,
The Morning, rosy dimpled,
From dewy tops called o'er responding rills.

IV

Wan with sweet summer hangs the deep
Hot heaven with the high sun hearted—
A great, wide bluebell bloom asleep
With golden-pistiled petals parted.—
So lone, one would not startle
If from yon wood should dartle
Some wildwood Dream, some Myth the wildwoods keep.

121

THE LOG-BRIDGE

I

Last month, where the old log-bridge is laid
O'er the woodland creek, in the belts o' the shade,
To the right and the left, pink-packed, was made
A gloaming glory of scented tangle
By the bramble roses there—that wade,
High-heaped, from the banks—with many a braid
That, wilting, powdered the ruts, and swayed,
To the waters beneath, loose loops of spangle;
Where the breeze that blew and the beam that rayed
Were murmurous-soft with the bees a-wrangle.

II

This month—'t is August—the lane that leads
To the bramble-bridge runs waste with weeds,
That bloom bright saffron, or satin seeds

122

Of thistle-fleece blow at you, hazy:
Starry the lane with the thousand bredes
Of the yellow daisy, and bud-like beads
Of marigold eyes, around which speeds
The butterfly, sumptuous with mottle and lazy;
Whereunder the pewee picks and pleads,
On the sumach's tassel that dips to the daisy.

III

All golden the spot in the noon's gold shine,
Where the yellow-bird sits with eyes like wine
And swings and whistles; where, line on line,
In coils of warmth the sunbeams nestle;
Where cool by the pool (where the crawfish, fine
As a shadow's shadow, darts dim) to mine
The wet creek-clay with their peevish whine,
Come mason-hornets; and roll and wrestle
With balls of clay they carry, and twine
In hollow nests on the joists o' the trestle.

IV

Where the horsemint shoots through the grasses,—high
On the root-thick rivage that roofs,—a dry

123

Gray knob that bristles with pink, the sigh
Of crickets is heard; and the leaves' deep bosoms
Are pierced, at dusk, with a bird's quick cry,
A passing bird that twitters by:
And the frogs' grave antiphons rise and die;
And here, to drink, come the wild opossums:
And here, to-night, will you and I
Linger and lean while the great moon blossoms.

124

AMONG THE KNOBS

There is a place embanked with brush
Three wooded knobs beyond,
Lost, in a valley, where the lush
Wild eglantine blows blond.

Where light the dogwoods earliest
Their torches of white fires,
And, bee-bewildered, east and west
The red haws build their spires.

The wild crab-apples' flowery sprays
Blur through the pensive gloom
A fragrant pink; and by lone ways
The close blackberries bloom.

I love the spot: a shallow brook
Slips from the forest, near
A cane-brake and a violet nook;
Its rustling depths so clear

125

The minnows glimmer where they glide
Above its rocky bed:
A boyhood-haunted brook, not wide,
That has its sparkling head

Among the rainy hills; and drops
By five low waterfalls—
Wild music of a hundred stops—
Between the forests' walls:

Down to a water-gate, that hangs
Across the stream; a dull
Portcullis rude, whose wooden fangs
The moss makes beautiful.

The brass-bright dragonflies about
Its seeding grasses swim;
The streaked wasps, worrying in and out,
Dart sleepily and slim.

Here in the moon-gold moss, that glows
Like pools of moonlight, dies
The pale anemone; and blows
The bluet, blue as skies.

And, where in April tenderly
The wild geranium made

126

A thin, peculiar fragrance, we,
Cool in pellucid shade,

Found wild strawberries just a-bud;
Wild berries, tart and fresh,—
Pale scarlet as a wood-bird's blood,—
That May's low vines would mesh.

Once from that hill a farm-house 'mid
Deep orchards—cozy brown,—
In lilacs and old roses hid,—
With picket-fence looked down.

O'er ruins now the roses guard;
The plum and seckel-pear
And apricot rot on the sward
Their wasted ripeness there.

Again when huckleberries blow
Their waxen bells I 'll tread
That dear accustomed way; and go
Adown that orchard; led

To that avoided spot, which seems
The haunt of vanished springs;
Lost as the hills in drowsy dreams
Of visionary things.

127

THE FALLS OF THE OHIO

Here on this jutting headland, where the trees
Spread a dusk carpet for the sun to cast
And count his golden guineas on, we 'll rest.
Behold th' Ohio Falls: see how it seethes!
Though hardly heard from this high, wooded point,
Yet how it still confuses tongue and ear
With its subdued and low monotonous roar!
Not as it did, however, when we stood
And marked it from the spanning of the bridge
Rushing beneath, impetuous as a herd,—
A tameless herd, with manes of flying spray,—
Between the pillars towering above.
No more does it confound us and confuse;
Its clamor here is softened to a sound,
Incessant and subdued, like that which haunts
The groves of spring, when, like some dim surprise,
A wind, precursor of the rain, rides down
From a gray cloud and sets the leafy tongues
Cool-gossiping of the approaching shower.

128

There runs the dam; and where its dark line cuts
The river's sheen, already you may see
The ripples glancing to the summer sun,
As if a host had couched a thousand spears
And tossed a thousand plumes of fleecy foam,
In answer to the challenge of the Falls,
Blown from his limestone battlements, and cried
From his wave-builded city's roaring walls.
And there, you see, the waves like champions charge;
Crowding, wild form on form, their foam-hoofs beat
The ragged rocks that roll them on their way:
Billowing they come; knight-like, to ringing lists,
With shout on shout, tossing a thousand plumes,
A thousand spears in sparkling tournament;
Lifting, opposing each, a silvery shield
Or shining pennon, now that sinks or soars,
And many a glittering sword of twinkling foam,
And many a helmet, shattered in flakes of froth,
That, to the trumpeting wind, hisses away:
While, o'er it all, swell out the rush and roar
Of onset, as of battle borne afar.—
On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop!
On, on, along the sandy banks that fling
Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay

129

Their ruinous rush, the knightly strife of waves,
Warring, and winding wild their watery horns.

Look, where a thousand oily eddies whirl,
And turn and turn like wheels of liquid steel
Below this headland! 'T is a place that none
Has bottomed yet with sounding lead and line.
Like some huge kraken, coiling vast its length,
The Eddy sleeps; and, bending from the shores,
The spotted sycamores have gazed and gazed,
Watching its slumber as gray giants might
A dragon in the hollow of gaunt hills,
Its serpent bulk wound round some magic hoard.
So long they 've watched, their ancient backs have grown
Humped, gnarled, and bent, but still they gaze and gaze,
Leaning above; and from the glassy waves
Their images stare back their wonderment.
Haply they see the guardian Genius lie
At the dark bottom in an oozy cave
Of coral; webbed, recumbent on his mace
Of mineral; his locks of dripping green
Circling a crown of ore; his fishy eyes
Dull with the aqueous dullness of his realms.

130

But when the storm 's abroad and whips the waves
With stinging lashes of the myriad rain,
Or scars with thunder some ancestral oak,
Sire of a forest, then he wakes in wrath,
And on the dark foundation of the stream
Rises, a monarch, crowned with iron crown,
And hurls his challenge upward at the storm,
And rages through the waters; heaves and breaks
Through the wild waves, whose round and murky bulks,
Ribbed white with foam, wallow their monster way,
Like giant herds, along yon edge of rock
O'erstrewn with petrifactions of far time;
Mollusk and trilobite and honeycomb
Of whitest coral; and with mass on mass
Of root-like reptiles; writhings turned to rock;
Huge saurian bulks that, haply, sported there,
Convolved; and, in a moment, when the change,—
Which made and unmade continents and seas,
That teemed and groaned with mammoth and plesiosaur,—
Came, with upheaval of the universe,

131

Thro' all their monster spines were struck to stone.

There where uprises a wild knoll, o'erstrewn
With wrecks of ancient forest, in mid-stream
Once rose an island, green and beautiful
With willow and beech, poplar and sycamore;
A river-island where the woodman built,—
Stream-guarded from the savage-haunted shore,—
His rude log cabin. Here he sowed his maize;
Here saw it tassel in the summer heat,
And glance like ranks of feathered Indians through
The glimmering vistas of the broken wood;
Here reaped and sheaved its stalks, all ivory-eared,
In shocks like wigwam rows, when like a maid,
An Indian maid, ruddy in dogwood beads,
The autumn came, soft o'er the sunset hills,
That blushed for love, and underneath her feet
Cast untold gold in leaves and yellow fruit.
Here dwelt the pioneer and here he died,
And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth
And loam of what was once an island; now
A bed of limestone rock and water pools,—
Where, in the quarry, you may see the blast

132

Spout heavenward the dust and dirt and stone,
And flap and pound its echoes round the hills
In giant strokes as of some Titan hammer;—
A mound of stump-pierced soil where once an isle,—
As rich and fair in forest and in field
As any isle that rises to a sail
In tropic seas,—arose to kiss the sun.

There lies the other half of what was once
Corn Island: broad the channel beats between.
Lower it lies, and mantled with dwarf brakes
Of willow and of cottonwood and beech,
Degenerate offsprings of the mighty boles
That once o'erbrowed the stream in majesty
Of tall primeval beauty. In the morn,
Ere yet the east assumes its faintest blush,
Here you may hear the melancholy snipe
Piping, or see her paddling in the pools
That splash the low bed of the rocky soil.

Here once the Indian stole in natural craft
From wahoo-bush to bush, from tree to tree,
His head plumes like a bird, below, above,
Fluttering and nodding 'mid the undergrowth;
In his brown hand the pliant, polished bow,
And at his back his gaudy quiver filled

133

With tufted arrows headed blue with flint.
And while the deep flamingo-colored west
Flamed on his ruddy cheek, and airy fire
Struck rosy 'thwart the stream, he, swift as thought,
Strung his quick bow and through the gray wild goose,
That rose with clamor from the rushy pool,
Sent a fleet arrow; crested with the quills
Which yesterday, perhaps, its mate's gray wing
Made beautiful; and plucked to decorate
The painted shaft that should to-day speed home
And redden all their white with kindred blood:
It falling, gasping at his moccasined feet,
Breathed out its wild life, while the lonely brave
Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills
Answered his exultation with a whoop.

1885.

134

FALL FANCIES

Far off a wind blew, and I heard
Wild echoes of the woods reply—
The herald of some royal word,
With bannered trumpet, blown on high,
Meseemed, then passed me by:

Who summoned marvels there to meet,
In pomp, upon a cloth of gold;
Where berries of the bitter-sweet,
That, splitting, showed the coals they hold,
Sowed garnets through the wold:

Where, under tents of maples, seeds
Of smooth carnelian, oval red,
The spice-bush spangled: where, like beads,
The dogwood's rounded rubies—fed
With fire—blazed and bled.

And there I saw amid the rout
Of months, in richness cavalier,
A minnesinger—lips apout;
A gypsy face; straight as a spear;
A rose stuck in his ear:

135

Eyes, sparkling like old German wine,
All mirth and moonlight; naught to spare
Of slender beard, that lent a line
Unto his lip; October there,
With chestnut curling hair.

His blue baretta swept its plume
White through the leaves; his purple hose,
Puffed at the thighs, made gleam of gloom;
His tawny doublet, slashed with rose,
And laced with crimson bows,

Outshone the wahoo's scarlet pride,
The haw, in rich vermilion dressed:
A dagger dangling at his side,
A slim lute, banded to his breast,
Whereon his hands did rest,

I saw him come. . . . And, lo, to hear
The lilt of his approaching lute,
No wonder that the regnant Year
Bent down her beauty, blushing mute,
Her heart beneath his foot.

136

LATE OCTOBER

Bulged from its cup the dark brown acorn falls,
And by its gnarly saucer, in the stream's
Clear puddles, swells; the sweet-gum's spike-crowned balls
Beside them lie; and, opening all their seams,
Beneath the chestnut-tree the burry hulls
Split, and, within, each nut like copper gleams.

Burst silver white, nods,—an exploded husk
Of snowy, woolly smoke,—the milk-weed's puff
Along the orchard's fence; where in the dusk
And ashen weeds,—as some grim Satyr's rough
Red, breezy cheeks burn through his beard,—the brusque
Crab-apples glow, wind-tumbled from above.

And under withered leaves the crickets' clicks
Seem some dim dirge sighed into memory's ears;

137

One bird sits in the sumach, flits and picks
Its sour seeds. Thro' all the wood one hears
The dropping hickories. Round the hay's railed ricks,
Among the fields, gather the lowing steers.

Some slim, bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked,
Like birds, the flowers, herding from their homes
To warmer woods and skies. Where once were rocked
Unnumbered bees within unnumbered blooms,
One feeble bee clings to one bloom, or, locked
Within it, dreams of summer's oozing combs.

Winds shake the maples, and all suddenly
A storm of leafy stars around you freaks,—
Some Dryad's tattered raiment. To her knee
Wading, the Naiad haunts her stream that streaks
Through woodland waifs. Hark! Pan for Helike
Flutes in the forest, while he seeks and seeks.

138

A NOVEMBER WALK

I
Morning

The hoar frost crisps beneath the feet;
And, sparkling in the morning's strength,
The fence, along its straggling length,
Gleams as if wrought of virgin sleet.

On broom-sedge fields and sassafras
Neglectfully the dim wind lifts
The dead leaves; and around me drifts
The milkweed, shaken from the grass.

Reluctantly and one by one
The useless leaves drift slowly down;
And, seen through woodland vistas, brown
The nut-tree patters in the sun.

Where pools the brook beneath its fall
With scales of ice its edge is bound;
And on the pebbles scattered round
The ooze is frozen; each a ball,

139

It seems, of crystal fallen there.
And now the wind sweeps through the wood
With sighings, and the solitude
Seems shaken with a mighty care.

Decay and melancholy drape
The near-by hills in mysteries
Of mist, through which the rocks and trees
Loom, hazy, each a phantom shape.

To sullenness the surly crow
All his derisive being yields,
And o'er the barren stubble-fields
Flaps, cawless, wrapped in hungry woe.

II
Evening

As eve comes on the teasel stoops
Its spike-crowned cone before the blast:
The tattered leaves drive whirling past
In frantic and fantastic troops.

The matted elder-copses sigh;
Their broad, blue combs, with berries weighed,
Like heavy pendulums are swayed
With every gust that wanders by.

140

Through broken walls of tangled brier,
That hedge the lane, the sumachs thrust
Their scarlet torches, red as rust,
Lit with the sunset's stolid fire.

The eve is here: Cold, hard, and drear
The cloudless west with livid white
Of flaming silver walls the night
Far as one star's thin rays appear.

Wedged 'thwart the west's white luridness
The wild geese wing; from roseless domes
The far “honk” of the leader comes
Lonely and harsh and colorless.

The west dies down; and in its cup,
Shadow on shadow, pours the night;
The east glows with a mystic light;
The stars are keen; the moon comes up.

141

THE WHITE EVENING

On hills, beneath the steely skies,
The wind-tossed forests rock and roar:
Along the river's ringing shore
Homeward the skimming skater flies.

On windy meads of icy brakes,
Where, sheathed in sleet, the haw-tree stands,
The moon looks down on glistening lands,
Where with the cold each bramble shakes.

Last night the sleet made white the world:
All day the wind moaned in the pines:
Now like a wolf, that whines and whines,
Like some wild wolf its hate is hurled

Against the hut upon the wold,
And the one willow by the stream:
Where, huddled, in the moon's chill gleam,
The houseless hare leaps through the cold.

The moon sinks low, the thin new-moon,
And with it, like a bit of spar,

142

Sinks down the large white evening-star,
Beneath which earth seems crystal-hewn.

Slim o'er the tree-tops, weighed with white,
The country church's spire doth swell,
A scintillating icicle;
While fitfully the village light

Stabs, stains with sallow stars the dark:
Homeward the creaking wagons strain:
The smithy glares: the tavern's vane
Points northward in its ghostly sark.

And from the north, with stinging lash,
Driving his herds of snow and sleet,
Upon his steed of wind, whose feet
Hurl through the iron woods and crash

Along the hills, with blow on blow,
The tempest sweeps; before his shout
The moon and stars are blotted out,
And fold on fold rolls down the snow.

143

DREAMS

My thoughts have borne me far away
To beauties of an older day,
Where, crowned with roses, stands the Dawn,
Striking her seven-stringed barbiton
Of flame, whose chords give being to
The seven colors, hue for hue;
The music of the color-dream
She builds the day from, beam by beam.

My thoughts have borne me far away
To myths of a diviner day,
Where, sitting on the mountain, Noon
Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune
Of rest and shade and clouds and skies,
Wherein her calm dreams idealize
Light as a presence, heavenly fair,
Sleeping with all her beauty bare.

My thoughts have borne me far away
To visions of a wiser day,
Where, stealing through the wilderness,

144

Night walks, a sad-eyed votaress,
And prays with mystic words she hears
Behind the thunder of the spheres,
The starry utterance that is hers
With which she fills the universe.

145

THE BROOK

To it the forest tells
The mystery that haunts its heart and folds
Its form in cogitation deep, that holds
The shadow of each myth that dwells
In nature—be it Nymph or Fay or Faun—
And whispering of them to the dales and dells,
It wanders on and on.

To it the heaven shows
The secret of its soul; true images
Of dreams that form its aspect; and with these
Reflected in its countenance it goes,
With pictures of the skies, the dusk and dawn,
Within its breast, as every blossom knows,
For them to gaze upon.

Through it the world-soul sends
Its heart's creating pulse that beats and sings
The music of maternity whence springs
All life; and shaping earthly ends,—
From the deep sources of the heavens drawn,—
Planting its ways with beauty, on it wends,
On and for ever on.

146

THE OLD SWING

Under the boughs of spring
She swung in the old rope-swing.

Her cheeks, with their happy blood,
Glowed pink as the apple-bud.

Her eyes, with their deep delight,
Shone glad as the stars of night.

Her curls, with their romp and fun,
Tossed hoiden to wind and sun.

Her lips, with their laughter shrill,
Rippled like some wild rill.

Under the boughs of spring
She swung in the old rope-swing.

And I,—who leaned on the fence,
Watching her innocence,

147

As, under the boughs that bent,
Now high, now low, she went,

In her soul the ecstasies
Of the stars, the brooks, the breeze,—

Had given the rest of my years,
With their blessings, and hopes, and fears,

To have been as she was then;
And, just for a moment, again

A boy in the old rope-swing
Under the boughs of spring.

148

TO AUTUMN

I feel thee as one feels a flower's,
A dead flower's fragrance in a room,—
A dim, gray grief that haunts the hours
With sad perfume.

Thou charm'st me as a ghostly lily
Might charm a garden's withered space,
With the pale pathos and the chilly
Hush of thy face.

I hearken in thy fogs; I hearken
When, like the phantom of dead Night,
With immaterial limbs they darken
The day with white.

With wrecks of rain and mad winds, heaping
Red ruins of riven rose and leaf,
Make sad my heart, O Autumn! sweeping
The world with grief.

149

WINTER DREAMS

How does it come that now I go
Down ways made blue with bluets' eyes?
Along the creek-road as the crow
With mocking laughter flies?

A wild bird beats a crippled wing
To lure me from its brush-built nest;
Then, like a brook, I hear it sing
Its wildwood happiest.

Beyond the orchard hills are dells
Of knee-deep huckleberries, white
With little bell-blooms, May-time swells
With sweetness and delight.

The faun wakes in me, wild and keen,
And, with the joy the rathe months hold,
Kicks happy heels in deeps of green
And rolls in deeper gold.

My Shakespeare falls: I wake: and frost
And ice seam every flower-bed:

150

Where once each stalk, an Edgar, tossed,
Poor Tom now shakes instead.

Where once th' gladiole, gleaming, shook
A wand of folly at the sun,
The humped stock hath a withered look—
The poor, pale Fool is done.

A great, gray beard the rose-bush hath,—
An old king's,—where hangs many a tear,
Near the dead lily by the path—
Cordelia and Lear.

University of Virginia Library

[IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES]

IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES