The poems of Madison Cawein

“Fair the Dandelion is,
But for me too lowly;
And the winsome Violet
Is, forsooth, too holy.
‘But the Touch-me-not?’—Go to!
What! a face that 's speckled
Like a common milking-maid's,
Whom the sun hath freckled.
Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt;
And the Trillium-Lily,
In her spotless gown, 's a prude,
Sanctified and silly.
By her cap the Columbine,
To my mind, 's too merry—
Gossips, I would sooner woo
Some plebeian Berry.

256

And the shy Anemone—
Well, her face shows sorrow;
Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day,
Dead and gone to-morrow.
Then that bold-eyed, buxom wench,
Big and blond and lazy,—
She 's been chosen over oft!—
Sirs, I mean the Daisy.
Pleasant persons are they all,
And their virtues many;
Faith! I know but good of each,
And naught ill of any.
But I choose a May-Apple;
She shall be my Lady;
Blooming, hidden and refined,
Sweet in places shady.”

In my youth 't was thus I sang,
In my heart's young hours,
In the first rare Spring of song,
Choosing 'mid the flowers.
So I hesitated when
Time alone was reckoned
By the hours that Fancy smiled,
Love and Beauty beckoned.
Hard it was for me to choose
From the flowers that flattered;

257

And the blossom that I chose
Soon lay dead and scattered.
Hard I found it then, ah me!
Hard I found the choosing;
Harder, harder since I 've found,
All too hard, the losing.
Haply had I chosen then
From the weeds that tangle
Wayside, woodland, and the wall
Of my garden's angle,
I had chosen better, yea,
For these later hours—
Longer live the weeds, and oft
Sweeter are than flowers.

259

THE CRICKET

I

First of the insect choir, in the spring
We hear his faint voice fluttering in the grass,
Beneath some blossom's rosy covering,
Or frond of fern, upon a wildwood pass.
When in the marsh, in clamorous orchestras,
The shrill hylodes pipe; when, in the haw's
Bee-swarming blooms, or tasseling sassafras,
Sweet threads of silvery song the sparrow draws,
Bow-like, athwart the vibrant atmosphere,—
Like some dim dream low-breathed in slumber's ear,—
We hear his Cheer, cheer, cheer.

II

All summer long the mellowing meadows thrill
To his blithe music. Be it day or night,
Close gossip of the grass, on field and hill
He serenades the silence with delight:

260

Silence, that hears the melon slowly split
With ripeness; and the plump peach, hornet-bit,
Loosen and fall; and everywhere the white,
Warm, silk-like stir of leafy lights that flit
As breezes blow; above which, loudly clear,—
Like joy who sings of life and has no fear,—
We hear his Cheer, cheer, cheer.

III

Then in the autumn, by the waterside,
Leaf-huddled; or along the weed-grown walks,
He dirges low the flowers that have died,
Or with their ghosts holds solitary talks.
Lover of warmth, all day above the click
And crunching of the sorghum-press, through thick
Sweet steam of juice; all night when, white as chalk,
The hunter's-moon hangs o'er the rustling rick,
Within the barn 'mid munching cow and steer,—
Soft as a memory the heart holds dear,—
We hear his Cheer, cheer, cheer.

261

IV

Kinsman and cousin of the Faëry Race,
All winter long he sets his sober mirth,—
That brings good-luck to many a fireplace,—
To folk-lore song and saga of the hearth.
Between the back-log's bluster and the slim
High twittering of the kettle,—sounds that hymn
Home-comforts,—when, outside, the starless earth
Is icicled in every laden limb,—
Defying frost and all the sad and sere,—
Like love that dies not and is always near,—
We hear his Cheer, cheer, cheer.

262

THE TREE TOAD

I

Secluded, solitary on some underbough
Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light,
Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how
The slow toadstool comes bulging, moony white,
Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,
The glow-worm gathers silver to endow
The darkness with; or how the dew conspires
To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires
Each blade that shrivels now.

II

O vague confederate of the whippoorwill,
Of owl and cricket and the katydid!
Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill
Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid
In cedars, twilight sleeps—each azure lid

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Drooping a line of golden eyeball still.—
Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice
Within the Garden of the Hours apoise
On dusk's deep daffodil.

III

Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon
Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover
And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune
Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over.
Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover
Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon
Of twilight's hush, and little intimate
Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate
Round rim of rainy moon!

IV

Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn
Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour
When they may gambol under haw and thorn,
Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?
Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower
The liriodendron is? from whence is borne
The elfin music of thy bell's deep bass,
To summon Fairies to their starlit maze,
To summon them or warn.

264

THE SCREECH-OWL

I

When, one by one, the stars have trembled through
Eve's shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire—
As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew
Orbs its bright beads;—and, one by one, the choir
Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier:
Then through the woods—where wandering winds pursue
A ceaseless whisper—like an eery lyre
Struck in the Erl-king's halls, where ghosts and dreams
Hold revelry, your goblin music screams,
Shivering and strange as some strange thought come true.

II

Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees,
Or those fantastic fungi of the woods
That crowd the dampness—are you kin to these

265

In some mysterious way that still eludes
My fancy? you, who haunt the solitudes
With hag-like wailings? voice, that seems to freeze
Out of the darkness,—like the scent which broods,
Rank and rain-sodden, over autumn nooks,—
That, to the mind, might well suggest such looks,
Ghastly and gray, as pale clairvoyance sees.

III

You people night with weirdness: lone and drear,
Beneath the stars, you cry your wizard runes;
And in the haggard silence, filled with fear,
Your shuddering hoot seems some wild grief that croons
Mockery and terror; or,—beneath the moon's
Cloud-hurrying glimmer,—to the startled ear,
Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes,
The witless wit of outcast Edgar there
In the wild night; or, wan with all despair,
The mirthless laughter of the Fool in Lear.

266

THE CHIPMUNK

I

He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence,
Or on the fallen tree,—brown as a leaf
Fall stripes with russet,—gambols down the dense
Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence
He comes, nor whither—'t is a time too brief!—
He vanishes;—swift carrier of some Fay,
Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief—
A goblin glimpse from woodland way to way.

II

What harlequin mood of nature qualified
Him so with happiness? and limbed him with
Such young activity as winds, that ride
The ripples, have, that dance on every side?
As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith

267

Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight,
Gnome-like, in darkness,—like a moonlight myth,—
Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.

III

Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole
Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps;
Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole
Tunnelling its mine—like some ungainly Troll
Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps
Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute;
Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps,
And trees unrolling mighty root on root.

IV

Such is the music of his sleeping hours.
Day hath another—'t is a melody
He trips to, made by the assembled flowers,
And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers,
And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.
Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze—
The silent music of Earth's ecstasy—
The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days.

268

THE WILD IRIS

That day we wandered 'mid the hills,—so lone
Clouds are not lonelier,—the forest lay
In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:
And many a bird the glimmering light along
Showered the golden bubbles of its song.

Then in the valley, where the brook went by,
Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,—
An isolated slip of fallen sky,
Epitomizing heaven in its sum,—
An iris bloomed—blue, as if, flower-disguised,
The gaze of Spring had there materialized.

I have forgotten many things since then—
Much beauty and much happiness and grief;

269

And toiled and dreamed among my fellowmen,
Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.
“'T is winter now,” so says each barren bough;
And face and hair proclaim 't is winter now.

I would forget the gladness of that spring!
I would forget that day when she and I,
Between the bird-song and the blossoming,
Went hand in hand beneath the soft spring sky!—
Much is forgotten, yea—and yet, and yet,
The things we would we never can forget.—

Nor I how May then minted treasuries
Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light
The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices
Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white.
Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort,
And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt.

But most of all, yea, it were well for me,
Me and my heart, that I forget that flower,

270

The blue wild-iris, azure fleur-de-lis,
That she and I together found that hour.
Its recollection can but emphasize
The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes.

271

THE PATH BY THE CREEK

There is a path that leads
Through purple ironweeds,
By button-bush and mallow
Along a creek;
A path that wildflowers hallow,
That wild-birds seek;
Roofed thick with eglantine
And grape and trumpet-vine.

This side, the blackberries sweet
Glow cobalt in the heat;
That side, a creamy yellow,
In summer-time
The pawpaws slowly mellow:
And autumn's prime
Strews red the Chickasaw,
Persimmon brown and haw.

The glittering dragon-fly,
A wingéd gem, goes by;
And tawny wasp and hornet
Make drowsy drone;

272

The beetle, like a garnet,
Basks on the stone;
And butterflies float there,
Spangling with gold the air.

Here the brown thrashers hide,
And chat and cat-bird chide;
The blue kingfisher houses
Above the stream,
And here the heron drowses,
Lost in his dream;
The vireo's flitting note
Makes woodlands more remote.

And now a cow's slow bell
Tinkles from dale to dell;
Where breeze-dropped petals winnow
From blossomy limbs
On waters, where the minnow,
Faint-twinkling, swims;
Where, in the root-arched shade,
Slim prisms of light are laid.

When in the tangled thorn
The new-moon hangs a horn,
Or, 'mid the sunset's islands,
Guides her canoe,

273

The brown owl in the silence
Calls, and the dew
Beads glimmering orbs of damp,
Each one a glow-worm lamp.

Then when the night is still
Here sings the whippoorwill;
And stealthy sounds of crickets,
And winds that pass,
Whispering, through bramble thickets
Along the grass,
Faint with warm scents of hay,
Seem feet of dreams astray.

And where the water shines
Dark through tree-twisted vines,
Some water-spirit, dreaming,
Braids in her hair
A star's reflection; seeming
A jewel there;
While all the sweet night long
Ripples her quiet song. . . .

Would I could imitate,
O path, thy happy state!
Making my life all beauty,
All bloom and beam;

274

Knowing no other duty
But just to dream,
And far from pain and woe
Lead feet that come and go.

Leading to calm content,
O'er ways the Master went,
Through lowly things and humble,
To peace and love;
Teaching the lives that stumble
To look above,
Forget the world of toil
And all its mad turmoil.

275

ALONG THE STREAM

Where the violet shadows brood
Under cottonwoods and beeches,
Through whose leaves the restless reaches
Of the river glance, I 've stood,
While the red-bird and the thrush
Set to song the morning hush.

There,—when wakening woods encroach
On the shadowy winding waters,
And the bluets, April's daughters,
At the darling Spring's approach,
Star their myriads through the trees,—
All the land is one with peace.

Under some imposing cliff,
That, with bush and tree and boulder,
Thrusts a gray, gigantic shoulder
O'er the stream, I 've oared a skiff,
While great clouds of iceberg hue
Lounged along the noonday blue.

276

There,—when harvest heights impend
Over shores of rippling summer,
And to greet the fair new-comer,—
June,—the wildrose thickets bend
In a million blossoms dressed,—
All the land is one with rest.

On some rock, where gaunt the oak
Reddens and the sombre cedar
Darkens, like a sachem leader,
I have lain and watched the smoke
Of the steamboat, far-away,
Trailed along the dying day.

There,—when margin waves reflect
Autumn colors, gay and sober,
And the Indian-girl, October,
Wampum-like in berries decked,
Leans above the leaf-strewn streams,—
All the land is one with dreams.

Through the bottoms where,—out-tossed
By the wind's wild hands,—ashiver
Bend the willows o'er the river,
I have walked in sleet and frost,
While beneath the cold round moon,
Frozen, gleamed the long lagoon.

277

There,—when leafless woods uplift
Spectral arms the storm-blasts splinter,
And the hoary trapper, Winter,
Builds his camp of ice and drift,
With his snow-pelts furred and shod,—
All the land is one with God.

278

VOICES

When blood-root blooms and trillium flowers
Unclasp their stars to sun and rain,
My heart strikes hands with winds and showers
And wanders in the woods again.

O urging impulse, born of spring!
That makes glad April of my soul,
No bird, however wild of wing,
Is more impatient of control.

Impetuous of pulse it beats
Within my blood and bears me hence;
Above the housetops and the streets
I hear its happy eloquence.

It tells me all that I would know,
Of birds and buds, of blooms and bees;
I seem to hear the blossoms blow,
And leaves unfolding on the trees.

279

I seem to hear the bluebells ring
Faint purple peals of perfume; and
The honey-throated poppies fling
Their golden laughter o'er the land.

It calls to me; it sings to me;
I hear its far voice night and day;
I can not choose but go when tree
And flower clamor, “Come away!”

280

THE ROAD HOME

Over the hills as the pewee flies,
Under the blue of the southern skies;
Over the hills where the red-bird wings,
Like a scarlet blossom, or sits and sings:

Under the shadow of rock and tree,
Where the warm wind drones with the honey-bee;
And the tall wild-carrots around you sway
Their lace-like flowers of cloudy gray:

By the black-cohosh and its pearl-white plume
A-nod in the woodland's odorous gloom;
By the old rail-fence, in the elder's shade,
That the myriad hosts of the weeds invade:

Where the butterfly-weed, like a coal of fire,
Blurs orange-red through brush and brier;
Where the pennyroyal and mint smell sweet,
And blackberries tangle the humming heat,

281

The old road leads; then crosses the creek,
Where the minnow dartles, a silvery streak;
Where the cows wade deep through the blue-eyed grass,
And the flickering dragon-flies gleaming pass.

That road is easy, however long,
Which wends with beauty as toil with song;
And the road we follow shall lead us straight
Past creek and wood to a farm-house gate.

Past hill and hollow, whence scents are blown
Of dew-wet clover that scythes have mown;
To a house that stands with porches wide
And gray low roof on the green hill-side.

Colonial, stately; 'mid shade and shine
Of the locust tree and the southern pine;
With its orchard acres and meadowlands
Stretched out before it like welcoming hands.

And gardens, where, in the myrrh-sweet June,
Magnolias blossom with many a moon
Of fragrance; and, in the feldspar light
Of August, roses bloom red and white.

In a woodbine arbor, a perfumed place,
A slim girl sits with listening face;

282

Her bonnet by her, a sunbeam lies
On her lovely hair, in her earnest eyes.

Her eyes, as blue as the distant deeps
Of the heavens above where the high hawk sleeps;
A book beside her, wherein she read
Till she saw him coming, she heard his tread.

Come home at last; come back from the war;
In his eyes a smile, on his brow a scar:
To the South come back—who wakes from her dream
To the love and the peace of a new regime.

283

DROUTH

I

The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike
Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops,
Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike
Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse
Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops,
The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat
Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,—
Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,—
An empty wagon rattles through the heat.

II

Where now the blue, blue flags? the flow'rs whose mouths
Are moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint,

284

That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South's
Wild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hint
At coming showers that the rainbows tint?
Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows?
The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves;
The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves;
The freckled touch-me-not and forest rose.

III

Dead! dead! all dead beside the drouth-burnt brook,
Shrouded in moss or in the shriveled grass.
Where waved their bells,—from which the wild-bee shook
The dew-drop once,—gaunt, in a nightmare mass,
The rank weeds crowd; through which the cattle pass,
Thirsty and lean, seeking some meagre spring,
Closed in with thorns, on which stray bits of wool
The panting sheep have left, that sought the cool,
From morn till evening wearily wandering.

285

IV

No bird is heard; no throat to whistle awake
The sleepy hush; to let its music leak
Fresh, bubble-like, through bloom-roofs of the brake:
Only the green-blue heron, famine-weak,—
Searching the stale pools of the minnowless creek,—
Utters its call; and then the rain-crow, too,
False prophet now, croaks to the stagnant air;
While overhead,—still as if painted there,—
A buzzard hangs, black on the burning blue.

286

THE BROKEN DROUTH

It seemed the listening forest held its breath
Before some vague and unapparent form
Of fear, approaching with the wings of death,
On the impending storm.

Above the hills, big, bellying clouds loomed, black
And ominous; yet silent as the blue
That pools calm heights of heaven, deepening back
'Twixt clouds of snowdrift hue.

Then instantly, as when a multitude
Shout riot and war through some tumultous town,
Innumerable voices swept the wood
As wild the wind rushed down.

And fierce and few, as when a strong man weeps,
Great rain-drops dashed the dust; and, overhead,
Ponderous and vast down the prodigious deeps,
Went slow the thunder's tread.

287

And swift and furious, as when giants fence,
The lightning foils of tempest went insane;
Then far and near sonorous Earth grew dense
With long sweet sweep of rain.

288

FEUD

A mile of lane,—hedged high with ironweeds
And dying daisies,—white with sun, that leads
Downward into a wood; through which a stream
Steals like a shadow; over which is laid
A bridge of logs, worn deep with many a team,
Sunk in the tangled shade.

Far off a wood-dove lifts its lonely cry;
And in the sleepy silver of the sky
A gray hawk wheels scarce larger than a hand.—
From point to point the road grows worse and worse,
Until that place is reached where all the land
Seems burdened with some curse.

A ragged fence of pickets, warped and sprung,—
On which the fragments of a gate are hung,—
Divides a hill, the fox and ground-hog haunt,
A wilderness of briers; o'er whose tops
A battered barn is seen, low-roofed and gaunt,
'Mid fields that know no crops.

289

Fields over which a path, o'erwhelmed with burrs
And ragweeds, noisy with the grasshoppers,
Leads,—lost, irresolute as paths the cows
Wear through the woods,—unto a woodshed; then,
With wrecks of windows, to a huddled house,
Where men have murdered men.

A house, whose tottering chimney, clay and rock,
Is seamed and crannied; whose lame door and lock
Are bullet-bored; around which, there and here,
Are sinister stains.—One dreads to look around.—
The place seems thinking of that time of fear
And dares not breathe a sound.

Within, is emptiness: the sunlight falls
On faded journals papering its walls;
On advertisement chromos, torn with time
Around a hearth where wasps and spiders build.—
The house is dead: meseems that night of crime
It, too, was shot and killed.

290

UNANOINTED

I

Upon the Siren-haunted seas, between Fate's mythic shores,
Within a world of moon and mist, where dusk and daylight wed,
I see a phantom galley and its hull is banked with oars,
With ghostly oars that move to song, a song of dreams long dead:—

“Oh, we are sick of rowing here!
With toil our arms are numb;
With smiting year on weary year
Salt-furrows of the foam:
Our journey's end is never near,
And will no nearer come—
Beyond our reach the shores appear
Of far Elysium.”

291

II

Within a land of cataracts and mountains old, and sand,
Beneath whose heavens ruins rise, o'er which the stars burn red,
I see a spectral cavalcade with crucifix in hand
And shadowy armor march and sing, a song of dreams long dead:—

“Oh, we are weary marching on!
Our limbs are travel-worn;
With cross and sword from dawn to dawn
We wend with raiment torn:
The leagues to go, the leagues we 've gone
Are sand and rock and thorn—
The way is long to Avalon
Beyond the deeps of morn.”

III

They are the curs'd! the souls who yearn and evermore pursue
The vision of a vain desire, a splendor far ahead;
To whom God gives the poet's dream without the grasp to do,
The artist's hope without the scope between the quick and dead:—

292

I, too, am weary toiling where
The winds and waters beat;
When shall I ease the oar I bear
And rest my tired feet?
When will the white moons cease to glare,
The red suns veil their heat?
And from the heights blow sweet the air
Of Love's divine retreat?

293

SUNSET AND STORM

Deep with divine tautology,
The sunset's mighty mystery
Again has traced the scroll-like west
With hieroglyphs of burning gold:
Forever new, forever old,
Its miracle is manifest.

Time lays the scroll away. And now
Above the hills a giant brow
Night lifts of cloud; and from her arm,
Barbaric black, upon the world,
With thunder, wind and fire, is hurled
Her awful argument of storm.

What part, O man, is yours in such?
Whose awe and wonder are in touch
With Nature,—speaking rapture to
Your soul,—yet leaving in your reach
No human word of thought or speech
Expressive of the thing you view.

294

BEECH BLOOMS

Among the valleys
The wild oxalis
Lifts up its chalice
Of pink and pearl;
And, balsam-breathing
From out their sheathing,
The myriad wreathing
Green leaves uncurl.

The whole world brightens
With spring, that lightens
The foot that frightens
The building thrush;
Where water tosses
On ferns and mosses
The squirrel crosses
The beechen hush.

And vision on vision,—
Like ships elysian
On some white mission,—
Sails cloud on cloud;

295

With scents of clover
The winds brim over,
And in the cover
The stream is loud.

'Twixt bloom that blanches
The orchard branches
Old farms and ranches
Gleam in the gloam:
Through fields for sowing,
'Mid blossoms blowing,
The cows come lowing,
The cows come home.

Where ways are narrow,
A vesper-sparrow
Flits like an arrow
Of living rhyme;
The red sun poises,
And farm-yard noises
Mix with glad voices
Of milking-time.

When dusk disposes
Of all its roses,
And darkness closes,
And work is done,

296

A moon's white feather
In starry weather
And two together
Whose hearts are one.

297

WORSHIP

I

The mornings raise
Voices of gold in the Almighty's praise;
The sunsets soar
In choral crimson from far shore to shore:
Each is a blast,
Reverberant, of color,—seen as vast
Concussions,—that the vocal firmament
In worship sounds o'er every continent.

II

Not for our ears
The cosmic music of the rolling spheres,
That sweeps the skies!
Music we hear, but only with our eyes.
For all too weak
Our mortal frames to bear the words these speak,
Those detonations that we name the dawn
And sunset—hues Earth's harmony puts on.

298

UNHEARD

All things are wrought of melody,
Unheard, yet full of speaking spells;
Within the rock, within the tree,
A soul of music dwells.

A mute symphonic sense that thrills
The silent frame of mortal things;
Its heart beats in the ancient hills,
And in each flow'r sings.

To harmony all growth is set—
Each seed is but a music mote,
From which each plant, each violet,
Evolves its purple note.

Compact of melody, the rose
Woos the soft wind with strain on strain
Of crimson; and the lily blows
Its white bars to the rain.

The trees are pæans; and the grass
One long green fugue beneath the sun—
Song is their life; and all shall pass,
Shall end, when song is done.

299

REINCARNATION

High in the place of outraged Liberty,
He ruled the world, an emperor and god:
His iron armies swept the land and sea,
And conquered nations trembled at his nod.

By him the love that fills man's soul with light,
And makes a heaven of earth, was crucified;
Lust-crowned he lived, yea, lived in God's despite,
And old in infamies, a king he died.

Justice begins now.—Many centuries
In some vile body must his soul atone
As slave, as beggar, loathsome with disease,
Less than the dog at which we fling a stone.

300

ON CHENOWETH'S RUN

I thought of the road through the glen,
With its hawk's nest high in the pine;
With its rock, where the fox had his den,
'Mid tangles of sumach and vine,
Where she swore to be mine.

I thought of the creek and its banks,
Now glooming, now gleaming with sun;
The rustic bridge builded of planks,
The bridge over Chenoweth's Run,
Where I wooed her and won.

I thought of the house in the lane,
With its pinks and its sweet mignonette;
Its fence, and the gate with its chain,
Its porch where the roses hung wet,
Where I kissed her and met.

Then I thought of the family graves,
Walled rudely with stone, in the West,

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Where the sorrowful cedar-tree waves,
And the wind is a spirit distressed,
Where they laid her to rest.

And my soul, overwhelmed with despair,
Cried out on the city and mart!—
How I longed, how I longed to be there,
Away from the struggle and smart,
By her and my heart.

By her and my heart in the West,—
Laid sadly together as one;—
On her grave for a moment to rest,
Far away from the noise and the sun,
On Chenoweth's Run.

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REQUIESCAT

The roses mourn for her who sleeps
Within the tomb;
For her each lily-flower weeps
Dew and perfume.
In each neglected flower-bed
Each blossom droops its lovely head,—
They miss her touch, they miss her tread,
Her face of bloom,
Of happy bloom.

The very breezes grieve for her,
A lonely grief;
For her each tree is sorrower,
Each blade and leaf.
The foliage rocks itself and sighs,
And to its woe the wind replies,—
They miss her girlish laugh and cries,
Whose life was brief,
Was all too brief.

303

The sunlight, too, seems pale with care,
Or sick with woe;
The memory haunts it of her hair,
Its golden glow.
No more within the bramble-brake
The sleepy bloom is kissed awake—
The sun is sad for her dear sake,
Whose head lies low,
Lies dim and low.

The bird, that sang so sweet, is still
At dusk and dawn;
No more it makes the silence thrill
Of wood and lawn.
In vain the buds, when it is near,
Open each pink and perfumed ear,—
The song it sings she will not hear
Who now is gone,
Is dead and gone.

Ah, well she sleeps who loved them well,
The birds and bowers;
The fair, the young, the lovable,
Who once was ours.
Alas! that loveliness must pass!
Must come to lie beneath the grass!
That youth and joy must fade, alas!
And die like flowers,
Earth's sweetest flowers!

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THE QUEST

I

First I asked the honey-bee,
Busy in the balmy bowers;
Saying, “Sweetheart, tell it me:
Have you seen her, honey-bee?
She is cousin to the flowers—
All the sweetness of the south
In her wild-rose face and mouth.”—
But the bee passed silently.

II

Then I asked the forest-bird,
Warbling by the woodland waters;
Saying, “Dearest, have you heard,
Have you heard her, forest-bird?
She is one of Music's daughters—
Never song so sweet by half
As the music of her laugh.”—
But the bird said not a word.

305

III

Next I asked the evening-sky,
Hanging out its lamps of fire;
Saying, “Loved one, passed she by?
Tell me, tell me, evening-sky!
She, the star of my desire—
Sister whom the Pleiads lost,
And my soul's high pentecost.”—
But the sky made no reply.

IV

Where is she? ah, where is she?
She to whom both love and duty
Bind me, yea, immortally.—
Where is she? ah, where is she?
Symbol of the Earth-soul's beauty.
I have lost her. Help my heart
Find her! her, who is a part
Of the pagan soul of me!

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BEFORE THE RAIN

Before the rain, low in the obscure east,
Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray;
Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased,
Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay
Like some white spider hungry for its prey.
Vindictive looked the scowling firmament,
In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray,
Seemed filled with malice of some dark intent.

The marsh-frog croaked; and underneath the stone
The peevish cricket raised a creaking cry.
Within the world these sounds were heard alone,
Save when the ruffian wind swept from the sky,
Making each tree like some sad spirit sigh;
Or shook the clumsy beetle from its weed,
That, in the drowsy darkness, bungling by,
Sharded the silence with its feverish speed.

307

Slowly the tempest gathered. Hours passed
Before was heard the thunder's sullen drum
Rumbling night's hollow; and the Earth at last,
Restless with waiting,—like a woman, dumb
With doubting of the love that should have clomb
Her casement hours ago,—avowed again,
'Mid protestations, joy that he had come.
And all night long I heard the Heavens explain.

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AFTER RAIN

Behold the blossom-bosomed Day again,
With all the star-white Hours in her train,
Laughs out of pearl-lights through a golden ray,
That, leaning on the woodland wildness, blends
A sprinkled amber with the showers that lay
Their oblong emeralds on the leafy ends.
Behold her bend with maiden-braided brows
Above the wildflower, sidewise with its strain
Of dewy happiness, to kiss again
Each drop to death; or, under rainy boughs,
With fingers, fragrant as the woodland rain,
Gather the sparkles from the sycamore,
To set within the core
Of crimson roses girdling her hips,
Where each bud dreams and drips.

Smoothing her blue-black hair,—where many a tusk
Of iris flashes,—like the falchions keen
Of Faery round blue banners of their Queen,—
Is it a Naiad singing in the dusk,

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That haunts the spring where all the moss is musk
With footsteps of the flowers on the banks?
Or but a wild-bird voluble with thanks?

Balm for each blade of grass: the Hours prepare
A festival each weed 's invited to.
Each bee is drunken with the honied air:
And all the heaven is eloquent with blue.
The wet hay glitters, and the harvester
Tinkles his scythe,—as twinkling as the dew,—
That shall not spare
Blossom or brier in its sweeping path;
And, ere it cut one swath,
Rings them they die, and tells them to prepare.

What is the spice that haunts each glen and glade?
A Dryad's lips, who slumbers in the shade?
A Faun, who lets the heavy ivy-wreath
Slip to his thigh as, reaching up, he pulls
The chestnut blossoms in whole bosomfuls?
A sylvan Spirit, whose sweet mouth doth breathe
Her viewless presence near us, unafraid?
Or troops of ghosts of blooms, that whitely wade
The brook? whose wisdom knows no other song
But that the bird sings where it builds beneath
The wild-rose and sits singing all day long.

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Oh, let me sit with silence for a space,
A little while forgetting that fierce part
Of man that struggles in the toiling mart;
Where God can look into my heart's own heart
From unsoiled heights made amiable with grace;
And where the sermons that the old oaks keep
Can steal into me.—And what better then
Than, turning to the moss a quiet face,
To fall asleep? a little while to sleep
And dream of wiser worlds and wiser men.

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SUNSET CLOUDS

Low clouds, the lightning veins and cleaves,
Torn from the wilderness of storm,
Sweep westward like enormous leaves
O'er field and farm.

And in the west, on burning skies,
Their wrath is quenched, their hate is hushed,
And deep their drifted thunder lies
With splendor flushed.

The black turns gray, the gray turns gold;
And sea'd in deeps of radiant rose,
Summits of fire, manifold,
They now repose.

What dreams they bring! what thoughts reveal!
That have their source in loveliness,
Through which the doubts I often feel
Grow less and less.

Through which I see that other night,
That cloud called Death, transformed of Love
To flame, and pointing with its light
To life above.

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RICHES

What mines the morning heavens unfold!
What far Alaskas of the skies!
That, veined with elemental gold,
Sierra on Sierra rise.

Heap up the gold of all the world,
The ore that makes men fools and slaves:
What is it to the gold, cloud-curled,
That rivers through the sunset's caves.

Search Earth for riches all who will,
The gold that soils, that turns to dust—
Mine be the wealth no thief can steal,
The gold of Beauty naught can rust.

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THE AGE OF GOLD

The clouds that tower in storm, that beat
Arterial thunder in their veins;
The wildflowers lifting, shyly sweet,
Their perfect faces from the plains,—
All high, all lowly things of Earth
For no vague end have had their birth.

Low strips of mist, that mesh the moon
Above the foaming waterfall;
And mountains that God's hand hath hewn,
And forests where the great winds call,—
Within the grasp of such as see
Are parts of a conspiracy;

To seize the soul with beauty; hold
The heart with love: and thus fulfill
Within ourselves the Age of Gold,
That never died, and never will,—
As long as one true nature feels
The wonders that the world reveals.

314

A SONG FOR LABOR

I

Oh, the morning meads, the dewy meads,
Where he ploughs and harrows and sows the seeds,
Singing a song of manly deeds,
In the blossoming springtime weather:
The heart in his bosom as high as the word
Said to the sky by the mating bird,
While the beat of an answering heart is heard,
His heart and hers together.

II

Oh, the noonday heights, the sunlit heights,
Where he stoops to the harvest his keen scythe smites,
Singing a song of the work that requites,
In the ripening summer weather:
The soul in his body as light as the sigh
Of the little cloud-breeze that cools the sky,
While he hears an answering soul reply,
His soul and hers together.

315

III

Oh, the evening vales, the twilight vales,
Where he labors and sweats to the thud of flails,
Singing a song of the toil that he hails,
In the fruitful autumn weather:
In heart and in soul as free from fears
As the first white star in the sky that appears,
While the music of life and of love he hears,
Her life and his together.

316

THE LOVE OF LOVES

I have not seen her face, and yet
She is more sweet than anything
Of earth—than rose or violet
That winds of May and sunbeams bring.
Of all we know, past or to come,
That beauty holds within its net,
She is the high compendium:
And yet—

I have not touched her robe, and still
She is more dear than lyric words
And music; or than strains that fill
The throbbing throats of forest birds.
Of all we mean by poetry,
That rules the soul and charms the will,
She is the deep epitome:
And still—

She is my world: ah, pity me!
A dream that flies whom I pursue:

317

Whom all pursue, whoe'er they be,
Who toil for Art and dare and do.
The shadow-love for whom they sigh,
The far ideal affinity,
For whom they live and gladly die—
Ah me!

318

THREE THINGS

There are three things of Earth
That help us more
Than those of heavenly birth
That all implore—
Than Love or Faith or Hope,
For which we strive and grope.

The first one is Desire,—
Who takes our hand
And fills our hearts with fire
None may withstand;—
Through whom we 're lifted far
Above both moon and star.

The second one is Dream,—
Who leads our feet
By an immortal gleam
To visions sweet;—
Through whom our forms put on
Dim attributes of dawn.

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The last of these is Toil,—
Who maketh true,
Within the world's turmoil
The other two;—
Through whom we may behold
Ourselves with kings enrolled.

320

IMMORTELLES

I

As some warm moment of repose
In one rich rose
Sums all the summer's lovely bloom
And pure perfume—
So did her soul epitomize
All hopes that make life wise,
Who lies before us now with lidded eyes,
Faith's amaranth of truth
Crowning her youth.

II

As some melodious note or strain
May so contain
All of sweet music in one chord,
Or lyric word—
So did her loving heart suggest
All dreams that make life blessed,
Who lies before us now with pulseless breast,
Love's asphodel of duty
Crowning her beauty.

321

A LULLABY

I

In her wimple of wind and her slippers of sleep
The twilight comes like a little goose-girl,
Herding her owls with many “Tu-whoos,”
Her little brown owls in the forest deep,
Where dimly she walks in her whispering shoes,
And gown of glimmering pearl.

Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep:
This is the road to Rockaby Town.
Rockaby, lullaby, where dreams are cheap;
Here you can buy any dream for a crown.
Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;
The cradle you lie in is soft and is deep,
The wagon that takes you to Rockaby Town.
Now you go up, sweet, now you go down,
Rockaby, lullaby, now you go down.

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II

And after the twilight comes midnight, who wears
A mantle of purple so old, so old!
Who stables the lily-white moon, it is said,
In a wonderful chamber with violet stairs,
Up which you can see her come, silent of tread,
On hoofs of pale silver and gold.

Dream, dream, little one, dream:
This is the way to Lullaby Land.
Lullaby, rockaby, where, white as cream,
Sugar-plum bowers drop sweets in your hand.
Dream, dream, little one, dream;
The cradle you lie in is tight at each seam,
The boat that goes sailing to Lullaby Land.
Over the sea, sweet, over the sand,
Lullaby, rockaby, over the sand.

III

The twilight and midnight are lovers, you know,
And each to the other is true, is true!
And there on the moon through the heavens they ride,

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With the little brown owls all huddled a-row,
Through meadows of heaven where, every side,
Blossom the stars and the dew.

Rest, rest, little one, rest:
Rockaby Town is in Lullaby Isle.
Rockaby, lullaby, set like a nest
Deep in the heart of a song and a smile.
Rest, rest, little one, rest;
The cradle you lie in is warm as my breast,
The white bird that bears you to Lullaby Isle.
Out of the East, sweet, into the West,
Rockaby, lullaby, into the West.

324

PESTILENCE

High on a throne of noisome ooze and heat,
'Mid rotting trees of bayou and lagoon,
Ghastly she sits beneath the skeleton moon,
A tawny horror coiling at her feet—
Fever, whose eyes keep watching, serpent-like,
Until her eyes shall bid him rise and strike.

325

MUSINGS

I
Inspiration

All who have toiled for Art, who've won or lost,
Sat equal priests at her high Pentecost;
Only the chrism and sacrament of flame,
Anointing all, inspired not all the same.

II
Apportionment

How often in our search for joy below
Hoping for happiness we chance on woe.

III
Victory

They who take courage from their own defeat
Are victors too, no matter how much beat.

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IV
Preparation

How often hope's fair flower blooms richest where
The soul was fertilized with black despair.

V
Disillusion

Those unrequited in their love who die
Have never drained life's chief illusion dry.

VI
Success

Success allures us in the earth and skies:
We seek to win her, but, too amorous,
Mocking, she flees us.—Haply, were we wise,
We should not strive and she would come to us.

VII
Science

Miranda-like, above the world she waves
The wand of Prospero; and, beautiful,

327

Ariel the airy, Caliban the dull,—
Lightning and Steam,—are her unwilling slaves.

VIII
The Universal Wind

Wild son of Heav'n, with laughter and alarm,
Now east, now west, now north, now south he goes,
Bearing in one harsh hand dark death and storm,
And in the other, sunshine and a rose.

IX
Compensation

Yea, whom He loves the Lord God chasteneth
With disappointments, so that this side death,
Through suffering and failure, they know Hell
To make them worthy in that Heaven to dwell
Of Love's attainment, where they come to be
Parts of its beauty and divinity.

X
Poppies

Summer met Sleep at sunset,
Dreaming within the south,—

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Drugged with his soul's deep slumber,
Red with her heart's hot drouth,
These are the drowsy kisses
She pressed upon his mouth.

XI
Her Eyes and Mouth

There is no Paradise like that which lies
Deep in the heavens of her azure eyes:
There is no Eden here on Earth that glows
Like that which smiles rich in her mouth's red rose.

XII
Her Soul

To me not only does her soul suggest
Palms and the peace of tropic shore and wood,
But, oceaned far beyond the golden West,
The Fortunate Islands of true Womanhood.

XIII
Her Face

The gladness of our Southern spring; the grace
Of summer; and the dreaminess of fall
Are parts of her sweet nature.—Such a face
Was Ruth's, methinks, divinely spiritual.

329

THE MESSAGE OF THE LILIES

My soul and I went walking
Beneath the moon of spring;
The lilies pale were talking,
We heard them murmuring.

From dimly moonlit places
They thrust long throats of white,
And lifted fairy faces
Of fragrant snow and light.

Their language was an essence,
Yet clear as any bird's;
And from it grew a presence,
As music grows from words.

A spirit born of silence
And chastity and dew
Among Elysian islands
Were not more white to view.

330

A spirit born of fire
And holiness and snow,
Within the Heaven's desire,
Were not more pure to know.

He smiled among them, lifting
Pale hands of prayer and peace—
And through the moonlight, drifting,
Came words to me like these:—

“We are His lilies, lilies,
Whose praises here we sing!
We are the lilies, lilies
Of Christ our Lord and King!”

331

ANTHEM OF DAWN

I

Then up the orient heights to the zenith that balanced the crescent,—
Up and far up and over,—the heaven grew erubescent,
Vibrant with rose and with ruby from hands of the harpist Dawn,
Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament's barbiton;
And the East was a priest who adored with offerings of gold and of gems,
And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible hems
Of the glittering robes of her limbs; that, lily and amethyst,
Swept glorying on and on through temples of cloud and mist.

332

II

Then out of the splendor and richness, that burned like a magic stone,
The torrent suffusion that deepened and dazzled and broadened and shone,
The pomp and the pageant of color, triumphal procession of glare,
The sun, like a king in armor, breathing splendor from feet to hair,
Stood forth with majesty girdled, as a hero who towers afar
Where the bannered gates are bristling hells and the walls are roaring war:
And broad on the back of the world, like a Cherubin's fiery blade,
The effulgent gaze of his aspect fell in glittering accolade.

III

Then billowing blue, like an ocean, rolled from the shores of dawn to even:
And the stars like rafts went down; and the moon, like a ghost-ship driven,
A feather of foam, from port to port to port of the cloud-built isles that dotted,

333

With pearl and cameo, bays of the day,—her canvas webbed and rotted,—
Lay lost in the gulf of heaven; while over her mixed and melted
The beautiful children of Morn, whose bodies are opal-belted;
The beautiful daughters of Dawn, who, over and under and after
The rivered radiance wrestled; and rainbowed heaven with laughter
Of halcyon sapphire.—O Dawn! thou visible mirth,
Thou hallelujah of heaven! hosanna of Earth!

334

AT THE LANE'S END

I

No more to strip the roses from
The rose-sprays of her porch's place!—
I dreamed last night that I was home
Kissing a rose—her face.

I must have smiled in sleep—who knows?—
The rose-aroma filled the lane;
I saw her white hand's lifted rose
That welcomed home again.

And yet when I awoke—so wan,
My old face wet with icy tears—
Somehow, it seems, she was not gone,
Though dead now thirty years.

II

The clouds roll up and the clouds roll down
Over the roofs of the little town;

335

Out in the hills, where the pike winds by
Fields of clover and bottoms of rye,
You will hear no sound but the barking cough
Of the striped chipmunk where the lane leads off;
You will hear no bird but the sapsuckér
Far off in the forest,—that seems to purr,
As the warm wind fondles its top, grown hot,
Like the docile back of an ocelot:
You will see no thing but the shine and shade
Of briers that climb and of weeds that wade
The glittering creeks of the heat, that fills
The dusty road and the red-keel hills.—
And all day long in the pennyroyal
The grasshoppers at their anvils toil;
Thick click of their tireless hammers thrum,
And the wheezy belts of their bellows hum;
Tinkers who solder the silence and heat
To make the loneliness more complete.
Around old rails where the blackberries
Are reddening ripe, and the bumblebees
Are a drowsy rustle of Summer's skirts,
And the bob-white's wing is the fan she flirts;
Under the hill, through the ironweeds
And ox-eyed daisies and milkweeds, leads
The path forgotten of all but one.
Where elder-bushes are sick with sun,
And wild raspberries branch big, blue veins

336

O'er the face of the rock where the old spring rains
Its sparkling splinters of molten spar
On the gravel bed where the tadpoles are,—
You will find the pales of a fallen fence,
And the tangled orchard and vineyard, dense
With the weedy neglect of thirty years.
The garden there,—where the soft sky clears
Like an old sweet face that has dried its tears;—
The garden-plot where the cabbage grew
And the pompous pumpkin; and beans that blew
Balloons of white by the melon patch;
Maize; and tomatoes that seemed to catch
Oblong amber and agate balls
Globed of the sun in the frosty falls:
Long rows of currants and gooseberries,
And the balsam-gourd with its honey-bees.
And here was a nook for the princess-plumes,
The snapdragons and the poppy-blooms,
Quaint sweet-williams and pansy-flowers,
And the morning-glories' bewildered bowers,
Tipping their cornucopias up
For the humming-birds that came to sup.
And over it all was the Sabbath peace
Of the land whose lap was the love of these;
And the old log-house where my innocence died,
With my boyhood buried side by side.

337

Shall a man with a face as withered and gray
As the wasp-nest stowed in a loft away,—
Where the hornets haunt and the mortar drops
From the loosened logs of the clapboard tops;—
Whom vice has aged as the rotting rooms
The rain where memories haunt the glooms;
A hitch in his joints like the rheum that gnars
In the rasping hinge of the door that jars;
A harsh, cracked throat like the old stone flue
Where the swallows build the summer through;—
Shall a man, I say, with the spider sins
That the long years spin in the outs and ins
Of his soul, returning to see once more
His boyhood's home, where his life was poor
With toil and tears and their fretfulness,
But rich with health and the hopes that bless
The unsoiled wealth of a vigorous youth;
Shall he not take comfort and know the truth
In its threadbare raiment of falsehood?—Yea!
In his crumbled past he shall kneel and pray,
Like a pilgrim come to the shrine again
Of the homely saints that shall soothe his pain,
And arise and depart made clean again!

338

III

Years of care can not efface
Visions of the hills and trees
Closing in its dam and race;
Nor the mile-long memories
Of the mill-stream's lovely place.

How the sunsets used to stain
Mirrors of the waters lying
Under eaves made dark with rain!
Where the red-bird, westward flying,
Lit to try its song again.

Dingles, hills and woods, and springs,
Where we came in calm and storm,
Swinging in the grapevine swings,
Wading where the rocks were warm,
With our fishing-nets and strings.

Here the road plunged down the hill,
Under ash and chinquapin,—
Where the grasshoppers would drill
Ears of silence with their din,—
To the willow-girdled mill.

There the path beyond the ford
Takes the woodside; just below

339

Shallows that the lilies sword,
Where the scarlet blossoms blow
Of the trumpet-vine and gourd.

Summer winds, that sink with heat,
On the pelted waters winnow
Moony petals that repeat
Crescents, where the startled minnow
Beats a glittering retreat.

Summer winds that bear the scent
Of the ironweed and mint,
Weary with sweet freight and spent,
On the deeper pools imprint
Stumbling steps, whose ripples dent.

Summer winds, that split the husk
Of the peach and nectarine,
Trail along the amber dusk
Hazy skirts of gold and green,
Spilling balms of dew and musk.

Where with balls of bursting juice
Summer sees the red wild-plum
Strew the gravel; ripened loose,
Autumn hears the pawpaw drum
Plumpness on the rocks that bruise:

340

There we found the water-beech,
One forgotten August noon,
With a hornet-nest in reach,—
Like a fairyland balloon,
Full of bustling fairy speech.

Some invasion, sure, it was;
For we heard the captains scold;
Waspish cavalry a-buzz,—
Troopers uniformed in gold,
Sable-slashed,—to charge on us.

Could I find the sedgy angle,
Where the dragon-flies would turn
Slender flittings into spangle
On the sunlight? or would burn—
Where the berries made a tangle—

Sparkling green and brassy blue;
Rendezvousing, by the stream,
Bands of elf-banditti, who,
Brigands of the bloom and beam,
Drunken were with honey-dew.

Could I find the pond that lay
Where vermilion blossoms showered
Fragrance down the daisied way?

341

That the sassafras embowered
With the spice of early May?

Could I find it—should I seek—
The old mill? Its weather-beaten
Wheel and gable by the creek?
With its warping roof; worm-eaten,
Dusty rafters worn and weak.

Where old shadows haunt old places,
Loft and hopper, stair and bin;
Ghostly with the dust that laces
Webs that usher phantoms in,
Wistful with remembered faces.

While the frogs' grave litanies
Drowse in far-off antiphone,
Supplicating, till the eyes
Of dead friendships, long alone
In the dusky corners,—rise.

Moonbeams? or the twinkling tip
Of a star? or, in the darkling
Twilight, fireflies? there that dip—
As if Night a myriad sparkling
Jewels from her hands let slip.

342

Where, I dream, my youth still crosses,
With a corn-sack for the meal,
Through the sprinkled ferns and mosses,
To the gray mill's lichened wheel,
Where the water drips and tosses.

343

ENCHANTMENT

The deep seclusion of this forest path,—
O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy;
Along which bluet and anemone
Spread a dim carpet; where the Twilight hath
Her dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath,
Wood-fragrance roams,—has so enchanted me,
That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be
Some Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath:
Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams,
That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows,
And every bird that flutters wings of tan,
Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems
A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows
Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.

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IN THE FOREST

One well might deem, among these miles of woods,
Such were the Forests of the Holy Grail,—
Brocéliand and Dean: where, clothed in mail,
The Knights of Arthur rode, and all the broods
Of legend laired.—And, where no sound intrudes
Upon the ear, except the glimmering wail
Of some far bird; or, in some flowery swale,
A brook that murmurs to the solitudes,
Might think he hears the laugh of Vivien
Blent with the moan of Merlin, muttering bound
By his own magic to one stony spot:
And, in the cloud that looms above the glen,—
In which the sun burns like the Table Round,—
Might dream he sees the towers of Camelot.

345

CAN SUCH THINGS BE

Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yet
Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom,
I listened—dead within a mighty room
Of some old palace where great casements let
Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet
Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom
Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom,
The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret.
And then, it seemed, along a corridor,
A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came,
Hurrying, yet slow. . . . I thought long centuries
Passed ere she entered—she, I loved of yore,
For whom I died, who wildly wailed my name
And bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes.

346

KNIGHT-ERRANT

Onward he gallops through enchanted gloom.—
The phantoms of the forest, dark and dim,
And shadows of vast death environ him—
Onward he spurs victorious over doom.
Before his eyes that love's far fires illume—
Where courage sits, impregnable and grim—
The form and features of her beauty swim,
Beckoning him on with looks that fears consume.
The thought of her distress, her lips to kiss,
Mails him in triple might; and so at last
To Lust's huge keep he comes; its giant wall,
Wild-towering, frowning from the precipice:
And through its gate, borne like a bugle-blast,
O'er night and hell he thunders to his all.

347

THE ARTIST

In story books, when I was very young,
I knew her first, one of the Fairy Race;
And then it was her picture took its place,
Framed round with love's deep gold, and draped and hung
High in my heart's red room: no song was sung,
No tale of passion told, I did not grace
With her associated form and face,
And intimated charm of touch and tongue.
As years went on she grew to more and more,
Until each thing, symbolic to my heart
Of beauty,—such as honor, truth, and fame,—
Within the studio of my soul's thought wore
Her lineaments, whom I, with all my art,
Strove to embody and to give a name.

348

POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY

Out of the past the dim leaves spake to me
The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet
Hyblæan bees seemed swarming my retreat
Around the reedy well of Poesy.
I closed the book. Then, knee to neighbor knee,
Sat with the soul of Plato, to repeat
Doctrines, till mine seemed some Socratic seat
High on the summit of Philosophy.
Around the wave of one Religion taught
Her first rude children. From the stars that burned
Above the mountained ether, Science learned
The first vague lessons of the work she wrought.
Daughters of God, in whom we still behold
The Age of Iron and the Age of Gold.

349

“QUO VADIS”

It is as if imperial trumpets broke
Again the silence on War's iron height;
And Cæsar's armored legions marched to fight,
While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke,
Blazed like an awful sunset. At a stroke,
Again I see the living torches light
The horrible revels, and the bloated, white,
Bayed brow of Nero smiling through the smoke:
And here and there a little band of slaves
Among dark ruins; and the form of Paul,
Bearded and gaunt, expounding still the Word:
And towards the North the tottering architraves
Of empire; and, wild-waving over all,
The flaming figure of a Gothic sword.

350

TO A CRITIC

R. H. S.

Song hath a catalogue of lovely things
Thy kind hath oft defiled,—whose spite misleads
The world too often!—where the poet reads,
As in a fable, of old envyings,
Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings,
Or kill it with their cawings: thorns and weeds,
Such as thyself, 'midst which the wind sows seeds
Of flow'rs, these crush before one blossom swings.
But here and there the wisdom of a School
Unknown to these hath often written down
“Fame” in white ink the future hath turned brown;
When every beauty, heaped with ridicule,
In their ignoble prose, proved their renown,
Making each famous—as an ass or fool.

351

QUATRAINS

I Poetry

Who hath beheld the goddess face to face,
Blind with her beauty, all his days shall go
Climbing lone mountains towards her temple's place,
Weighed with Song's sweet, inexorable woe.

II The Unimaginative

Each form of beauty 's but the new disguise
Of thoughts more beautiful than forms can be;
Sceptics, who search with unanointed eyes,
Never the Earth's wild Fairy-dance shall see.

III Music

God-born before the Sons of God, she hurled,
With awful symphonies of flood and fire,

352

God's name on rocking chaos—world by world
Flamed as the universe rolled from her lyre.

IV The Three Elements

They come as couriers of Heaven: their feet
Sonorous-sandaled with majestic awe;
In raiment of swift foam and wind and heat,
Blowing the trumpets of God's wrath and law.

V Rome

Above the Circus of the World she sat,
Beautiful and base, a harlot crowned with pride:
Fierce Nations, upon whom she sneered and spat,
Shrieked at her feet and for her pastime died.

VI On Reading the Life of Haroun er Reshid

Down all the lanterned Bagdad of our youth
He steals, with golden justice for the poor:
Within his palace—you shall know the truth!—
A blood-smeared headsman hides behind each door.

353

VII Mnemosyne

In classic beauty, cold, immaculate,
A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands,
Upon her brow deep-chiselled love and hate,
That sorrow o'er dead roses in her hands.

VIII Beauty

High as a star, yet lowly as a flower,
Unknown she takes her unassuming place
At Earth's proud masquerade—the appointed hour
Strikes, and, behold! the marvel of her face.

IX The Stars

These—the bright symbols of man's hope and fame,
In which he reads his blessing or his curse—
Are syllables with which God speaks His name
In the vast utterance of the universe.

354

X Echo

Dweller in hollow places, hills and rocks,
Daughter of Silence and old Solitude,
Tip-toe she stands within her cave or wood,
Her only life the noises that she mocks.

355

THE DREAMER

Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers,
And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh;
Or, on each season, spell the epitaph
Of its dead months repeated in their flowers;
Or list the music of the strolling showers,
Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff,
Or read the day's delivered monograph
Through all the chapters of its dædal hours.
Still with the same child-faith and child regard
He looks on Nature, hearing, at her heart,
The Beautiful beat out the time and place,
Through which no lesson of this life is hard,
No struggle vain of science or of art,
That dies with failure written on its face.

356

WINTER

The flute, whence Summer's dreamy finger-tips
Drew music,—ripening the cramped kernels in
The burly chestnut and the chinquapin,
Red-rounding-out the oval haws and hips,—
Now Winter crushes to his stormy lips,
And surly songs whistle around his chin;
Now the wild days and wilder nights begin
When, at the eaves, the lengthening icicle drips.
Thy songs, O Summer, are not lost so soon!
Still dwells a memory in thy hollow flute,
Which unto Winter's masculine airs doth give
Thy own creative qualities of tune,
Through which we see each bough bend white with fruit,
Each branch with bloom, in snow commemorative.

357

MID-WINTER

All day the clouds hung ashen with the cold;
And through the snow the muffled waters fell;
The day seemed drowned in grief too deep to tell,
Like some old hermit whose last bead is told.
At eve the wind woke, and the snow clouds rolled
Aside to leave the fierce sky visible;
Harsh as an iron landscape of wan Hell
The dark hills hung framed in with gloomy gold.
And then, towards night, the wind seemed some one at
My window, wailing: now a little child
Crying outside my door; and now the long
Howl of some starved beast down the flue.—I sat
And knew 't was Winter with his madman song
Of miseries on which he stared and smiled.

358

SPRING

First came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips;
A pursuivant who heralded a prince:
And dawn put on her livery of tints,
And dusk bound gold about her hair and hips:
And, all in silver mail, the sunlight came,
A knight, who bade the winter let him pass;
And freed imprisoned beauty, naked as
The Court of Love, in all her wildflower shame.
And so she came, in breeze-borne loveliness,
Across the hills; and heav'n bent down to bless:
Above her head the birds were as a choir;
And at her feet, like some strong worshiper,
The shouting water pæan'd praise of her,
Who, with blue eyes, set the wild world on fire.

359

TRANSFORMATION

It is the time when, by the forest falls,
The touch-me-nots hang faery folly-caps;
When ferns and flowers fill the lichened laps
Of rocks with color, rich as orient shawls:
And in my heart I hear a voice that calls
Me woodward, where the hamadryad wraps
Her limbs in bark, and, bubbling in the saps,
Sings the sweet Greek of Pan's old madrigals:
There is a gleam that lures me up the stream—
A Naiad swimming with wet limbs of light?
Perfume that leads me on from dream to dream—
An oread's footprints flowering into flight?
And, lo! meseems I am a Faun again,
One with the myths that I pursue in vain.

360

RESPONSE

There is a music of immaculate love,
That beats within the virginal veins of Spring,—
And trillium blossoms, (like the stars that cling
To fairies' wands;) and, strung on sprays above,
White-hearts and mandrake blooms, (that look enough
Like the elves' washing—white with laundering
Of May-moon dews;) and all pale-opening
Wildflowers of the woods are born thereof.
There is no sod Spring's white foot brushes but
Must feel the music that vibrates within,
And thrill to the communicated touch
Responsive harmonies, that must unshut
The heart of Beauty for Song's concrete kin,
Emotions—that are flowers—born of such.

361

THE SWASHBUCKLER

Squat-nosed and broad, of big and pompous port;
A tavern visage, apoplexy haunts,
All pimple-puffed: the Falstaff-like resort
Of fat debauchery, whose veined cheek flaunts
A flabby purple: rusty-spurred he stands
In rakehell boots and belt, and hanger that
Claps when, with greasy gauntlets on his hands,
He swaggers past in cloak and slouch-plumed hat.
Aggression marches armies in his words;
And in his oaths great deeds ride cap-à-pie;
His looks, his gestures breathe the breath of swords;
And in his carriage camp all wars to be:—
With him, of battles there shall be no lack
While buxom wenches are and stoops of sack.

362

SIMULACRA

Dark in the west the sunset's sombre wrack
Unrolled vast walls the rams of war had split,
Along whose battlements the battle lit
Tempestuous beacons; and, with gates hurled back,
A mighty city, red with ruin and sack,
Through burning breaches, crumbling bit by bit,
Showed where the God of Slaughter seemed to sit
With Conflagration glaring at each crack.—
Who knows? perhaps as sleep unto us makes
Our dreams as real as our waking seems
With recollections time can not destroy,
So in the mind of Nature now awakes,
Haply, some wilder memory, and she dreams
The stormy story of the fall of Troy.

363

THE BLUEBIRD

From morn till noon upon the window-pane
The tempest tapped with rainy finger-nails,
And all the afternoon the blustering gales
Beat at the door with furious feet of rain.
The rose, near which the lily's bloom lay slain,
Like some red wound dripped by the garden rails,
On which the sullen slug left silvery trails—
It seemed the sun would never shine again.
Then in the drench, long, loud, and clarion-clear,—
A skyey herald tabarded in blue,—
A bluebird warbled . . . and at once a bow
Was bent in heaven, and I seemed to hear
God's sapphire spaces crystallizing through
The strata'd clouds in azure tremolo.

364

CAVERNS

Written of Colossal Cave, Kentucky.

Aisles and abysses; leagues, no man explores,
Of rock that labyrinths and night that drips;
Where everlasting silence broods, with lips
Of adamant, o'er earthquake-builded floors.
Where forms, such as the Dæmon-World adores,
Laborious water carves; whence echo slips
Wild-tongued o'er pools where petrifaction strips
Her breasts of crystal from which crystal pours.—
Here where primordial fear, the Gorgon, sits,
Staring all life to stone in ghastly mirth,
I seem to tread, with awe no tongue can tell,—
Beneath vast domes, by torrent-tortured pits,
'Mid wrecks terrific of the ruined Earth,—
An ancient causeway of forgotten Hell.

University of Virginia Library

[WEEDS BY THE WALL]

FOREWORD