The poems of Madison Cawein

She walks with the wind on the windy height
When the rocks are loud and the waves are white,
And all night long she calls through the night,
“O my children, come home!”
Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,
Tosses around her like a shroud,
While over the deep her voice rings loud,—
“O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!”

II

Who is she who wanders alone,
When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown?
Who walks all night and makes her moan,
“O my children, come home!”
Whose face is raised to the blinding gale;

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Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale,
While over the world goes by her wail,—
“O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!”

III

She walks with the wind in the windy wood;
The dark rain drips from her hair and hood,
And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued,
“O my children, come home!”
Where the trees loom gaunt and the rocks stretch drear,
The owl and the fox crouch back in fear,
As wild through the wood her voice they hear,—
“O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!”

IV

Who is she who shudders by
When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly?
Who walks all night with her wailing cry,
“O my children, come home!”
Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue,
With wan feet wounded and hands wild-wrung,

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Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung,—
“O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!”

V

'T is the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees,
The mother of Death and of Mysteries,
Who cries on the wind all night to these,
“O my children, come home!”
The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain,
Calling her children home again,
Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain,—
“O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!”

372

THE LAND OF HEARTS MADE WHOLE

Do you know the way that goes
Over fields of rue and rose,—
Warm of scent and hot of hue,
Roofed with heaven's bluest blue,—
To the Vale of Dreams Come True?

Do you know the path that twines,
Banked with elder bosks and vines,
Under boughs that shade a stream,
Hurrying, crystal as a gleam,
To the Hills of Love a-Dream?

Tell me, tell me, have you gone
Through the fields and woods of dawn,
Meadowlands and trees that roll,
Great of grass and huge of bole,
To the Land of Hearts Made Whole?

On the way, among the fields,
Poppies lift vermilion shields,
In whose hearts the golden Noon,
Murmuring her drowsy tune,
Rocks the sleepy bees that croon.

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On the way, amid the woods,
Mandrakes muster multitudes,
'Mid whose blossoms, white as tusk,
Glides the glimmering Forest-Dusk,
With her moths of fluttering musk.

Here you hear the stealthy stir
Of shy lives of hoof and fur;
Harmless things that hide and peer,
Hearts that sucked the milk of fear—
Fox and rabbit, squirrel and deer.

Here you see the mossy flight
Of faint forms that love the night—
Whippoorwill and owlet-things,
Whose weird call before you brings
Wonder-worlds of happenings.

Now in sunlight, now in shade,
Water, like a brandished blade,
Foaming forward, wild of flight,
Startles, then arrests the sight,
Whirling steely loops of light.

Through the tree-tops, down the vale,
Breezes roam, and leave a trail
Of cool music that the birds,—

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Following in happy herds,—
Gather up in twittering words.

Blossoms, frail and manifold,
Shower the way with pearl and gold;
Blurs, that seem the darling print
Of the Springtime's feet, or glint
Of her twinkling gown's torn tint.

There the Myths of old endure:
Dreams that are the world-soul's cure;
Things that have no place or play
In the facts of Everyday
Round your presence smile and sway.

Suddenly your eyes may see,
Stepping softly from a tree,—
Slim of form and wet with dew,—
The brown Dryad; lips the hue
Of a berry bit into.

You may mark the Naiad rise
From her pool's reflected skies;
In her gaze the heaven that dreams,
Starred, in twilight-haunted streams,
Mixed with water's grayer gleams.

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You may see the laurel's girth,
Big with bloom, give fragrant birth
To the Oread whose hair,—
Musk and darkness, light and air,—
Fills the hush with wonder there.

You may mark the rocks divide,
And the Faun before you glide,
Piping on a magic reed,
Sowing many a music-seed,
From which bloom and mushroom bead.

Of the rain and sunlight born,
Young of beard and young of horn,
You may see the Satyr lie,
With a very knowing eye,
Teaching fledgeling birds to fly.

These shall cheer and follow you
Through the Vale of Dreams Come True:
Wind-like voices, leaf-like feet;
Forms of mist and hazy heat,
In whose pulses sunbeams beat.

Lo! you tread enchanted ground!
From the hollows all around
Elf and spirit, gnome and fay,

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Guide your feet along the way
Till the dewy close of day.

Then beside you, jet on jet,
Emerald-hued and violet,
Flickering, floats a firefly light,
Aye to guide your steps aright
From the valley to the height.

Steep the way is; when at last,
Vale and wood and stream are passed,
From the heights you shall behold
Panther heavens of spotted gold
Tiger-tawny deeps unfold.

You shall see on stocks and stones
Sunset's bell-deep color tones
Fallen; and the valleys filled
With dusk's purple music, spilled
On the silence, rapture-thrilled.

Then, as answering bell greets bell,
Night ring in her miracle
Of the doméd dark, o'er-rolled,
Note on note, with starlight cold,
'Twixt the moon's broad peal of gold.

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On the hill-top Love-a-Dream
Shows you then her window-gleam;
Brings you home and folds your soul
In the peace of vale and knoll,
In the Land of Hearts Made Whole.

378

THE WIND OF SUMMER

From the hills and far away
All the long, warm summer day
Comes the Wind and seems to say:

“Come, oh, come! and let us go
Where the meadows bend and blow,
Waving with the white-tops' snow.

“'Neath the hyssop-colored sky
'Mid the meadows we will lie
Watching the white clouds roll by;

“While your hair my hands shall press
With a cooling tenderness
Till your grief grows less and less:

“Come, oh, come! and let us roam
Where the rock-cut waters comb
Flowing crystal into foam.

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“Under trees whose trunks are brown,
On the banks that violets crown,
We will watch the fish flash down;

“While my voice your ear shall soothe
With a whisper soft and smooth
Till your care shall wax uncouth.

“Come! where forests, line on line,—
Armies of the oak and pine,—
Scale the hills and shout and shine.

“We will wander, hand in hand,
Ways where tall the toadstools stand,
Mile-stones white of Fairyland.

“While your eyes my lips shall kiss,
Dewy as a wild-rose is,
Till they gaze on naught but bliss.

“On the meadows you will hear,
Leaning low your spirit ear,
Cautious footsteps drawing near.

“You will deem it but a bee,
Murmuring soft and sleepily,
Till your inner sight shall see

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“'T is a presence passing slow,
All its shining hair ablow,
Through the white-tops' tossing snow.

“By the waters, if you will,
And your inmost soul is still,
Melody your ears shall fill.

“You will deem it but the stream
Rippling onward in a dream,
Till upon your gaze shall gleam

“Arm of spray and throat of foam—
'T is a spirit there a-roam
Where the radiant waters comb.

“In the forest, if you heed,
You shall hear a magic reed
Sow sweet notes like silver seed.

“You will deem your ears have heard
Stir of tree or song of bird,
Till your startled eyes are blurred

“By a vision, instant seen,
Naked gold and naked green,
Glimmering the boughs between.

381

“Follow me! and you shall see
Wonder-worlds of mystery
That are only known to me!”

Thus outside my city door
Speaks the Wind its wildwood lore,
Speaks, and lo! I go once more.

382

THE WIND OF WINTER

The Winter Wind, the wind of death,
Who knocked upon my door,
Now through the key-hole entereth,
Invisible and hoar:
He breathes around his icy breath
And treads the flickering floor.

I heard him, wandering in the night,
Tap at my window pane,
With ghostly fingers, snowy white,
I heard him tug in vain,
Until the shuddering candle-light
Did cringe with fear and strain.

The fire, awakened by his voice,
Leapt up with frantic arms,
Like some wild babe that greets, with noise,
Its father home who storms,
With rosy gestures that rejoice
And crimson kiss that warms.

383

Now in the hearth he sits and, drowned
Among the ashes, blows;
Or through the room goes stealing round
On cautious-stepping toes,
Deep-mantled in the drowsy sound
Of night that sleets and snows.

And oft, like some thin fairy-thing,
The stormy hush amid,
I hear his captive trebles ring
Beneath the kettle's lid;
Or now a harp of elfland string
In some dark cranny hid.

Again I hear him, imp-like, whine,
Cramped in the gusty flue;
Or knotted in the resinous pine
Raise goblin cry and hue,
While through the smoke his eyeballs shine,
A sooty red and blue.

At last I hear him, nearing dawn,
Take up his roaring broom,
And sweep wild leaves from wood and lawn,
And from the heavens the gloom,
To show the gaunt world lying wan,
And morn's cold rose a-bloom.

384

THE LEAF-CRICKET

I

Small twilight singer
Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger
Of dusk's dim glimmer,
How cool thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer
Vibrate, soft-sighing,
Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying.
I stand and listen,
And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten
With rose and lily,
Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly,
Breathing around its cold and colorless breath,
Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death.

II

I see thee quaintly
Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly—

385

As thin as spangle
Of cobwebbed rain—held up at airy angle;
I hear thy tinkle,
Thy fairy notes, the silvery stillness sprinkle;
Investing wholly
The moonlight with divinest melancholy:
Until, in seeming,
I see the Spirit of the Summer dreaming
Amid her ripened orchards, apple-strewn,
Her great, grave eyes fixed on the harvest-moon.

III

As dewdrops beady,
As mist minute, thy notes ring low and reedy:
The vaguest vapor
Of melody, now near; now, like some taper
Of sound, far fading—
Thou will-o'-wisp of music aye evading.
Among the bowers,
The fog-washed stalks of Autumn's weeds and flowers,
By hill and hollow,
I hear thy murmur and in vain I follow—
Thou jack-o'-lantern voice, thou elfin cry,
Thou dirge, that tellest Beauty she must die.

386

IV

And when the frantic
Wild winds of Autumn with the dead leaves antic;
And walnuts scatter
The mire of lanes; and dropping acorns patter
In grove and forest,
Like some frail grief, with the rude blast thou warrest,
Sending thy slender
Far cry against the gale, that, rough, untender,
Untouched of sorrow,
Sweeps thee aside, where, haply, I to-morrow
Shall find thee lying, tiny, cold and crushed,
Thy weak wings folded and thy music hushed.

387

THE OWLET

I

When dusk is drowned in drowsy dreams,
And slow the hues of sunset die;
When firefly and moth go by,
And in still streams the new-moon gleams,
A sickle in the sky:
Then from the hills there comes a cry,
The owlet's cry:
A shivering voice that sobs and screams,
That, frightened, screams:—

“Who is it, who is it, who?
Who rides through the dusk and dew,
With a pair of horns,
As thin as thorns,
And face a bubble-blue?
Who, who, who!
Who is it, who is it, who?”

388

II

When night has dulled the lily's white,
And opened wide the moonflower's eyes,
When pale mists rise and veil the skies,
And round the height in whispering flight
The night wind sounds and sighs:
Then in the woods again it cries,
The owlet cries:
A shivering voice that calls in fright,
In maundering fright:—

“Who is it, who is it, who?
Who walks with a shuffling shoe,
'Mid the gusty trees,
With a face none sees,
And a form as ghostly too?
Who, who, who!
Who is it, who is it, who?”

III

When midnight leans a listening ear
And tinkles on her insect lutes;
When 'mid the roots the cricket flutes,
And marsh and mere, now far, now near,
A jack-o'-lantern foots:

389

Then o'er the pool again it hoots,
The owlet hoots:
A voice that shivers as with fear,
That cries in fear:—

“Who is it, who is it, who?
Who creeps with his glow-worm crew
Above the mire
With a corpse-light fire,
As only dead men do?
Who, who, who!
Who is it, who is it, who?”

390

THE POET

He stands above all worldly schism,
And, gazing over life's abysm,
Beholds, within the starry range
Of heaven, laws of death and change,
That, through his soul's prophetic prism,
Are turned to rainbows wild and strange.

Through nature is his hope made surer
Of that ideal, his allurer,
By whom his life is upward drawn
To mount pale pinnacles of dawn,
'Mid which all that is fairer, purer
Of love and lore it comes upon.

An alkahest, that makes gold metal
Of dross, his mind is—where one petal
Of one wild-rose will well outweigh
The piled-up facts of every-day—
Where commonplaces, there that settle,
Are changed to things of heavenly ray.

391

He climbs by steps of stars and flowers,
Companioned of the spirit Hours,
And sets his feet in pastures where
No merely mortal feet may fare;
And higher than the stars he towers
Though lowly as the flowers there.

His comrades are his own high fancies
And thoughts in which his soul romances;
And every part of heaven or earth
He visits, lo, assumes new worth;
And touched with loftier traits and trances
Reshines as with a lovelier birth.

He is the play, also the player;
The word that 's said, likewise the sayer;
And in the books of heart and head
There is no thing he has not read;
Of time and tears he is the weigher,
And mouthpiece 'twixt the quick and dead.

He dies: but, mounting ever higher,
Wings Phœnix-like from out his pyre
Above our mortal day and night,
Clothed on with sempiternal light;
And raimented in thought's fine fire
Flames on in everlasting flight.

392

Unseen, yet seen, on heights of visions,
Above all praise and world derisions,
His spirit and his deathless brood
Of dreams fare on, a multitude,
While on the pillar of great missions
His name and place are granite-hewed.

393

SUMMER NOONTIDE

The slender snail clings to the leaf
Gray on its silvered underside;
And slowly, slowlier than the snail, with brief
Bright steps, whose ripening touch foretells the sheaf,
Her warm hands berry-dyed,
Comes down the tanned Noontide.

The pungent fragrance of the mint
And pennyroyal drench her gown,
That leaves long shreds of trumpet-blossom tint
Among the thorns, and everywhere the glint
Of gold and white and brown
Her flowery steps waft down.

The leaves, like hands with emerald veined,
Along her way try their wild best
To reach the jewel—whose hot hue was drained
From some rich rose that all the June contained—
The butterfly, soft pressed
Upon her sunny breast.

394

Her shawl, the lace-like elder bloom,
She hangs upon the hillside brake,
Smelling of warmth and of her breast's perfume,
And, lying in the citron-colored gloom
Beside the lilied lake,
She stares the buds awake.

Or, with a smile, through watery deeps
She leads the oaring turtle's legs;
Or guides the crimson fin, that swims and sleeps,
From pad to pad, from which the young frog leaps;
And to its nest's green eggs
The reed-bird there that begs.

Then 'mid the fields of unmown hay
She shows the bees where sweets are found;
And points the butterflies, at airy play,
And dragon-flies, along the water-way,
Where honeyed flowers abound
For them to flicker round.

Or where ripe apples pelt with gold
Some barn—around which, coned with snow,
The wild-potato blooms—she mounts its old
Mossed roof, and through warped sides, the knots have holed,

395

Lets her long glances glow
Into the loft below.

To show the mud-wasp at its cell
Slenderly busy: swallows, too,
Packing against a beam their nest's clay shell;
And crouching in the dark the owl as well
With all her downy crew
Of owlets gray of hue.

These are her joys; and until dusk
Lounging she walks where reapers reap,
From sultry raiment shaking scents of musk,
Rustling the corn within its silken husk,
And driving down heav'n's deep
White herds of clouds like sheep.

396

TO THE LOCUST

Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reed-like breast,
Makest meridian music, long and loud,
Accentuating summer!—dost thy best
To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd
With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon—
When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady-browed,
Upon his sultry scythe—thou tangible tune
Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise
Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies.

Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills
Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes;
Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills
The land with death as sullenly he takes
Downward his dusty way: 'midst woods and fields
At every pool his burning thirst he slakes;

397

No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields
A spring from him; no creek evades his eye;
He needs but look and they are withered dry.

Thou singest, and thy song is as a spell
Of somnolence to charm the land with sleep;
A thorn of sound that pierces dale and dell,
Diffusing slumber over vale and steep.
Sleepy the forest, nodding sleepy boughs;
Sleepy the pastures with their sleepy sheep;
Sleepy the creek where sleepily the cows
Stand knee-deep, and the very heaven seems
Sleepy and lost in undetermined dreams.

Art thou a rattle that Monotony,
Summer's dull nurse, old sister of slow Time,
Shakes for Day's peevish pleasure, who in glee
Takes its discordant music for sweet rhyme?
Or oboe that the Summer Noontide plays,
Sitting with Ripeness 'neath the orchard-tree,
Trying repeatedly the same shrill phrase,
Until the musky peach with weariness
Drops, and the hum of murmuring bees grows less?

398

JULY

Now 'tis the time when, tall,
The long blue torches of the bellflower gleam
Among the trees; and, by the wooded stream,
In many a fragrant ball,
Blooms of the button-bush fall.

Let us go forth and seek
Woods where the wild plums redden and the beech
Plumps its stout burrs; and, swelling, just in reach,
The pawpaw, emerald-sleek,
Ripens along the creek.

Now 't is the time when ways
Of glimmering green flaunt white the giant plumes
Of the black-cohosh; and through bramble glooms,—
A blur of orange rays,—
The butterfly-blossoms blaze.

399

Let us go forth and hear
The spiral music that the locusts beat,
And that small spray of sound, so grassy sweet,
Dear to a country ear,
The cricket's summer cheer.

Now golden celandine
Is hairy hung with silvery sacs of seeds,
And bugled o'er with freckled gold, like beads,
Beneath the fox-grape vine,
The jewel-weed's blossoms shine.

Let us go forth and see
The dragon- and the butterfly, like gems,
Spangling the sunbeams; and the clover stems,
Weighed down with many a bee,
Nodding mellifluously.

Now morns are full of song;
The cat-bird and the red-bird and the jay
Upon the hilltops rouse the ruddy day,
Who, dewy, blithe, and strong,
Lures their wild wings along.

Now noons are full of dreams;
The clouds of heaven and the wandering breeze
Follow a vision; and the flowers and trees,

400

The hills and fields and streams,
Are lapped in mystic gleams.

The nights are full of love;
The stars and moon take up the golden tale
Of the sunk sun, and passionate and pale,
Mixing their fires above,
Grow eloquent thereof.

Such days are like a sigh
That beauty heaves from a full heart of bliss:
Such nights are like the sweetness of a kiss
On lips that half deny—
The warm lips of July.

401

EVENING ON THE FARM

From out the hills where twilight stands,
Above the shadowy pasture-lands,
With strained and strident cry,
Beneath pale skies that sunset bands,
The bull-bats fly.

A cloud hangs over, strange of shape,
And, colored like the half-ripe grape,
Seems some uneven stain
On heaven's azure, thin as crape,
And blue as rain.

By ways, that sunset's sardonyx
O'erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks,
Through which the cattle came,
The mullein stalks seem giant wicks
Of downy flame.

From woods no glimmer enters in,
Above the streams that, wandering, win
From out the violet hills,
Those haunters of the dusk begin,
The whippoorwills.

402

Adown the dark the firefly marks
Its flight in golden-emerald sparks;
And, loosened from his chain,
The shaggy watch-dog bounds and barks,
And barks again.

Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay;
And now an owlet, far away,
Cries twice or thrice, “T-o-o-w-h-o-o”;
And cool dim moths of mottled gray
Flit through the dew.

The silence sounds its frog-bassoon,
Where, on the woodland creek's lagoon,
Pale as a ghostly girl
Lost 'mid the trees, looks down the moon
With face of pearl.

Within the shed where logs, late hewed,
Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood
Make blurs of white and brown,
The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood
Of teetering down.

The clattering guineas in the tree
Din for a time; and quietly
The hen-house, near the fence,
Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry
Of cocks and hens.

403

A cow-bell tinkles by the rails,
Where, streaming white in foaming pails,
Milk makes an uddery sound;
While overhead the black bat trails
Around and round.

The night is still. The slow cows chew
A drowsy cud. The bird that flew
And sang is in its nest.
It is the time of falling dew,
Of dreams and rest.

The brown bees sleep; and round the walk,
The garden path, from stalk to stalk
The bungling beetle booms,
Where two soft shadows stand and talk
Among the blooms.

The stars are thick: the light is dead
That dyed the west: and Drowsyhead,
Tuning his cricket-pipe,
Nods, and some apple, round and red,
Drops over-ripe.

Now down the road, that shambles by,
A window, shining like an eye
Through climbing rose and gourd,
Shows where Toil sups and these things lie—
His heart and hoard.

404

UNDER THE HUNTER'S MOON

White from her chrysalis of cloud,
The moth-like moon swings upward through the night;
And all the bee-like stars that crowd
Heav'n's hollow hive wane in her silvery light.

Along the distance folds of mist
Hang frost-pale, ridging all the dark with gray;
Tinting the trees with amethyst,
Touching with pearl and purple every spray.

All night the stealthy frost and fog
Conspire to slay the rich-robed weeds and flowers;
To strip the woods of wealth, and clog
With piled-up gold of leaves the creek that cowers.

I seem to see their Spirits stand,
Molded of moonlight, faint of form and face,

405

Now reaching high a chilly hand
To pluck some walnut from its spicy place:

Now with fine fingers, phantom-cold,
Splitting the wahoo's pods of rose, and thin
The bittersweet's globes of gold,
To show the coal-red berries packed within:

Now on frail threads of gossamer
Stringing slim pearls of moisture; necklacing
The flow'rs; and spreading cobweb fur,
Crystalled with stardew, over everything;

While 'neath the moon, with moon-white feet,
They wander and a moon-chill music draw
From thin leaf-cricket flutes—the sweet,
Dim dirge of Autumn dying in the shaw.

406

IN THE LANE

When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock,
And the brown bee drones i' the rose,
And the west is a red-streaked four-o'-clock,
And summer is near its close—
It 's—Oh, for the gate and the locust lane
And dusk and dew and home again!

When the katydid sings and the cricket cries,
And ghosts of the mists ascend,
And the evening-star is a lamp i' the skies,
And summer is near its end—
It 's—Oh, for the fence and the leafy lane,
And the twilight peace and the tryst again!

When the owlet hoots in the dogwood-tree,
That leans to the rippling Run,
And the wind is a wildwood melody,
And summer is almost done—
It 's—Oh, for the bridge and the bramble lane,
And the fragrant hush and her hands again!

407

When fields smell moist with the dewy hay,
And woods are cool and wan,
And a path for dreams is the Milky-way,
And summer is nearly gone—
It's—Oh, for the rock and the woodland lane,
And the silence and stars and her lips again!

When the weight of the apples breaks down the limbs,
And musk-melons split with sweet,
And the moon's broad boat in the heaven swims,
And summer has spent its heat—
It 's—Oh, for the lane, the trysting lane,
And the deep-mooned night and her love again!

408

EPIPHANY

There is nothing that eases my heart so much
As the wind that blows from the great green hills;
'T is a hand of balsam whose healing touch
Unburdens my bosom of ills.

There is nothing that maketh my soul to rejoice
Like the sunset flaming without a flaw:
'T is a burning bush whence God's own voice
Addresses my spirit with awe.

There is nothing that hallows my mind, meseems,
Like the night with its moon and its starry slope:
'T is a mystical lily whose golden gleams
Fulfill my being with hope.

There is nothing, no, nothing, we see and feel,
That speaks to our souls some beautiful thought,
That was not created to help us and heal
Our lives that are overwrought.

409

LIFE

I
Pessimist

There is never a thing we dream or do
But was dreamed and done in the ages gone;
Everything 's old; there is nothing that 's new,
And so it will be while the world goes on.

The thoughts we think have been thought before;
The deeds we do have long been done;
We pride ourselves on our love and lore
And both are as old as the moon and sun.

We strive and struggle and swink and sweat,
And the end for each is one and the same;
Time and the sun and the frost and wet
Will wear from its pillar the greatest name.

No answer comes for our prayer or curse,
No word replies though we shriek in air;

410

Ever the taciturn universe
Stretches unchanged for our curse or prayer.

With our mind's small light in the dark we crawl,—
Glow-worm glimmers that creep about,—
Till the Power that made us, over us all
Poises His foot and treads us out.

Unasked He fashions us out of clay,
A little water, a little dust,
And then in our holes He thrusts us away,
With never a word, to rot and rust.

'T is a sorry play with a sorry plot,
This life of hate and of lust and pain,
Where we play our parts and are soon forgot,
And all that we do is done in vain.

II
Optimist

There is never a dream but it shall come true,
And never a deed but was wrought by plan;
And life is filled with the strange and new,
And ever has been since the world began.

411

As mind develops and soul matures
These two shall parent Earth's mightier acts;
Love is a fact, and 't is love endures
'Though the world make wreck of all other facts.

Through thought alone shall our age obtain
Above all ages gone before;
The tribes of sloth, of brawn, not brain,
Are the tribes that perish, are known no more.

Within ourselves is a voice of Awe,
And a hand that points to balanced Scales;
The one is Love, and the other, Law,
And their presence alone it is avails.

For every shadow about our way
There is a glory of moon and sun;
But the hope within us hath more of ray
Than the light of the sun and the moon made one.

Behind all being a purpose lies,
Undeviating as God hath willed;
And he alone it is who dies,
Who leaves that purpose unfulfilled.

412

Life is an epic the Master sings,
Whose theme is Man, and whose music, Soul,
Where each is a word in the Song of Things,
That shall roll on while the ages roll.

413

MEETING IN THE WOODS

Through ferns and moss the path wound to
A hollow where the touch-me-nots
Swung horns of honey filled with dew;
And where—like footprints—violets blue
And bluets made sweet sapphire blots,
'T was there that she had passed I knew.

The grass, the very wilderness
On either side, breathed rapture of
Her passage: 't was her hand or dress
That touched some tree—a slight caress—
That made the wood-birds sing above;
Her step that woke the flowers, I guess.

I hurried, till across my way,
Foam-footed, bounding through the wood,
A brook, like some wild child at play,
Went laughing loud its roundelay;
And there upon its bank she stood,
A sunbeam clad in forest gray.

414

And when she saw me, all her face
Bloomed like a wild-rose by the stream;
And to my breast a moment's space
I gathered her; and all the place
Seemed conscious of some happy dream
Come true to add to Earth its grace:

Some union, that was Heav'n's intent—
For which God made the world—the bliss,
The love, that raised her innocent
Young face to mine that, smiling, bent
And sealed her first words with a kiss—
As Love might close his testament.

415

ROSE AND RUE

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Do you remember where
The willows used to screen
The water flowing fair?
The mill-stream's banks of green
Where first our love begun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Do you remember how
From th' old bridge we would lean—
The bridge that 's broken now—
To watch the minnows sheen
Through ripples of the Run,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Do you remember, too,
The old beech-tree, between
Whose roots the windflowers grew?

416

Where oft we sat at E'en,
When stars were few or none,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
The bark is grown around
The names I cut therein,
And the true-love knot that bound;
The love-knot, clear and clean,
I carved when our love begun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
The roof of the farm-house gray
Is fallen and mossy green;
Its rafters rot away:
The old path scarce is seen
Where oft our feet would run,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Through each old tree and bough
The lone winds cry and keen—
The place is haunted now

417

With ghosts of what-has-been,
And dreams of love-long-done,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
There, in your world of wealth,
There, where you move a queen,
Broken in heart and health,
Does there ever rise a scene
Of days, your thought would shun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Here, 'mid the rose and rue,
Would God that your grave were green,
And I were lying, too!
Here on the hill, I mean,
Where oft we laughed in the sun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.

418

A MAID WHO DIED OLD

Frail, shrunken face, so pinched and worn,
That life has carved with care and doubt!
So weary waiting, night and morn,
For that which never came about!
Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn,
In which God's light at last is out.

Gray hair, that lies so thin and prim
On either side the sunken brows!
And soldered eyes, so deep and dim,
No word of man could now arouse!
And hollow hands, so virgin slim,
Forever clasped in silent vows!

Poor breasts! that God designed for love,
For baby lips to kiss and press!
That never felt, yet dreamed thereof,
The human touch, the child caress—
That lie like shriveled blooms above
The heart's long-perished happiness.

419

O withered body, Nature gave
For purposes of death and birth,
That never knew, and could but crave
Those things perhaps that make life worth—
Rest now, alas! within the grave,
Sad shell that served no end of Earth.

420

COMMUNICANTS

Who knows the things they dream, alas!
Or feel, who lie beneath the ground?
Perhaps the flowers, the leaves and grass
That close them round.

In spring the violets may spell
The moods of them we know not of;
Or lilies sweetly syllable
Their thoughts of love.

Haply, in summer, dew and scent
Of all they feel may be a part;
Each red rose be the testament
Of some rich heart.

The winds of fall be utterance,
Perhaps, of saddest things they say;
Wild leaves may word some dead romance
In some dim way.

In winter all their sleep profound
Through frost may speak to grass and stream,
Stilling them with the silent sound
Of all they dream.

421

THE DEAD DAY

The west builds high a sepulchre
Of cloudy granite and of gold,
Where twilight's priestly hours inter
The day like some great king of old.

A censer, rimmed with silver fire,
The new moon swings above his tomb;
While, organ-stops of God's own choir,
Star after star throbs in the gloom.

And night draws near, the sadly sweet—
A nun whose face is calm and fair—
And kneeling at the dead day's feet
Her soul goes up in silent prayer.

In prayer, we feel through dewy gleam
And flowery fragrance, and—above
All Earth—the ecstasy and dream
That haunt the mystic heart of love.

422

ALLUREMENT

Across the world she sends me word,
From gardens fair as Falerina's,
Now by a blossom, now a bird,
To come to her, who long has lured
With magic sweeter than Alcina's.

I know not what her word may mean,
I know not what may mean the voices
She sends as messengers unseen,
That through the hush around me lean,
And whisper till my heart rejoices.

Soon must I go. I must away.
Must take the path that is appointed.
God grant I reach her realm some day,
Where by her love, as by a ray,
My soul shall be anointed.

423

AUGUST

I

Clad on with glowing beauty and the peace,
Benign, of calm maturity, she stands
Among her meadows and her orchard-lands,
And on her mellowing gardens and her trees,
Out of the ripe abundance of her hands
Bestows increase
And fruitfulness, as, wrapped in sunny ease,
Blue-eyed and blonde she goes,
Upon her bosom Summer's richest rose.

II

And he who follows where her footsteps lead,
By hill and rock, by forest-side and stream,
May glimpse the glory of her visible dream,
In flower and fruit, in rounded nut and seed:
She, in whose path the very shadows gleam;
Whose humblest weed

424

Seems lovelier than June's loveliest flower, indeed,
And sweeter to the smell
Than April's self within a rainy dell.

III

Hers is a sumptuous simplicity
Within the fair Republic of her flowers,
Where you may see her standing hours on hours,
Breast-deep in gold, soft-holding up a bee
To her hushed ear; or sitting under bowers
Of greenery,
A butterfly a-tilt upon her knee;
Or lounging on her hip,
Dancing a cricket on her finger-tip.

IV

Ay, let me breathe hot scents that tell of you:
The hoary catnip and the meadow-mint,
On which the honor of your touch doth print
Itself as odor. Let me drink the hue
Of ironweed and mist-flower here that hint
With purple and blue,
The rapture that your presence doth imbue
Their inmost essence with,
Immortal, though as transient as a myth.

425

V

Yea, let me feed on sounds that still assure
Me where you hide: the brooks', whose happy din
Tells where, the deep, retired woods within,
Disrobed, you bathe; the birds', whose drowsy lure
Tells where you slumber, your warm, nestling chin
Soft on the pure,
Pink cushion of your palm. . . . What better cure
For care and memory's ache
Than to behold you thus, and watch you wake.

426

THE BUSH-SPARROW

I

Ere wild-haws, looming in the glooms,
Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms;
And in the whistling hollow there
The red-bud bends, as brown and bare
As buxom Roxy's up-stripped arm;
From some gray hickory or larch,
Sighed o'er the sodden meads of March,
The sad heart thrills and reddens warm
To hear you braving the rough storm,
Frail courier of green-gathering powers;
Rebelling sap in trees and flowers;
Love's minister come heralding—
O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers!
O brown-red pursuivant of Spring!

II

“Moan,” sob the woodland waters still
Down bloomless ledges of the hill;
And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang

427

In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang
Sharp beaks and talons of the wind:
Black scowl the forests, and unkind
The far fields as the near: while song
Seems murdered and all beauty wrong.
One weak frog only in the thaw
Of spawny pools wakes cold and raw,
Expires a melancholy bass
And stops as if bewildered: then
Along the frowning wood again,
Flung in the thin wind's vulture face,
From woolly tassels of the proud,
Red-bannered maples, long and loud,
“The Spring is come! is here! her Grace! her Grace!

III

“Her Grace, the Spring! her Grace! her Grace!
Climbs, beautiful and sunny browed,
Up, up the kindling hills and wakes
Blue berries in the berry brakes:
With fragrant flakes, that blow and bleach,
Deep-powders smothered quince and peach:
Eyes dogwoods with a thousand eyes:
Teaches each sod how to be wise
With twenty wildflowers to one weed,
And kisses germs that they may seed.

428

In purest purple and sweet white
Treads up the happier hills of light,
Bloom-, cloudy-borne, song in her hair
And balm and beam of odorous air.
Winds, her retainers; and the rains
Her yeomen strong who sweep the plains:
Her scarlet knights of dawn, and gold
Of eve, her panoply unfold:
Her herald tabarded behold!
Awake to greet! prepare to sing!
She comes, the darling Duchess, Spring!”

429

QUIET

'A log-hut in the solitude,
A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
This side, the shadow-haunted wood;
That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.

At daybreak Morn will come to me
In raiment of the white winds spun;
Slim in her rosy hand the key
That opes the gateway of the sun.

Her smile will help my heart enough
With love to labor all the day,
And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough,
With her smooth footprints, each a ray.

At dusk a voice will call afar,
A lone voice like the whippoorwill's;
And, on her shimmering brow one star,
Night will descend the western hills.

She at my door till dawn will stand,
With gothic eyes, that, dark and deep,
Are mirrors of a mystic land,
Fantastic with the towns of sleep.

430

MUSIC

Thou, oh, thou!
Thou of the chorded shell and golden plectrum, thou
Of the dark eyes and pale pacific brow!
Music, who by the plangent waves,
Or in the echoing night of labyrinthine caves,
Or on God's mountains, lonely as the stars,
Touchest reverberant bars
Of immemorial sorrow and amaze;—
Keeping regret and memory awake,
And all the immortal ache
Of love that leans upon the past's sweet days
In retrospection!—now, oh, now,
Interpreter and heart-physician, thou
Who gazest on the heaven and the hell
Of life, and singest each as well,
Touch with thy all-mellifluous finger-tips
Or thy melodious lips,
This sickness named my soul,
Making it whole
As is an echo of a chord,

431

Or some symphonic word,
Or sweet vibrating sigh,
That deep, resurgent, still doth rise and die
On thy voluminous roll;
Part of the beauty and the mystery
That axles Earth with music; as a slave,
Swinging it round and round on each sonorous pole,
'Mid spheric harmony,
And choral majesty,
And diapasoning of wind and wave;
Speeding it on its far elliptic way
'Mid vasty anthemings of night and day.—
O cosmic cry
Of two eternities, wherein we see
The phantasms, Death and Life,
At endless strife
Above the silence of a monster grave.

432

A DREAM SHAPE

With moon-white hearts that held a gleam
I gathered wildflowers in a dream,
And shaped a woman, whose sweet blood
Was odor of the wildwood bud.

From dew, the starlight arrowed through,
I wrought a woman's eyes of blue;
The lids that on her eyeballs lay
Were rose-pale petals of the May.

Out of a rosebud's veins I drew
The fragrant crimson beating through
The languid lips of her, whose kiss
Was as a poppy's drowsiness.

Out of the moonlight and the air
I wrought the glory of her hair,
That o'er her eyes' blue heaven lay
Like some gold cloud o'er dawn of day.

433

I took the music of the breeze
And water, whispering in the trees,
And shaped the soul that breathed below
A woman's blossom breasts of snow.

A shadow's shadow in the glass
Of sleep, my spirit saw her pass:
And thinking of it now, meseems
We only live within our dreams.

For in that time she was to me
More real than our reality;
More real than Earth, more real than I—
The unreal things that pass and die.

434

THE OLD BARN

Low, swallow-swept and gray,
Between the orchard and the spring,
All its wide windows overflowing hay,
And crannied doors a-swing,
The old barn stands to-day.

Deep in its hay the Leghorn hides
A round white nest; and, humming soft
On roof and rafter, or its log-rude sides,
Black in the sun-shot loft,
The building hornet glides.

Along its corn-crib, cautiously
As thieving fingers, skulks the rat;
Or in warped stalls of fragrant timothy,
Gnaws at some loosened slat,
Or passes shadowy.

A dream of drouth made audible
Before its door, hot, harsh, and shrill

435

All day the locust sings. . . . What other spell
Shall hold it, lazier still
Than the long day's, now tell:—

Dusk and the cricket and the strain
Of tree-toad and of frog; and stars
That burn above the rich west's ribbéd stain;
And dropping pasture bars,
And cowbells up the lane.

Night and the moon and katydid,
And leaf-lisp of the wind-touched boughs;
And mazy shadows that the fireflies thrid;
And sweet breath of the cows,
And the lone owl here hid.

436

THE WOOD WITCH

There is a woodland witch who lies
With bloom-bright limbs and beam-bright eyes,
Among the water-flags that rank
The slow brook's heron-haunted bank.
The dragonflies, in brass and blue,
Are signs she works her sorcery through;
Weird, wizard characters she weaves
Her spells with under forest leaves,—
These wait her word, like imps, upon
The gray flag-pods; their wings, of lawn
And gauze; their bodies, gleaming green.
While o'er the wet sand,—left between
The running water and the still,—
In pansy hues and daffodil,
The fancies that she doth devise
Assume the forms of butterflies,
Rich-colored.—And 't is she you hear,
Whose sleepy rune, hummed in the ear
Of silence, bees and beetles purr,
And the dry-droning locusts whirr;
Till, where the wood is very lone,

437

Vague monotone meets monotone,
And Slumber is begot and born,
A faery child beneath the thorn.
There is no mortal who may scorn
The witchery she spreads around
Her dim demesne, wherein is bound
The beauty of abandoned time,
As some sweet thought 'twixt rhyme and rhyme.
And through her spells you shall behold
The blue turn gray, the gray turn gold
Of hollow heaven; and the brown
Of twilight vistas twinkled down
With fireflies; and in the gloom
Feel the cool vowels of perfume
Slow-syllabled of weed and bloom.
But, in the night, at languid rest,—
When like a spirit's naked breast
The moon slips from a silver mist,—
With star-bound brow, and star-wreathed wrist,
If you should see her rise and wave
You welcome—ah! what thing could save
You then? forevermore her slave!

438

MAY

The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed,
That spangle the woods and dance—
No gleam of gold that the twilights hold
Is strong as their necromance:
For, under the oaks where the woodpaths lead,
The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed
Are the May's own utterance.

The azure stars of the bluet bloom,
That sprinkle the woodland's trance—
No blink of blue that a cloud lets through
Is sweet as their countenance:
For, over the knolls that the woods perfume,
The azure stars of the bluet bloom
Are the light of the May's own glance.

With her wondering words and her looks she comes,
In a sunbeam of a gown;
She needs but think and the blossoms wink,
But look, and they shower down.
By orchard ways, where the wild bee hums,
With her wondering words and her looks she comes
Like a little maid to town.

439

RAIN

I

Around, the stillness deepened; then the grain
Went wild with wind; and every briery lane
Was swept with dust; and then, tempestuous black,
Hillward the tempest heaved a monster back,
That on the thunder leaned as on a cane;
And on huge shoulders bore a cloudy pack,
That gullied gold from many a lightning crack:
One great drop splashed and wrinkled down the pane,
And then field, hill, and wood were lost in rain.

II

At last, through clouds,—as from a cavern hewn
Into night's heart,—the sun burst, angry roon;
And every cedar, with its weight of wet,
Against the sunset's fiery splendor set,
Startled to beauty, seemed with rubies strewn:
Then in drenched gardens, like sweet phantoms met,
Dim odors rose of pink and mignonette;
And in the east a confidence, that soon
Grew to the calm assurance of the moon.

440

FALL

Sad-hearted Spirit of the solitudes,
Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods!
Gray-gowned in fog, gold-girdled with the gloom
Of tawny sunsets; burdened with perfume
Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist;
And all the beauty of the fire-kissed
Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way,
Odorous of death and drowsy with decay.
I think of thee as seated 'mid the showers
Of languid leaves that cover up the flowers,—
The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June
Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune
A singer gives her soul's wild melody,—
Watching the squirrel store his granary.
Or, 'mid old orchards, I have pictured thee:
Thy hair's profusion blown about thy back;
One lovely shoulder bathed with gypsy black;
Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweet
The rosy russets tumbled at thy feet.

Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers?
Or heart-sick bird that sang of happier hours?
A cricket dirging days that soon must die?
Or did the ghost of Summer wander by?

441

SUNSET IN AUTUMN

Blood-colored oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass;
Gaunt slopes, on which the bleak leaves glow of brier and sassafras,
And broom-sedge strips of smoky pink and pearl-gray clumps of grass
In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain pools gleam like glass.

From west to east, from wood to wood, along the forest-side,
The winds,—the sowers of the Lord,—with thunderous footsteps stride;
Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed,
Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide.

The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds sounds its far fairy-bell;
And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed's windy shell

442

Glimmers; while, wrapped in withered dreams, the wet, autumnal smell
Of loam and leaf, like Fall's own ghost, steals over field and dell.

The oaks, against a copper sky—o'er which, like some black lake
Of Dis, bronze clouds, (like surges fringed with sullen fire) break—
Loom sombre as Doom's citadel above the vales that make
A pathway to a land of mist the moon's pale feet shall take.

Now, dyed with burning carbuncle, a limbolitten pane,
Red in wild walls of storm, the west opens to hill and plain,
On which the wild-geese ink themselves, a far triangled train;
And then the shuttering clouds close down—and night it comes again.

443

CONTENT

When I behold how some pursue
Fame that is Care's embodiment,
Or fortune, whose false face looks true,—
An humble home with sweet content
Is all I ask for me and you.

An humble home, where pigeons coo,
Whose path leads under breezy lines
Of frosty-berried cedars to
A gate, one mass of trumpet-vines,
Is all I ask for me and you.

A garden, which, all summer through,
The roses old make redolent,
And morning-glories, gay of hue,
And tansy with its homely scent,
Is all I ask for me and you.

An orchard, that the pippins strew,
From whose bruised gold the juices spring;
A vineyard, where the grapes hang blue,

444

Wine-big and ripe for vintaging,
Is all I ask for me and you.

A lane, that leads to some far view
Of forest or of fallow-land,
Bloomed o'er of rose and meadow-rue,
Each with a bee in its hot hand,
Is all I ask for me and you.

At morn, a pathway deep with dew,
And birds that vary time and tune;
At eve, a sunset avenue,
And whippoorwills that haunt the moon,
Is all I ask for me and you.

Dear heart, with wants so small and few,
And faith, that 's better far than gold,
A lowly friend; a child or two,
To care for us when we are old,
Is all I ask for me and you.

445

OCTOBER

Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows
A tourney-trumpet on the listed hill;
Past is the splendor of the royal rose
And duchess daffodil.

Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden's space,
Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold,
A ragged beggar with a lovely face,
Reigns the sad marigold.

And I, who sought June's butterfly for days,
Now find it—like a coreopsis bloom—
Amber and seal, rain-murdered 'neath the blaze
Of this sunflower's plume.

Here drones the bee; and there, sky-voyaging wings
Dare the blue gulfs of heaven: the last song
The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings
Upon that pear-tree's prong.

446

No angry sunset brims with rubier red
The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed,
Pour in the blossoms of this salvia-bed
Where each leaf seems to bleed.

And where the wood-gnats dance, a little mist,
Above the efforts of the weedy stream,
The girl, October, tired of the tryst,
Dreams a diviner dream.

One foot just dipping the caressing wave,
One knee at languid angle; locks that drown
Hands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave,
Watching the leaves drift down.

447

DISCOVERY

What is it now that I shall seek
Where woods dip downward, in the hills?—
A mossy nook, a ferny creek,
And May among the daffodils.

Or in the valley's vistaed glow,
Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines,
Shall I behold her coming slow,
Sweet May, among the columbines?

With red-bud cheeks and bluet eyes,
Big eyes, the homes of happiness,
To meet me with the old surprise,
Her hoiden hair all bonnetless.

Who waits for me, where, note for note,
The birds make glad the forest trees?
A dogwood blossom at her throat,
My May among th' anemones.

As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,
And dewdrops drink the moon's bright beams,
My soul shall kiss her lips' perfumes,
And drain the magic of her dreams.

448

THE OLD SPRING

I

Under rocks whereon the rose
Like a strip of morning glows;
Where the azure-throated newt
Drowses on the twisted root;
And the brown bees, humming homeward,
Stop to suck the honeydew;
Fern and leaf-hid gleaming gloamward,
Drips the wildwood spring I knew,
Drips the spring my boyhood knew.

II

Myrrh and music everywhere
Haunt its cascades—like the hair
That a Naiad tosses cool,
Swimming strangely beautiful,
With white fragrance for her bosom,
And her mouth a breath of song:—
Under leaf and branch and blossom
Flows the woodland spring along,
Sparkling, singing flows along.

449

III

Still the wet wan mornings touch
Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such
Slender stars as dusk may have
Pierce the rose that roofs its wave;
Still the thrush may call at noontide
And the whippoorwill at night;
Nevermore, by sun or moontide,
Shall I see it gliding white,
Falling, flowing, wild and white.

450

THE FOREST SPRING

Push back the brambles, berry-blue;
The hollowed spring is full in view:
Deep-tangled with luxuriant fern
Ripples its rock-embedded urn.

Not for the loneliness that keeps
The coigne wherein its crystal sleeps;
Not for wild butterflies that sway
Their pansy pinions all the day
Above its mirror; nor the bee,
Nor dragon-fly, that, passing, see
Themselves reflected in its spar;
Not for the one white liquid star
That twinkles in its firmament;
Nor moon-shot clouds, so slowly sent
Athwart it when the kindly night
Beads its long grasses with the light
Small jewels of the dimpled dew:
Not for the day's inverted blue,
Nor the quaint, dimly colored stones
That dance within it where it moans;

451

Not for all these I love to sit
In silence and to gaze in it.
But, lo! a nymph with merry eyes
Greets mine within its laughing skies;
A glimmering, shimmering nymph who plays
All the long fragrant summer days
With instant sights of bees and birds,
And talks with them in water-words;
And for whose nakedness the air
Weaves moony mists; and on whose hair,
Unfilleted, the night will set
That lone star as a coronet.

452

THE HILLS

There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
Beckon our mutability
To follow and to gaze upon
Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
Meseems the very heavens are massed
Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
With all the skyey burden of
The winds and clouds and stars above.
Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
The laws that give all Beauty being!
Behold! to them, when dawn draws near,
The nomads of the air appear,
Unfolding crimson camps of day
In brilliant bands; then march away;
And under burning battlements
Of evening plant their tinted tents.
The truth of olden myths, that brood
By haunted stream and haunted wood,
They see; and feel the happiness

453

Of old at which we only guess:
The dreams, the ancients loved and knew,
Still as their rocks and trees are true:
Not otherwise than presences
The tempest and the calm to these:
One, shouting on them all the night,
Black-limbed and veined with lambent light:
The other, with the ministry
Of all soft things that company
With music—whose embodied form
Fills all the solitude with charm
Of leaves and waters and the peace
Of bird-begotten melodies—
And who at night doth still confer
With the mild moon, that telleth her
Pale tale of lonely love, until
Wan shadows of her passion fill
The heights with shapes that glimmer by
Clad on with sleep and memory.

454

THE SONG OF THE THRUSH

Overhead, overhead a wood thrush flutes,
And it seems to me
All the sweet words in the world,
Married to melody, could not express
What its few, wild notes,
Inspired, and simple, and free, express,
Say to me
Of expectation and woodland mystery,
Dreams, and wonder-visions never appearing,
Remote and unattainably beautiful—
O indescribable song!
Song of the wild brown thrush!
O June! O love! O youth!
Of you, of you it speaks to me!
Of the lost, the irremediable,
The indescribably fair and far and yet to be found;
The mysteriously hidden, too:
The lure of the undiscoverable calling, calling,
Bidding me on and on,
In the voice of all my longings,
Down the dim, the deep, the cadenced aisles of the forest.

455

TRANSMUTATION

To me all beauty that I see
Is melody made visible:
An earth-translated state, may be,
Of music heard in Heaven or Hell.

Out of some love-impassioned strain
Of saints, the rose evolved its bloom;
And, dreaming of it here again,
Perhaps relives it as perfume.

Out of some chant, that demons sing
Of hate and pain, the sunset grew;
And, haply, still remembering,
Relives it here as some wild hue.

456

FROST

Magician he, who, autumn nights,
Down from the starry darkness whirls;
Heav'n's harlequin, whose spangled tights
And wand are powdered thick with pearls.

Through him each pane presents a scene,
A Lilliputian landscape, where
The world is white instead of green,
And trees and houses hang in air.

Where Elfins gambol and delight,
And bow the jewelled bells of flowers;
Where upside-down we see the night
With many moons and meteor showers.

And surely in his wand and hand
Lies Midas magic, for, behold,
Some morn we wake and find the land,
Both field and forest, turned to gold.

457

ADVENTURERS

Seemingly over the hilltops,
Possibly under the hills,
A tireless wing that never drops,
And a song that never stills.

Epics heard on the stars' lips?
Lyrics read in the dew?—
To sing the song at our finger-tips,
And live the world anew!

Cavaliers of the Cortés kind,
Bold and free and strong,—
And, oh, for a fine and muscular mind
To sing a New-World's song!

Sailing seas of the silver morn,
Blown of its balm and spice,
To put the Old-World art to scorn
At the price of any price!

Danger, death, but the hope high!
God's, though the purpose fail!—
Into the deeds of a vaster sky
Sailing a dauntless sail.

458

INVOCATION

I

O Life! O Death; O God!
Have we not striven?
Have we not known Thee, God,
As Thy stars know Heaven?
Have we not held Thee true,
True as Thy deepest,
Sweet and immaculate blue
Heaven whence rains Thy dew!
Have we not known Thee true,
O God who keepest!

II

O God, our Father, God!—
Who gav'st us fire,
To rise above the sod,
To soar, aspire—
What though we strive and strive,
And all our soul says “live”?
Will not the scorn of men,

459

Like some wild bird, again
Falcon it down with sneers,
As often in past years?
And, O sun-centered high,
Thou, too, who 'rt Poet,
Beneath Thy seeing sky
Each day new Keatses die,
Crying, “Why should we try!
That which we seek 's a lie!”—
Why is this so?—O why?—
Thou who dost know it!

III

We know Thee beautiful,
We know Thee bitter!
Help Thou!—Men's eyes are dull,
O God most beautiful!
Make Thou their souls less full
Of things mere glitter.
Dost Thou not see our tears?
Dost Thou not hear the years
Treading our hearts to shards,
O Lord of all the Lords?—
Give heed, O God of Hosts,
There 'mid Thy glorious ghosts,
Most high and holy!

460

Have mercy on our tears!
Have mercy on our years!
Our strivings and our fears,
O Lord of lordly peers,
On us, so lowly!

IV

On us, so fondly fain
To tell what mother-pain
Of Nature haunts the rain.

On us, so glad to show
What sorrow wings the snow,
And her wild winds that blow.

Us, who interpret right
Her mystic rose of light,
Her moony rune of night.

Us, who have utterance for
Each warm, flame-hearted star
That stammers from afar.

Who hear the tears and sighs
Of every bud that dies
While heav'n's dew on it lies.

461

Who see the power that dowers
The wildwood bosks and bowers
With musk and sap of flowers.

Who see what no man sees
In water, earth and breeze,
And in the hearts of trees.

Turn not away Thy light,
O God!—Our strength is slight!
Help us who breast the height!
Have mercy, Infinite!
Have mercy!

462

THE DEATH OF LOVE

So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!
And in the sorrow of our heart's hushed halls
A lute lies broken and a rose-flower falls;
Love's house stands empty and his hearth lies cold.
Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told,
In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls
Beauty decays; and on their pedestals
Dreams crumble, and th' immortal gods are mold.
Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone,
One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost
Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past—
The voice of Memory, that stills to stone
The soul that hears; the mind, that, utterly lost,
Before its beautiful presence stands aghast.

463

UNANSWERED

How long ago it is since we went Maying!
Since she and I went Maying long ago!
The years have left my forehead lined, I know,
Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.
Ah, time will change us: yea, I hear it saying—
“She, too, grows old: the face of rose and snow
Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow
Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.
The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled,
Has lost the litheness of its loveliness:
And all the gladness that her blue eyes held
Tears and the world have hardened with distress.”—
“True! true!” I answer, “O ye years that part!
These things are changed—but is her heart, her heart?”

464

LOVE, THE INTERPRETER

Thou art the music that I hear in sleep,
The poetry that lures me on in dreams;
The magic, thou, that holds my thought with themes
Of young romance in revery's mystic keep.—
The lily's aura, and the damask deep
That clothes the rose; the whispering soul that seems
To haunt the wind; the rainbow light that streams,
Like some wild spirit, 'thwart the cataract's leap—
Are glimmerings of thee and thy loveliness,
Pervading all my world; interpreting
The marvel and the wonder these disclose:
For, lacking thee, to me were meaningless
Life, love, and hope, the joy of everything,
And all the beauty that the wide world knows.

465

LOVE DESPISED

Why not resolve and hunt it from one's heart?
This love, this god and fiend, that makes a hell
Of all one's life, in ways no tongue can tell,
No mind divine, nor any word impart.
Would not one think the slights that make hearts smart,
The ice of love's disdain, the wintry well
Of love's disfavor, otherwise would quell?
Or school one's nature, too, to its own art?
Why will men cringe and cry forever here
For that which, once obtained, may prove a curse?
Why not remember that, however fair,
Decay is wed to Beauty? that each year
Robs somewhat from the riches of her purse,
Until at last her house of pride stands bare?

466

PEARLS

Baroque, but beautiful, between the lunes,
The valves of nacre of a mussel-shell,
Behold, a pearl! shaped like the burnished bell
Of some strange blossom that long afternoons
Of summer coax to open: all the moon's
Chaste lustre in it; hues that only dwell
With purity. . . . It takes me, like a spell,
Back to a day when, whistling truant tunes,
A barefoot boy I waded 'mid the rocks,
Searching for shells strewn in the creek's slow swirl,
Unconscious of the pearls that round me lay:
While, 'mid wild-roses,—all her tomboy locks
Blond-blowing,—stood, unnoticed then, a girl,
My sweetheart once, the pearl I flung away.

467

THE WOMAN SPEAKS

Why have you come?—To see me in my shame?
A thing to spit upon, despise and scorn?—
You, you who ask me! You, by whom was torn,
Then cast aside, like some vile rag, my name!
What shelter could you give me, now, that blame
And loathing would not share? that wolves of vice
Would not besiege with eyes of glaring ice?
Wherein Sin sat not with her face of flame?
‘You love me”?—God!—If yours be love, for lust
Hell must invent another synonym!
If yours be love, then whoredom is the way
To Heaven and God! and not with soul but dust
Must burn the faces of the Cherubim,—
O beast of beasts, if yours be love, I say!

468

OF THE SLUMS

Red-faced as old carousal, and with eyes
A hard, hot blue; her hair a frowsy flame,
Bold, dowdy bosomed, from her window-frame
She leans, her mouth all insult and all lies.
Or slattern-slippered and in sluttish gown,
With ribald mirth and words too vile to name,
A new Doll Tearsheet, glorying in her shame,
Armed with her Falstaff now she takes the town.
The flaring lights of alley-way saloons,
The reek of hideous gutters and black oaths
Of drunkenness from vice-infested dens,
Are to her senses what the silvery moon's
Chaste splendor is, and what the blossoming growths
Of Earth and bird-song are to Innocence.

469

LIGHT AND WIND

Where, through the myriad leaves of many trees,
The daylight falls, beryl and chrysoprase,
The glamour and the glimmer of its rays
Seem visible music, tangible melodies:
Light that is music; music that one sees—
Wagnerian music—where forever sways
The spirit of romance, and gods and fays
Take form, clad on with dreams and mysteries.
And now the wind's transmuting necromance
Touches the light and makes it fall and rise,
Vocal, a harp of multitudinous waves
That speaks as ocean speaks—an utterance
Of far-off whispers, mermaid-murmuring sighs—
Pelagian, vast, deep down in coral caves.

470

THE WINDS

Those hewers of the clouds, the Winds,—that lair
At the four compass-points,—are out to-night;
I hear their sandals trample on the height,
I hear their voices trumpet through the air:
Builders of Storm, God's workmen, now they bear,
Up the steep stair of sky, on backs of might,
Huge tempest bulks, while,—sweat that blinds their sight,—
The rain is shaken from tumultuous hair:
Now, sweepers of the firmament, they broom,
Like gathered dust, the rolling mists along
Heaven's floors of sapphire; all the beautiful blue
Of skyey corridor and aëry room
Preparing, with large laughter and loud song,
For the white moon and stars to wander through.

471

TOUCHES

In heavens of rivered blue, that sunset dyes
With glaucous flame, deep in the west the day
Stands Midas-like; or, wading on his way,
Touches with splendor all the twilight skies.
Each cloud that, like a stepping-stone, he tries
With rosy foot, transforms its sober gray
To blazing gold; while, ray on crystal ray,
Within his wake the stars like bubbles rise.
So should the artist in his work accord
All things with beauty, and communicate
His soul's high magic and divinity
To all he does; and, hoping no reward,
Toil onward, making darkness aureate
With light of worlds that be and are to be.

472

EARTH AND MOON

I saw the day like some great monarch die,
Gold-couched, behind the clouds' rich tapestries.
Then, purple-sandaled, clothed in silences
Of sleep, through halls of skyey lazuli,
The twilight, like a mourning queen, trailed by,
Dim-paged of dreams and shadowy mysteries;
And now the night, the star-robed child of these,
In meditative loveliness draws nigh.
Earth,—like to Romeo,—deep in dew and scent,
Beneath Heaven's window, watching till a light,
Like some white blossom, in its square be set,—
Lifts a faint face unto the firmament,
That, with the moon, grows gradually bright,
Bidding him climb and clasp his Juliet.

473

DUSK

Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold,
And 'mid their sheaves,—where, like a daisy-bloom
Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom,
The star of twilight flames,—as Ruth, 't is told,
Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old,
The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume
From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume
Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled.
Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill
Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily
Stumbling the stone with one foam-fluttering foot:
Save for the note of one far whippoorwill,
And in my heart her name,—like some sweet bee
Within a rose,—blowing a fairy flute.

474

SEPTEMBER

The bubbled blue of morning-glory spires,
Balloon-blown foam of moonflowers, and sweet snows
Of clematis, through which September goes,
Song-hearted, rich in realized desires,
Are flanked with hotter hues: with tawny fires
Of acrid marigolds,—that light long rows
Of lamps,—and salvias, red as day's red close,—
That torches seem,—by which the Month attires
Barbaric beauty; like some Asian queen,
Towering imperial in her two-fold crown
Of harvest and of vintage; all her form
Gold and majestic purple: in her mien
The might of motherhood; her baby brown,
Abundance, high on one exultant arm.

475

THE END OF SUMMER

Pods are the poppies, and slim spires of pods
The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes
Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds
Collapsing at a touch; the lote, that sods
The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods
And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds,
Around the sleepy water and its reeds,
Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods.
Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer 's dead!
The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre,
Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire:
While from the East, as from a garden-bed,
Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some
Great golden melon—saying, “Fall has come.”

476

THE PASSING GLORY

Slow sinks the sun,—a great carbuncle ball
Red in the cavern of a sombre cloud,—
And in her garden, where the dense weeds crowd,
Among her dying asters stands the Fall,
Like some lone woman in a ruined hall,
Dreaming of desolation and the shroud;
Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed,
Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl.
The gaunt wind rises, like an angry hand,
And sweeps the sprawling spider from its web,
Smites frantic music in the twilight's ear;
And all around, like melancholy sand,
Rains dead leaves down—wild leaves, that mark the ebb,
In Earth's dark hour-glass, of another year.

477

PROTOTYPES

Whether it be that we in letters trace
The pure exactness of a woodbird's strain,
And name it song; or with the brush attain
The high perfection of a wildflower's face;
Or mold in difficult marble all the grace
We know as man; or from the wind and rain
Catch elemental rapture of refrain
And mark in music to due time and place:
The aim of art is Nature; to unfold
Her truth and beauty to the souls of men
In close suggestions; in whose forms is cast
Nothing so new but 't is long eons old;
Nothing so old but 't is as young as when
The mind conceived it in the ages past.

478

SUPERSTITION

In the waste places, in the sinister night,
When the wood whispers like a wandering mind,
And silence sits and listens to the wind,
Or, 'mid the rocks, to some wild torrent's flight;
Bat-browed thou wadest with thy wisp of light
Among black pools the moon can never find;
Or, owlet-eyed, thou hootest to the blind
Deep darkness from some cave or haunted height.
He who beholds but once thy fearsome face,
Never again shall walk alone! but wan
And terrible attendants shall be his—
Unutterable things that have no place
In God or Beauty—that compel him on,
Against all hope, where endless horror is.

479

A. D. NINETEEN HUNDRED

War and Disaster, Famine and Pestilence,
Vaunt-couriers of the Century that comes,
Behold them shaking their tremendous plumes
Above the world! Lo, all the air grows dense
With rumors of destruction and a sense,
Cadaverous, of corpses and of tombs
Predestined; while,—like monsters in the glooms,—
Bristling with battle, shadowy and immense,
The Nations rise in dread apocalypse.—
Where now the boast Earth makes of civilization?
Its brag of Christianity?—In vain
We seek to see them in the wild eclipse
Of hell and horror and the devastation
Of Death triumphant on his hills of slain.

480

UNCALLED

As one, who, journeying westward with the sun,
Beholds at length from the up-towering hills,
Far-off, a land unspeakable beauty fills,
Circeän peaks and vales of Avalon:
And, sinking weary, watches, one by one,
The big seas beat between; and knows it skills
No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills,
This is the helpless end, that all is done:
So 't is with him, whom long a vision led
In quest of Beauty—and who finds at last,
She lies beyond his effort; all the waves
Of all the world between them: while the dead,
The myriad dead, who populate the Past
With failure, hail him from forgotten graves.

481

QUATRAINS

I Moths and Fireflies

Since Fancy taught me in her school of spells
I know her tricks: These are not moths at all,
Nor fireflies; but masking Elfland belles
Whose link-boys torch them to Titania's ball.

II Autumn Wildflowers

Like colored lanterns swung in Elfin towers,
Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways,
And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays,
Burns the sloped crimson of the cardinal-flowers.

III The Wind in the Pines

When winds go organing through the pines
On hill and headland, darkly gleaming,

482

Meseems I hear sonorous lines
Of Iliads that the woods are dreaming.

IV Opportunity

Behold a hag whom Life denies a kiss
As he rides questward in knighterrant-wise;
Only when he hath passed her is it his
To know, too late, the Fairy in disguise.

V Dreams

They mock the present and they haunt the past,
And in the future there is naught agleam
With hope, the soul desires, that at last
The heart, pursuing, does not find a dream.

483

AFTERWORD

What vague traditions do the golden eves,
What legends do the dawns
Inscribe in fire on Heaven's azure leaves,
The red sun colophons?

What ancient stories do the waters verse?
What tales of war and love
Do winds within the Earth's vast house rehearse,
God's stars stand guard above?

Would I could know them as they are expressed
In hue and melody!
And say, in words, the beauties they suggest,
Language their mystery!

And in one song magnificently rise,
The music of the spheres,
That more than marble should immortalize
My name in after years.

University of Virginia Library

A VOICE ON THE WIND

PROEM