University of Virginia Library

no previous section Nature-notes and impressions in prose and verse
no next section

To the Memory OF GEORGE H. ELLWANGER TRUE FRIEND AND LOVER AND INTERPRETER OF NATURE, AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF ESTEEM AND ADMIRATION

[Would I could talk as the flowers talk]

Would I could talk as the flowers talk
To my soul! and the stars, in their ceaseless walk
Through Heaven!—and tell to the high and low
The things that they say, so all might know
The dreams they dream, and have told to me!
As Nature sees would I could see!
Then might I speak with authority!—
I stand below and look above,
And see her busy with life and love,
And can tell the world so little thereof.
Oh, for a soul that could feel much less!
Or, feeling more, could so express
The things it feels and their tenderness:
The very essence, the soul of art,
And all the heavens and hells of heart!
Then might I rise to the very peak,
The summit of song, which poets seek,
And speak with a voice as the masters speak.
1

NATURE-NOTES and IMPRESSIONS

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.—
Wordsworth.

1883–1886

[Lead me, thou Bard of Beauty, through those caves]

Lead me, thou Bard of Beauty, through those caves
Of pale Diana! let me hear the moan
Of Ocean, sorrowing with all his waves
As once he sorrowed on that Island lone
2

In siren moonlight. Here, where twilight paves
The woodland paths, I seem to hear her trail
Dim raiment; her, that damsel who enslaves
My soul; that Beauty, sad, divinely pale,
That haunts thy song, mastering the gamut whole
Of dreams and music; on whose easeful breast,—
As once Endymion's head, soft-dreaming, pressed
That Indian maiden's bosom,—rests my soul.

[O let me sing as thou didst, Keats, and die]

O let me sing as thou didst, Keats, and die!
With soul poured on the circling starry night;
When Dian's lune hangs dewy in the sky,
And the wild nightingale with anguished might
Bewails in some dense bramble's spicy dusk
Its old heart-sorrow to the wild rose wan;
3

Or let me, like thyself, drink in the musk
Of some dull draught from Lethe's waters drawn,
And sink, as thou didst, into dreamless sleep,
Where disappointment, heartache, grief and scorn,
And human misery can no longer heap
The soul that treads life's path set round with thorn;
Ay! fall asleep, as thou didst fall asleep
Under the alien skies, of hope forlorn!

[In the forest of music often and often]

In the forest of music often and often,
To the murmuring song of the winds and waters,
Have our spirits mingled and mixed
In the wildflower dance of the Hours
On the mossy carpet under the whispering leaves:
Or wandered, hand in shadowy hand,
Beneath the song-suggestive stillness of the moon:
Or leaned, listening,
Over deep glens of echoing green,
Carved in the ancient bosoms of the hills
4

By sonorous and impetuous waters,
Bearing upon their foamy crests
Crescents and points, starry and still,
Of reflected emerald flame,
When the heavens bloomed and blazed with a million quivering fires.
Dost thou know her name?
Fairest of the Daughters of Music is she,
Loveliest of all the Children of Art.

[When winter nights are cold and shrill]

When winter nights are cold and shrill,
And winds sit rocking wild their arms,
Far off, beyond the treeless hill,
Sound ghostly faint the owl's alarms.
Wail, wail, thou bird of ill omén,
Within thy freezing glen!
Screech, screech through all the frosty night
Where gleams the cold moonlight!
5

Well with man's mood thy song accords,
Thy song that knows but wailing words.
Lo, where the oats in barn are housed,
The screech-owl sits and croons and cries,
Until the cocks are all aroused
And know to-night some pullet dies.
Hush, hush, thou staring owl!
And leave the roosting fowl!
Go, seek the shivering wood,
And there, where wild winds brood,
Sing to the soul that hope has lost,
The soul that still is tempest-tost.
When snows drift deep the forest path,
And sleet bows down the strongest trees,
Like Edgar's fear and Lear's crazed wrath,
The screech-owl's voice makes wild the breeze.
Mourn, mourn, thou feathered witch
Above the frozen ditch!
Weep, weep, unto the icy gale,
Where icicles hang pale,
As weeps the heart, ingratitude
Makes winter of, the grief pursued.
11

[The roar of winter through the palsied oaks]

The roar of winter through the palsied oaks,
Wind-tortured on the withered fields,
Is as the sound of giant chariot spokes,
And clashing of innumerable shields.

[I've wooed soft sleep all night]

I've wooed soft sleep all night,
Clothed in her mantle white
And dim as rain;
I've lain all night and wept
For death, who past me crept,
To still this pain,
Heart's pain, but all in vain.
Why cam'st thou not, O death?
Why cam'st thou not, O sleep?
Death's brother, calm of breath,
For whom I keep
Vigil the long night through:
At last the day breaks blue
And dim the dawn.
Would that you yet might hear,
And hearing me, draw near
Ere night be gone.
12

The night is wild; the bitter blasts sweep by;
The shrouded snows with ghostly fingers beat
The shuddering casements, and the candle flame
Seems fluttered of phantom lips whose kiss is death.
13

[With its helm of silver and spur of gold]

With its helm of silver and spur of gold
A fairy knight is the toad-flax bold,
Who takes this form to mortal eyes,
The form of a flower of golden dyes.

[By the willow copse near the river shore]

By the willow copse near the river shore,
Where the white waves hush their splash and roar,
With an idle sail and an idle oar
I seemed to drift into other streams,
Borne on by the sleepy current of dreams.

[O wilding of the young, young June]

O wilding of the young, young June,
That this old rock holds fast,
Thy day is done too soon, too soon,
Too beautiful to last.
14

[When all the orchards faded lie]

When all the orchards faded lie,
When roses drop and lilies die,
15

When fall's full moon makes deep the sky,
Lay me asleep,
Where breezes bend the sighing trees,
Lay me asleep.
When all the dusty autumn day
Is heard the locust's roundelay,
And, dropping leaves, the tree-tops sway
And wildflowers there,
Beneath the wildflowers let me rest,
The wildflowers there.
Let not thy hand disturb the grass
To plant an alien flower there;
Let those wild infants, free as fair,
Above me, sleeping, bloom and pass,
Forgotten die,
Forgotten as myself, alas!
Who 'neath them lie.
17

[The moon is a lemon petal]

The moon is a lemon petal,
And the west a wild-rose red,
And the twilight twines her dusky locks
With lily-like stars o'erhead.

[Deep down, deep down, deep, deep, deep]

Deep down, deep down, deep, deep, deep!
Follow us! come with us!—See how we leap!
Daughters of Æger, veiled white with the spray,
Beckoning, calling you. Oh, come away!
18

Children of Earth, come hither, where we
Dwell in Ran's realms of cerulean hue;
Where through her caverns of green and of blue
Echo our songs, our songs of the sea,
Dirging the dead, the sailors who sleep
Deep down, deep down, deep, deep, deep!
Come, where the dulse and the nautilus cling!
Come away, come away, here where we sing!
Where of your eyes we will fashion pale homes,
Hollow, for pearls and the glimmering foams.
19

[Come, kiss me, beautiful Death]

Come, kiss me, beautiful Death,
And lull me with thy wings;
Breathe on me with thy breath,
And touch my soul with things
Unknown of life. Imbue
My body with thy dew
And bear me far away
Into a deeper dawn
Than lights life's shadowy lawn,
Some fairer break-of-day.
Life's sickness, long and old,
Cure in me; everything:
Life's greed for fame and gold
And love and suffering.
Yea, I am young and fair!
Come, take me by the hair
And kiss me on the eyes;
Then bear me through the deep,
As thy brother, dream-tossed Sleep,
Hath borne me loving-wise.
20

[Cheerily rang the bugle horn]

Cheerily rang the bugle horn,
Cheerily through the wood,
For the ten-tined buck by the hunt outworn
At bay 'neath the old oak stood.
22

[And now yon crystal mount of clouds]

And now yon crystal mount of clouds
Silvers with light as 't were of wings,
Whose base the thunder's blackness shrouds,
While to its summit brightness clings.
Along the west, flashed through the dun,
Leaping, the angled lightnings fly,
Cleaving the deeps, where thunders run
Like mountain torrents down the sky.
Out of it rises, partly hid,
A cloud, rose-spar, all fair of form,
Like some sky-pointed pyramid,
Or pillar of light, above the storm.
May 23, 1885; 6 P. M.

[The broad Ohio's darkening stream]

The broad Ohio's darkening stream
Seems now as still as liquid glass,
In which the bridge's pillars dream
Unwavering where the still waves pass.
23

The shattered thunder fragments fly;
One cloud alone makes dark the west,
Low stooping to the evening sky,
A champion with a burning crest:
Through whose mailed breast of darkness dim
And ragged rents of vapors deep,
The sun sweeps lances, long and slim,
Of flame that fall on vale and steep.
Through stratas torn of windy rack
Full flashes now its crimson star,
Blazing blood-red through stormy black
And bronze of tempest scattered far.
May 23, 1885; 6:30 P.M.

[O wind of eve, what spices, steeped]

O wind of eve, what spices, steeped
In some more aromatic clime,
Thou breathest,—as from islands reaped
Of Summer, over seas of thyme.
Thou bearest odor on thy breath
Fresh as the scent of ocean's waves;
Cool as if thou hadst lain beneath,
All day, in dark and crystal caves.
24

Night comes, with sparkling fireflies
Like jewels tangled in her hair,
And all around her perfumes rise
Of rain, as 't were dim spirits there.

[When eve casts on the day's dark bier]

When eve casts on the day's dark bier
The rhododendrons of her light,
And trims her stars, like tapers clear,
At feet and head, how fair is night.
26

[O my Kentucky, forest old!]

O my Kentucky, forest old!
Where Beauty dwells, the stalwart child
Of Love and Life, where I behold
The dreams still glow that long beguiled
The marble and the bronze of men,
Whose Art made fair the world of old,
Yet never held, of classic ken,
A form like thine which I would mould.
Around me now I turn and gaze:
The earth is green; the heaven is clear:
Where smile the stars, or bloom the days
More absolutely fair than here!
Young still is she, and fresh as morn,
Standing her sister States among;
Ah! would I were a poet born,
To sing her as she should be sung!
27

Bidding her keep beneath her heel
The lust for wealth, wrong's iron crown;
Her pioneer pride, a shield of steel,
A buckler that no foe may down.
Sister to Hospitality!
Mother of Lincoln and of Clay!
Make thyself worthy still to be
Mother of men as great as they.
Mother of loves and hopes that dare;
Of dreams and deeds that sing and toil,
Whose hands are open as the air,
Whose honor none on earth may soil!
Let mightier dreams be thine! arise!
Let all the world behold thee set
A constellation in the skies
Where all thy sister Stars are met!
1885.
29

[A distant river glimpsed through deep-leaved trees]

A distant river glimpsed through deep-leaved trees.
A field of fragment flint, blue, gray, and red.
Rocks overgrown with twigs of trailing vines
Thick-hung with clusters of the green wild-grape.
Old chestnut groves the haunt of drowsy cows,
Full-uddered kine chewing a sleepy cud;
Or, at the gate, around the dripping trough,
Docile and lowing, waiting the milking-time.
Lanes where the wild-rose blooms, murmurous with bees,
The bumble-bee tumbling their frowsy heads,
Rumbling and raging in the bell-flower's bells,
Drunken with honey, singing himself asleep.
30

Old in romance a shadowy belt of woods.
A house, wide-porched, before which sweeps a lawn
Gray-boled with beeches and where elder blooms.
And on the lawn, whiter of hand than milk,
And sweeter of breath than is the elder bloom,
A woman with a wild-rose in her hair.
32

[No more for me shall gray-robed Dawn look through]

“No more for me shall gray-robed Dawn look through
Heaven's windows of the fog, or rain, or dew,
The maiden Dawn with eyes of beautiful blue.”

[I saw sweet Summer go]

I saw sweet Summer go
Into a woodland green,
Unto a sliding stream,
A drowsy water;
With cheeks of sunset glow
Dreaming she seemed to lean,
Dreaming a wild-wood dream,
The wood's wild daughter.
She seemed to smile, then weep,
Then lift, then bow her head,
Deep with its golden hair,
Sad as some maiden
Who loveless falls asleep,
Her eyes to sorrow wed,
Her cheeks as wild flowers fair
With dewdrops laden.
33

I heard the streamlet moan;
I heard the wood-wind wail;
I heard the forest sob:
“Summer is dying!”
Whiter she lay than stone,
And down each dell and dale
I heard the wild heart-throb
Of Nature sighing:—
“Come back!—Oh, art thou dead,
Thou, thou my sweetest child?
Come back with all thy flowers!”—
But naught she heeded,
Lying with wild-flowered head
In beauty undefiled,
While 'round her sad the Hours
Bowed down and pleaded.
Then through the woodland there,
With ribbons flying gay,
Mocking at Summer's death
With laughter hollow,
Tossing her gipsy hair,
In Romany array,
Autumn, all wild of breath,
Cried, “Follow! follow!”
34

[When the jeweled lights of the fireflies gleam]

When the jeweled lights of the fireflies gleam
In fairy revelry;
When the waning moon on the forest stream
Looks down, I love to sit and dream,
To dream her again with me.
We speak of the past; of the things once said;
Of the happiness long gone by;
35

While one blue star burns bright overhead:—
For sweet it is to talk with the dead,
The dead that do not die.
With the dead that are never far away,
That are even as yonder star,
Whose light the darkness, ray on ray,
Makes visible, viewless all the day
Though shining still afar.
Like a lonely beautiful flower wild
In the limitless lands of space,
That star is, blossoming undefiled;
More beautiful for that loneness, mild
It shines on my upturned face.
'Mid the fairy lights of the fireflies,
In the light of the waning moon,
Born of the grief that never dies,
Into my eyes gaze her dark eyes,
The eyes death closed last June.
And I hear her speak, and I hear her sigh:—
For, the dead—they never forget:
Around my heart her white hands lie,
And she kisses my face and asks me why
My cheeks with tears are wet.
36

And as in life I clasp her and hold,
And meseems it is no dream—
That here we meet, as oft of old,
When the lights of the fireflies' lamps gleam gold,
In the trysting place by the stream.
44

[Thus in the dusk as ghosts they met]

Thus in the dusk as ghosts they met,
Culling the pansy-violet,
The violet of sweet regret
And memory, dim and dewy wet.

[In dimly lighted cloisters of the heart]

In dimly lighted cloisters of the heart
I met with one whose face was like to thine,
The ghost-face of the love that once I wronged.
45

[Amid the summer fields and flowers]

Amid the summer fields and flowers,
Let us be children for a day,
Where laughter speeds the joyful hours
And drives dull care away.

[Keep thou my face engraven in thine heart]

Keep thou my face engraven in thine heart,
Now that we part;
Forget me not; or if thou dost forget
Hold me to blame,
Who leave thee now, without one heart's regret,
Forgotten even thy name.

[One milk-white hand she stretched to me]

One milk-white hand she stretched to me,
My heart sobbed, “O beware!”
But both my arms reached out to her
Despite my soul's despair.
46

1887–1890

[Now that the dawn is up, is up]

Now that the dawn is up, is up,
And your vine drips dewy with cup on cup,
Lean out, lean out, rare Marguerite,
Lean out of your window over the street,
Where Love stands waiting, sweet, for you,
Like a rose 'mid roses wet with dew.
47

[Dark woodland ways of drowsy rustlings]

Dark woodland ways of drowsy rustlings
Where, in the road, the clay-red nodules lie;
And where the wild grape, green with clusters, swings,
Dimmer than rain, the cool noon hours steal by.

[The thunder boomed from cloudy ridge to ridge]

The thunder boomed from cloudy ridge to ridge,
Trailing the terror of sonorous arms;
Making the lightning for his wrath a bridge,
Planting his banners on the heights of storms.
48

[Who now hath understood]

Who now hath understood,
Whose art may ever reach
The velvet blush of the bud,
The velvet bloom of the peach?

[High up she glides, high up, the quartz-white moon]

High up she glides, high up, the quartz-white moon,
Tipping the mountains with exultant fire,
And in her light each pine becomes a lyre,
And every wind an Oread-whispered tune.

[The hope, the hate, the bitterness of love]

The hope, the hate, the bitterness of love
Were in her eyes that levelly looked at me,
While th' rebel blood went storming up her cheek.
Devil and angel was she in a breath,
Cursing and kissing me whom she wished dead.

[Barbaric burgonets, heavy with gems]

Barbaric burgonets, heavy with gems,
And armor wrought of wondrous alchemy,
The Spirits of the sunset don, and sweep,
Vast, cloudy-charioted, along the skies.
49

[Thou hast no thought for one who walks 'mid flowers]

Thou hast no thought for one who walks 'mid flowers,
Whiling away the humming-bird-like hours,
Nay, nay, not thou!
Nor think I now of thee who sittest where
The vine leaves wreathe thy beautiful brow and hair,
Forgotten now.
51

[Thou art to me the whole of heaven]

Thou art to me the whole of heaven,
Its sun, its stars, its golden moon;
Thou art to me as music given,
As song that holds the world in tune.
52

[Two unshed tears made beautiful her eyes]

Two unshed tears made beautiful her eyes
Lighting their liquid turquoise sorrowful;
Yet was she false, in spite of all her tears,
And with sin pregnant as the seeds of hell.
54

[Oh, for the gods of the Greeks]

Oh, for the gods of the Greeks,
The oaks of Dodona!
For the white-bosomed gods of the Greeks!
The gods whom my fancy seeks
'Mid these woods whence is blown a
Murmur of Naiad creeks;—
Here where this old oak speaks,
To my soul, like a god of the Greeks,
An oak of Dodona!
55

[A languid land of lazy moons and stars]

A languid land of lazy moons and stars
I wander in, watching the ripple bars
Rocking the hyacinths and nenuphars.

[The haymakers' sickles]

The haymakers' sickles
Flash wet on the leas;
The wild honey trickles
From tops of the trees,
The noon is a poppy, the winds are its bees.

[She whom I loved too well]

She whom I loved too well,
Crowned with the pomegranate bell
Sits empress now in Hell;
And there
My soul sits by her, kissing her eyes and hair.
56

[Tell me, do you love to lie]

Tell me, do you love to lie
With the dipping boughs above you,
Where blue glimpses of the sky
Greet you like the eyes that love you?

[What gladness of the young, young Earth]

What gladness of the young, young Earth
Conceived the lily and rose?
What sweetness of her soul's deep thought
Into their fragrance flows?

[Maid Marian rose in the morn betime]

Maid Marian rose in the morn betime,
Looked in her glass and hummed a rhyme.
I saw her walk by the blossoming bean
Busked in a gown of bombazine.
57

[Look at me over your shoulder, lass]

Look at me over your shoulder, lass,
As you often look in your looking-glass,
And trill to me that merry rhyme,
That rhyme of love and the glad spring-time,
With a fol-de-rol-de-rey oh!

[Oh, could I only grieve you]

Oh, could I only grieve you,
And grieve you more and more!
I who no more believe you,
You, falser than before!
Ah, could I but deceive you,
You, whom I still adore!
Oh! would I were a bee, my love,
And you a wild-rose tree, my love,
I'd sip the sweets I see, my love,
And be no longer poor.
When apple buds are breaking,
And winds with musk o'erflow;
When wren and thrush are making
Sweet song where'er we go,
The kiss I'll then be taking
Is the kiss that still you owe.
58

[You who would not have me]

You who would not have me
Now may not save me;
Now you pursue me,
I will not woo thee:
Love is grown cold;
Love is grown old.

[Dim gleam and gloom]

Dim gleam and gloom
And breezy boom
Of wild bees in the mustard bloom
Swoon through the windows of my room,
As if the young Spring trailed her raiment of perfume
Through the old house, rustling from room to room.

[Along the west a cloud-wrought crimson cloth]

Along the west a cloud-wrought crimson cloth
The curtained sunset draws, to which one star
Clings, fluttering silver, like a glimmering moth,
Pale and crepuscular.
59

What voice is that which wanders in the wood?
Is it the Twilight murmuring to the hills?
Or, wrapped in mystery of the solitude,
The far-off whippoorwills?

[What of the sea when the storm clouds thicken]

What of the sea when the storm clouds thicken?
What of the soul when its loved hopes sicken?
Look in my eyes and tell me this,—
What of our lives when our hearts are stricken,
Given and taken our love's last kiss?
60

[Between the meads of millet]

Between the meads of millet
The soft wind breathes and blows;
Between the meads of millet
I kissed her mouth's warm rose,
And on her hand I placed the band,
Where all my future glows.
63

[Her eyes were dark with the darkness of hell]

Her eyes were dark with the darkness of hell
And sweet with the sweetness of sin,
And I was a dream of love, they tell,
To her eyes that entered in.
64

[Night came, treading the darkness into burning stars]

Night came, treading the darkness into burning stars,
And in my heart waking again old wars.
The shadow of the past lay on my mind's sick gloom
As on a waste the shadow of a tomb.
65

[On the sunset's cloudy tide]

On the sunset's cloudy tide
Triremes of the storm did sit,
All their hundred ports flung wide
With wild battle lanterns lit.
70

[Alas! how hearts go groping]

Alas! how hearts go groping
For that which may not be!
Braving the gates where hoping,
'T is written, none shall see!
In ways of blind endeavor
And darkness of the never
The gates are closed once open;
The end is misery.

[Why is it thus with me as days go by]

Why is it thus with me as days go by?
Oh, why, oh, why?
Less frequent is the smile, more often now the sigh.

[Swift as the poplar, with its lordly height]

Swift as the poplar, with its lordly height,
To clothe itself in green when Springtime calls,
When forests still are bare, is hope to come
Into our lives when love has said “prepare.”
77

[While lone I stood]

While lone I stood
Within the wood
I heard the feet of Silence edge
And stumble on a rocky ledge—
A sound of waters foaming down
Between mossed banks of green and brown:
And through the trees, that leaned to listen,
I caught a momentary glisten
Of her white limbs all interwound
With white confusion of her gown,
That made a dim and glimmering sound.
79

1891–1900

81

[A vagabond foot and a vagabond road]

A vagabond foot and a vagabond road,
And the love in our hearts our only load.
An easy foot in an easy shoe,
And who is it cares where the road leads to?
An old plank gate at a lane's green end,
And who is it cares where the lane may wend?
A bowl of milk and a bit of bread,
Who richer fares or is better fed?
A crust, a spring and a blackberry,
And who is it sups as well as we?
A hut by the road and a girl to kiss,
What man hath greater joy than this?
82

The night, the stars, and a pillow of hay,
Whose bed is sweeter than this, I say?
Whose dreams are deeper? whose sleep as pure?—
The heart that's heavy finds here its cure.
Finley Woods, July 15th.
92

[As, all distraught, with dark, neglected hair]

As, all distraught, with dark, neglected hair
She lifted up her face to mine I saw
The moon-white glory of her soul, and love
Smiled sadly at me from her shadowy eyes.
96

[The milkweeds nod their Rip-Van-Winkle heads]

The milkweeds nod their Rip-Van-Winkle heads
When Autumn blows; and in the snoring flue
The chill wind sleeps. All night it seems to me
A goblin gnome, a Lob Lie-by-the-Fire,
Sits humped upon the hob whining of cold,
Or whistling to the flame to keep him warm.
98

[In the Garden of Skulls and Serpents]

In the Garden of Skulls and Serpents,
By a tower of gold,
Stood a woman, fair as fire,
Wonderful to behold.
Webs of starry flame she wove there,
Webs of moony fire,
Snares to seize the souls of mortals,
Slay them with desire.

[The pure precision of a star, a flower]

The pure precision of a star, a flower,
The punctuality of their return
And order of their coming fill my soul
With the astonishment which mortals feel
For Bible beauties that no man explains.

[I have listened long unto the promises]

I have listened long unto the promises,
The confidences of the trees; and now,
Continuous with the trees, a stream expands,
Expounding all the woods' dim mysteries
In ripple rhymes sung softly to itself.
99

[I saw the Spring go by, her mouth a thread]

I saw the Spring go by, her mouth a thread
Of wild-rose red,
Blowing a golden oat;
And now, a crown of barley on her head,
The Summer comes, a poppy at her throat.
100

[An Eldorado of vales and peaks]

An Eldorado of vales and peaks,
That the cloudy ore of the sunset streaks,
Is the Eldorado my fancy seeks:
Where the gold lies thick that they feign to find,—
That never in earthly mine was mined,—
In the airy caves of the dæmonkind.

[A rune of glimmer and a scrawl of light]

A rune of glimmer and a scrawl of light,
Printing with gold the black-bound page of night,
The glow-worm is, making its blackness bright.

[The deep blue spike of the great lobelia glows]

The deep blue spike of the great lobelia glows
Beside the cardinal-flower along the ways
Where Summer goes stripping the wayside rose
Of all its blooms, and plumping red its hips;
Her grasshopper gown of rustling golds and grays
Bristling with burrs caught from the trefoil's sprays,
And from the thorny marigold's tick-like tips.
106

[I gazed upon the wasted lips of Want]

I gazed upon the wasted lips of Want
Within a city haunt
Of vice and sin,
And thought of the green, the abundant fields beyond
The sordid streets, whither Want could not win,
The sick and fond;
And, where the white-top like dim streaks of steam
Wavers its whiteness, lay him down and dream,
Lapped in the murmur of a meadowed stream.
110

[Green in the circle of contingent trees]

Green in the circle of contingent trees
The water lies wherein the new leaf sees
Its twinkling shadow. Through the boscage leers
The beast-like visage with the satyr smile
Of what has followed me this many a mile,
Earth's lust, hot-eyed, with horrible mouth and ears.
111

[On every side the roses rise]

On every side the roses rise
In crimson insolence and pride;
And near them, steeped in lordly dyes,
That to the roses' are allied,
Of transitory purple and pearl,
The poppies' delicate flowers uncurl.

[The shadows where no light looked through]

The shadows where no light looked through,
Ephemeral sapphire, lay in pools of blue;
And there the spendthrift flowers flung
Their petaled gold; and many a tongue
Of many a wild bird of their beauty sung.

[With all my heart I deem it no great folly]

With all my heart I deem it no great folly
To be in love with gentle Melancholy;
113

[What bird is that that sings so long]

What bird is that that sings so long?
To hear whose song
Each bashful bud opens its rosy ear,
Leaning it near.
While here,
114

Under the blossoming button-tree,
I seem to see
A shape, a presence look out at me;
And, clothed in raiment of white and gray,
Pass on like the Spirit of Easter Day.

[The sunset lets its heavy curtains down]

The sunset lets its heavy curtains down
Of thunder-purple orphreyed deep with gold
Around the cloudy-builded couch of Day,
Canopied with the star-wrought blue of heaven.

[These are the cups of Comus]

These are the cups of Comus,
These tulips pranked with flame,
The tulip-burning twilight fills
With wine of wondrous name.

[Yea; death behind her, gazing through her hair]

Yea; death behind her, gazing through her hair;
Death in her lips and in her body fair;
115

Ten hundred deaths to him whose heart is hers,
Who kisses her—death, darkness, and despair.
116

[The blue wild hyssop, with its dewy mouth]

The blue wild hyssop, with its dewy mouth,—
Cool, moist, and heavenly 'mid the pink-bloomed mint
Along the shallow creek, shrunk with the drouth,—
Seen suddenly thus, seems, swift, an instant's hint
Of some dim being—one, whom, still in vain,
I follow where their many delicate ears
The purple beard's-tongue and lobelia lean
Sidewise to silence, listening for the rain
Tiptoeing the trees through which she flees again—
The presence that my soul adores yet fears,
The Loveliness my eyes have never seen.
117

[Drab-colored seed pods of the autumn hung]

Drab-colored seed pods of the autumn hung,
Like beggar's tatters, on the red-bud boughs:
Around the old, old house there was no sound,
No song or sound, save on the rotting shed,
The dim old shed, a dove made plaintive moan.
In rapt clairvoyance gray the shadows lay
118

Around it seeing many things unseen
Of mortal eyes, strange things now dead and gone,
Ghosts of the sometime gladness dwelling there,
Spectres of age and youth, and sorrows old,
Older than all the oldness sleeping there
'Mid clemencies of days forever gone.

[A poet's soul 's unconscious of its dreams]

A poet's soul's unconscious of its dreams
As is the night unconscious of its stars,
As is the heaven of all its clouds and winds,
And Earth, retentive Earth, of all its flowers.

[The bright half moon, a boat pearl-white]

The bright half moon, a boat pearl-white,
Floats down the cloud-canals of night.
119

[When earth forgets one flower that comes with spring]

When earth forgets one flower that comes with spring,
And heaven one star that beautifies the night,
Shall I forget that song I heard her sing.
121

[All night it rained. Now in the dawn]

All night it rained. Now in the dawn
The purple-berried cedars stand
Weighed down with wet the sun strikes through.
122

[I love to linger o'er the roseless rose]

I love to linger o'er the roseless rose
When hips are ripe and candle-flames they seem,
Orange and red, lit in the Autumn's honor,
Who softly goes,
Her ruby crown upon her,
Adown the ways where vines like banners stream.
123

[The auroral scent of morning lilies blows]

The auroral scent of morning lilies blows
Mixed with nocturnal perfumes of the rose
Around the Dawn whose state invades the sky
Trailing wild raiment of sidereal dye,
Holding her torch of spheric fire high.
127

[As I went riding toward the sea]

As I went riding toward the sea,
By field and hill and flower and tree,
The thickets parted and suddenly
A satyr's face laughed out at me.
132

[Clung o'er with cockle-burrs and thorny seeds]

Clung o'er with cockle-burrs and thorny seeds,
Sad Autumn dreamed among her feathering weeds.
135

1901–1905

149

[There was an old frog]

There was an old frog
Sat on a log
In the light of the crescent moon, aboon,
In the light of the pale new moon:
And he said to the crescent,
“My dear, look pleasant!
I'm going to sing you a tune, real soon;
I am going to sing you a tune.”
150

[So let Noon lead me till at last she reaches]

So let Noon lead me till at last she reaches
That spot where Evening tarries brown
Beneath the trees, through which the sunset bleaches;
Deep in a wood of ancient oaks and beeches,
Where I may lay me down,
With all the loveliness that Nature teaches,
And watch Night crown her with her starry crown.
153

[Above the hills the sunset's rolled]

Above the hills the sunset's rolled
One long deep streak of lurid gold,
157

[The bloodroot leaves of middle March]

The bloodroot leaves of middle March
Lift up their blooms, each one a torch
Of creamy crystal in whose white
The calyx is a golden light.
160

[Croppings out of unmined gold]

Croppings out of unmined gold,
Of secret wealth no man hath told.

[Moist, rocky places of the spring]

Moist, rocky places of the spring,
Rich with dark woodland loam,
Where hosts of golden poppies cling
And breaks the bloodroot's and the twinleaf's foam.
The mossy hillside's bulging rocks
O'er which the fragile white-heart flocks,
Whose penciled leaves and shell-shaped blooms
Seem fancies from the fairies' looms.

[The hairy stems of the hepatica]

The hairy stems of the hepatica,
Beneath the wahoo-bush and leafing haw,
Nod delicate as the heads of elfin maids
Of fairy tales who haunt the forest glades;
And bluets, like a Naiad's eyes adream,
Assert their azure by the woodland stream;
And, where the wind-flower braved the winds of March,
The poppy lights its golden torch.
161

Come dance, come flaunt yourselves, ye wild little wind-flowers of March!
And, poppies, come light their way with the hollow gold of your torch!
167

[Deep in the leaves' concealing green]

Deep in the leaves' concealing green
A wood-thrush flutes,
The first thrush seen
Or heard this spring, and straight, meseems,
Its notes take on the attributes
Of mythic fancies and of dreams—
A faun goes piping o'er the roots
And mosses, gliding through dim gleams
And glooms, and while he glides he flutes,
Though still unseen,
'Mid thorny berry and wild-bean.
168

[The dewberries are blooming now]

The dewberries are blooming now:
The days are long; the nights are short;
The dogwood blossom from its bough
Drops snowy petals, heart by heart,
Here where she laid 'gainst mine her brow
When we did part.
Soon where the dewberries' blossoms gleam
The berries red will, ripening, glow;
And if the dogwood by the stream
Did ever bloom, no one will know,
And she, too, seem a vanished dream
Of long ago.
169

The yellow star-flower shows its gold
Among the trees, half hid in grass;
Already do the leaves grow old;
Already doth the springtime pass;
And last year's leaf hath turned to mould,
As love, alas!
The crowfoot blossom lifts its eyes
Of amber hue from 'round my feet;
The bluet apes the Mayday skies
With glances blue as they are sweet,
Here where last spring we met with sighs,
No more to meet.

[Purple the hills stretch under purple mists]

Purple the hills stretch under purple mists,
A damson-frosted purple that persists
Even in the valley, darkling there that lies—
No bluer black hath night, no darker dyes.
The low gray clouds, whose edges are thinned,
And spun
By the sun
And the wind,
How they swirl and curl
And furl and unfurl
Into lawny lengths of snow and pearl!
170

Now feathering white as the moon-mists do,
For the wind and the sun to tempest through,
Now closing over,
Cloud-cover on cover,
Deep azure chasms of fringing blue.
171

[Hark how the honey-throated thrush]

Hark how the honey-throated thrush
With notes of limpid harmony
Scatters the noonday's liquid hush,
Taking the woods with witchery.
Hid in the foliage deeps of green
He flutes his wildwood notes serene,
Like some tree-spirit, lost, unseen.
173

[The ground is strewn with the dead oak-bloom]

The ground is strewn with the dead oak-bloom,
Brown and withered as autumn broom:
And there, in a hollow of the hills,
Like a giant pearl in a giant hand,
Is a white-washed hut where an old man tills
A barren acre of barren land.
An arid acre, that soon shall blow
With wild-rose crimson and elder snow.

[That little worm shall become a fly]

That little worm shall become a fly,
And sing and sting 'neath the summer sky;
Or a gnat, like that which grows in the gall
High on the oak leaf there—a ball
That the elves shall loose and toss over all
Merrily under the next new moon;—
174

When it'll grow itself wings and a sting and a tune,
Stinging and singing its way into June.
175

[Invite my soul to rest awhile]

Invite my soul to rest awhile
And dream beneath their azure smile.

[The smell of tannin in the ozoned air]

The smell of tannin in the ozoned air
Under the oaks when the woods are green,
And the scent of the soil and moisture where
The young leaves dangle and make a screen,
Where the hiding wood-nymph combs her hair,
Have breathed me full of the Faun again,
And made me kin to the wind and rain.
176

[The stealthy squirrel skips along]

The stealthy squirrel skips along;
The bush-bird lifts its twilight song;
The great frog sounds his resonant gong
At nightfall.
The small wood-gnat, that stings and flies,
And drowns itself for rage in your eyes,
Sings and whines and thinly cries
At nightfall.
The hairy spiders, that crouch outside
Their earth-bored lairs, now stealthily glide,
Or spin great webs for the moths that hide
Till nightfall.
181

[Yesterday among the beeches, to-day among the oaks]

Yesterday among the beeches, to-day among the oaks:
Those with their emerald and gold,
Their amber golds and grays,
These with their blood-dark bronze,
Translucent, frosty reds:
The gold the Autumn dons,
The blood her sad heart sheds,
As slow she goes her ways;
Sheds at each step, that cloaks
Each pool that glimmers cold,
182

Sunk in the woodland mould,
'Mid the oaks, of whose russets and reds
Winds make their beds,
Bowing their withered heads,
That are old, so old,
Where the Autumn cons,
In her golds and grays,
Her Book of Days.

[The wind is rising and the leaves are blown]

The wind is rising and the leaves are blown,
Wild, swallow-high, reluctant still to fall,
Swarming from hill to hill; and over all
The sere, wild-sounding oaks a voice calls lone,
As if the wood some ancient word were sighing,
Some unintelligible word of beauty dying.

[The dawn comes in clad all in hodden gray]

The dawn comes in clad all in hodden gray,
And, like a tattered cloak its wildness wears,
183

The ragged rain sweeps stormily this way:
The acorn, like a bullet, strikes the soil;
And blown from its wild pod the milkweed's plume,
Wan in the ghostly and the gusty gloom,
Flares like a lamp hand-hollowed of trembling toil.
November 12th, 1904.

[Hylas, that pipe the little buds awake]

Hylas, that pipe the little buds awake;
The shrill hylodes, how they sing
Before the wind-flower and the bloodroot shake
Their twinkling stars frail in the locks of Spring.
The rose-bruised blue of the bluebell's buds
Will soon make gay the hem of her gown;
Green as the green of the young oak woods
With changing tints of mauve and brown.
184

And soon will golden poppies cling
In woodland places deep with loam,
And we shall glimpse the feet of Spring—
White in the twinleaf's flowers of foam.
And all the hillside's rugged rocks
She'll shower with shell-shaped white-heart blooms,
Shaken from out her radiant locks,
As down she comes through greenwood glooms.
185

[Still are the forests barren of all buds]

Still are the forests barren of all buds,
And all the woods of wildflowers; but, behold!
Within a week or less the invading hosts,
Myriad and many as the stars of heaven,
Shall utterly invade these woodland ways,
When every foot of soil shall show and boast
Its bud or blossom or balsam-beakéd leaf,
Bragging of beauty to the passer-by,
Beggared and bankrupt of all words to praise.

[Come, let us forth and homage her]

Come, let us forth and homage her,
Clothed on with warmth and musk and myrrh,
The indescribable odor wild that clings
Around her like a garment: let us sing
186

Songs to her, glad as grass and all the things
Exulting in her presence—greening things
And airy that have gotten them new wings:
Come, let us forth and give our praise to Spring.

[My mind's washed clean by the wind that brings]

My mind's washed clean by the wind that brings
The wild warm scent of the woods on its wings,
The racy sweets of the bourgeonings
Of flower and tree and brier that clings.
187

My head I bare to the winds that blare,
That blow from the purple heart of the cloud,
Now low, now loud,
From the heart of the cloud, like a giant's hair,
Blown everywhere,
Blue-black and low,
Heavy with rain and the pearly glow
Of sunlight gulfing its deeps with snow.—
Blow, winds of spring! O blow, blow, blow!
Caress my brow like fingers fair,
Cool fingers touching my eyes and hair!
Blow, spring winds, blow! O blow, blow, blow!
Blow out of my soul all cark and care!
And out of my heart, aye! out of my heart, despair!

[The wind goes groping among the trees]

The wind goes groping among the trees,
Telling the bees
Where the little buds open that no one sees.
188

At intervals, as softly cool it blows,
The wild-plum shows
Its bee-swarm'd clusters 'twixt the wood's dark rows.

[The sluggish snake now basks his uncoiled length]

The sluggish snake now basks his uncoiled length
Beside the windings of the water-course;
With torpid beady eyes he lies and dreams
Where warm the sunlight sleeps. Near by him claws
Of some strange beast have marked the furrowed sand
As with deep talonings of mighty rage
Here on the wild road where it fords the stream.

[Rocked by the winds of March the trees become]

Rocked by the winds of March the trees become,
Each one a maddened pendulum
Swayed every way as if in time
To some wild music, roaring rhyme
Shouted from storm-tossed hill to hill,
Amid the forests that are never still.
190

[The gold-green blooms of the spicebush burn]

The gold-green blooms of the spicebush burn
Lighting the wood at every turn;
191

Like the starry tufts of the sassafras,
Whose fragrance thrills us as we pass,
From out their patents of gold they spill
A faint aroma that haunts the hill.

[Placid and pure and clean the wild-phlox blooms]

Placid and pure and clean the wild-phlox blooms
Make glad the hillsides and deep-wooded banks
192

Of wandering creeks. Beneath the old, gray beech
The Mayapples, in myriad colonies,
Advance-guards of the wildflowers' following hosts,
Lift up their green-and-umber tents of leaves,
Each unrolled tent tipped with its furled-up flag,
Its pea-like bud, a knob of delicate green,
Wherein the milk-white,—blazoned deep with gold,—
Of its broad bloom, its banner's packed away.
While at the wood's edge, at the turn o' the lane,
A clear, a chilly crimson in its keys,
Its million blooms, the maple fairly glows,
Making a crystal blur of rosy gloom;
Wherein the bluebird, like a sapphire closed
In an enormous ruby, sits and sings;
Upon his back and on his wayward wings
The lapis-lazuli o' the April sky.
April 5th, 1905.
193

[Who is it knows]

Who is it knows
How the huckleberry grows,
Blooms and blows?—
Only the bird that sings and sings,
Waving its wings,
Saying, “Come see it where it swings!
Ruddy green and amber rose,
See, oh, see,
In honor of Spring,
Under this tree,
See how they ring
Their tiny bells, that cluster out,
Silvery red, in a rosy rout.”
204

[The liquid note of the thrush—what words can describe it]

The liquid note of the thrush—what words can describe it?
Above me now I hear it, dropping its globéd harmony,
Golden-bubbled, crystalline clear, indescribably deep.
Questioningly, answeringly its music falls,
Notes of antiphonal gold,
Full of youth and joy;
A tree-spirit, seemingly,
Voicing the innocence, the exuberance, the beauty of invisible,
Inviolable things; wild myths that populate
205

The world of the woods and streams.
Pensively, hopefully now it pleads,
Pleads for the dreams that haunt the hearts of the trees,
The soul of the woodland—
Dreams that it sees from its leafy height,
Its breezy eyrie of green,
Dreams that it sees and knows.
And now for me its music, too, takes form,
Visible, material form:
And I seem to see—
A presence, young with the youth that never ages,
A Faun, a Spirit, slender and naked as Spring,
Deep in the forest, approaching and now retreating,
Blowing his flute of flowers,
Gleaming, vanishing far in the verdurous glooms:
A Spirit, happy with all that is happy,
Communicated joy of all that is beauty,
The wild, wild beauty it drew from the breasts of its mother,
Its beautiful mother, Nature:
A phantom supernal in loveliness, responsive and tender,
206

Diaphanous, hyaline, translucently green and golden,
Golden and green like the sound of a thrush's fluting:
A form of light like that which shimmers and shades
Under the day-deep boughs of the myriad beeches;
Flitting, wavering now like a joy that dances,
Silent, alone in the heart of the forest,
Shimmering, glimmering here like the ray that stars the ripples,
Sun-speared, flashing and fading on woodland waters,
Falling, calling, foamy-lipped, like a Naiad,
Lost in the leaves, the remotest deeps of the forest.
Like the rain that tips the point of a poplar leaf,
Trembling, a liquid star, to its twinkling fall,
There it glances and glints, tinkling with silver the silence;
There it hazes like heat that haunts the summer meadows,
207

To whose kisses the wildflowers open their wondering and fragrant eyes:
A glimmering form it leads me, musical ever of motion,
From wildwood place to place,
Retreating, advancing, luring from vista to vista,
Far and far in the forest, the haunted deeps of the forest,
To slay me there, perhaps, at last,
At last with some last, long and lovelier note,
Ringing as gold
And deeper in magic than the myths of old.
210

[The woodpecker! hear him, the redcapped]

The woodpecker! hear him, the redcapped,
Driving home his bill!
Driving deliberately home his bill
In the top limb of yonder tree.
Swiftly, instantly, repeatedly it sounds,
Resonant, distinct in the hollow wood.—
What a prospect from such an outlook,
What a world of limb and leaf,
Ever moving, restless in its rest,
Must that be from where he raps!
That tallest giant of them all,
That poplar there
Where so unconcernedly he clings.
What exultation of height!
What intoxication of cloud and sky!
Of wind and rapture in the blowing hair of the tree!
Its rocking and nodding head!—
Oh, that I too had wings!

[The crawfish in his tower of ooze and clay]

The crawfish in his tower of ooze and clay—
What knows he of the day!
Like some crabb'd misanthrope,
Sans joy, sans hope,
211

He sits within his pit
Seeing no part of heaven, that azures over it.

[Hag-tapers bow their heads i' the wind]

Hag-tapers bow their heads i' the wind
Like candles the witches bear; and, thinned
As the moonlight is where a soul has sinned,
Their blossoms look; and a flower red
Blooms near them, shaped like a viper's head,
A blood-blotched flower, like a symbol pinned
To the breast of a gipsy dagger-dead,
A damsel frail as a flower, oh!
213

[Here where the twilight-colored trunks of trees]

Here where the twilight-colored trunks of trees,
Mottled with lichen, arch the twilight way,
Where every crooked bough, swayed by the breeze,
Now seems a knotted serpent, viperous gray,
Because of one whose flat and horrible head,
Reared in my woodland way, I crushed to-day,
Fanging with poison its own side instead
Of me advancing where unseen it lay.
214

[Silvered with sun and rain the hills and vales]

Silvered with sun and rain the hills and vales,
O'er which a ragged rim of thunder trails,
Show like some lunar landscape, pearl and frost,
Crystaled with moon-dust and with star-drift crossed,
Misted of silver and in silver lost.
222

[The old tree, on which the man was hanged, sighed to itself]

The old tree, on which the man was hanged, sighed to itself:—
“Alas! why am I made an instrument of violent death?
What have I done that I should be so punished?
Made a participant in such a crime?
I, whose life has evermore been one of peace and love:
Whose mind has ever been employed with thoughts of mercy:
Whose arms have always been stretched forth
In kindness and protection,
Sheltering the baby blossoms,
The shy, the tender, the timid,
The wild things of the woods,
That love to nestle and lie at my mossy foot:
I, whose limbs have unselfishly made,
Year after year,
A quiet cirque of coolth and comfort for the weary traveler,
Hot and dusty from the road,
223

Refreshing and restoring him with the soothing whisper,
The lullabying lilt of my leaves:
My verdurous bosom the home and haunt of unstudied song,—
Birds and breezes rejoicing in its sheltering and maternal amplitude.
Ah me! henceforward will Beauty and Love avoid me,
Frequent visitors before!
And Fear and Hate tenant in my boughs.
The Dryad, who dwelt in my heart,
Its beautiful and innocent inhabitant, is fled away.
No more will the loveliness of things within me and about me
Be as it was before.
Accursed am I among trees!
Accursed with the curse of murder!
The contact and contamination of crime!
Accursed with the stigma of slaughter!
And accursed shall I ever remain through the crime of man,
The most cruel, the most destructive, the most ferocious of all animals.
Would now that some devastating bolt,
224

Blindingly launched from yonder approaching cloud,
Might fell me, thunderingly, to earth!
Making me really that which I feel that I am become—
A horrible thing, twisted and gnarled and black,
Hideously crippled and scarred,
Blasted and branded, as the brow of Cain,
With withering, with elemental fire:
Laying me prone; or leaving a towering and tortured trunk,
A blackened shape,
In the shuddering and rejecting forest—
A trysting place for Murder,
A roost for obscene things,
Buzzards, carrion-crows, and owls.”
226

[Where like an angry tyrant roars the sea]

Where like an angry tyrant roars the sea,
Pulling his yeasty beard, upon his throne
Of iron crags; and where, like storm-lights strewn,
The baleful stars redden tempestuously,
I see him stand, blind Winter, all alone,
Wild hair and beard, like snow, about him blown.

[What boots it to keep saying]

What boots it to keep saying
That “life 's a hollow farce”?
That “men are fools”? that “praying
Helps not, nor doth remorse”?
What boots it to keep dwelling
On grief and sin and shame?
The old, old story telling,
“The end for all 's the same”?
Who says that He, the Power
That made us, as a rule
Made fools with farce for dower,
He only is the fool.
238

[Until we meet again]

Until we meet again
Heaven keep thee gay!
'Neath skies of sun or rain,
Or gold or gray,
Heaven keep thee gay.
Even as the sun-dial does,
So let thy days
Record no hour that was
Not full of rays,
Even as the sun-dial does.

[Where bloomed the rose but yesterday]

Where bloomed the rose but yesterday,
Lamp upon lamp the hips burn red;
And one by one leaves float away,
Red leaves dropped in the wood-stream's bed.
And now the spectres of the flowers
Stream white across the stubble plains;
Ghosts, shaken from their wind-swept bowers,
Of weeds that tangle all the lanes.
The partridge pipes; the blue-jays call;
And caws the crow, that ribald bird:
The woods turn gold; the acorns fall;
And all day long the hunt is heard.
240

[The climbing cricket clings]

The climbing cricket clings,
Moving its vibrant wings,
To some green brier amid the fields turned sere:
And to me, dreaming here,
Its plaintive music seems
An utterance of dreams
And it itself lute of the dying Year.

[My soul is sick of many things]

My soul is sick of many things,
But mainly of the word,
The word of hope day never brings;
That like some beautiful bird
Above me and beyond me wings,
Yet nevermore is heard.

[Ah, not in vain]

Ah, not in vain
I see again
The roses ruined of the rain:
241

And in the mist
The amethyst
Of morning-glories wet and whist:
The moonflower bent
And torn and rent
That yestereve was redolent.
Back to my heart
They bring the smart
Of thoughts from which I can not part.
Analogies
Of memories
That fall like rain on autumn leas.
Sad memories all,
Like rain, that fall
On joy, a rose wrecked by the wall.
246

[A thin fall rain]

A thin fall rain,
Whose spite again
Whips wild the drizzled window-pane:
Through which I see
The blinded bee
Beat down and ended utterly:
The marigold
And zinnia old
Bent, wet, and wretched in the cold:
And all the bowers
Forlorn of flowers
As are the hopes which once were ours.

[Ephemeral gold]

Ephemeral gold,
Deciduous emerald,
And crumbling ruby all the forests old
Fling to the shining wind, deep-rolled
Like some loud music through them:
Majestic music, sad and manifold,
247

The music of that ancient skald,
October called,
Who sits wild chanting to them.
250

[The scarlet and the gold and bronze]

The scarlet and the gold and bronze,
The lemon, rose and gray,
The splendors that October dons,
Seen from this hilltop far away,
Like some wild bugle blast, far blown,—
The visible sound of something wild, unknown,—
Crimsonly calling, shake my blood that thrills;
Commanding me to follow
Beyond the farthest hills;
Exultantly to follow,
Through flaming holt and hollow,
Whereso their music wills;
The trumpet-pealing fires
Of trees and vines and briers,
Whose leaves like notes are falling,
The clarion color calling
My heart beyond the hills.
253

[Ochre-colored broom-sedge]

Ochre-colored broom-sedge
Yellowing desolate ways,
Fields, the black thorns hedge,
Bleached with sodden strays,
Strays of leaves and flowers of dead, forgotten days.

[In the forest by the rain-wild creeks]

In the forest by the rain-wild creeks,
Where the wet wind fumbles in the boughs,
Rake the leaves away and, lo! the beaks
Of a myriad germs, beneath, that house:
Fingertips of gold and green and gray,
Tongues and fingertips of countless flowers,
Pointing us and telling us the way,
Path up which the Springtime leads her Hours:
At whose step awake the thousand pipes
Of the hylas, ere our eye perceives
In her cheeks the rose that morning stripes,
In her hair the gold of all the eves.
254

CATKINS

I

Misty are the far-off hills
And misty are the near;
Purple hazes dimly lie
Veiling hill and field and sky,
Marshes where the hylas cry,
Like a myriad bills
Piping, “Spring is here!”

II

A redbird flits,
Then sings and sits
And calls to his mate,
“She is late! she is late!
How long, how long must the woodland wait
For its emerald plumes
And its jewelled blooms?—
She is late! she is late!”
255

III

Along the stream,
A cloudy gleam,
The pussy-willows, tufted white,
Make of each tree a mighty light;
Pearl and silver and glimmering gray
They tassel the boughs of the willow way;
And as they swing they seem to say,
With mouths of bloom
And warm perfume:—

IV

“Awake! awake!
For young Spring's sake,
O little brown bees in hive and brake!
Awake! awake!
For sweet Spring's sake,
O butterflies whose wild wings ache
With colors rare
As flowers wear!
And hither, hither,
Before we wither!
Oh, come to us,
All amorous
With honey for your mouths to buss.
256

V

“Hearken! hearken!—
Last night we heard
A wondrous word:
When dusk did darken
The rain and the wind sat in these boughs,
As in a great and shadowy house.
At first we deemed
We only dreamed,
And then it seemed
We heard them whisper of things to be,
The wind and the rain in the willow tree,
A sweet, delicious conspiracy,
To take the world with witchery:
They talked of the fairy brotherhoods
Of blooms and blossoms and leaves and buds,
That ambushed under the winter mold
And under the bark of the forest old:
And they took our breath
With the shibboleth,
The secret word that casts off death,
That word of life no man may guess;
That wondrous word
Which we then heard,
257

That bids life rise
Beneath the skies;
Rise up and fill
Far wood and hill
With myriad hosts of loveliness,
Invading beauty that love shall bless.

VI

“Then in our ears,
Our woolly ears,
Our little ears of willow bloom,
Like wild perfume
We seemed to hear dim woodland cheers
Of hosts of flowers
That soon would run
Through fields and bowers,
And to the sun
Lift high their banners of blue and gold,
And storm the ways of the woodland old.

VII

“Awake! awake!
For young Spring's sake,
O hylas sleeping in marsh and lake!
Tune up your pipes and play, play, play!
Tune, tune your reeds in ooze and clay,
258

And pipe and sing
Till everything
Knows, gladly knows,
Sowing the rose,
The lily and rose,
With her breast blown bare
And the wind in her hair,
And the birds around her everywhere,
The Spring, the Spring,
The young witch Spring,
With lilt and laughter, and rain and ray,
Comes swiftly, wildly up this way.”

ANNOUNCEMENT.

The night is loud with reeds of rain
Rejoicing at my window-pane,
And murmuring, “Spring comes again!”
I hear the wind take up their song
And on the sky's vibrating gong
Beat out and roar it all night long.
Then waters, where they pour their might
In foam, halloo it down the night,
From vale to vale and height to height.
259

And I thank God that down the deep
She comes, her ancient tryst to keep
With Earth again who wakes from sleep:
From death and sleep, that held her fast
So long, pale cerements round her cast,
Her penetential raiment vast.
Now, Lazarus-like, within her grave
She stirs, who hears the words that save,
The Christ-like words of wind and wave.
And, hearing, bids her soul prepare
The germs of blossoms in her there
To make her body sweet and fair;
To meet in manifest audience
The eyes of Spring, and reverence,
With beauty, God in soul and sense.
260

“WHEN SPRING COMES DOWN THE WILDWOOD WAY”

When Spring comes down the wildwood way,
A crocus in her ear,
Sweet in her train, returned with May,
The Love of Yester-year
Will follow, carolling his lay,
His lyric lay,
Whose music she will hear.
The crowfoot in the grass shall glow,
And lamp his way with gold;
The snowdrop toss its bells of snow,
The bluebell's blue unfold,
To glad the path that Love shall go,
High-hearted go,
As often in the days of old.
The way he went when hope was keen,
Was high in girl and boy:
Before the sad world came between
Their young hearts and their joy:
Their hearts, that Love has still kept clean,
Kept whole and clean,
Through all the years' annoy.
261

How long it seems until the spring!
Until his heart shall speak
To hers again, and make it sing,
And with its great joy weak!
When on her hand he'll place the ring,
The wedding-ring,
And kiss her mouth and cheek!

HILDA OF THE HILLSIDE

I

Who is she, like the spring, who comes down
From the hills to the smoke-huddled town?
With her peach-petal face
And her wildflower grace,
Bringing sunshine and gladness to each sorry place?—
Her cheeks are twin buds o' the brier,
Mixed fervors of snow and of fire;
Her lips are the red
Of a rose that is wed
To dew and aroma when dawn is o'erhead:
Her eyes are twin bits o' the skies,
Blue glimpses of Paradise;
262

The strands of her hair
Are sunlight and air—
Herself is the argument that she is fair,
This girl with the dawn in her eyes.

II

If Herrick had looked on her face
His lyrics had learned a new grace:
Her face is a book
Where each laugh and each look,
Each smile is a lyric, more sweet than a brook:
Her words—they are birds that are heard
Singing low where the roses are stirred,—
The buds of her lips,—
Whence each of them slips
With music as soft as the fragrance that drips
From a dew-dreaming bloom;—
With their sound and perfume
Making all my glad heart a love-haunted room.
263

III

But she—she knows nothing of love!
She—she with the soul of a dove,
Who dwells on the hills,
Knowing naught of the ills
Of the vales, of the hearts that with passion she fills:
For whom all my soul
Is a harp from which roll
The songs that she hears not, the voice of my love,
This girl who goes singing above.

DAWN IN THE ALLEGHANIES

The waters leap,
The waters roar;
And on the shore
One sycamore
Stands, towering hoar.
The mountains heap
Gaunt pines and crags
That hoar-frost shags;
And, pierced with snags,
Like horns of stags,
264

The water lags,
The water drags,
Where trees, like hags,
Lean from the steep.
The mist begins
To swirl; then spins
'Mid outs and thins
Of heights; and thins
Where the torrent dins;
And lost in sweep
Of its whiteness deep
The valleys sleep.
Now morning strikes
On wild rampikes
Of forest spikes,
And, down dim dykes
Of dawn, like sheep,
Scatters the mists,
And amethysts
With light, that twists,
And rifts that run
Azure with sun,—
Wild-whirled and spun,—
The foggy dun
O' the heavens deep.
265

Look! how they keep
Majestic ward,
Gigantic guard!
And gaze, rock-browed,
Through mist and cloud!
Eternal, vast,
As ages past!
And seem to speak,
With peak on peak,
Of God! and see
Eternity!

MUSIC

Oh, let me die in Music's arms,
Clasped by some milder melody
Than that which thrills with soft alarms
The souls of Love and Ecstasy!
Until the tired heart in me
Is stilled of storms.
So let me die, a slave of slaves,
Within her train of lyric gold:
Borne onward through her vasty caves
Of harmony, that echo old
With all our sad hearts hope and hold,
And all life craves.
266

Come with the pleasures dear to men
In one long Triumph!—what are they
Beside the one that sweeps us when
Her harp she smites? and far away
She bears us from the cares of day
Unto her glen?
Her hollow glen, where, like a star,
That, in deep heaven, thrills and throbs,
She sits, her wild harp heard afar,
Strung with the gold of grief that sobs,
And love that sighs, and, whispering, robs
All life of jar.
Beneath her all-compelling eye
Our souls lie naked: nothing seems
That is: but that which is not, by
Her magic, lives: and all our dreams
Are real, and, clothed in heavenly gleams,
Smile, leaning nigh.
The soul of love that can not die
Breathes on our eyelids starry fire;
And sorrow, with sweet lips that sigh,
Kisses our lips; and faith, the choir
Of all our hopes, its heart a lyre,
Goes singing by.
267

AUTUMN ETCHINGS

I
MORNING

Her rain-kissed face is fresh as rain,
Is cool and fresh as a rain-wet leaf;
She glimmers at my window-pane,
And all my grief
Becomes a feeble rushlight, seen no more
When the gold of her gown sweeps in my door.

II
FORENOON

Great blurs of woodland waved with wind;
Gray paths, down which October came,
That now November's blasts have thinned
And flecked with fiercer flame,
Are her delight. She loves to lie
Regarding with a gray-blue eye
The far-off hills that hold the sky:
And I—I lie and gaze with her
268

Beyond the autumn woods and ways
Into the hope of coming days,
The spring that nothing shall deter,
That puts my soul in unison
With what's to do and what is done.

III
NOON

Wild grapes that purple through
Leaves that are golden;
Brush-fires that pillar blue
Woods, that, enfolden
Deep in the haze of dreams,
In resignation
Give themselves up, it seems,
To divination:
Woods, that, ablaze with oak,
That the crow flew in,
Gaze through the brushwood smoke
On their own ruin,
And on the countenance of Death who stalks
Amid their miles,
While to himself he talks
And smiles:
269

Where, in their midst, Noon sits and holds
Communion with their grays and golds,
Transforming with her rays their golds and grays,
And in my heart the memories of dead days.

IV
AFTERNOON

Wrought-iron hues of blood and bronze,
Like some wild dawn's,
Make fierce each leafy spire
Of blackberry brier,
Where, through their thorny fire,
She goes, the Afternoon, from wood to wood,
From crest to oak-crowned crest
Of the high hill-lands, where the Morning stood
With rosy-ribboned breast.
Along the hills she takes the tangled path
Unto the quiet close of day,
Musing on what a lovely death she hath—
The unearthly golden beryl far away
Banding the gradual west,
270

Seen through cathedral columns of the pines
And minster naves of woodlands arched with vines;
The golden couch, spread of the setting sun,
For her to lie, and me to gaze, upon.

V
EVENING

The winds awake,
And, whispering, shake
The aster-flower whose doom is sealed;
The sumach-bloom
Bows down its plume;
And,—blossom-Bayard of the field,—
The chicory stout
To the winds' wild rout
Lifts up its ragged shield.
Low in the west the Evening shows
A ridge of rose;
And, stepping Earthward from the hills,
Where'er she goes
The cricket wakes, and all the silence spills
With reed-like music shaken from the weeds:
271

She takes my hand
And leads
Softly my soul into the Fairyland,
The wonder-world of gold and chrysolite,
She builds there at the haunted edge of night.

VI
NIGHT

Autumn woods the winds tramp down
Sowing acorns left and right,
Where, in rainy raiment, Night
Tiptoes, rustling wild her gown
Dripping in the moon's pale light,
In the moonlight wan that hurries
Trailing now a robe of cloud
Now of glimmer, ghostly browed,
Through the leaves whose wildness skurries,
And whose tatters swirl and swarm
Round her in her stormy starkness;
She who takes my heart that leaps,
That exults, and onward sweeps,
Like a red leaf in the darkness
And the tumult of the storm.
272

WOOD-WAYS

I

O roads, O paths, O ways that lead
Through woods where all the oak-trees bleed
With autumn! and the frosty reds
Of fallen leaves make whispering beds
For winds to toss and turn upon,—
Like restless Care that can not sleep,—
Beneath whose rustling tatters wan
The last wildflow'r is buried deep:
One way of all I love to wend,
That towards the golden sunset goes,
A way, o'er which the red leaf blows,
With an old gateway at its end,
Where Summer, that my soul o'erflows,
My summer of love, blooms like a wildwood rose.

II

O winter ways, when spears of ice
Arm every bough! and in a vice
Of iron frost the streams are held;
When, where the deadened oak was felled
273

For firewood, deep the snow and sleet,—
Where lone the muffled woodsmen toiled,—
Are trampled down by heavy feet,
And network of the frost is spoiled,
O road I love to take again!—
While gray the heaven sleets or snows,—
At whose far end, at twilight's close,
Glimmers an oldtime window-pane,
Where spring, that is my heart's repose,
My spring of love, like a great fire glows.

THE CHARCOAL-BURNER'S HUT

Deep in a valley, green with ancient beech,
And wandered through of one small, silent stream,—
Whose bear-grassed banks bristled with brush and burr,
Tick-trefoil and the thorny marigold,
Bush-clover and the wahoo, hung with pods,
And mass on mass of bugled jewelweed,
Horsemint and doddered ragweed, dense, unkempt,—
I came upon a charcoal-burner's hut,
274

Abandoned and forgotten long ago;
His hut and weedy pit, where once the wood
Smouldered both day and night like some wild forge,
A wildwood forge, glaring as wild-cat eyes.
A mossy roof, black, fallen in decay,
And rotting logs, exuding sickly mold
And livid fungi, and the tottering wreck,
Rude remnants, of a chimney, clay and sticks,
Were all that now remained to say that once,
In time not so remote, one labored here,
Labored and lived, his world bound by these woods:
A solitary soul whose life was toil,
Toil, grimy and unlovely: sad, recluse,
A life, perhaps, that here went out alone,
Alone and unlamented.
Lost forever,
Haply, somewhere, in some far wilder spot,
Far in the forest, lone as was his life,
A grave, an isolated grave, may mark,—
275

Tangled with cat-brier and the strawberry-bush,—
The place he lies in; undistinguishable
From the surrounding forest where the lynx
Whines in the moonlight and the she-fox whelps.
A life as some wood-fungus now forgotten:
The Indian-pipe, or ghost-flower, here that rises
And slowly rots away in autumn rains.
Or, it may be, a comrade carved a line
Of date and death on some old trunk of tree,
Whose letters long ago th' erasing rust
Of moss and gradual growth of drowsy years
Slowly obliterated: or, may be,
The rock, all rudely lettered, like his life,
Set up above him by some kindly hand,
A tree's great, grasping roots have overthrown,
Where lichens long ago effaced his name.
276

IN CLAY

Here went a horse with heavy laboring stride
Along the woodland side;
Deep in the clay his iron hoof-marks show,
Patient and slow,
Where with his human burden yesterday
He passed this way.
Would that this wind that tramples 'round me here,
Among the sad and sere
Of winter-weary forests, were a steed,—
Mighty indeed,
And tameless as the tempest of its pace,—
Upon whom man might place
The boundless burden of his mortal cares,
Life's griefs, despairs,
And ruined dreams that bow the spirit so!
And let him go
Bearing them far from the sad world, ah me!
Leaving it free
As in that Age of Gold, of which men tell,
When Earth was glad and gods came here to dwell.
277

GRAY SKIES

It is not well
For me to dwell
On what upon that day befell,
On that dark day of fall befell;
When through the landscape, bowed and bent,
With Love and Death I slowly went,
And wild rain swept the firmament.
Ah, Love that sighed!
Ah, Joy that died!
And Heart that humbled all its pride;
In vain that humbled all its pride!
The roses ruin and rot away
Upon your grave where grasses sway,
And all is dim, and all is gray.

SUNSET DREAMS

The moth and beetle wing about
The garden ways of other days;
Above the hills, a fiery shout
Of gold, the day dies slowly out,
278

Like some wild blast a huntsman blows:
And o'er the hills my Fancy goes,
Following the sunset's golden call
Unto a vine-hung garden wall,
Where she awaits me in the gloom,
Between the lily and the rose,
With arms and lips of warm perfume,
The Dream of Love my Fancy knows.
The glow-worm and the firefly glow
Among the ways of bygone days;
A golden shaft shot from a bow
Of silver, star and moon swing low
Above the hills where twilight lies:
And o'er the hills my Longing flies,
Following the star's far, arrowed gold,
Unto a gate where, as of old,
She waits amid the rose and rue,
With star-bright hair and night-dark eyes,
The Dream, to whom my heart is true,
My Dream of Love that never dies.
279

MENDICANTS

Bleak, in dark rags of clouds, the day begins,
That passed so splendidly but yesterday
Wrapped in magnificence of gold and gray.
And poppy and rose. Now, burdened as with sins,
Their wildness clad in fogs, like coats of skins,
Tattered and streaked with rain, gaunt, clogged with clay,
The mendicant Hours take their sombre way
Westward o'er Earth, to which no sunray wins.
Their splashing sandals ooze; their footsteps drip,
Puddle and brim with moisture; their sad hair
Is tagged with haggard drops, that with their eyes'
Slow streams are blent; each sullen fingertip
Rivers; while 'round them, in the drenchéd air,
Wearies the wind of their perpetual sighs.
280

WINTER RAIN

Wild clouds roll up, slag-dark and slaty gray,
And in the oaks the sere wind sobs and sighs,
Weird as a word a man before he dies
Mutters beneath his breath yet fears to say:
The rain drives down; and by each forest way
Each dead leaf drips, and murmurings arise
As of fantastic footsteps,—one who flies,
Whispering,—the dim eidolon of the day.
Now is the wood a place where phantoms house:
Around each tree wan ghosts of flowers crowd,
And spectres of sweet weeds that once were fair,
Rustling; and through the bleakness of bare boughs
A voice is heard, now low, now stormy loud,
As if the ghosts of all the leaves were there.
281

MARINERS

[_]

(Class Poem, Read June, 1886)

A beardless crew we launched our little boat;
Laughed at its lightness; joyed to see it float,
Veer in the wind, and, with the freshening gale,
Bend o'er the foaming prow the swollen sail.
No fears were ours within that stanch-built barque;
No fears were ours 'though all the west was dark,
And overhead were unknown stars; the ring
Of ocean sailless and no bird a-wing:
Yet there was light; radiance that dimmed the stars
Dancing like bubbles in Night's sapphire jars.
We knew not what: only adown the skies
A shape that led us, with sidereal eyes,
282

Brow-bound and shod with elemental fire,
Beckoning us onward like the god Desire.
Brisk blew the breeze; and through the starry gloam,
Flung from our prow, flew white the furrowed foam.—
Long, long we sailed; and now have reached our goal.
Come, let us rest us here and call the roll.
How few we are! Alas, alas, how few!
How many perished! Every storm that blew
Swept from our deck or from our staggering mast
Some well-loved comrade in the boiling vast.
Wildly we saw them sink beneath our prow,
Helpless to aid; pallid of face and brow,
Lost in the foam we saw them sink or fade
Beneath the tempest's rolling cannonade.
They sank; but where they sank, above the wave
283

A corposant danced, a flame that marked their grave;
And o'er the flame, whereon were fixed our eyes,
An albatross, huge in volcanic skies.
They died; but not in vain their stubborn strife,
The zeal that held them onward, great of life:
They too are with us; they, in spite of death,
Have reached here first. Upon our brows their breath
Breathes softly, vaguely, sweetly as the breeze
From isles of spice in summer-haunted seas.
From palaces and pinnacles of mist
The sunset builds in heaven's amethyst,
Beyond yon headland where the billows break,
Perhaps they beckon now; the winds that shake
These tamarisks, that never bowed to storm,
Haply are but their voices filled with charm
Bidding us rest from labor; toil no more;
Draw up our vessel on the happy shore;
284

And of the lotus of content and peace,
Growing far inland, eat, and never cease
To dream the dreams that keep the heart still young,
Hearing forever how the foam is flung
Beneath the cliff; forgetting all life's care;
Easing the soul of all its long despair.
Let us forget how once within that barque,
Like some swift eagle sweeping through the dark,
We weighed the sun; we weighed the farthest stars;
Traced the dim continents of fiery Mars;
Measured the vapory planets whose long run
Takes centuries to gird their glimmering sun:
Let us forget how oft the crystal mountains
Of the white moon we searched; and plumbed her fountains,
That hale the waters of the æonian deep
In ebb and flow, and in her power keep;
Let us remember her but as a gem,
A mighty pearl, placed in Night's anadem:
285

Let us forget how once we pierced the flood,
Fathomed its groves of coral, red as blood,
Branching and blooming underneath our keel,
Through which like birds the nautilus and eel,
The rainbowed conch and irised fishes swept,
And where the sea-snake like a long weed slept.
Here let us dream our dreams: let Helen bare
Her white breast for us; and let Dido share
Her rich feast with us; or let Lalage
Laugh in our eyes as once, all lovingly,
She laughed for Flaccus. We are done with all
The lusts of life! its loves are ours. Let fall
The Catilines! the Cæsars! and in Gaul
Their legions perish! And let Phillip's son
In Ammon's desert die; and never a one
Lead back to Greece of all his conquering line
From gemmed Hydaspes.
286

Here we set our shrine!
Here on this headland templed of God's peaks,
Where Beauty only to our worship speaks
Her mighty truths, gazing beyond the shore
Into the heart of God: her eyes a door
Wherethrough we see the dreams, the mysteries,
That grew to form in the Art that once was Greece:
Making them live once more for us, the shapes
That filled the woods, the mountains, and the capes
Of Hellas: Dryad, Oread, and Faun;
Naiad and Nereid, and all the hosts of Dawn.
no previous section Nature-notes and impressions in prose and verse
no next section