University of Virginia Library

WOODS AND WATERS

I
On a Headland

White sails and sunlight on a sapphire sea,
Whence, rank on rank, the battling billows come
In emerald onslaught, plume on flying plume,
Trampling the shore with epic ecstasy.
This is God's poem, that, with mystery
And marvel of music, strikes man's spirit dumb,
Addressing it, in voices of the foam,
With thoughts and dreams of immortality.
Long have I stood upon this rock, that brows
Old Ocean's azure, and within its deep
Beheld God's image, and divined such awe
As one, admitted to his Father's house,
Feels, when from innermost chambers to'ards him sweep
The solemn splendors of invested Law.

II
The Forest

Ghost-flower and mushroom, fungus many hued,
Dot dim mosaics under pine and birch,
That column huge this dim, mysterious church,
Aisled and clerestoried, which men call a wood.
There!—Is't the shadow of a dream pursued?
Or deer that passes?—What is yonder smirch
Against the sunlight?—Raven on its perch?
Or cowléd doubt addressing solitude?—
A brooklet, brown as Autumn, in its flow
Murmurs a prayer, as pilgrims might at march;
And when the wind, with sibilant silence shod,
Lifts up its voice in organ worship, lo,
Yon woodland vista, with its sunset arch,
Seems a vast casement glorifying God.

III
The Mill-Stream

The cardinal-flower, in the sun's broad beam,
With sudden scarlet takes you by surprise,
Its fiery star arresting heart and eyes,
Like some strange spell beside this forest stream.
The wood around is shadowy as a dream
Of witchcraft, filled with unrealities:—
You'd hardly start if from those ferns should rise
A satyr something with faun eyes agleam.
And on the rocks the sound of drowsy foam
Is like a voice of Legend, half asleep,
Crooning a tale of vague antiquity;
And with the sound you almost feel that some
Strange thing will hap,—a hamadryad leap
Between the boughs, Pan-hunted to the sea.

IV
The Old Saw-Mill

Brown as a cairngorm, rimmed with golden woods,
The clear brook glasses in an oval pond,
Pouring confusion thence where great blooms blond
The glimmering marge in weedy multitudes.
Here where its ruin o'er the tumult broods,
Moss-sunk and crumbling in a stony bond,
No more its toiling wheels and saw respond
To the swift water's urge whose sound intrudes.
Here in the night, among the rocks and slime,
So dark the stream, so lost in utter gloom,
One could imagine that this skeleton form
Still kept a memory of some perished crime,
And saw forever down its roaring flume
A wild face whirling in the rushing storm.

V
Swamp-Led

The old trees weep with mist; the pitcher-plant,
Thrusting its crimson blossom from a whorl
Of purple-veinéd cups, that drip and curl,
Leers like a lip in dreams of old romant.
And, like the hair of some drowned girl, aslant
The wild grass trails its darkness in a swirl
Of long lagoon, wherethro', a sorry pearl,
The aster glimmers, death's last ministrant.
You almost fear to tread the swollen moss,
That shags the rocks and pads the humps of trees,
Lest, yawning suddenly, a pit of death
Suck down the instant feet, to slide across
A form of ooze, with hands of slime that seize,
And, dragging slowly, clutch away the breath.

VI
The Swamp

Hummocks and hags of moss and writhen roots,
Fantastic forms,—the twisted torture-tools
Of demon Nature,—who, amid gaunt stools
Of fungus, squats shrilling her insect flutes.
Above, at dusk, the staring screech-owl hoots;
The blue wisp wanders; and among dim pools
The horn'd moon searches where the darkness drools
Toad-throated mockery that the distance mutes.
The bladderwort and pitcher-flower bloat
Strange blossoms here, fat-rooted in the ooze;
And all the trees, that seem to await a sound,
Lean stealthily over, watching yonder boat,
Half-sunken there, fearful of what may use
Its rotting oar when night comes, hushed, profound.

VII
The Place of Pools

Here, though bluff weeds their mauves and purples flaunt,
And daylight spreads glad gold on grass and moss,
Is something sinister, the soul's at loss
To understand or see as is its wont:
Morosely old, a something, grim and gaunt,
Stalks there invisible, as stalks across
A ruin of legend, with gray hair atoss,
Vague Superstition, making it his haunt.
Above the sombre pools the gypsy Fall
Leans, wild of look. ... Is that a crimson bough,
Staining the water? or a blur of blood?
That, as a mind a memory may recall,
The place reshapes within itself somehow,
Pointing a crime long buried in the flood.

VIII
Vespertime

The barberry reddens in the lanes; the vine
Hangs a red banner where the wood-brook rills;
The cricket in the dropping orchard shrills,
Piping the starry asters into line.
The hoarse crow calls, winging from pine to pine,
That lift their columns on a hundred hills,
And sentinel the sea whose emerald stills
Its heart's unrest, drinking the sunset's wine.
Afar one sail, touched with the flame that flies,
Glimmers and fades; and in its place a mist
Puts forth an arm embracing sea and shore:
And over ocean, where the long light dies,
The harvest-moon orbs in the amethyst,
Like some huge pearl round in a shell's blue core.

IX
Flower Pageant

The orange and amber of the marigold,
The terra-cottas of the zinnia flowers,
With which the season every garden dowers,
Light up their lamps of Autumn as of old.
The salvia, flashing scarlet manifold,
And aster, that its flame-like flowers showers,
Seem bonfires builded to keep warm the Hours,
Who huddle round them murmuring of the cold.
Along the roads, in torques of gold, parades
The Summer's pageant; every bloom a torch
Borne in September's train, whose funeral goes
With pomp of purple down these woodland glades,
Where Melancholy sits beneath the larch
Crumbling the crimson of the last late rose.

X
The Wind from the Sea

Mother of storm, all night it wailed and wept
Outside the window; or, with wrath and roar,
Beat with wild hands of terror at the door,
Till on the hearth the frightened fire leapt,
And from the sea a moaning answer swept,
As if the ghosts of all the dead it bore
Cried out in lamentation to the shore,
That with its crags and pines grim council kept.
But with the coming of the rose of dawn
Its clamor ceased; and, mid the flowers and trees,
It sighing went; or, leaning, soft of tone
Whispered of beauty, till the soul was drawn,
As by a ghost in drowsy draperies,
Back, back to memories of the long-agone.

XI
Sea Lure

Deep down I see her on a coral throne,
Or in an emerald grotto, arched with foam,
Combing green tresses with a rainbow comb,
The kraken by her, watching, still as stone.
Oft have I seen her in the ocean's moan
Busy with shells beneath a nautilus dome;
Or scattering pearls to lure the fishes home,
A mermaid form no man shall make his own.
Now like a siren, on some island hoar,
Naked she sings of loves and lotus lands,
And men who hear leave sweethearts and their wives;
And now, a witch, from some Utopian shore,
Beckoning, she calls, rich treasure in her hands,
And to the quest men blindly give their lives.

XII
Ocean Mists

All day the mists crept stealthily from sea,—
A silent army of invading white,
That planted glimmering banners on the height,
And blotted out each rock and hill and tree:
Far as the eye could see, mysteriously,
Wild tents arose; it seemed that all the coasts
Of all the world had sent their specter hosts
To 'siege the land which Autumn held in fee.
The landscape, hanging a disconsolate head,—
Tears and dejection in its attitude,—
Dripped, mourning for the Summer that was gone;
While through the garden, where the flowers lay dead,
A phantom moved, of melancholy mood,—
Trailing the ghost of beauty, dead at dawn.

XIII
A Forest Place

Like some sad room, devoted to the dead,
Dim with the dust of love-begotten hours,
Where dull decay sits, and gray memory lowers,
And sorrow stands beside death's ancient bed:
Where dark, above, the filmy form of dread
Spins webs; and in a dusty corner cowers
Love's fragrant dream, among forgotten flowers,
With broken lute, and bowed unhappy head:
So seems the Year in this old forest place,
Among Fall's tarnished purples and torn golds:
The dedicated loveliness of woe
Brooding forever on Joy's perished face,
The happiness that passed, where none beholds,
With Youth and Spring into the Long-Ago.