The poet, the fool and the faeries

A Lyrical Eclogue
Scene: A woodland among hills.
Time: The Present.
Poet
Well! well! as I'm a poet, here's a fool!
What does he here?

Fool
What, sir, but keep him cool,
And pass the time of day with such as you.

Poet
Why, that's my fool now! One that Shakespeare knew!—
Are we in Arden, then?

Fool
That's telling tales.

Poet
Aye! it is Arden.

Fool
So we're far as that!—
Show me now where Audrey and Touchstone sat.

Poet
Take it from me, upon this mossy mat;
—There! I'll swear it by your bauble's bat,
Or—my last poem.

Fool
Ah! then Poetry ails,
Since you will swear, by her, to what is lies?

Poet
Not only does she ail, good Fool, but dies;
Such is the verdict of the worldly wise.—
But when I saw her last she looked not ill;
There was a happy light in her clear eyes.—
That she was dying is impossible.

Fool
But nothing is impossible.—You're here!
A poet in these woods!—Your poet,—well—
Keeps to the town where there is atmosphere.

Poet
Then diagnose me what a poet is,
Or should be, Fool.

Fool.

Now, by the cap I wear!
Since Kings command, here's my analysis—
No poet he of mart or thoroughfare.

He measures facts by a gleam o' the moon,
And calendars days by dreams;
He values less than a wild bird's tune
The world of mortal schemes:
He dons the pack of the Work-and-Wait,
On the trail of the Never-Sure,
And whistles a song as he faces Fate
To follow the far-off lure.

He says a word to the butterfly,
And its mottled dream is his;
He whispers the bee, and it makes reply
With a thought like a honeyed kiss:
He speaks the bird, and he speaks the snake,
And the ant in its house of sand,
And their guarded wisdom is his to take,
And their secrets to understand.

He shares his soul with the wayside rose,
His heart with the woodland weed,
And he knows the two as himself he knows,
And the thoughts with which they plead:
To him they speak in confidence,
And he answers them with love,
And hand in hand with their innocence
Strikes out for the trail above.

Sworn comrade he of the rocks and trees,
Companion boon of the brooks;
Through whose hoary tribes he hears and sees
The things that are not in books:
He goes his way of do and dare,
Led on by firefly gleams,
And lays him down with never a care
By the campfire of his dreams.

Poet
That's what I call a goodly bit of news.
How comes it that a fool such things can feel,
And say them too?—'T is strange.

Fool
'T was but a ruse
To get you into argument.

Poet
I see.
But I, good Fool, with all you said agree.
Your knowledge now of what a bard should be
Makes to my heart a very strong appeal.
Where did you learn this thing?

Fool
In Arcady.
I have a fair acquaintance with the Muse.

Poet
Indeed?

Fool
You see I only need to choose
Of all these things that lie right at my hand,—
That anyone with sense may understand,—
Select my meter and arrange my rhyme,
And there you are!—my discourse moves to time.

Poet
Behold the fool turned poet! Come, sir, come!
Song must be heard. Too long has she been dumb.
All genius is half fool.—What say you now
To a good bout at rhyming?

Fool
Steel to steel,
With “Ho” and “Ha” and “Curse you anyhow”?—
Why I'm your onion! cut or thrust or play—
'T is easier, sir, than running down at heel.
I'll foin you—well, an hour or a day
And never falter foot.

Poet
Have at you!—Pray,
But have a care, my gentle Fool! You know,
Apollo once brought Marsyas to woe.

Fool
But you are not Apollo.

Poet
Even so.
And well for you, my Fool: THAT saves your skin.

Fool

I'm willing to be flayed; so let's begin.

All around,
In the forest, is enchanted ground:—
Where the sunlight throws
Airy-minted gold
To the lily and rose,
Stretching flowers, like hands, to seize and hold:
Where the brooks unfold
Scrolls of music, crystal melody,
For the hills to hear,
Leaning low an ear,
Many a leafy ear,
Emerald-veined, on many a listening tree;
Where the winds work at their necromance,
Rustling-robed, with hands that glint and glance,
Weaving, dim a-trance,
Lights and shadows into tapestry,
Glimmering with many a wildflower dance:—
Quaker-Ladies in a saraband,
Twinkling hand in hand;
And, demurely met,
Orchids in a stately minuet,
Flirting eyelids at the amorous bee,

Bird and bee, in lyric ecstasy:—
There, where none may hear,
Magic, Mystery,
Parents of Romance,
Ever near,
Work dim wonders with the rain and sun,
Mist and dew:
There the two
Plot enchantments, old yet always new—
Never hurried; never done
Dreaming, weaving,
All perceiving,
Dreams man's soul is heir unto:
Waving, beckoning him to follow
Down the world, through holt and hollow;
Bidding see with the spirit's eyes,
Heed and hear with the soul's deep heart,
Till the Mind, by the two made wise,
Come to a shadowy world apart,
And, hand in hand with its ecstasies,
Enter the gateway of Surprise,
And find its dreams realities.

Poet
Well rhymed, my Fool. If all men had your sense
The world would be the wiser.

Fool
That's recompense.
Critics might scorn it; magazines reject.
Howbeit, Poet, thanks for your respect.

Poet

You've made me somewhat thoughtful with your theme;
And since't is Spring I cannot help but dream.

Where the orchid's faery flowers
Lamp the forest ways with pearl,
And the sibyl woodland hours
Gossip with the thrush and merl:
Where the hill-born waters run,
Bluebell-aproned in the sun,
Each one madcap as a girl
Dancing with wild hair awhirl:

Where the bluet blossoms wink,
Constellating heavens of moss;
And around the wood pool's brink
Iris flowers their bonnets toss:
Where the bird's-foot violet
And the windflower thickly set
Magic snares for hearts that cross,
Wildwood-wandered, at a loss:

There the rough bee, busily,
In the haw tree's house of bloom,
Plies his honeyed industry,
Weaving murmur and perfume,
Spinning cirques of sorcerous sound,
Where old Time is drowsy-bound,
Like to Merlin, fallen on doom,
Captive in a gleaming gloom.

Wheresoe'er the feet may stray
Earth with mystery is tense;
Every tree trunk hides a fay,
Every fern is pixy dense:
Elfland lays an ambuscade
In each wonder-guarded glade,
Taking prisoner the sense
With compelling indolence.

Till the spirit vision clears,
And before the eyes, behold!
Beauty's very self appears,
As the Greeks believed of old:
In the rapture of her gaze
Glows the joy of other days;
In her tresses all the gold
Of the faery tales long told.

Still she keeps her body fair
For the soul that knows not art;
Innocent and free of care
Low she whispers to the heart,
As in childhood, when you knew,
And in dreams she came to you,
In a place remote, apart,
Elfdom, that is on no chart.

Still within her bower she waits
For the moment, long removed;
Till, delivered of the Fates,
Wakes again the soul that loved:

And to it shall be revealed
Secrets that she kept concealed;
And the dream, which long behooved,—
Real as earth,—again be proved.

Fool

You're not so far wrong as it may appear
When't comes to faeries.—Hark now! in your ear:
I have a secret I have longed to tell
To some good friend; and it concerns this dell.

Where the path leads through this dell
All the way is under spell:
There, beneath the old oak tree,
Where the light lies dim at noon,
Elfland held its revelry,
Danced and left its yellow shoon:—
You may call them, if you choose,
Whippoorwill-shoes.

There between a stalk and stem,
Where the crowfoot hangs its gem,
Golden in the fern's green hair,
Swings a hammock, dips a bed,
Faeryland has woven there
Out of mist and moonbeam thread:—
Never web was spider spun
Like this one.

Yonder fungus, pink and brown,
Which the slim snail silvers down
Cautiously, as if afraid
Of intrusive visitors,
Is a table ouphens laid
For their feast beneath the stars:—
Never mushroom, you may wis,
Was like this.

To this tree now lay your ear:
In its heart you too may hear
Whispered wonders, as have I:
How, in frog-skin pantaloon,
Moth-wing gown and butterfly,
Pixies tripped here by the moon:—
Never breeze, or sap, I know,
Murmurs so.

Now and then, whence none can tell,
Sudden fragrance sweeps the dell,
And your eyelids flutter to:—
'T is some glamour, elfin—wise,
Passing very near to you,
Putting glimmer in your eyes:—
Never wild-rose scent, or sun,
So could run.

Thus it is I look around
When I tread this faery ground:—
There is witchcraft in the place;
There is magic; there is spell;

You can feel it like a face,
Gazing, yet invisible:
I have felt it; you may feel:—
None reveal.

Poet

I prize your revelation, and believe,
Without a reservation, all you say.
Now, mark you; yonder—do your eyes perceive,
Among the leaves and flowers, what's a-play?
What fancies,—faeries?—call them by that name—
The two that always must remain the same.

Like Rapunzel within her tower,
Divinely pale, in sweet distress,
The Mayapple, of fragile flower,
Gives glimpses of its loveliness:
And there, like her the witch detained,
And walled with sleep and many a briar,
The wild rose glimmers, rosy veined,
As if its blushes it restrained,
Soft-dreaming of its heart's desire.

All is at peace: the woods around
Stand silent as authorities
In contemplation. Not a sound
Disturbs their dream of centuries.
Out of their long experience

In green and gold they tell their thought;
And to the soul's divining sense
Deliver all the evidence
Of that for which man's mind has sought.

Retired as happiness that holds
The memory of a grief that's gone,
The humid orchis here unfolds
Its pearl and purple to the dawn.
Around, the bluets, near and far,
Prompt as the skies they imitate,
In multitudes that know no bar,
Reveal their beauty, star on star,
And nothing of their joy abate.

How one frail flower like this can make
Immortal to the memory
A place, a moment, with the ache
Of something more than eyes can see!
And how the soul will cling to it,—
And in its thought immortalize
The happiness whereon it hit
In that one moment exquisite
When Beauty took it by surprise.

Fool

Now I'll be open with you, Poet.—See,
Now you're my friend since you believe like me.

Why, I have seen things—faeries! Yes, right here!
I'll tell you of them. Listen. Lend your ear.

I sat with woodland dreams one night,
Before the moon rose round and white,
And saw the moth-like minions dim,
Who guard the wild rose when asleep,
Come forth: The spirits, small and slim
(Gold-Pollen, Prickle, Rain-Bright, Trim),
Who hang around each wildflower's rim
Its carcanet of dew, and keep
Its fair face clean of things that creep.

I saw them, busily as ants,
Hang with pale gold the woodland plants:
On bindweed tendrils, one by one,
I saw them loop long rows of bells,
That swung in crystal unison;
Then up the silken primrose run
(Moth-Feather, Tripsy, Light-Foot, Fun),
And to the stars unclasp its shells,
That filled with sweetness all the dells.

I saw the shapes that house in trees,
That guard the nests of birds and bees:
Like sudden starlight gleamed their hands
And leaf-like bodies, glimmering green,
When through the woods they moved in bands
(Wisp, Foxfire, Burr, Jock-o'-the-Brands),
And dotted night with firefly wands;

Peering with pin-point eyes between
The fernleaves for some harm unseen.

I saw the fancies wild, for whom
The crickets violin the gloom,
Lead in a pageant long of dreams;
To see which even the sleepy snail
Thrust out its horns; and from the streams
(Spraytop- and Ripple-chased it seems),
The trout leapt silvery, showering gleams
Of beryl'thwart the pearly pale
Low moon that raised her faery sail.

And with the moon came presences
Of gnome-like things that toil mid trees;
That build the ghost-flower in a night;
And set their grotesque shoulders to
The toadstool's root and heave it white
(Troll, Nixen, Kobold, Glowwormlight),
Into the star dusk; and pull tight
The webs that frost themselves with dew
Adown each woodland avenue.

I saw them rouse the moth and ride
The spider forth; and rein and guide
The grumbling beetle on its way;
And prick the slow slug so it'd see
The fungus ruff of red and gray
(Lob, Fly-by-Night, and Lanthornray),
Where it could gorge itself all day;

The agaric, which, tirelessly,
They'd wrung from out the old dead tree.

These things I saw: Then shapes of musk
In herby raiment swarmed the dusk;
They rose from moss and rotted wood,
From loam and leaf and weed and flower:
Midge-winged they swept the solitude
(Rosehip and Fernseed, Lily-Snood),
A vague, ephemeral sisterhood,
That stole the sweetness from each bower,
To give it back within the hour.

Then slighter forms of film and foam
Rose from the streams and sat, a comb
Of moon-pearl in their hands: the fays,
Who herd the minnows; keep from harm
The dragonfly that sleeps or sways
(Foam-Flutter, Starstep, Ripple-Rays),
Like some bright jewel, on the Day's
White breast, when, starred, a golden charm,
The water-lily opens warm.

And then I saw them cloud the air,—
Elf shapes, that came with flying hair,
Winding their gnat-like bugles: sprites,
That help the spider when it weaves
Its web; or, lamped with glowworm lights
(Prank, Heavyhead, Bob-up-o'-Nights),
Guide bats and owlets in their flights,

Or toads to where the mushroom heaves
Its rosy round through loam and leaves.

These are the dreams I sat with when
The owlet hooted in the glen;
These are the dreams that came before
My eyelids in this forest gray—
Children of Fancy, Faery Lore,—
Puck, Ariel, and many more,—
Wearing the face that erst they wore
For Shakespeare; and, in some strange way,
As real now as in his day.

Poet

Since you have spoken, Sir, I'll tell you what
Occurred to me upon this selfsame spot,
When soul-sick of the world I sought this wood,
Knowing my heartache would be understood.

I took the old wood at its word,
And flung me on its lap of moss;
Its shimmering arms above me stirred,
And green its bosom heaved across.
I felt its cool breath on my cheek,
As low it leaned to see my face,
Whispering, “What is it, son, you seek?
What is it that you would replace?
What have you lost? what would you find?—
Is it your heart? or peace of mind?”

I heard its question, not with ears,
But with an inward sense of grief:
Words would not come, but only tears,
Slow tears, that brought me no relief.
Again the whisper: “Is it love?
Or aspirations you have prized?
Or loss of faith in God above?
Or some far dream unrealized?”—
“I know not how,” my soul replied,
“But Poetry, meseems, has died.”

Then for a space the wood was still.—
A teardrop fell;—or was it rain
I felt upon my face; the chill
Glad tears of Nature?—Then again,
Was it her joy?—or just the storm
She gathered to her breast awhile?
Then, quickly, was it sunlight warm?
Or on her face a quiet smile?
As low I heard her answer thrill—
“Here in my arms Song slumbers still.”

And, oh, I wakened as from dreams,
And saw her there,—Song, dim as moss:
And heard her voice, which is the streams,
Rill from her pure throat leaned across:
And all around me, flower on flower,
I saw her wild thoughts gleam and glow;
And through them, by some subtle power,
Beheld my soul's dreams come and go.

Long mourned as dead, no more to part,
I took her sobbing to my heart.

Fool

Why, you are Nature's favored son, I see.
But hark you now: She too has let me know
Soul-intimacy: Once with eyes of glee
She made the Wind's self visible to me—
The elfin Wind!—You were not favored so.

I saw her there among the leaves,
A slender spirit none perceives,
The Wind, who still her magic weaves,
Romancing:
I heard her feet, as soft as thieves';
And then the silken swish of sleeves,
Steal 'round the forest's fluttered eaves,
A-dancing.

She leaned and whispered in the ear
Of every wildflower something dear,—
How to protect their hearts from fear
Of dying:
Then took the thistle's feathery sphere
And glimmered it across the mere,
Or on a cobweb, trailing near,
Went flying.

The butterfly, that comes and goes,
She tosses on the wilding rose;
Then teases

The blossomed bee that whines; and blows
Into each bud till wide it grows;
When swift its musk that overflows
She seizes.

Then fine and fair away she trips,
Wood perfume on her wildwood lips,
To where, with twinkling fingertips,
Day's daughter,
The Gloaming, waits; and Silence drips:
There from her gown of light she slips,
And with the star of twilight dips
The water.

Poet

Surely you have good eyes, Sir.—Long ago
The ancient wisdom of the world, that Snake
Of God's own Eden, in such shapes did show
Himself to mortals, making their senses ache
With longings for a loveliness that drew
The mind of man beyond the things he knew.

The Snake, that once in Eden spake,
The ancient Snake, that wrought our woe,
Still lies with bright green eyes awake
By every wildwood path we go:
We may not see him; may not know:
But still he waits eternal there
Watching whatever way we fare.

We feel his presence in the leaves,
That murmur of forgotten things:
Of longings, and of love that grieves
For whilom joys and happenings:
Of vanished lights and broken wings,
And all the perished host, it seems,
That once made fair the hills and streams.

We hear him whispering in the trees,
And in the waters of the rocks,
Of wildwood dreams and mysteries,
That 'tend the visionary flocks
Of Beauty who, eluding, mocks
All efforts of the human mind
To seize her and forever bind.

We see his eyes at sunset flame
And pierce the centuried forest through,
Looking the things that have no name,
To which our longings are a clue;—
And memories of lives we knew
Flow back from outer nothingness
Upon our souls to curse or bless.

Amorphous, dim, he folds us round
In darkness, like another night:
His rustling body wreathes the ground,
His eyeballs burn with emerald light:
We hear and see and feel his might,—
That made religions once of old,—
With worship of dead myths take hold.

He is a part of what we see
Yet do not see; of what we hear
Yet never hear: within each tree
And rock and stream he watches near,
Addressing now the spirit ear
With thoughts; and now the spirit eye
With dreams that pass but never die.

Fool

That takes me back to times when men wore skins;
When Earth teemed dragons; tons, that soared, with wings;
Or isled the ocean with enormous fins:
Primordial guesses at approaching things.
Why, while you spoke, in mind I seemed to go
Back to creation; to the very day
God wrought a mate for man. Meseems I know,
Yes, am quite sure, He made her in this way.

I saw Him first set up a bone,
And breathe on it until it shone
And grew a heart, to curse or bless,
And filled with love and wantonness,
All Hell's delight, all Heaven's distress.

Then to Himself God smiling said,
“The heart's the least; far more the head.”
He shaped the head; then molded fair
The bright destruction of her hair,
And therein made for man a snare.

In front He painted fresh her face,
All innocent, divine of grace;
But underneath the angel mien
He hid a devil, dark, unclean,
A monster thing whose gaze was green.

Into the face He set the eyes,
Full of beguilement and surmise,
Of prayer and passion, make-believe,
And tears and laughter, to deceive
The heart of man God meant to grieve.

The nose and mouth He fashioned next:
The nose precise; the mouth perplexed
With virtue and the quenchless thirst
For fruit forbidden, blest and curst
With longings for life's best and worst.

Then loud God laughed and spake again:
“Without the body all were vain!”—
And underneath the head he set
The throat and breasts, like roses met,
And arms; all portions of the net.

The torso then and limbs of snow
He made and fixed them fair below:
And in her feet and in her breast
He breathed the spirit of unrest
And vanity of soul distressed.

“Behold!” God said, “my masterpiece!
Through whom the world shall know increase.—
And man will give me thanks, I know,
And laud My work, and, heart aglow,
Accept My gift and all his woe.”

Poet

No woman'd thank you for that, understand!
What an arraignment of the sex!—You went
A little far there, friend. And, out of hand,
You are a fool who has grown insolent;
That's what fair Eve would say.—Look where yon cloud
Takes on strange shape, with pearl and azure browed:
Perhaps it beckons us,—what do you say?—
To fairer dreams of the lost Far Away.

Far away, oh, far away,
Where the clouds grow up and the shadows gray;
Where twilight dreams and the rain-wind sleeps,
And the cloud-born waterfall, singing, leaps.
Oh, there, whatever the soul may say,—
Far away, aye, far away,—
Is the happy Land of Yesterday.

Loveliness walks on its hills, and sighs;
And friendship smiles from its oldtime skies;
Love, like a maid who walks in dreams,
Flutters with white its vales and streams:

And over it all a gladness lies,—
As soft as eyes, as love's own eyes,—
And heart's ease, breathing slumberous sighs.

Never near, oh, never near,
That Land where dreams of the heart appear;
Where Revery lays her spirit bare,
And Mystery lures with golden hair:
Oh, there, whatever the heart may hear,—
Never near, yes, never near,—
Is the Land of Ghosts that our hearts hold dear.

Witchery waits by its lonely ways
With mild-eyed dreams of other days;
And down old paths, where young feet went,
Faith, with her open testament,
Walks with Hope through the golds and grays
Of oldtime ways, remembered ways,
The look in her face of long-past Mays.

Never near and far away
Are the lone, lost Lands of Yesterday
And dim To-morrow, where dream and ghost
Wander and whisper and beckon us most.
Open your gates in the Cloudland gray,
Never near and far away,
And let us in where our longings stray.

Fool

Well, you and I can always journey there:
We have the receipt of fernseed. But beware!

How you step yonder, by that tree.—Meseems
I saw a Faery hide there.—How absurd!—
It's but a burnished beetle. How it gleams!
It could tell tales now, if it would!—my word!

Last night beneath this ancient tree,
Dim in the moonlight and the ferns,
The elfin folk held revelry,
I know by what my soul discerns
Mysteriously.

For, look you, where yon circle runs
Of bluets, winking very wise,
The rapture of those tricksy ones
Has put confusion in their eyes,
That meet the sun's.

And, mark you, how the toadstool there
Protrudes its bulk in Falstaff state;
It too has seen, I well will swear,
An elf, and learned to imitate
His pompous air.

And where that lichen lays a streak
Of rose, fair as a flowering stock,
The place but recollects her cheek,
The fay's, who danced upon this rock
Above the creek.

And, hark! between this rock and root,
Where, shrill, the cricket pipes away,

A faery dropped a magic flute,
That never stops, but still must play
For faery foot.

And that same beetle, glittering by,
Has mailed itself, as it has seen
Titania's guard, in royal dye
Of bronz and green, when round their queen
They caught its eye.

The toad that squats, observing naught,
By yonder mushrooms' bench and bar,
Has donned the Puck-wise look he caught
From Oberon's chief councilor
In judgment sought.

The bees that murmur drowsy here,
The gnats and wood-flies, but repeat
The music which a sleepy ear
Caught when all Elfland rose to greet
Queen Mab with cheer.

Oh, there is more than eye may see,
That to the moon is visible!—
If it could speak, this ancient tree,
What would it say? what would it tell
Of Faërie?

But it—it keeps its council close,
As do the crickets and the flowers:—
Ah, could it speak and tell of those!

What tales we'd hear, of elfin powers!
What things none knows!

Poet

Spring's taken full possession of your brain,
And I can feel it working here in mine;
Why, there she stands with all her radiant train,
The Spring herself, beneath a wildgrape-vine.

There her beauty dons a gown
White of dogwood blooms,
And goes dreaming up and down
Through the wood's dim rooms;
Waters, falling, make a sound
Like her heart's full beat;
And the silence all around
Rustles with her feet.

There the iris, timidly,
From its hood of dew,
To the wind that wanders by
Lifts an eye of blue:
Here the cautious violet,
As if it could hear
Music none has dreamed of yet,
Lays to earth an ear.

There the winds on tiptoe tread,
Lullabying low
To the bee whose blossom-bed
Rocks now fast, now slow.

Here the sunlight, like a charm,
Lays a touch of gold,
As if summoning some form,
Gnome-like, from the mold.

Here the Mayapple, that seems
In a wax-white trance,
With suggestions of its dreams
Clouds its countenance.
On the hush no sound intrudes,
Save a redbird's song,
And the wood-brook's interludes
Singing low along.

Presences of wind and light,
Myths, the Spring gives form,
Glow upon the spirit-sight,
With compelling charm;
Blushing into bloom and breeze,
Making sweet the house,
Where the white Spring takes her ease
Under blossoming boughs.

Grant me, Heaven, eyes to see,
Evident of grace,
Her divine virginity,
Naked, face to face!
All her goddess loveliness,
So I may adore,
Like Tiresias of old,
Blind forevermore.

Fool

Now you have said it!—Things seem all agog
For something that has happened or will hap:
Why, look you there, even this moldering log
Has clothed itself in moss, and spreads its lap
For some wild sylvan's seat; or for the Queen
Of all the Wood Sprites to survey the scene.

The flag-flower flies an azure streak;
The dogtooth violet bugles out:
What festival, beside this creek,
Is Faeryland about?

The bluebell in the wind swings peals
Of azure, and the poppies chime
A golden call, whose sound reveals
How Elfland trips to time.

Such ecstasy as that which sings,
Compelling, in each root and seed,
And in the egg wakes wilding wings
That flutter to be freed.

Soul music, ear has never heard,
That breathes o'er earth its living breath,
And flings Life's last triumphant word
Full in the face of Death.

Poet

Death? death?—There is no death!—I know!—And why?—
I've been to Avalon, the shadowy Isle,
And know the Beautiful can never die,
That God permitted for a little while
To walk the Earth and cheer us with its smile.

For I have been in Avalon,
And walked its glimmering groves among,
And talked with Beauty, dead and gone,
And Love that lives in ancient song.
Yes, I have been in Avalon:
Therefore, you see, my brow is wan.

Remembering still the look of those
Sore-wounded ones, who loved in vain,
Whose lives are wrapped now in repose,
Freed from the vassalage of pain,
An inner peace my spirit wears
Regardful of that look of theirs.

Pale violet were the belting seas,
And violet too both hill and dale;
And, unremembering, over these
The heaven like a violet pale;
And cliff and mountain from the steep
Let down dim streams as if asleep.

And here and there the ancient woods
Spread mighty and majestic robes,

Wherein were woven attitudes
Of beauty, marble-pale: dim globes
And towers of loveliness, it seemed
The Island into being dreamed.

No sun I saw; I saw no moon:
But twilight dreamed forever there,
With shadowy starlight all a-swoon,
Above the blue and quiet air:
While all around, from east to west,
The consecration lay of rest.

There saw I queens of old romance,
And glimmering kings of legend pass;
And on their brows and in their glance
I read their dreams as in a glass:
And, of my soul remembered yet,
The dreams have taught me to forget.

But in their hearts my heart could read
No memory of what had been;
No old regret for thought or deed,
Or that they once were king and queen.
They had forgotten all thereof—
The hate of earth as well as love.

Long time I spake them, dim, apart;
Long time I talked with queen and king,
While through the heaven of my heart
Oblivion trailed a twilight wing;
And on my spirit's lifted brow
Was poured the peace that haunts it now.

Yes, I have been in Avalon,
The faery Isle in faery seas;
Therefore it is my face is wan,
My heart at peace remembering these.
It may not be, and yet—I seem
Forever waking from a dream.

Fool

That's where I came from. I'm a prisoner, too,
In this mad world. Why, I was Dagonet,
King Arthur's fool. 'Twas there I met with you:
And you were Tristram.—I cannot forget
How well you sang once of the fair Isolt;
You dare not tell me that you have forgot?—
These airs of Spring help memory a lot.—
The world is changed since then, or I'm a dolt.

Is that the acid sorrel
And honey-scented clover?—
Or can it be a quarrel
Of wood nymphs in the cover?
Who in their leafy wrangle
Shake fragrance from the tangle
Of boughs that wildflowers spangle.

Oh, witchcraft of the sorrel!
Oh, glamour of the clover!—
Do you not glimpse the coral-
Tipped breasts of each wood-lover?

Each dryad, slow unsheathing
Dim limbs from bark enwreathing
Her bosom, blossom-breathing?

Oh, sorcery of sorrel!
Oh, magic of the clover!—
What glimmers through the laurel?
What wings its white way over?—
What myth, that haunts these bowers,
Child of the winds and flowers,
Touches this world of ours?

The rosy tips of sorrel,
And purple cups of clover,
Bewitch my soul, and star all
The ways with dreams that hover:—
Dreams, shadowy as Isis,
Who somehow there arises,
Born of my soul's surmises.

Poet

Dreams! dreams! enough of dreams! of myths and dreams!
Here now's reality: a faery flower.
That's substance for you. How its beauty seems
T' invest the moment with immortal dower!

Flower of the wet wild woodland, lonely flower,
Trembling in elfin beauty by the brink

Of this wild stream, which murmurs of the shower,
That brimmed its breast with joy for quite an hour,—
Would I could read the faery thoughts you think,
And hear of ouphen marvels, all awink,
That met your eyes last night in this dark bower!

Dim as the web the spider slenderly
Hammocks at dusk for Dawn to rope with dew;
Pale in the moonbeam, at their revelry,
You have beheld the Elves around this tree
Wild-whirling. And could we but learn of you,
Then might we find of Faeryland the clue,
The shibboleth, the open sesame.

That world our childhood entered, manhood lost:
Invisible except unto the heart:
A world whose far dominions none has crossed:
That to the soul shows its immortal coast
But once in life; and, intimated part
Of all our dreams, strives ever through high art
To make them real to the uttermost.

Ah, flower of the whirlwind and the rain!
Frail forest flower, on whose lip of spar
Spring leaves her chilly kiss, a rosy stain,
What profits all this dreaming, since again,

The clue escapes us? hope, that leads us far,
Teasing the soul beyond its mortal bar,
Only to find, alas! all dreams are vain.

Fool

There spoke no botanist, upon my word!
But a true poet, Sir. Why, even a fool
Can see through that. All dreaming is absurd
To sordid souls, who come not here to school.—
Look! there are wild peas, bless them!—and they dream
Of other things, I think, than that they seem.

Here's the tavern of the bees:
Here the butterflies, that swing
Velvet cloaks, and to the breeze
Whisper soft conspiracies,
Pledge their Lord, the Faery King:
Here the hotspur hornets bring
Fiery word, and drink away
Heat and hurry of the day.

Here the merchant bee, his gold
On his thigh, falls fast asleep;
And the armored beetle bold,
Like an errant-knight of old,
Feasts and tipples pottles-deep:
While the friar crickets keep
Creaking low a drinking-song,
Like an Ave, all day long.

Here the baron bumblebee,
Grumbling in his drowsy cup,
Half forgets his knavery:
Dragonflies sip swaggeringly,
Cavaliers who stop to sup:
To whose brag come whining up
Gnats, the thieves, that tap the tuns
Of the honeyed musk that runs.

Here the jewelled wasp, that goes
On his swift highwayman way,
Seeks a moment of repose,
Drains his cup of wine-of-rose,
Sheathes his dagger for the day:
And the moth, in downy gray,
Like some lady of the gloom,
Slips into a perfumed room.

When the darkness cometh on,
Round the tavern, golden green,
Fireflies flit with torches wan,
Looking if the guests be gone,
Linkboys of the Faery Queen:
Lighting her who rides, unseen,
To her elfin sweetpea bower,
Where she rests a scented hour.

Poet

Yes; there is witchcraft in these woods.—Right there,
Beyond those vales, are hills where I have been

And talked with visions. If I did but dare,
I too might tell you of the things I've seen.

Old hills, that break the far horizon's fall,
Within my heart again I hear you call,
Bidding me come and talk with mysteries
Of woodlands where, pale-pooled, the waters lie,
In whose enchanted glass the forest sees
Its form reflected and the dreams go by
Of silence and of solitude, who keep
Watch round their mirrors, gazing long and deep.

My hills! gray-peopled with the wraiths of rain—
Mist-ghosts, that gather and dissolve again:
Pale exhalations that, in dim retreats
Of foam and fern, above the slim cascade
Fling wild a rainbow; or, in slender sheets
Of foggy stealth, phantom the dripping glade,
Where Witchcraft cabins with her wildflower spells,
Filling the wood with magic of their bells.

Hills, that the moon's white feet, how oft! have kissed:
Where wan Endymion and his dreams keep tryst:
Where the pale soul of Beauty doth abide,
Whispering her legends, to the cradled flowers,

Of filmy things, moth-gowned and glowworm-eyed,
Who lace the ways and gossamer the bowers
With webs for dews to tiptoe and bewitch
With pearl and crystal till each weed is rich.

Hills, from whose breasts, in drowsy fancy, rise
The perfume-thoughts of flowers; fragrant sighs;
And dim damp dreams of fungi: imagings
Of Haunters of the ferns who, through the night,
Speed thin the tumult of invisible wings,
That take the heart with terror and delight,
Dreaming it hears the nymph who fled from Pan,
And all the immortal myths that with her ran.

Old hills! beyond you, in my soul I know,
Still lies the Wonderland of Long Ago,
High-mountained and deep-valleyed; elfed with streams,
Where old Enchantment builds her bower of bloom,
And Magic rears his City of Lost Dreams,
Templed with glory that no time shall doom:
The shadow of whose marvels, as of old,
Still lures me in the sunset's towers of gold.

Fool

From following that lure you got that look.
The mystery is solved why you are here,
And I can see now why your eye's so clear.—
I, too, have walked with spirits; by this brook;
The lonely spirits of the changing year.

One haunts the woods that Spring makes wet,
Trailing faint skirts of violet:
She sits between the shade and shine
And turns to heaven a trillium-face,
Plaiting her locks of celandine
That ripple to her throat's green lace
Of ferns, whereat, ethereal blue,
The iris sparkles, gemmed with dew.

And I have met the one who goes,
With hands of berry-stain and rose,
With Summer. Or divined her near
By some warm wind's dim evidence
Of lily scent or lavender,
Or plum, red-ripening by some fence,
Near which she sat with head a-nod,
Rich-robed in broom and goldenrod.

But in the rotting woods of Fall
She turns a witch and with wild call
Walks arm in arm with Death, and shakes
A head of moldy moss and grass;
Her weedy cloak among the brakes

Hangs torn; and wheresoe'er she pass
The woods grow conscious of decay,
And pulpy toadstools mark her way.

In Winter I have found her dead,
The berried thorn about her head;
Her face, an icy fragment, cold,
Rimmed with white locks of frost and snow;
Her tattered shroud, the tarnished gold
Of leaves that on the old beech blow;
And in her withered hand the last
Wild thistle, twisted by the blast.

Poet

Yes, you have met them. I, too, let me tell,
Have looked on spirits in this forest dell.
Mark you,—this very moment, while you spoke,
Something befell me that enthrals: It seems
I saw as sees this tree, this ancient oak,
The Presences of beauty Nature dreams.

There where the whiteheart's blossom clings,
And columbine is frailly flushed,
Just where that cat-bird sings and swings,
And water wild is rushed,—
The old oak crooked its arm at me,
That branch, and said, “Come here and see!”—
And, with a hand of witchery,
A leaf my forehead brushed.

And, lo, a voice, like some old friend's,
Spoke softly,—“See what none has seen:—
Where myth begins and matter ends,
And all that lies between.”—
And, lo! the dream which haunts the rose
Took on faint form; and, at repose,
The thought, which in the tree's heart grows,
Revealed itself in green.

I saw the spirit, white and wild,
That dances with the waterfall;
And like the beauty of a child
Hangs laughing over all:
I saw the faery of the fern
Swing wet its web at every turn;
And in the dew the pixy burn
Who holds the grass in thrall.

I saw the sylphids of the light
Gleam into being—print the ground;
And with them, whispering into sight,
The wind with wildflowers crowned:
I saw the sylvan sit at ease
Behind the bark of covering trees;
And in the brambles, watching these,
The Faun whom none hath bound.

I saw the harmony around,—
Bee-murmur, wing-beat, burst of song,—
Evolve a silvery shape of sound,
That nymph-like moved along:

I saw the happiness that fills
The heart of things, that never stills,
Run with the rapture of the rills,
A goddess straight and strong.

A moment more and I had seen
The soul itself of Beauty bared,
And all that Nature's love may mean
To me had been declared:
Her dreams grotesque, or beautiful,
Her mysteries,—no years annul,
That keep the world from growing dull,—
By me had then been shared.

Between the unknown and the known,
Bewildered with the vision, I
Let go the bough, whose touch had shown
What hides from every eye:
The charm was snapped; the spell was o'er;
The forest lay there as before,
Mere lights and shadows, nothing more,
And winds that whispered by.

Fool
She's always dreaming—Nature. There she goes,
Putting it on her canvas in vast strokes
Of sunset: gold and cinnabar and rose,
That vision forth the glory, say, which glows
Around God's throne, transforming all those oaks.

Poet
Deep in the west
A tattered bulk of cloud,
A magic galleon, gold of hull and shroud,
Rolls,—ribbed with fire,—on some perilous quest:
Now, from deep rifts
Of darkening rose,
A dæmon castle, burning ruby, grows,—
An Afrit palace which enchantment lifts.

Fool
The hut on the hilltop,
The pool in the sand,
The rock by the wayside
Seem touched by a hand,
And answer a summons
To put off the old,
Discard their disguises,
And burn into gold.

Poet
Deep in the east
Th' anticipating sky
Silvers with light as of a presence nigh,
Divinity, shepherding clouds, pale, pearly fleeced;
Upon whose view,
From gradual deeps

Of glimmering dusk, huntress Diana leaps,
Her moonbeam-arrows spearing them through and through.

Fool

The heart of the clover,
The soul of the rose,
The spirits of water
And leaves in repose,
Dissolve their enchantment,
And tell to the dusk
The dreams that invest them
With music and musk.

Madmen or fools that maunder, men would say;
Who'd see no more there than mere golds and reds,
And name it simply “Sunset”; go their way,
Their minds upon their dinners and their beds.

Poet

We have our poetry and they have theirs:
Theirs takes a more material form than ours.—
How wild the woods smell now! how sweet the airs!
Look where the Twilight for her flight prepares;
And drops her brooch, the evening-star she wears,
At Night's dark feet, on Heaven's topmost towers.

When I am dead, my soul shall haunt these woods,
As bird or bee,
These dim, grave forests where no foot intrudes
Irreverently.

Where Spring proclaims herself in orchis pale
And moccasin-flower,
And many another bloom that tells its tale
To sun and shower.

Here shall my soul go singing all day long
With wren and thrush,
Or, with the bee, hum honey-sweet among
The hyssoped hush.

Or all night long, wild with the whippoorwill,
Wail to the moon;
Or with the moth slip glimmering, white and still,
Where flowers lie strewn.

Here I shall watch and see the ghosts go by
Of all the loves,
The forest lovers who have loved, as I,
Deep woods and groves.

And they will know me—not as bee or bird—
But for a soul
Through whom the forest speaks an ancient word
Of joy and dole.

And meditative moods of bliss and pain
Shall with me fare,
And thoughts, that haunt the shimmering sun and rain,
With irised hair.

And living visions too shall pass me by,
Or with me go
Singing of beauty, who with quiet eye
Shall bid me know.

And to my heart her message shall be clear
In ways unknown;
And dreams, that whispered at my mortal ear,
Shall there be shown.

And I shall speak then with the bird and bee,
And tree and flower,
And they shall know me part of all they see,
And bless the hour.

Fool

The dictionaries have a name for all
Who love the woods as you do. I shall call
My poet now,—that is, if he insist,—
No more mere Poet but Nemophilist.—
But dusk draws on, that is—the Elfins' dawn,
My little playmates'. Now their dance begins.
Look where their lanthorns flit, now bright, now wan.—
No fireflies they, but tripping Faerykins.

The Night puts on a strange disguise,
A mask and domino of flame,
Through which I see her stealthy eyes
Gaze with a look that has no name:
Before me seems to grow her dream,
Taking the form of gleam on gleam.

A million lights, a million stars
Of twinkling gold with emerald blent,
Between the woods and pasture bars,
Fashion another firmament,
Of faery fire and elfin flame,
That puts the heaven above to shame.

The cedar and the oak are hung
With will-o'-wisps that never cease,
And dark the twinkling fields among
They loom like monster Christmas trees,
Around which, glimmering, glide and glance
The torches of a goblin dance.

What faery fête is this she dreams,
Old Night? What revelry of damps
And dews? in which her darkness gleams
Pale-jewelled, hung with pixy lamps,
That work illusions, mysteries,
Fantastic, in the eye that sees.

Each moment flames a fiery sign
From blade to bush, from bush to tree;
A web of lights, a flickering line
Of stars that quiver constantly;

A pulse of gold that beats delight
Within the viewless veins of Night.

Oh, Puck-wild raptures of the dew,
Oh, Ariel transports of the dusk,
Now let my spirit join with you
And dance within Night's heart of musk,
Until, like you, it come to know
The ouphen wonders there that glow.

Poet

Join you the Masque of Night, but I must go.
I am not worthy of such confidence,
Ignorant, and skeptic often, as you know,
Of many things for which my mind's too dense.
My gentle Fool, to make the matter plain,
I fear I'd spoil your revel. You remain.
My heart stays with you by this forest pool,—
That better part of me men call the fool.

Now whirling flies, whose whine is like a sting,
Bred of the water, where at noon the snake
Rippled or wreathed, no longer rage and sing,
And by this wood-pool nothing is awake
Except the moth that, like a flower's ghost,
Searches the shadows for a dream long lost.

There in the dusk strange lights define themselves,
Glimmer on glimmer and green glow on glow,

Like some fantastic revel of the elves,
The fireflies flit their torches to and fro;
Twinkling in faery fête, a drowsy dance,
The pool repeats with starry necromance.

Hark!—to the pool is given a voice; a throat
Of raucous music, hoarsening the night;
Toad-tongued it jars the darkness with one note,
Making the silence guttural as with fright:
And now the oak with owlet speech replies,
The dark rock twitters into bat-winged cries.

And now the wood gives answer: fine and sharp,
Shrilling an insect syllable in each weed,
Protesting fiercely. On its cricket-harp
The darkness strums, while, like insistent seed,
The fireflies sow the night with flame on flame,
And the dark whippoorwill cries wild its name.

Now all the east's aglow: and, pale around,
Is pause. And now a rumor shakes the trees—
A wind that whispers of a beauty found,
Immortal, godlike, veiled in mysteries:
And now, upon the hilltop, look!—the moon,
Diana-like, breasting the woods that swoon.

Fool

Again the whippoorwill's dark keenings fall:
And in my heart they echo—sad, oh, sad!

In my fool heart, that cries for things it had,
When it was young; old things beyond recall.

An old house on a lonely hill;
An apple-tree before its door—
How oft I watched the Springtime spill
Pale petals on its old, worn sill!
And through faint boughs the May moon pour
Its light like some soft spirit!
And, oh, how wild the whippoorwill
Would call! how wildly weird and shrill,
By that gray house upon the hill,
And how I loved to hear it!

The tree is dead; the house is gone;
The old house by the apple-tree;
The whippoorwill that sang till dawn,
Where blossoms pelted lane and lawn,
Will sing no more for Spring and me,
Dim in the moonlight swinging:
But still, ah me! when Spring comes on,
Back to that place my soul is drawn,
Where, glimmering in the tree long gone,
That wild bird still is singing.

Poet

When fools wax sad their listeners must depart:
For Life demands of fools a merry heart.—
I too was young once, and have memories too.
But, ah, the little sister, whom I knew!

Little sister, faery sister, you whom often I have heard;
You, dim kin to all the wildflowers and to every wandering bird;
You, wild portion of all beauty, symbol of all greenwood lore,
Take me to your heart and hold me as you did in days of yore.

Little sister, elfin sister, let me feel your eyes again,
Where the April azure sparkled into dreams of sun and rain;
In whose deeps, as in high heaven, shot with shadow and with light,
Glowed the look of far Adventure and the lure and dare of Flight.

Little sister, shadow sister, let me hear your voice once more,
With the music of the genii opening an Aladdin door;
Where the call of every yearning, that the human heart has known,
Took me to its breast and held me, made my very soul its own.

Little sister, pixy sister, let me feel again your hands;
Let their touch again translate me to those far-off Wonderlands:

Lands of strange unknown allurements, old enchantments, once that held,
Drew my heart with faery fancies in the days when youth enspelled.

Little sister, forest sister, you, part bird and part a flower,
Lead me, as you often led me in my childhood, for an hour,
Past the ranges of the real, into lands where love allures,
Where the dreams of beauty wander with the magic that endures.

Little sister, wonder sister, ope again the gates that rose,
Built of mystery and marvel, in the walls of Let's-Suppose;
Of that city of old witchcraft, towered with Legend of all time,
Where we sat with Song and Story and with all the Sons of Rhyme.

Little sister, elfin sister, take me back into those fields,
Partly sunset, partly morning, where the warriors ride with shields;
Knightly Dreams of fame and glory, and the Daughters of Desire,
By their sides, on snow-white palfreys, wake in them the battle-fire.

Little sister, faery sister, tell me whither have you gone?
You, who whispered me in darkness and addressed me in the dawn:
You, who fostered me in childhood, told me dreams that should come true—
Little sister, little sister, ah, the dreams that went with you!

The Poet rises and departs. The Fool sits on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree, elbows on knees, and chin in palm. He appears to be listening to something sibilant in earth and air. Suddenly starting to his feet he gazes knowingly in a certain direction. Then smiling furtively to himself he steals cautiously forward, and, hollowing a hand to his mouth, talks mysteriously to the whispering woods.
So, so! my Little Sister, we will play.—
Come forth! come forth, O you my Poet lost!
I know the tree you hide in all the day.
Come forth, my Little Sister, and be tossed.—
Come! come! my Ladykin, no more delay!
Come forth! come forth! and bring along with you
Ariel and Puck, and all your playmates, pray,
And those lost dreams that our good poet knew.
Come forth, my Little Sister, come and play!

THE DRYADS

A ONE-ACT LYRICAL DRAMA OF ANCIENT GREECE

Scene: A deep and mighty Forest near the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly.

Time: Approaching the close of the Tenth Century, B. C., the day when through permission of the wood god, Pan, at the end of every hundred years, the Dryads are released from their tree boles.

A syrinx is heard. Then a murmur, indistinct at first, but gradually growing louder and clearer, like a great wind in the forest. All at once, shapes, silvery green and golden brown, are made visible, flowing like light from the hoary trunks of the trees.

First Dryad

Again the cycle rounds its years!
Again, o'erhead and all around
The night that clasped my beauty clears—
My limbs are free, my heart unbound.

Second Dryad

O beauty, mothered of the green
And gold that haunt the sacred wood,
Take heart once more and run between
The silence and the solitude.

A Third Dryad
(far off)

Come, where the moss spreads carpets cool:
The fern hangs fold on emerald fold!
Come, where the hyssop banks the pool
With heaven; poppies nod their gold.

A Fourth Dryad
(approaching)

Bend down, O boughs! and blow, O leaves!
And, winds, come take us by the hair!
Come, dance with us, where nothing grieves,
And with our wild hearts laugh at care!

First Dryad

As in a pool a pebble drops,
The clouds let down a little breeze,
And round the forest's circled tops
A ripple runs like breaking seas.

Second Dryad

Oh, let it lead us, guide us, to
Our heart's desire beyond the sun,—
The Dreams, Faun-like, who still pursue
Our love, and ever round us run.

The Dreams, the Fauns, whom no man sees,
Only our eyes that watch behind
The bark, and through investing trees
Behold what haunts the wildwood's mind. ...

Third Dryad
(far away)

Hark, how the cascade calls us there!
Wild-tossing locks of foam and moss—
Come, let us trail with hers our hair,
And trip her Naiad limbs across!

Fourth Dryad

Now arm in arm, around and round,
In wildflower cirques of pearl and blue,
Dance down the wind, without a sound,
And wake the new buds, breaking through.

Then, face to heaven, light as air,
Where every leaf winks wet its eye
Of dew, that starred Dawn's chilly hair,
Come flit in glimmering beauty by.

The forms of the Dryads, who have been circling and murmuring together to the chanting of the four voices, suddenly arrest their movements, and lean listening intently to a sound that seems to rise up from underground.
Fifth Dryad

But, oh, what calls! what cry intrudes?
Whose voice is that? what sound of moan?

Voice from Underground

It is the deep roots of the woods
Crying for freedom like your own.

Fifth Dryad

Where is god Pan?

Many Dryads
(near and far away)

O Pan! Pan! Pan!

Voices from Underground

Make free our forms, whose twisted hold
Has grasped through many a century's span
The mighty forest, dark and old.

Many Voices
(windily, far and near)

Pan! Pan! god Pan!

Fifth Dryad
(beseechingly)

Oh, set these free!
Unloose from them the knotted dark!
From coiling shapes that none can see,
Like us, who crouch behind the bark!

A syrinx is heard, bird-like, approaching through the trees. Then a voice, seemingly that of Pan, speaks.

But all your praying is in vain!
Again on you the ancient doom
Falls, and your beauty once again
Must grow into a living tomb.

The bird-like syrinx is heard again, pensively, plaintively, gradually dying away in the distance. The glimmering forms of the Dryads remain frozen, as it were, beside the trunks of their respective trees. Unutterably sad the voice that first announced triumphantly their freedom now pierces the silence of the listening forest.
First Dryad

Around my form again I feel
The solid darkness close and creep!—
Farewell! farewell! till Pan unseal
The night again wherein we sleep.

As they are slowly withdrawn into the enveloping trunks of the trees, many voices are heard, lyrically; finally blending more and more whisperingly with the movements of the branches and the leaves, until, more and more indistinct, the leafy sound, rising and falling at regular intervals, is hardly distinguishable from the wind in the woods.
A Voice

If you hearken and heed in the forest,
When the wind blows soft above,
You may hear, in the bending branches,
Our wild hearts beat with love,
And our airy bodies move.

Echo

With lights of green and gold,
And fragrance manifold,
They mark the moss and mold.

Another Voice

As we glimmer and glide and glimmer,
Dim-limbed of the wind and sun,
In the woods an old enchantment,
Like a drowsy dream, is spun,
A dream that's never done.

Echo

And tender as the blue
Of wildflowers wet with dew
Their soft eyes gaze at you.

A Far-Off Voice

And, oh, when the fountains call us
Through veils of the foam and moss,
How we dance to the cascade's music,
And trail like mist across,
With rainbowed hair atoss!

Echo

How sweet, where waters flow,
And fern and wildflower grow,
To watch them come and go!

First Voice

But ever a sound of sorrow
Breaks in on our revery:
The sob of the roots of the forest,
That hold to heaven each tree. ...
What now shall set them free?—

Echo

Alas! if I but knew
A charm that would undo!
But lo! a prisoner too
Am I! am I!
A prisoner too, like you,
Until I die.

Their voices fade away in a long-drawn sigh, and the forest is slowly darkening when the bushes are cautiously parted and two young Fauns appear in the circle of trees, glimmering into dusk.
First Faun

They laughed at me.

Second Faun

They scoffed at me.
They cried me fool. They called me fey.

First Faun

But Pan has shut each in her tree,
And we are free to run and play.

Second Faun

How old they are!—But we are young.

First Faun

No matter! we are wise as they.
And not so close of speech and tongue.—
Now, brother, tell me: Yesterday
What happened you beside this way.

Second Faun

It was among these very woods,
When darkness closed the wild hills in,
And with a swiftness, that eludes,
The spider-life came forth to spin:
Between a mighty tree and rock,
Dim in a ray of moonlight thin,
I saw Pan sitting, wild of lock,
His huge hands resting on his chin,
Where crickets made a drowsy din.

His beard poured down a waterfall
Before him; and his moss-like hair
Rolled silence round him like a wall
Around a tower brown and bare:
His tree-like limbs, that spanned the stream,

His shoulders, like an eagle's lair,
Loomed, lichen-mottled: and the gleam
Of glowworms streamed into the air
From out the starlight of his stare.

His body bristled thick with thorns
And awns of wild-oats, like a hill;
And like the toiling of the Norns,
His strength, though quiet, was not still.
The twisted roots that were his feet,
From which the waters ran a rill,
Were made the temporary seat
Of voices wild, batrachian-shrill,
That all the darkness seemed to fill.

The fingers tangled in his beard
Were knotted like the boughs of trees;
And on them gaunt the owl appeared;
The nightingale made melodies:
And through the forest evermore
There went a droning as of bees—
The calling of Pan's heart, that poured
Protection on the least of these—
The forest-life that clasped his knees.

First Faun

'T is well. And I, too, yesterday
Was lucky. Think what I have seen!

Second Faun

What was it? Come; no more delay!

First Faun

But in what favor you have been!
In Pan's own presence: and have learned
Of Godhead's self; no go-between!
While I have watched, all undiscerned,
A young Leimoniad.

Second Faun

You mean
The one you chased here o'er the green?

First Faun

The same.—Her breasts were tipped with coral:
Her mouth and cheeks were each a rose:
Her hair was golden-green, like sorrel
That into starry blossom glows.
As some slim bough the south wind blows
She swayed beside the bramble thicket,
Light-tilted on her tiny toes,
Held in her hand a shrilling cricket.

The grace of wind; the poise of dew;
The wild alertness of a flower,
Were in her limbs that glanced and blew
Through blossoms like an April shower,
That fills a rainbow-rounded hour.
Before her danced a butterfly,
Blue as the petal of a flower,
Swayed by the import of her eye.

As some wild plant within it closes
All fragrance that its bloom reveals,
Her breathing held a sense of roses,
An attar such as rain unseals.
And with such swiftness as one feels
When breezes sweep one way the clover,
She showed the wind her twinkling heels
And tossing locks with bees a-hover.

Not mine to tell you where she went,
Or how before my eyes she faded;
How for a moment there she bent
And from its bud a bloom unbraided;
Or how the forest pool she waded,
And from its ooze the lily lifted,
Then with a glance the young bird aided,
Who from its nest in fright had drifted.

Second Faun

But, brother, say, did you not follow?

First Faun

Nay. Like a mist athwart the dawn
She gleamed an instant in the hollow,
Burned into beauty and was gone.

Second Faun

Had it been I, as I'm a Faun!
I'd caught her hair.

First Faun

Nay; none might capture
That nymph, for whom each flower put on
Joy, and each leaf looked love and rapture.

Second Faun

Look where the crocus and amaracus,
The cistus, cyclamen, and helichrys,
Wave their sweet fingers sleepily at us—

First Faun

As if they wished to fling a good-night kiss.

Second Faun

Nay! nay! to point us where some young Nymph sleeps—
But hark! who comes?—What is it runs and leaps?

The ferns and underbrush to the right of them are violently agitated and a young Satyr leaps out.
Satyr

Brothers, have you beheld her?—Passed she here?—
Far have I followed.

First Faun

No one passed this way.

Second Faun

What was she like?

Satyr

The dreamy close of day,
With starlight in her eyes, and love and fear.

First Faun

Tell us about her.—Have you done her wrong?—
And to what race of nymphs does she belong?

Satyr

As I lay on a rock to-day
And watched the sunset die away,
A wood mist took on azure form,
And gestured with a windy arm
For me to follow through the gray
Old forest to some place of charm,
A place all wild with foam and spray.

And there, within a murmuring dell,
There always seemed to lie a spell:
And, underneath a hollow stone,
A water-dæmon seemed to moan,
Condemned forever there to dwell

And sob in sorrow: wildly blown
Its foaming hair about me fell.

I raised the rock that held it bound,
And, lo, it changed into a sound,
A shape of music, viewless yet,
Breathing of fern and violet:
And from the sound a form unwound,
A silvery thing, that twinkled wet,
A rainbow winding her around.

She on my eyelids kissed me thrice,
And clasped me with white arms of ice;
And gazing on her, light as loam
My heart grew.—I would bear her home,
This Naiad creature with wild eyes,
Born of the flowers and the foam,
And make her mine in other wise.

But she like water swung and swayed;
Then like a ripple tripped the glade,
A Limnad, or a Naiad thing,
That fluttered now a rainbow wing,
And now a prism'd shine and shade,
Weaving a cirque, a bubble ring,
Wherein my satyr heart was laid.

And then, as softly still as moss
Greening some drowsy rock across,
She stole beside me: and I felt
Her mouth on mine; her breath, that smelt

Of fern and flower.—At a loss
I leapt to seize. ... She seemed to melt
And vanish with wild locks atoss.

And in her place—I rubbed my eyes—
I saw a trailing wood mist rise;
An azure form, an irised gray,
That seemed to motion me the way
That I must follow. In this wise
I hither came. Now tell me pray,
Passed she this way, in some disguise?

First Faun

Naught saw I save a topaz gleam
Flit through these glades, a sunset beam.

Satyr

'T was she I know. But whither fled?

First Faun

I know not. Haply overhead,
Where, yonder, falls the mountain stream.

Satyr

Farewell.—Mayhap't is as you said.
There I perhaps may find my dream.

He departs, leaping lightly into the shadows. The Fauns seat themselves at the foot of a gigantic oak tree, and stare steadily in the direction which the Satyr has taken.
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Dusk deepens. A pipe is heard, far off in the forest; a lyric note—like that of a nightingale.
First Faun

What does the flute say, brother?

Second Faun

Dream, dream, dream.

First Faun

Tell me the dream it sings to you. I hear,
But I am tired and only wish to sleep.

Second Faun

Sleep then; and let me murmur it in your ear.
Now I remember: it was but last year
This thing befell me. Still the old trees keep
A record of that happiness, I deem,
And this dim moment brings its beauty near.

First Faun

Tell me of that lost happiness. Very dear
It must have been, since now it sings so sweet.
And brings the wildflowers crowding to your feet.

Second Faun

'T was in this selfsame forest,
When Spring walked here and dreamed,

And everywhere, in earth and air,
The God of Beauty gleamed:

'T was in this selfsame forest,
Lost in the oldtime hills,
When every rock the ladysmock
And crocus blossom frills:

'T was in this selfsame forest,
Beneath a flowering thorn,
I saw the side of a tree divide
And a dryad presence born.

A shape of emerald shadow,
The sunlight arrowed through,
Who left the print of her feet in mint
And windflowers wet with dew.

Her hair was corn-ripe amber,
And golden-long as moss,
And the woodland glanced into light and danced
Whenever she made it toss.

Her eyes were mountain azure,
Star-sapphired, ray on ray,
And wherever they fell a wildflower-bell
Leapt blue beside the way.

Her mouth, an apple-blossom.
Her tongue, a rosy bee;
And whenever she spoke a bird awoke
And a wing beat in the tree.

And I was fain to follow,
Forever and a day,
And make her mine as the eglantine
Makes its the heart of May.

And oft she turned with laughter,
And oft she tossed her head;
And I followed on till the day was gone,
And the sunset's rose burned red.

And still I followed after,
And still she fled afar,
Till eve was done and, one by one,
Night bloomed with star on star.

And then once more she beckoned,
And wild of heart drew near,
And I felt her breast to my bosom pressed,
And her wild-fern breath in ear.

And what to me she whispered,
And what my heart replied,
The wild, deep soul of the solitude
Dreamed, and the wind in the ancient wood
Into starry being sighed.

First Faun

Silence. The reticent stream makes not a sound;
The forest sleeps and winds are hushed around.

Slowly the moon, like some bright Oread, breasts,
With pearl-white bosom bared, the vasty wood,
And a pale moment on the mountain rests,
Startled, astonished at the solitude.
Silence. A bird stirs in the nested leaves,
And the deep bosom of the forest heaves.

Second Faun

Murmur. Conspiracies of tempest pass,
Swaying the forest as deer sweep the grass:
Æolian raiment rustles; and dim feet
Of darkness dance, anticipating dreams
That die before fulfilment; whispers meet
And syllabled voices of the hills and streams.
Murmur. The Night Wind passes.—Hark! again,
Far off, the caution of approaching rain.

They stretch themselves at the foot of two gigantic trees, and sleep. Silence, save for that indefinable movement which is ever perceptible in a forest no matter how windless the night may be. It is as if invisible and ministering forces were assembling, above and below the earth, to perform certain duties, the fructifying and finishing of fruit and flower and leaf. The moon has risen and pours her pale light down on the recumbent forms of the Fauns. All is
76

mystery and moonlight and shadow. Dimly at first, and seemingly remote as lost antiquity, a voice is heard, murmurous with a mighty music, to which another voice, as remote and majestic, replies, making the forest-hush melodious with meaning.
An Ancient Oak

I heard a voice in the forest
When the world was thrilled with morn;
And its sound was the sound of waking
And vision a moment born:
And it said to my heart: “Behold me!—
But let thy Dryad beware:
For I am she, the deity,
Whose beauty wakes despair.”
And full in the dawn I saw her,
As Actæon saw of old,
The perilous virgin presence,
With gaze of green and gold:
As Actæon saw I saw her,
White-limbed where the morning wells,—
And the hound-like sense of that insolence
Has silenced my soul with spells.

An Ancient Beech

I heard a voice in the forest
When the earth was hushed with eve;
And its sound was the sound of slumber
And dreams that none perceive:

And it called to my soul: “Behold me!—
But let one look suffice;
For I am she, the divinity,
Whom none shall gaze on twice.”
And I looked as looked Endymion,
And saw her shimmering there,
With limbs of pearl and mother-of-pearl,
A crescent in her hair:
As Endymion saw I saw her,—
Like the moon on Tempe's streams,—
And the light of her look and the joy I took
Have blinded my heart with dreams.

With the hushing of the voices of the trees, myriad insect sounds make themselves audible, 'mid which is heard the fine, fibril pipings of a syrinx; and suddenly, in a whirl of creatures of the forest, Pan, blowing fiercely on his pipes, dances down the glade. The Fauns stir in their sleep; rubbing their eyes they leap to their feet and follow after him. Scene closes.

THE COMMON EARTH

I

Sounds of children at their play,
Laughter dropping young and clear
As dew from out the flowers of May:
Murmured songs and wings in flight,
When Summer takes with warmth the year:
Far off thunder, never near,
Dreamy with a strange delight,
Drowsy with a thrill of fear,
And the sound of rain at night—
All are pleasant to the ear.—
Then the wood-bird's plaintive call
Overhead at evenfall:
Insects singing in the weeds
When the dusk is blue and still,
And the full moon breasts the hill
Like a sylvan from her rill;
And the wind among the reeds
Whispers, and they stir and fill
Silence with a glimmering sound
As of spirit things around,
Twinkling mist-like o'er the meads,
Spilling earth with dewy beads:
Mellow music of the frog,
Where the night her elf-lights leads,—

Faeryland and dreams ajog
With their torches, drums and reeds,
Dancing over brook and bog:
Or where waters, bright with moon,
Sigh of sleep a faery tune,
Dreamy stir of boughs of June.—
These are pleasant to the ear,
Common ear;
Things the Earth's old heart holds dear.

II

The face of one we love near by,
And friendship's smile to which we cleave
Through life's long mutability,
Are pleasant to the eye.—
Gold-flickerings on an August eve
In one rose-cloud the day may leave,
In dominating majesty,
Constant in its inconstancy,
To hold the sunset and one star,—
A lamp a sylphid swings afar
In caverns dim of porphyry,
Or grottoes pale of airy pearl;—
How pleasant to the eye!—
Cloud-Alps whose battlements unfurl
Heat-lightnings; and along which fly
The colors of a quiet sky,
That lift the thought to things on high,
Beyond this world that we perceive;
And waken in the heart a sigh,

With a sweet yearning still to grieve;—
Colors in a quiet sky;—
Cascades falling, gleam in gleam,
Where the forest shadows dream,
And the wildflowers, eye to eye,
In the stream gaze slenderly:
Firefly glimmers, amber-green,
Over swards dim-elfed with dew,—
Links that torch the faery queen
On her bat-wing through the blue,
When the crescent moon hangs new;—
Or, upon a winter's night,
Glancing through a window-light,
Seen afar, the fire's red glow,
Elf-like dancing on the snow,
Leading back to long-ago:—
All are pleasant to the eye,
Common eye;
Things the old Earth holds us by.

III

Childhood's breath, divine with health,
And heavenly sweet as hydromel;
Cheeks, whose roses blush in stealth
And of the heart's young secret tell:
Rain-odors blown from fields of hay,
New-reaped and warm, at close of day:
And from the orchard, near the well,
Fruit-musk of ripeness full that fell,
With muffled thud, through heavy boughs;

And honeyed odors, sweet-asway,
Bee-clung and bruised, beside the way,—
These are pleasant to the smell:
And scents that sweeten an old house,
That hugs its garden to its heart,
And makes itself of it a part,
Inseparably; the ancient spouse
Of rose and pink and hollyhock,
And many a spicy-smelling stock,
Round which the moths in ermine dart
When twilight calls them forth, and eve's
First star looks trembling through the leaves,
And up the lane come slow the cows,
Tinkling a dim and mellow bell,
What time the wood-smoke tells of home,
And in the woods the leafy loam
Breathes of the autumn soon to come:—
These are pleasant to the smell,
Common smell,
Things that hold us like a spell.

IV

A child's soft hair beneath the hand,
Through which the heart may understand
The innocence which means so much
To all we've longed for and have planned;—
The thoughts, the faery fancies,—all
That keeps our hearts in childhood's thrall,
Subservient to and glad of such.
A child's soft hair beneath the hand—
How pleasant to the touch,

And intimate with love's demand!
Then water-lilies, plucked from cool
Dark depths of some old woodland pool,
Where all the shadows wild remain,
Unmoving, dreaming steadily,
As in dark eyes a mystery,
Elusive with the beautiful:
These are pleasant; and the rain
On orchard blossoms, sweet a-strain,
Through which, when Spring comes windily,
One seems to feel he clasps her there,
Beauty, the hoiden, wild as fair,
Her rose-leaf lips on his again,
While 'thwart his face blows wet her hair:—
And then, when dusk has dewed the heat,
The feel of grass beneath the feet,
As when in childhood brown and bare
Along the summer we did fare,
Without a fear, without a care:—
The feel of grass!—How young and sweet
The feel of grass beneath the feet!—
Ah, how pleasant to the touch,
Common touch!
Things of earth that help us much.

V

Water from a mountain spring
Out of crystal bubbling:
Wells, where wild the ferns are laced,
And the mountain blossoms cling—

Ah, how pleasant to the taste!
Dew within a wildflower's throat,
Round whose bloom the wild bees sing,
Hummingbirds flash out and float:
Sweetness, in which may be traced
Spice of wildness, tang of clove,
Color even, interwove,—
These are pleasant to the taste.
Wine and pungence of the grape,
Crushed with purple on the lips;
And such sap as Summer sips
From a leaf-cup or a flower,
Or the berry that she strips,
Dewy at the morning hour,
From her briar-tangled bower;
These are pleasant to the lips:
Racy ripeness; drowsy drips;
Honey of the bag o' the bee;
And the cool acidity
Of the sorrel: tastes that teased
Childhood's palate; sweet and sour;
All that once our playtime pleased:
These are pleasant to the taste,
Common taste,
Things where earth its name hath traced.

VI

These are pleasures that to life
Bring no strife,
But content and quiet days,

In God's praise;
Making here, in many ways,
Something even
That approaches near to Heaven:
These be common to all life,
Man and wife;
Common to all human hearts,—
Hearts, whose tastes are clean and sane:
Simple joys, that still obtain;
That comprise within their parts
Nothing which life may disdain;
Simple joys, and pleasures plain,
Common to all human hearts,
Souls that know no modern arts,
Mad desires that vex the brain,
Futile, volatile, and vain
As the castles built in Spain,
Kingdoms on eidolon charts. ...
Things that help the human heart,—
Common heart,—
And are an undying part
Of the life that's clean and sane:
Simple life and quiet heart—
God be thanked that such remain!

A FAERY BURIAL

Scene: Midsummer Night; a wooded and moonlit hollow thro' which foams and falls a rocky and ferny stream.
First Faery
Bring the firefly for to light
Lanterns of our funeral rite;
Swing their glimmer to and fro
So that Faeryland may know
That a faerymaid lies low
As a flower;
One who tripped it but ago
Merrily, oh, merrily,
Hour on hour,
In the moonlight's primrose glow,
On the hilltop, on the lea,
In the hollow,
Light of heart as bird or bee:
Who no more on hill or shore
Now shall trip it merrily,
In the starlight and the moon
To the cricket's creaking tune.
Faeries, follow!
O-hey! O-hey!
Elf and fay,
Come away, come away!
Follow, faeries, follow!

Second Faery
Bring the glowworm with its torch
For to light our funeral march;
Bring the beetle with his drone
For to drowsily intone
Pixy grief and pixy moan:
From the thicket
Bring the cricket,
Who beneath a hollow stone
Maketh sorrow all alone:
Let him make for her a rhyme,
To which all our thoughts shall chime,
Sadly chime,
In the hollow;
While the flowers all keep time,
Mournful time.—
Faeries, follow!
Eglantine,
And Columbine,
Troop in line!
Follow, faeries, follow!

Third Faery
Bring the harebell, hollow blue,
Clappered with a bead of dew;
Bring the wild-bean and the pea,
Little bells of fragrancy,
Let them ring a melody;
Hang them o'er us
On a web of witchery;

They her requiem shall be;
Let them swing there solemnly,
Solemnly;
Toll in chorus
Dirges for her lying here,
Lying here,
In the hollow;
Who no more shall lean her ear
To a flower; there to hear
Faery music, crystal clear
In its heart of honey-cheer.
Bear her now away from here
On a petal for her bier:
Faeries, follow!
Larkspur, Phlox,
From the rocks
Twinkle down with loosened locks!—
Follow, faeries, follow.

Fourth Faery
Close her tiny coffin up,
Fashioned from an acorn-cup;
Dig her grave where she was born
Underneath the elfin thorn.—
Ah, that fay should die forlorn!
Dawn should startle
Her: who stopped and stayed till morn
Gazing on a mortal-born
Youth, whose hair was gold as corn,
Who returned her love with scorn—

Foolish mortal!
He, too, now shall die forlorn,
Love forlorn.—
Would that she had turned ere day
From the hollow!
Had the red cock, far away,
Crowed to warn her, then a ray
Had not pierced her heart, sweet fay!
Cruel morning so to slay!
Faeries, follow!
Elf and sprite,
Down the night,
Follow, faeries, follow!

All Four Faeries
Let the hornet and the bee
Sent'nel her virginity:
Let the wasp and dragonfly
Guard the spot where she doth lie,
Where the hollow waters sigh
And the glimmering winds go by,
Bearing wild the owlet's cry.—
None must know where she doth lie,
None must know that faeries die!—
Leave no token
Here to draw a human eye:
None must know that faeries die.—
Leave unbroken
Cups of moss and ferns and flowers,
Wilding flowers,
In the hollow;

Naught must point to what was ours,
Faerymaid who once was ours.—
Leave her now to moon and showers,
That shall soon transmute her powers. ...
Come away!
Faeries, follow!
Come away!
The east grows gray!—
Leave her here to sleep alway:
Come away!'t is break of day!
Follow, faeries, follow!

TWO FAERIES AND A FLOWER

Scene: A moonlit forest of early Spring.
First Faery

Hither, sister, lend an ear:
What is this which now I hear
In this wildflower, frail and white,
Glimmering in the April night:
Is't a dream it yields unto?—
Or the kisses of the dew?

Second Faery

You a Faery, and not know
What a flower thinks!—Ho! ho!—
That's the ecstasy it feels
At the beauty it reveals:
'T is the thought within its heart,
Of its buds and blooms a part.

First Faery

Sister, sweetheart, tell me now—
What is this within the bough?
Cautiously it feels its way
As if fearful to betray
Some old secret?—Is it mind,
Working in the darkness blind?

Second Faery

Brother, you should know this thing:
'T is the sense of blossoming:
'T is the beauty there awaiting,
And within its self debating
When to push forth sap and scent,
And again be evident.

First Faery

Sister, tell me: Do you know
What is this that moves below
In the earth?—What gropes and feels
Like a blind-worm, mole at heels?—
Is't an ant that digs its home,
Laboring under clay and loam?

Second Faery

Brother, you should know this sound!—
'T is the seed beneath the ground;
Acorn splitting through its husk,
Busy in the under dusk,
Thrusting down its coil of root,
And uptwisting green its shoot.

First Faery

Sister, here's a cobweb thing,
Fine as moonlight. Let us swing.—
Listen!—Are we near a nest?—
What was that I heard or guessed?

What keeps singing?—Can it be
Some wild bird I cannot see?

Second Faery

Brother, you have ears and eyes,
Yet you are not over wise.—
What you hear now,—listen well,—
Is a bird within its shell
Taking form: beneath its wings
'T is its heart you hear that sings.

First Faery

Sister, see! there goes a snail:
On that fern it leaves a trail
Silver gray.—Come; get astride:
Down this cobweb let us slide.—
Tell me, sweetheart, is it true,
Mortals oft come here to woo?

Second Faery

Brother, once,—oh, long ago!—
Here I saw them walking slow:
One a man and one a maid.
There was starlight in the glade.
Long I listened in the fern,
But of them could nothing learn.

First Faery

Did he kiss her? Did she sigh?
Or did they go silent by?—

Were their faces pale with bliss?—
Human love they say's like this:
Very sweet and sad and strange,
Far beyond our faery range.

Second Faery

You have said it: They seemed sad,
Happy too. A something had
Entered in their lives denied
To the faery-life that spied.
Oh, how greatly did my heart
Envy them love's human part!

First Faery

Since you saw those lovers you
Have become quite different too.

Second Faery

Sad and wise?—It well may be:
'T is the soulless part in me,
That keeps crying night and day,
“Would that I were not a fay!”

First Faery

Do you love me?

Second Faery

Ah, you know.

First Faery

When I kiss you thus and so,
Sweetheart, are you sad or glad?

Second Faery

Very glad.—But they were sad.

First Faery

That's because they're mortal-born. ...
Come away! Let's dance till morn.

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:

100

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,

101

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.

102

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:

103

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.

Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass., September, 1911.

104

A PATH TO THE WOODS

Its friendship and its carelessness
Did lead me many a mile,
Through goat's-rue, with its dim caress,
And pink and pearl-white smile;
Through crowfoot, with its golden lure,
And promise of far things,
And sorrel with its glance demure
And wide-eyed wonderings.

It led me with its innocence,
As childhood leads the wise,
With elbows here of tattered fence,
And blue of wildflower eyes;
With whispers low of leafy speech,
And brook-sweet utterance;
With bird-like words of oak and beech,
And whistlings clear as Pan's.

It led me with its childlike charm,
As candor leads desire,
Now with a clasp of blossomy arm,
A butterfly kiss of fire;
Now with a toss of tousled gold,
A barefoot sound of green,
A breath of musk, of mossy mold,
With vague allurements keen.

105

It led me with remembered things
Into an oldtime vale,
Peopled with faery glimmerings,
And flower-like fancies pale;
Where fungous forms stood, gold and gray,
Each in its mushroom gown,
And, roofed with red, glimpsed far away,
A little toadstool town.

It led me with an idle ease,
A vagabond look and air,
A sense of ragged arms and knees
In weeds grown everywhere;
It led me, as a gypsy leads,
To dingles no one knows,
With beauty burred with thorny seeds,
And tangled wild with rose.

It led me as simplicity
Leads age and its demands,
With bee-beat of its ecstasy,
And berry-stained touch of hands;
With round revealments, puff-ball white,
Through rents of weedy brown,
And petaled movements of delight
In roseleaf limb and gown.

It led me on and on and on,
Beyond the Far Away,
Into a world long dead and gone,—
The world of Yesterday:

106

A faery world of memory,
Old with its hills and streams,
Wherein the child I used to be
Still wanders with his dreams.

107

THE DREAMS OF SUMMER

Now drowsy Summer takes the world
And rocks it in her arms,
A poppy flower, it seems, soft curled
Upon her breast that warms.
Among the fields with Indolence,
In gypsy gown of ragged gold,
She walks; or by some tangled fence
Sits with the Dreams of old.

Upstarting when, in rebel red,
The Sunset pitches camp
On uplands of the heaven o'erhead,
She lights her signal lamp,
The moon, she swings so all may see
The twilight way which she must take,
Putting to bed the bird and bee,
And life in field and brake.

When Night leads from the folded hills
Its clan of gypsy dreams,
Upon her cricket-flute she shrills,
And scatters glowworm gleams;
Then slips the moon-moth from its weed
On pearl-orbed wings of seal and tan,
And calls the wild Stealth forth to feed
That lives in fear of man.

108

She drives the warm winds through the trees,
And thuds the earth with fruit;
The tumbled ripeness, no one sees,
Smells bruised beneath the foot:
She herds the sky's cloud-fleeces white
On acres of the star-flowered blue,
And sows the dusk with firefly-light,
And plants it with the dew.

Dim in the East, when stars grow wan,
On housewife knees she kneels,
And blows the hearthfire ash of dawn
Which red her face reveals:
And then down-lying, morning's rose
Stuck in a cloud of tawny locks,
She dozes in the garden close
Among the hollyhocks.

Falls fast asleep; then, half aware,
Beside the sleepy stream,
Stoops, and her hot face in its hair
Startles her like a dream:
And pale with fear she turns away,
And to her hounds, the wood-winds, calls,
Who, mad with haste, set all asway,
Where swift her shadow falls.

And from the hills on lightning feet
Her whippers-in, the thunders, race,
While through a veil of rain and heat
Earth shows a frightened face:

109

Till deep within the cloud-walled West
Eve lights a witch's windowpane,
Where shapes, in gold and scarlet dressed,
Show where she dreams again.

110

HARVESTING

I

It's—Hey, for the dell, oh! when harvest is yellow,
And orchards hang mellow and appled each tree:
It's—Leave the ripe acres, the reapers and rakers,
And all the haymakers and wander with me,
O girl, like a poppy full blown for the bee!
With cheeks like brown berries,
And lips like wild cherries,
And beauty, I swear it, far sweeter to see
Than Summer in blossom, deep Summer in blossom,
With clover-sweet bosom and heart of a bee.—
It's—Hey, for the dell, oh! and tryst by the tree.

II

And what will they think, oh! when sunset is pink, oh!
And little stars wink, oh! like buds in the blue?
When into the gloaming we two go a-roaming,
Like birds that are homing, when fireflies are few,

111

O girl, like a wildrose full blown for the dew:
With hair like the twilight's,
And eyes like dusk's high lights,
And body a garden that Love wanders through,
A garden of roses, moon-lilies and roses,
Whose beauty uncloses to kiss of the dew.—
Ah, what will they think, oh! those stars in the blue?

112

SABBATH

I

All is repose,
Where swaths of summer, laid in hay-sweet rows,
Make musk the fields through which the pathway goes
Unto a woodland-wall where cedars dream,
And roses shred their petals, one by one:
Where, slumbrous silver, leaps a little stream,
Making a murmurous glimmer in the sun,
And on a log, a slender streak of gray
Against the noon, a small green heron stands,
Moveless as meditation.—Far away
Dreams seem to camp among the meadow-lands.—
Rest rules the day.

II

Night comes to woo,
Mid heaps of clovered fragrance, cool with dew,
And fields of flowers a gateway leads into,
Under the shadow of great chestnut trees
Where moonlight waits, a presence, that awakes

113

Cricket and katydid and sleeping breeze,
And shakes the attar from the wildrose brakes:
And now the darkness opens many an eye
Of firefly gold; and gowns herself in white,
Far-following veils of mist; and with a sigh,
Voluptuous-drawn, resigns her to delight.—
Love rules the night.

114

DESERTED

The old house leans upon a tree
Like some old man upon a staff:
The night wind in its ancient porch
Sounds like a hollow laugh.

The heaven is wrapped in flying clouds,
As grandeur cloaks itself in gray:
The starlight flitting in and out,
Glints like a lanthorn ray.

The dark is full of whispers. Now
A fox-hound howls: and, through the night,
Like some old ghost from out its grave,
The moon comes, misty white.

115

THE WOOD STREAM

As night drew on, around the quiet stream
The wildflower heads leaned closer, and the trees
Muttered a little, as if half in dream;
And through the wood, trailing sweet robes, a breeze,—
Like some dim elfin gathering perfume,—
Faltered a moment ere it sank in gloom.

Then all was still—except that one small stone
Protested, whimpering, in the water's way;
Petulant, resistant, where the cascade shone,
Wrapping its tumult in a gown of spray,
Like some pale mother who would put to rest
Her child, a starbeam brooching her bright breast.

More careful of the nest upon its arm,
That hugged the wild-bird, seemed each bush and tree:
And in its heart, securing it from harm,
Each wildflower seemed to clasp more close its bee:
And even Earth with more protection seemed
To hide the things that in her bosom dreamed.

116

Save for the stream, to which the hush gave heed,
And little winds that sighed and, whispering, rose,
And donned their rustling robes with infant speed,
Tiptoe, regardful of the wood's repose,
The night was still.—And then, as if aware
That all was ready, radiance filled the air.

Godiva-like, the moon rode into sight,
Cautions, yet confident that no one sees;
The naked moon, astonishing the night,
Brightening the thoroughfares of all the trees:
Holding her course unfaltering and sure,
Knowing herself as beautiful as pure.

117

WORM AND FLY

Unseen the lizard, in reptilian night,
Evolves the hole wherein are placed its eggs,
Small, yolky oblongs of membraneous white,
Seed-like that put forth legs.

Beneath the stone, that lies where long it fell,
The pale grub sleeps until the Summer sings,
Then, blindly groping, splits its locust shell
And whirls rejoicing wings.

Upon the oak bough, swelling with the sap,
The gray-green gall rounds, like a wart, its sphere,
Wherein the woodfly's whining sting shall tap,
And bore its thin way clear.

I stand and wonder, pausing mid the trees,
And question what they purpose—worm and fly;
Unbeautiful; and made, it seems, to tease,
And weary ear and eye.

Does Nature blunder into forms? Does she
Count these as true expressions,—fly and worm?

118

And Man?—perhaps her one mistake is he—
Slow-toiling out his term.

Hag-lights and fox-fire and the wisp that flies—
Are they not parts too of great Nature's scheme?—
'T is flame that shows where buried treasure lies,
And night, that makes it gleam.

119

THE OLD BAYOU

The rosy egret, Sunset,
Wings up the moss-gray skies;
And creeping under clouds, the Dusk,
A burning beetle, dies.
Round cypress, oak, and willow
A raucous music cries,
And from the water, dark beneath,
The mist's white shadows rise.
And glimmering down the bayou,
With starlight-twinkling eyes,
The Twilight oars her blue canoe
Pale-prowed with fireflies.
Her owlet call the Darkness
Utters in vague surmise;
Then with a sibilant voice afar
The bayou Hush replies.
Now Night the cricket hinges
Of her old doorway tries,
And stealing through the House of Dreams
Sleep to the silence sighs.
Wide to the dark one window
She flings, and from it flies
A moth—the round, white, wandering Moon,
Whose ghostly image lies

120

Upon the bayou's bosom
In strangely shimmering wise—
A phantom barque with a phantom maid,
Who a phantom paddle plies.

121

BUTTERFLIES

Freebooters of the sunlight, blue and black,
Glimmering with gold you go your velvet ways
From flower to flower, from weed to weed, and back,
Demanding toll of all the honeyed days,
Nature accommodating all your needs,
As once she did when with unaltered face
She fed the worm as now the fly she feeds.

The worm! how long since you forgot the worm
Unsightly that you were? the chrysalis
Your life endured; the dark, prenatal term
Of your existence, wherein naught of bliss
Or beauty was.—Now out of night returned,
Pinioned and plumed, your life is one long kiss
On Summer's languid lips for which you yearned.

This was your hope in darkness, where your dreams
Were all of wings and rainbows, manifold,
Which transformation touched and changed to gleams,
Materializing their ethereal gold,
That burst your prison house and rose to range
With joy, forgetting all the life of old;
The new accepted as if nothing strange.

122

Go your glad ways of fragrance and of light,
Following the dream, forevermore that lures,
Beyond the shadow of immortal night
That holds the soul: the dream, through which endures
Hope which hath led the world for centuries,—
The hope within the heart which still assures
The soul of many immortalities.

123

DRAGONFLIES

You, who put off the water-worm, to rise,
Reborn, with wings; who change, without ado,
Your larval bodies to invade our skies,
What Merlin magic disenchanted you,
And made you beautiful for mortal eyes?

Shuttles of summer, where the lilies sway
Their languid leaves and sleepy pods and flowers,
Weaving your colored threads into the day,
Knitting with light the tapestry of hours,
You come and go in needle-like array.

Now on a blade of grass, or pod, as still
As some thin shred of heaven, motionless,
A point, an azure streak, you poise, until
You seem a figment Summer would express
But fails through utter indolence of will.

Then suddenly, as if the air had news,
And flashed intelligence of faery things,
You vibrate into motion, instant hues,
Searching the sunlight with diaphanous wings,
Gathering together many filmy clues.

124

Clues, that the subject mind, in part, divines,
Invisible but evidenced through these:—
The mote, that goldens down the sun's long lines,
The web, that trails its silver to the breeze,
And the slow musk some fragile flower untwines.

Could we but follow! and the threads unwind,
Haply through them again we might perceive
That Land of Faery, youth left far behind,
Lost in the wonder-world of Make-Believe,
Where Childhood dwells and Happiness-of-Mind.

And, undelayed, far, far beyond this field
And quiet water, on the dream-road trail,
Come on that realm of fancy, soul-concealed,
Where we should find, as in the faery tale,
The cap through which all Elfland is revealed.

125

A WILDFLOWER

How may my art proclaim thee?
Or half thy grace express?
What word is there to name thee
And all thy loveliness?
Thou, who beside me swayest,
Within this woodland old,
Too much to me thou sayest
With thy dim blue and gold.

Beside this mossed rock growing,
Where wild bees dream and drone,
Thy delicate shadow throwing
Upon the gray-green stone;
Of something thou remindest,
Some far thing of the soul,
A look when love was kindest,
A touch that did console.

The bird above may know it,
So pensively it sings,
But never priest or poet,—
The thought that with thee springs.
Part of the heart's elation
Is what thou dost express,
That shrinks from ostentation,
And merely loveliness.

126

Ah, could my words define it,
Or lend that thought a name,
Then all men might divine it,
And thou wert sure of fame.
But words speak nothing clearly;
And men who read may say—
Oh, 't was a wildflower merely
He found beside the way.

127

THE GHOST FLOWER

(The Indian Pipe)

What freak of faery, fancy of the night,
Compelled you hither, drowsy with the dew?
Taking my heart with weirdness, like the flight
Of moth or owlet through the noonday blue,
O flower of phantoms,—slender as a light
That flits at haunted casements, pale of hue,—
A finger white
Lifting, mysterious, on the startled view.

Decay and dampness mothered you, while death
Sat by and glowered under threatening skies,
Breathing you full of his autumnal breath,
Staring you white with winter of his eyes:
O type of everything which perisheth,
Corruption hidden 'neath a fair disguise,
Whose Beauty saith,
“Behold a symbol for the worldly wise.”

O flower of death, so like, yet not a flower!
O form of fungus, are you kin to those?
Did God conceive you in some lonely hour,
Uncertain yet of what He did propose?
A half-formed thought, abandoned; without dower

128

Of fragrance; whence grew out the perfect rose
Of Eden's bower,—
Whose counterpart in every garden grows.

A semblance merely, flung forgotten here,
Eidolon-like, disclaimed of all your kin,
Pointing a phantom finger at the Year,
Or with a twisted hand, as white as Sin,
Clutching at silence, who a hollow ear
Leans to the earth on which the rain beats thin,
While shapes of fear
And shadows wander, dream-wise, out and in.

Dreams from the world of gnomes, where mysteries dwell,
You conjure forth:—I seem to see them stand,
Fantastic round you: up and down the dell
Their vague enchantments move, pale hand in hand.—
Would that I too such magic could compel,
And, so admitted of Night's Erl-King band,
Could break the spell
That bars the gateway into Elfinland.

129

AUTUMN STORM

Topping the hills the oaks,
Black on the sunset's fire,
Draw, with terrific strokes,
Gates as it were of Tyre,
Burning; while, like a page
Out of some tragedy,
Heaven grows dark with rage,
Pregnant with things to be.

Out of the North the Wind
Gallops with all his hordes,
Hun-like, and gaunt and blind,
Swooping the Earth with swords:
Night, on her tower of cloud,
Lets her wild beacon flare;
Then, through the darkness loud,
Arrows rain everywhere.

Wrapped in their mantles wide,
Cloaks of the mist that stream,
Onward the Hours ride,
Forward with never a gleam:
On through the forest, on,
Over wild hill and plain,
All the long night till dawn
Trample the troops of rain.

130

“I HEAR THE WOODLANDS CALLING”

I hear the woodlands calling, and their red is like the blare
Of trumpets in the air,
Where rebel Autumn plants her tents and crowns her gypsy hair.

I hear her beauty calling glad, with crimson and with gold,
As oft it called of old;
And I must forth and greet her there and clasp her close and hold.

As yesterday, again to-day, my heart will run to her,
The gypsy wanderer,
Through scarlet of the berry-pod and purple of the burr.

The vines that vision forth her cheeks shall tell me where she lies,
Soft gazing at the skies;
And I will steal upon her dreams and look into her eyes.

131

The sumach that repeats her lips shall tell me where she smiles,
Who still my heart beguiles,
And I will speak her face to face and lounge with her for miles.

A riot and a tangle there, a blur of gold and gray;
She surely went this way—
Or, so it seems, the maples cry, the cloudy asters say.

Oh, I must up and strike the trail, that often I have gone,
At sunset and at dawn,
Where all the beauty of the world puts all her splendor on.

I hear her bugles on the hills; I see her banners blowing,
And all her campfires glowing,—
The campfires of her dreams,—and I—I must be up and going.

132

DOLOROUS NIGHT

All night long I heard it raining,
And the trees
To the flowers, still remaining,
Kept complaining
Without cease.
All night long I heard a weeping
As of grief,
While the autumn wind kept sweeping
Branch and leaf.

All the night I heard a crying.—
Was it rain?—
Or a sorrow trailing, flying,
Dimly sighing
At my pane?
All the night I heard a beating
As of wings,
And a voice that kept repeating
Many things.

At my window, that was shuttered,
Once the wind
Tapped;—or was't a leaf that fluttered,
Darkly muttered,
At my blind?—

133

Was it Autumn?—Or, unsheathing
Black his blade,
Death? who stood there darkly breathing
Where Night swayed.

Was't the ghost of some departed
Love, long lost?
Driven like the leaves that darted,
Broken-hearted,
Tempest-tossed?—
All its wild hair dripped November,
Dark and wet. ...
What it wailed the woods remember—
I forget.

134

THE CALL OF THE HEART

Oh, my heart is on the moorland, on the old land, on the poor land,
Where it hears the heather calling and the gorse shake with the bee!
Oh, it's there I would be lying, with the clouds above me flying,
And blue beyond the blackthorn tops a peep of purple sea.

Oh, my heart is on the moorland, on the old land, on the shore land,
Where the gypsy-bands of dreams pitch camp, the dark-eyed Romany!
Oh, it's there I would be dreaming, with the sunset o'er me streaming,
With her beside my campfire there whose voice still calls to me.

With her, the light-foot maiden, with her eyes so vision-laden,
That little sister to the flowers, and cousin to the bee:
Oh, would that we were going against the hill-wind's blowing
To meet the playmates that she knew, that child of Faëry.

135

Oh, would that we were sitting beneath the wild-fowl's flitting,
Her dark eyes looking into mine as stars look in the sea,
While, dim as autumn weather, and sweet as scents of heather,
Our campfire trails its smoke of dreams like mists along the lea.

Oh, heart, there on the moorland, the old land, and the poor land!
You're breaking for the gypsy love you nevermore shall see:
The little light-foot maiden, the girl all blossom-laden,
Departed with her people and the dreams that used to be.

136

OLDTOWN

Harness up the old horse;
Harness up the shay:
We are bound for Oldtown
Many miles away.
If arrived at middle night,
In the wintry weather,
We shall find the old folks
Waiting up together.

There the heart is home, dear;
There the rooms are wide;
Rafters bright with firelight;
Summer-sweet inside.
There, though backs be bowed with years,
Forms are straight in seeming;
And beneath the locks of age
Youth's deep eyes are gleaming.

There the dooryards blossom
With the oldtime flowers;
Pansy, pink and mignonette,
Fair as childhood's hours.
Lamps of lost Aladdin days,
There the morning-glories
Hang; and roses grow the gold
Of old faery stories.

137

There the songs we loved once,
And the tales we told,
Haunt the hearths and chambers
With the words of old.
There, though lips be sad and thin,
Worn with toil the fingers,
Kindness keeps them beautiful
With a love that lingers.

Harness up the old horse;
Harness up the shay:
We must get to Oldtown
Ere the close of day.
If the road be long, be long,
And the Inns—not any,
In the town is rest, my dear,
And good friends a many.

138

THE OLD PLACE

Sassafras grows at its gate, and veins
Of lichen mottle its stones with stains;
And there, where its porch hangs low in view,
High on its beams the swallows brood:
Its garden blossoms, all poppy strewed,
With oldtime flowers of every hue.

The old spring calls where the hollow drips
And still invites with its mossy lips,
Lullabyed to by the sleepy pines,
Within whose whisper the woodchuck steals,
And along whose twilight the fox reveals
An instant's glimmer when noonday shines.

It is a place that I dream of oft:
I see the light in its log-built loft;
The wasps that plaster their cells of clay;
The weaving spider; and, bubble-blue,
The sky, that sweeps with its swallow through
Its open window, high-heaped with hay.

The martins circle its roof in flocks,
And twitter its chimneyed martin-box;
The redbird builds in the trumpet-vine,

139

A living crimson that flecks the trees,
That shade the shed where the borer-bees
Whine at their holes in the planks of pine.

I dream of the way that takes me where
The creek in the woods has made a stair,
A rock-stair, roofed with the boughs of beech;
And I see the pool where the minnow shines,
And dragonflies flash their jewelled lines,
And pale pond-lilies loll just in reach.

And barefoot there, in torn straw-hat,
His dog beside him, where oft he sat,
I see a boy in the glimmering day
Dropping an idle line: may be
Floating a boat of the bark of a tree—
A boy, who has never gone away.

The boy, who haunts that oldtime place,
With his sun-tanned feet and freckled face;
The lad, who follows at dusk the cows,
As oft and oft in the days gone by;
The boy, brown-haired, who once was I,
Who lives in dreams of that oldtime house.

140

THE PATH TO YESTERDAY

There's a path that leads to Yesterday—you know it;
A rambling path of flowers and perfume:
You remember how the wild grapes overgrow it
To the house upon the hilltop deep in bloom.

There's a path that leads to Yesterday through flowers,
Where the veery is a voice of wandering song;
Where the cricket snaps its faery whip for hours,
And a barefoot boy goes whistling all day long.

There's a path that leads to Yesterday through dingles,
Mossed and ferny, where the wood pool is an eye,
And the sunbeam is a twinkle there that mingles
With the gladness of a girl that dances by.

There's a path that leads to Yesterday, a-glimmer
With the pearl and purple footsteps of the Dusk;
Where the first star leaps and flashes, like a swimmer,

141

On the violet verge of twilight washed with musk.

There's a path that leads to Yesterday that's haunted
With the shadows of old memories of bliss,
And the ghosts of loves that roamed there once, who counted
Every moment by a heart-beat or a kiss.

Hark—the path that leads to Yesterday is calling!—
Don't you hear it? how it calls through many things!
Through its roses, like the memories now falling,
And the dream-like nestward fluttering of wings.

On the path that leads to Yesterday we've started!—
Hear it calling with its many whippoorwills!—
Like the voices of old Happiness departed,—
Through the darkness, where the moon rests on the hills.

142

AGE

Dust and fatigue; and down Life's long hot road
Age and his oxen, groaning with their load,
Pass creakingly: the ever-urging goad
Of want compelling to what unknown end?
What though the fields around be ploughed and sowed;
The orchards burdened till they break and bend,
Meagre for him the harvest God will send,
And what he reaps haply he may not spend.

What eyes are sadder than the eyes of Age!
That have but labor for their heritage,
And loneliness and loss for toil's long wage;
That by the rushlight Faith still try to read
Their Book of Patience, dimly, page by page,
But find no comfort there that helps their need,
But weariness ever; nothing sweet to feed
Heart's hope upon, or any love to lead.

I often think that if God could behold
The sadness here of all Earth's poor and old,
He would not sit so calm as we are told:
If He could hear the souls that pray in vain,

143

The hearts that perish, crying in the cold,
And of bereavement all the wailing train,
His hand would hush the archangelic strain,
And Heaven sit bowed with pity for Earth's pain.

144

DROUTH

Beside the dried-up streams the Summer walks
In ragged gray and tattered green and gold,
Dragging her slattern feet from wood to wold,
O'er every field that white a pathway chalks:
And evermore unto herself she talks,
In insect accents, strident, manifold,
Stinging the heat with weariness untold,
Her scrawny voice dry as the wayside stalks.
Beside the pool, where late she leaned and saw
Her lily bosom bared to lure the bee,
She leans again, beholding but a pod,
A withered disc, near which the crow's harsh caw
Seems but the echo of the mockery
In her own heart, that laughs at Man and God.

145

BESIDE THE ROAD

Who has not walked with loneliness,
And leaned upon the arm of grief,
Along the road of Heart's Distress,
Mourning that joy is brief?

The paths appointed us to take
Are not the ways that we would choose;
The guide-post reading “Duty's Sake”
Is one we cannot lose.

But they, who kneel awhile and pray,
Or muse with Nature upon God,
May find, beside the lonely way,
The faery goldenrod

Of hope, whose light makes bright the road,
And beautifies the lonely hours,
And turns the sorrow of our load
To thoughts, like shining flowers.

146

THE HAIL STORM

Along the hill's huge back,
Above the crouching terror of the plain,
Tempest, imperial, crowned with blazing black,
Trails far the thunderous purple of his train,
Tattered with fringes of the streaming rain.

Vast forces seem at council: genie shapes
And elementals changing, form on form;
Now from the swarm one awful Deev escapes,
And with a lightning gesture lifts its arm,
Shouting a word of storm.

And all the earth sits cowering: not a sound:
The forest's shoulders shudder, swing and sway:
Then, like some monster thing that quests around,
The Afrit wind leaps on the driven day,
And wrapped in rain and hail rides his resistless way.

147

CHAOS AND ORDER

Shadows; and outposts of the rebel Night,
And muttered whisperings of conspiracy:
Deep in the west a flicker of ominous light,
As if a torch had signaled suddenly;
Involving heaven and earth in anarchy:
Then, high above the world, vast wings in flight
And trumpet-thunder of Night's empery.—
Chaos and Night,—form upon demon form,—
Riding the exultation of the storm.

Glimmer; and rumors of confederate Dawn:
Aerial tumult as of sylphid feet:
Far ranks of radiance, on the peaks withdrawn,
Confronting Darkness, who, in wild retreat,
Flies from the leveled glory, fiery beat
Of swords about a golden gonfalon,
And sapphire shields, and spears of blinding heat.—
Light, and its ordered cohorts, ray on ray,
And the fierce phalanx of resistless Day.

148

THE GRAY LAND

The crawfish builds its oozy chimneys here
Of pallid clay;
The shadowy wood around is sad and sere;
The sky is gray:
The mossy waters wearily creep
Dim through a land that seems asleep,
Or lost in old remembering deep
Of some forgotten day.

The ovals of the acorns, split with rain,
That sprout and spread,
Splash mud and moss with many a sinister stain,
Faint streaks of red:
No sound upon the hush intrudes
Except the drip of wet, that broods
Like some old crime upon the woods,
And holds them grim with dread.

149

SILK O' THE WEED

Where, under boughs of willow-gray,
By banks the blades began to pierce,
And leaflets pricked up pearly ears
To hear the things birds had to say:

I saw her standing, reticent
As Love that fears to be denied,
Shy, wildflower-faced and wildflower-eyed,
Spring, 'mid the pods the wind had rent:

Spring, in her robe of cloud and sun,
Wafting, with lips of redbud blush,
Into the air's attentive hush,
Assurance of the love begun:

White kisses for the trees and grass,
They streamed in promise everywhere,
And with them, bright with blowing hair,
A silken breath, I saw her pass.

150

THE PLOUGHMAN

The broken soil, made damp with rain,
Smells good along the bramble lane.
Broad in the afternoon the fields,
Conscious of every seed they hold,
Seem thinking of the harvest-yields,
That soon will turn their brown to gold.

The coultered earth, the furrowed loam,
Dreams of the coming Harvest-Home:
And, dreaming, breathes of unborn hay,
Of briar and daisy, wheat and weed,
That shall bedeck it on that day
When men shall come and give it heed.

And he who guides the plunging plough
Across the soil's dark surface now,
What dream is his if any dream?—
Not one that aims at loveliness,
But plenty—like a golden stream—
To make his need and toil far less.

His toil and need! that circumvent
The soul, for which the dream was meant,
That lifts the man above the brute,
And frees from bonds of circumstance:—
But it is toil that gives us fruit,
And need is not a thing of chance.

151

DUSK AND THE WHIPPOORWILLS

The wet gold of the rainy dusk
Died over woods and hills,
When through the Maytime's deeps of musk
Cried clear the whippoorwills.

One called afar; and one, loud-heard,
Answered quite near at hand:
Each seemed the utterance of a word
My heart could understand.

A word of wonder and of dream
That held me when a child;
With charm investing every stream,
And every woodland wild.

That led me, most mysteriously,
Down haunted forest ways,
With magic of wild melody,
Back to the old hill-days:

Unto a porch, o'ergrown with rose,
Where still, with wondering eyes,
My childhood smiles and round it glows
The dream that never dies.

152

THE TEMPEST

Like soldiers, silent in the last redoubt,
The wildwoods waited as the storm drew out
Its cloudy cohorts with a mighty shout.

As men, who face destruction, overhead
I heard wild voices of the rain that said,—
“It is the forest-people! Strike them dead!”

Then followed tossings of tempestuous hair,
And movements of huge bodies everywhere,
And protestations, as of wild despair.

A moment's silence; then upon the world,
The charioteers of Tempest,—Winds,—were hurled,
And Thunder's bellowing banner blew unfurled.

An oak, the tower of two centuries,
Set its gigantic shoulders to the breeze,
And roared down, ruining, on enormous knees.

153

Then overhead terrific trumpets blared:
The sky swooped downward with a sword that glared,
And the long ranks of rain rushed, hurricane-haired,
Charging the world with spears that nothing spared.

154

TWO BIRDS

Birds

Rising in lyric rings,
There is a bird that sings,—
“Never, heart, never!”
Meaning,—From higher things
Never restrain thy wings;
Mounting forever,
Dare and endeavor.

Gazing with jewelled eyes,
There is a bird replies,
“Sweetest, love, sweetest!”
Meaning,—What life denies
Love, who keeps pure and wise,
That is completest,
Holds what is fleetest.

Old as the heart are they,
Birds of the every day,
Older than sorrow.—
Oh, may they sing alway
Down in the hearts that pray,
Helping care borrow
Hope of to-morrow.

155

IN THE DEEP FOREST

In the deep forest when the lightning played,
Pallid and frail a wilding flower swayed,
Lifting its blossom from the streaming sod,
Trembling and fearful, like a child dismayed,
Who in the darkness has forgotten God.

In the deep forest, in the thunder's roll,
Face to pale face I met with my own soul;
And in its eyes were trouble and alarm,
Like that which held the heaven from pole to pole,
And doubt of God above the night and storm.

In the deep forest, when the tempest passed,
The flower smiled unbroken of the blast;
And in the forest, as the day drew on,
Hand in pale hand, with sure eyes upward cast,
My soul and I stood confident of dawn.

156

PURSUIT

Where the slender stream runs rippling through the woods,
Like a child who sings and dances to a song,
Towards a wildrose lure that evermore eludes,
What has followed, all noon long,
The murmur of a throng,—
Faint voices of the flowers that call in countless multitudes?—
Ah, what, but that dear love of old that still is sweet and strong!

Where the shadowy stream trips whispering on the rocks,
Like a spirit weaving magic in a dell,
Towards a music, at the heart that calls and knocks,
What has tried to read or spell
Every leafy miracle,
That Nature writes within her book of wonders she unlocks?—
Ah, what, but dear desires of old and dreams that still compel!

Where the little stream slips downward to the pool,
Like a joy into a life that shuts it round,

157

Where the grasses crown its quiet, deep and cool,
What has caught the soul and bound
With a glimmer and a sound
And charmed it in a place apart that lights make wonderful?—
Ah, what, but oldtime memories that here again are found!

158

AFTER DEATH

The forest stirred; and then a bird
Sang; and its song enspelled
The silence like some magic word
By which the heart's compelled.

Among the woods, with interludes,
Deep-hidden in the green,
It sang to little sisterhoods
Of wildflowers dimly seen.

It seemed a flute, a faery flute,
Of one whom love compels,
Who pleads, Faun-like, his wildwood suit
In plaintive syllables.

And I, who heard its golden word,
Remembered once again
How long ago I'd heard the bird
When life knew less of pain.

How then its note seemed less remote;
And, in mysterious reach,
Though farther than a dream may float,
It with my soul held speech.

159

I understood. And through the wood
Its song went like a gleam,
Taking with love the solitude,
The human heart with dream.

It passed away with its wild lay:
And years have gone since then:—
I heard the bird again to-day
Within the selfsame glen.

In like event it came and went
With golden melody:
And, mother, oh, the things it meant
To the sad heart in me!

160

LIGHT

The golden chrysalis of dawn
Breaks through its heavenly husk,
And winged with rose floats up and on
Piercing with flame the dusk.

Out of what darkness daybreak brings
Its testament of gold,
Inscribed with elemental things
That God hath never told.

Ah, Heaven! how good it is to live,
One with abounding day!
To be no longer fugitive
On Life's down-darkening way!

But, part and portion of the light,
To rise again re-born;
Beyond the shadow and the night,
Anointed of the Morn.

161

THE MOTHER

My little boy, who used to run
With glad hair blowing in the sun,
Where runs he now?
Where runs he now?—
In fairer fields than these, that blow
The withered blooms of long-ago,
That soon shall whiten with the snow
As does my brow;
As does my brow.

My little boy, the sweet of tongue,
Who leapt and laughed, and joyed and sung,
Where sings he now?
Where sings he now?—
In some bright place where children meet,
And lullabies of love repeat,
That break my heart's remembering beat
With tears somehow;
With tears somehow.

My little boy, who used to play
With happy eyes the livelong day,
Where plays he now?
Where plays he now?—

162

With fairer playthings there than those
That broken in their box repose,
As in my breast the hopes, God knows,
O'er which I bow;
O'er which I bow.

My little boy, who sat to hear
The wonder tales to him so dear,
Where harks he now?
Where harks he now?—
Haply in that fair world he knew
Of faery where all dreams come true
As here on earth they never do,
Alas! somehow;
Alas! somehow.

163

OLD “BUD” RILEY

“Little Boy!—Halloo! halloo!
Can't you hear me calling you?—
Little Boy that Used to Be,
Come in here and play with me!”—
“Bud” Riley.

Over the rail-fence of the years,
That climbs and crumbles between our lands,
Old “Bud” Riley, I stretch my hands
Full of my love and all that endears,
As the boy's young hands that once you knew,
Filled with unfaltering faith in you,
And love and laughter and smiles and tears.
The same old love that once you knew
When you and I went wandering through
Song's flowery fields, with never a frown,
And whistled our sweetheart, freckled and brown,
Our country Muse, in homespun gown,
Who smiled on you and on me again,
As we tuned our pipes in the sun and rain,
Far from the crowd and the deafening town,
Out in the woods where the world is sane,
Out in the air of the open plain,

164

High on God's hills that His streams run down—
Old “Bud” Riley, her heart was yours,
Is ... though my love for her endures;
That little sweetheart, who, long, oh, long,
Has kept you a boy in the Land o' Song.

165

THEY SAY

(To G.)

They say that beauty withers;
They tell me flowers die;
That all the world's unreal,
And dreams, like days, go by:
They say that joy is mortal,
And nothing here is sure:
They all are lies, for, in your eyes,
I find that these endure.

They tell me glory passes,
That life is but a breath;
That happiness goes like the rose,
And love is slain of death:
They say that hope shall perish,
That nothing shall arrive:
I scorn the whole, for, in your soul,
I see how these survive.

University of Virginia Library

[THE COMMON EARTH]

THE POET, THE FOOL, AND THE FAERIES

THE DRYADS

A ONE-ACT LYRICAL DRAMA OF ANCIENT GREECE

THE COMMON EARTH

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

A FAERY BURIAL

TWO FAERIES AND A FLOWER

WOODS AND WATERS

I On a Headland

II The Forest

III The Mill-Stream

IV The Old Saw-Mill

V Swamp-Led

VI The Swamp

VII The Place of Pools

VIII Vespertime

IX Flower Pageant

X The Wind from the Sea

XI Sea Lure

XII Ocean Mists

XIII A Forest Place

A PATH TO THE WOODS

THE DREAMS OF SUMMER

HARVESTING

I

II

SABBATH

I

II

DESERTED

THE WOOD STREAM

WORM AND FLY

THE OLD BAYOU

BUTTERFLIES

DRAGONFLIES

A WILDFLOWER

THE GHOST FLOWER

(The Indian Pipe)

AUTUMN STORM

“I HEAR THE WOODLANDS CALLING”

DOLOROUS NIGHT

THE CALL OF THE HEART

OLDTOWN

THE OLD PLACE

THE PATH TO YESTERDAY

AGE

DROUTH

BESIDE THE ROAD

THE HAIL STORM

CHAOS AND ORDER

THE GRAY LAND

SILK O' THE WEED

THE PLOUGHMAN

DUSK AND THE WHIPPOORWILLS

THE TEMPEST

TWO BIRDS

Birds

IN THE DEEP FOREST

PURSUIT

AFTER DEATH

LIGHT

THE MOTHER

OLD “BUD” RILEY

THEY SAY

I
On a Headland

II
The Forest

III
The Mill-Stream

IV
The Old Saw-Mill

V
Swamp-Led

VI
The Swamp

VII
The Place of Pools

VIII
Vespertime

IX
Flower Pageant

X
The Wind from the Sea

XI
Sea Lure

XII
Ocean Mists

XIII
A Forest Place