Songs of Doubt and Dream (Poems)

With care I scanned it in a wintry hour,
As though my steadfast look would search for signs
Of that mysterious transfiguring power
Whose charm its dull rotundity enshrines.

What hidden strength could dower this torpid plant
All sublety of conjecture dared not guess,
Chill, callous, earthy and insignificant,
Engirt with husks of swarthy brittleness.

But now, when mellowing April's mirth or tears
Fill heaven with sweet caprice of storm and calm,
I watch how radiantly its outgrowth rears
A gorgeous chalice, brimmed with fragrant balm

Ah, little maid, beneath my window there,
Disdained by hurrying passers while you ply,
With ragged garments and with tangled hair,
Your shabby broom that keeps the crossing dry.

Of you, poor weary starveling, who shall say
What beauty and fragrance might not break control,
If love's dear luminous warmth once found its way
In through the dark of your neglected soul?

[II. O swan, what memories rarely sweet]

O swan, what memories rarely sweet
To your white majesty belong,
While in this public park you meet
The stares and gapes of many a throng?

In willowy grace and stainless hue
Your regal curves are yet akin
To that sleek beauteous bird which drew
The enchanted car of of Lohengrin.

And while your charms my look enchain,
Sweet visions through my fancy float...
I see some delicate châtelaine
Feed you beside some castle-moat.

Or when bluff barons lolled at wine,
In far mediæval midnight hours,
I see you where the moonlit Rhine
Wound glittering towers,

While there, in pale mysterious plumes,
Till daybreak fired the ghostly skies,
You weirdly swam through dreamy glooms,
With maddening songs and women's eyes.

St. James's Park, 1889.

III.—In Mid-Ocean.

How could the Greeks make Love be born of thee,
In whose cold spaces love could no more dwell
Than sorrow in youth, or joy amid a knell,
O bleak and uncompanionable sea!
Nay, stirred with ire and hate in like degree,
Now swollen as when we see a snake's throat swell,
Now wreathed as when his body its wrath would tell,
Thy wandering waters ever form and flee!

Sweet is thy tremulous bosom, richly clothed
In light that leaps or loiters, beams or broods,
And sweet thy toss, thy glory, or music grave;
Yet ah! who ever knew thee well but loathed
The vast blank circuits of thy solitudes,
The treachery coiled below thy brightest wave?

At Sea, 1884.

[IV. While the broad night above me broods]

While the broad night above me broods,
In all her shadowy plentitudes,

I let my roaming vision fare
Through many an aisle of starry air.

“Bright throngs,” I muse, “that o'er us bend,
How vague the messages you send!

“That fiery star, within whose rays
A wicked blood-red ardor plays,

“May be some world where dwell serene
A race with souls divinely clean!

“And this large tear of saintly light,
O'er the dead sunset throbbing white,

“Its snowy splendors looking now
Fit for some aureoled angel's brow,

“This star through ages may have been
Some great wild world gone mad with sin!”

V.—A Squirrel.

Where yonder stately chestnuts, blent in one,
Hide cool aerial archways from the sun,

You roam on agile feet, in furry guise,
With bounteous wisp of tail, black beads of eyes.

Though colored like the inert brown branches' hue,
The spirit of their light leafage lives in you!

And while you gambol amid their breezy dark,
Fantastic reveller, with delight I mark

The alert shy head, the nimble leap and pause,
The chattering voice, the restive click of claws,

The idyllic ecstasy, the buoyant power,
The elusive grace, until you seem, this hour,

Like some strange wingless bird, whom Heaven has lent
A shadowy forest for its firmament!

[VI. Dear lavish blossoms that light the Junes]

Dear lavish blossoms that light the Junes,
And fold our fields with the tender haze
Of those pure petals that grow like rays
From the downy rims of their golden moons,

Pale throngs that the suave wind ripples through
With the placid surges of sleeping lakes,
Bright largess that fresh young summer makes,
In her sweet wise way, out of morning dew,

O daisies, dainty and coyly prim,
When I watch you blooming I always seem
To be wandering back, in a drowsy dream,
Where the meadows of childhood glimmer dim!

The meadows that manhood sees no more,
The meadows of story and of song,
Where little Red Riding Hood trips along,
To knock at her grandam's cottage-door!

Where the ghost of Bo-Peep goes roaming, too,
And seeks her flock while she rubs both eyes,—
The meadows where elfin echoings rise
From the phantom horn of Little Boy Blue!

The meadows of innocence, mirth and rhyme,
Lying far aloof from the world's wide din,
The bounteous meadows that never have been,
Yet will always be, till the end of time!

[VIII. Somehow I have lived without you]

Somehow I have lived without you
All these years;
Never dreamed a dream about you,
Felt no fears;
Neither missed you nor required you,
Had you not, nor yet desired you.

I have dealt with mirth or mourning,
Day by day,
Loving, hating, prizing, scorning,
Man's old way.
This would charm or that would cheer me;
Life was life, and you not near me!

Well, the months were measured duly;
I drew breath.
It was life. Ah, truly, truly,
Life, not death.
Yet such life as lacked the giving
Of one grace to make it living!

[IX. I feel the huge dim city round me lie]

I feel the huge dim city round me lie,
Still drugged with sleep below the whitening sky.

Now sounds the sluggish roll of distant wheels;
Now falls the unsteady step of one who reels.

For year by year, in strange weird trysts like these,
Meet toil and vice, the intense antitheses.

But save for such chance noise amid the air,
A deathly and solemn calm is everywhere.

Deep in my soul, this ghostly dawn that springs
Fresh from eternity, speaks awful things!

Here to my side she seems, with spectral dress,
To steal like some pale mighty prophetess,

And tell me in some vague mysterious way
How o'er the shadowy roofs the speeding day

Inexorably bears within its breath
New joy, despair, sin, anguish, birth and death!

X.—To a Reformer.

Nay, now, if these things that you yearn to teach,
Bear wisdom, in your judgment, rich and strong,
Give voice to them, though no man heed your speech,
Since right is right, though all the world go wrong.

The proof that you believe what you declare
Is that you still stand firm though throngs pass by;
Rather cry truth a life-time to void air
Than flatter listening millions with one lie!

XI.—Grass.

The rose is praised for its beaming face,
The lily for saintly whiteness;
We love this bloom for its languid grace
And that for its airy lightness.

We say of the oak “how grand of girth!”
Of the willow we say “how slender!”
And yet to the soft grass, clothing earth,
How slight is the praise we render!

But the grass knows well, in her secret heart,
How we love her cool green raiment,
So she plays in silence her lovely part
And cares not at all for payment.

Each year her buttercups nod and drowse,
With sun and dew brimming over;
Each year she pleases the greedy cows
With oceans of honeyed clover.

Each year on the earth's wide breast she waves,
From spring until stern November;
And then she remembers so many graves
That no one else will remember!

And while she serves us with gladness mute,
In return for such sweet dealings
We tread her carelessly underfoot,—
Yet we never wound her feelings!

University of Virginia Library

REVERIES.

I.—A Tulip-Bulb.