Songs of Doubt and Dream (Poems)

“If yonder tough oak, seamed with scars,
Could give some white wild form release,
With eyes amid whose wistful stars
Burned memories of immortal Greece!”

[II. Above the porch, full in dawn's rosy view]

Above the porch, full in dawn's rosy view,
Fringes of icicles hang glittering keen,
Traced clear against the pale heaven's crystal blue
In splintry and vivid sheen.

And as their silver lances glassily clash
With golden lances by the new day borne,
Through the sharp air unmelted they now flash
A silent arctic scorn.

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But while the grand sun mounts in dazzling state,
My thoughts from these bleak snowy scenes have turned
To sultry and luxurious climes where late
Noon's yellow fervors burned!

Still from the porch the icicles gleam chill;
Yonder still spread the barren snow-choked fields;
Over the cheerless lands white winter still
His radiant sceptre wields.

But I dream strangely of some Orient calm
Where this same sun drops west through stagnant heat,
While some swart Arab, near a drowsy palm,
Lolls at his camel's feet.

[III. Shadows hung dense on the burnished lake]

Shadows hung dense on the burnished lake
Where our boat was languidly sliding;
We heard in the forest the whip-poor-will wake,

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And saw the red moon upgliding;
And each told not, for the other's sake,
The sorrow that each was hiding.

We had wasted in passionate words and moods
The day that went down as our last;
We had loitered in leafy solitudes
With the phantoms of our past!
Forgetting the grief in store for us
And the fate that followed fast,
Such radiant robe as it wore for us
From the present we had cast!
And now that the darkness fell again
Where our feet on the lit sward wandered,
We thought of the birds that sang in vain
And the sunbeams idly squandered!

Oh, better we did not speak—
That we looked at the shining shore,
At the clouded moon's far fiery streak,
At the dip of the glimmering oar!
Oh, better we did not seek
A voice for regret once more—
That we suffered, we silently bore!

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I should not have pleaded one word
From your pale dear lips, or a sigh,
Had your soul gone then like a bird
From a rift in its prisoning bars!—
Ah, so thankfully watching you die,
Till your low voice was not heard
Nor your true heart longer stirred,
And the light of each fond eye
Had floated away to the stars!

IV.—Asters and Goldenrods.

Summer, the dying queen, lay still,
And felt her weary heart grow chill
With death's long lingering blight.
There, at brief distance from her gaze,
Two common weeds upreared their sprays
In the sad sinking light.

Two wayside weeds that only knew
Those kind endearments that the dew
The rain, the sunshine, make;
And though they looked of differing leaves,
Yet each was fraught with fragile sheaves
Whose buds erelong would break.

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Then the pale queen, in thankful pride,
Blessed these poor wildflowers ere she died,
And said to them: “Behold,
Henceforth while here on earth ye live,
To one my purple robe I give,
To one my crown of gold!”

[V. All day the reapers on the hill]

All day the reapers on the hill
Have plied their task with sturdy will,
But now the field is void and still.

And wandering thither, I have found
The bearded spears in sheaves well-bound,
And stacked in many a golden mound.

And while cool evening suavely grows,
While o'er the sunset's dying rose
The first great white star throbs and glows,

While from the clear east, red of glare,
The ascendant harvest moon floats fair
Through dreamy deeps of purple air;

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While in among the slanted sheaves
A tender light its glamour weaves,
An elfish light that lures, deceives,

Then, swayed by fancy's dear command,
Amid the past I seem to stand,
In hallowed Bethlehem's harvest-land!

And through the vague field, dim-descried,
A homeward host of shadows glide,
And sickles gleam on every side.

Shadows of man and maid I trace,
With shapes of strength and shapes of grace,
Yet gaze but on a single face.

A candid brow, still smooth with youth;
A smile of calm; a mien of truth...
The patient star-eyed gleaner, Ruth!

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VI.—To a Friend Who Slept Ill.

How hast thou angered into stern disdain
That mild compassionate god round whose bowed head
The clustering poppies droop their drowsy red,
Somnus, that walks the world from twilight's wane
All the long night till day be born again,
While after him, in shadowy legion, stream
The pale diaphanous floating forms of dream?

He kisses brows that ache from earthly care;
He soothes to peace the indignant souls of slaves;
O'er many an eye, grown tired with tears, he waves
Those rich-dyed languid flowers he loves to bear,
And yet for thee no tender spell doth spare,
O friend that liest awake and hearest night
Flow on past banks of time in stealthy might.

Ah, would that I, who am well-beloved of sleep,
Might make fond intercession, friend, for thee,
Each night when some shy Dream should visit me
Where the long labyrinths of slumber sweep!
Both the Dream's dim hands would I seize and keep,
Praying of her to speed, with lulling charms,
And wreathe about thy neck two rosy arms!

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[VII. How long ere the blast that is nipping and bitter]

How long ere the blast that is nipping and bitter
Shall blend with the bland air that tells winter's doom?
How long ere battalia of buttercups glitter?
How long ere the tulip the terrace illume?
How long ere the young mating robin shall twitter,
A gay-breasted flitter through vistas of bloom?

Come fleetlier, spring, for we languish to know thee
Delaying no longer thy fairness afar!—
To see the sun burnish the smooth sward below thee,
Or slant through the shower one long golden bar;
And watch the wild violets flocking to show thee
What happy winds blow thee, in star after star.

VIII.—Babes in the Wood.

She had two little babes, a boy and girl,
Two little babes that are not with her now.
On one bright brow full golden fell the curl,
The curl fell chestnut-brown on one bright brow.

She loves to dream of them that some soft day,
While wandering far from home, their fitful feet
Went heedlessly along some woodland way
Where shine and shade harmoniously meet;

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And that they wandered deeper and more deep
Into the forest's fragrant heart and fair,
Till just at evenfall they dropped asleep,
And ever since they have been slumbering there.

After their wilful truantry, that day,
Each is so tired it does not wake at all,
And over them the boughs that sigh and sway,
Conspire to make perpetual evenfall.

And she, that must not join them, still is blest,
However passionately her poor heart grieves;
For memories, like sweet birds at her behest,
Have covered them with tender thoughts, like leaves!

IX.—Aquarelle.

Far away westward the cattle go,
Dotting the land's dim edges;
Isled in the roseate afterglow,
Darken the long cloud-ledges.

Burning each moment with warmer beams,
Moon, by your sweet chaste power
Lull the world into lotus-dreams
While you hang like a lotus-flower!

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[X. How sad, in this wide airy glade]

How sad, in this wide airy glade,
Where boughs with vocal tremor gleam,
Where great white clouds fling spots of shade
And moons of timid daisies beam,
Near trilling bird and buoyant bee,
To find you thus, O gaunt dead tree!

Spectral you stand amid the glow
And mirth in which you bear no part;
You hear the song, you feel the flow
Of breezes fresh from summer's heart;
Yet still you know, with each glad breath,
The discongruity of death!

Oft through your dry stark frame will run
Faint memories of fonder days;
Of fealty to the regnant sun
And stately rapture in his rays;
Of how your live roots loved to coil
In mellow fathoms of cool soil.

Or yet about your sombre blight
More tender dreams perchance may cling
Of how, with delicate delight,

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Broke the first bud of your first spring,
And you in mute joy understood
Your own idyllic motherhood.

Or dearer still perchance you hold
That hour when from your leafy breast
The first frail silver treble told
Of downy young in your first nest,
And of its green protection proud,
Your vernal foliage laughed aloud.

Or you remember, it may be,
In dumb and indeterminate way,
Some vine whose lithe fragility
Clasped your strong bole and weakly lay
Fluttering against your vigor rude,
And charmed you with its gratitude.

But now no more you richly thrive;
Alone yet not alone you reign,
As one alive yet not alive,
A monument of patient pain;
While each new star the night makes clear
Moves you with separate souvenir.

Ah, best the sturdy woodman came
And bore, ere winter gales could roam,

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Your sapless wreck to cheer with flame
The fireside of some peaceful home,
Till all your dumb regrets were lost
In sweet memorial holocaust!

XI.—Cradle-Song.

Oh, slumber, my darling; the white star is beaming
From pale yellow dusk in the west.
Oh, slumber my darling; with beautiful dreaming
Its gleaming shall dower thy rest.

Oh, slumber, my darling; the white star is glowing
Leagues out on the shadowy sea,
And if the wild winds there be drearily blowing
The knowing is not unto me.

Oh, slumber, my darling; the white star in pillows
Of purple-hued clouds sinks to sleep;
This gale that is tossing the poor faded willows
Wakes billows afar on the deep.

Oh, slumber, my darling; the white star is dying,
The gold autumn gloaming is dim;
My thoughts to thy mariner father are flying,
And sighing I fear me for him.

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Oh, slumber, my darling; the white star is beaming
No longer, and low is the light.
Perchance where the grave of thy father is gleaming
Are screaming the sea-gulls to-night!

[XII. They led the pale Christ through the mouthing throng]

They led the pale Christ through the mouthing throng,
In Orient days far-fled;
For then too often, as now, right cringed to wrong,
And many had spoken and said:
“Not this man, but Barabbas.”

He was a thief, the pardoned one, 'tis writ:
Did worse crime stain him red?
Nay, thief or murderer—what mattered it?
For many had spoken and said:
“Not this man, but Barabbas.”

And so he walked unprisoned through the town;
And on the stern cross bled
The brow of Christ below the galling crown,
For many had spoken and said:
“Not this man, but Barabbas.”

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The world, forsooth, has learned its lesson well
Since that dark hour and dread!
Full often accursed by the same bitter spell,
Its lips have opened and said:
“Not this man, but Barabbas.”

[XIII. How marvellously all the deeps of night]

How marvellously all the deeps of night
Make harmony with nature's many moods,
Doming her oceans in their solitudes
With larger mystery and immenser might;
Pouring pale glamours on the mountain's height,
Or quivering in the boughs of lonely woods;
Or where dead calm on some great desert broods,
With labyrinthine splendors throbbing white!

But oh, high stars what dissonance you bring
When o'er the city, amid far narrower skies,
You break like spectral flowers from magic seeds!
For then with sorrowing sovereignty you fling
Your glory upon a million careless eyes
Dragged earthward by innumerable greeds!

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XIV.—To a Literary Fop.

You praise the poet of immortal name
Now, when the world's best eulogies are willed him.
Living, he wanted bread far more than fame;
He was not “classic” till starvation killed him.

What if some Keats now felt the critic's brand?
Some Chatterton to-day cursed fortune's fetters?
Dare you cheer either with benignant hand?
Not you!—sleek lacquey at the skirts of Letters!

[XV. Think not that you may calmly tread]

Think not that you may calmly tread
The loftier height that thousands miss,
Till you have measured all the dread
And darkness of the abyss.

That foot which climbs where towers most high
The peak of blended sun and snow,
Is always guarded by an eye
That dares to look below!

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[XVI. An old man mused, amid twilight's haze]

An old man mused, amid twilight's haze,
While he watched a fading fire alone,
Which day of his long life's many days
Could be named the fairest he had known.

Then out from his memory voices broke,
And all were of days now past and dead;
He smiled at forgotten dreams they woke
In the low mellifluous words they said.

Of the grand Swiss mountains' power and peace,
Of the Orient's lazy and splendid spell,
Of noons in Venice, of morns in Greece,
Each day for its own sake pleaded well.

But when all the magic murmurs died
Where his chamber drowsed in the spent logs' light,
“I was dim and cheerless,” a new Day sighed,
“I was chill with blast, I was bleak with blight,

“Yet I gave you that first warm poignant thrill
When your first last love in your fond arms lay”...

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“'Tis enough!” cried the old man. “Bleak and chill,
You of all my days were the fairest day!”

[XVII. I saw in dreams a system of dead worlds]

I saw in dreams a system of dead worlds,
Rolling, huge cinders, round a mightier sun,
Itself a cinder. “Each world,” said a voice,
“Was once, when millions of slow years had passed,
Glorious for beauty nature dowered it with,
But still more glorious for the habitants
That rose from ape to angel on its orb.
Then came, when millions of more years were spent,
Gradual extinction of the vast sun's fires..
The system rolls to-day one mockery. Look!”

Then in my dream I asked: “Will our sun fade
Like this, and all his courtier planets pale
Thus impotently?”

“Yes,” the voice replied;
“With worlds in space to evolve is to dissolve,
As even with us being born is but to die.
An individual immortality

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Haunts with its hollow myth men's trusting hearts.
Forsake that shadow, and live thy human life
Nobly and adequately till the end.”

“But if such end be nothingness?” I mourned.

“Then count thou on what flavorous opiates
This nothingness will brew thee. Count thou, too,
On the soft unimaginable down
Its pillows hold for thee; nor fail to think
How royaller than all earth's emperors
Man goes to his last rest who round himself
Doth wrap the draperies of eternity.”

University of Virginia Library

INTERMEZZO.

I.—The Wood-Turtle.