Rose and Roof-Tree :: :: University of Virginia Library

When the mornings dankly fall
With a dim forethought of rain,
And the robins richly call
To their mates mercurial,
And the tree-boughs creak and strain
In the wind;
When the river's rough with foam,
And the new-made clearings smoke,
And the clouds that go and come
Shine and darken frolicsome,
And the frogs at evening croak
Undefined
Mysteries of monotone,
And by melting beds of snow
Wind-flowers blossom all alone;
Then I know
That the bitter winter's dead.
Over his head
The damp sod breaks so mellow,—

Its mosses tipped with points of yellow,—
I cannot but be glad;
Yet this sweet mood will borrow
Something of a sweeter sorrow,
To touch and turn me sad.

THE BOBOLINK.

How sweetly sang the bobolink,
When thou, my Love, wast nigh!
His liquid music from the brink
Of some cloud-fountain seemed to sink,
Built in the blue-domed sky.

How sadly sings the bobolink!
No more my Love is nigh:
Yet rise, my spirit, rise, and drink
Once more from that cloud-fountain's brink,—
Once more before I die!

THE SUN-SHOWER.

A penciled shade the sky doth sweep,
And transient glooms creep in to sleep
Amid the orchard;
Fantastic breezes pull the trees
Hither and yon, to vagaries
Of aspect tortured.

Then, like the downcast dreamy fringe
Of eyelids, when dim gates unhinge
That locked their tears,
Falls on the hills a mist of rain,—
So faint, it seems to fade again;
Yet swiftly nears.

Now sparkles the air, all steely-bright,
With drops swept down in arrow-flight,
Keen, quivering lines.
Ceased in a breath the showery sound;
And teasingly, now, as I look around,
Sweet sunlight shines!

JUNE LONGINGS.

Lo, all about the lofty blue are blown
Light vapors white, like thistle-down,
That from their softened silver heaps opaque
Scatter delicate flake by flake,
Upon the wide loom of the heavens weaving
Forms of fancies past believing,
And, with fantastic show of mute despair,
As for some sweet hope hurt beyond repair,
Melt in the silent voids of sunny air.

All day the cooing brooklet runs in tune:
Half sunk i' th' blue, the powdery moon
Shows whitely. Hark, the bobolink's note! I hear it,
Far and faint as a fairy spirit!
Yet all these pass, and as some blithe bird, winging,
Leaves a heart-ache for his singing,
A frustrate passion haunts me evermore
For that which closest dwells to beauty's core.
O Love, canst thou this heart of hope restore?

A RUNE OF THE RAIN.

I.

O many-toned rain!
O myriad sweet voices of the rain!
How welcome is its delicate overture
At evening, when the glowing-moistur'd west
Seals all things with cool promise of night's rest!

At first it would allure
The earth to kinder mood,
With dainty flattering
Of soft, sweet pattering:
Faintly now you hear the tramp
Of the fine drops falling damp
On the dry, sun-seasoned ground
And the thirsty leaves around.
But anon, imbued
With a sudden, bounding access
Of passion, it relaxes
All timider persuasion,

And, with nor pretext nor occasion,
Its wooing redoubles;
And pounds the ground, and bubbles
In sputtering spray,
Flinging itself in a fury
Of flashing white away;
Till the dusty road
Flings a perfume dank abroad,
And the grass, and the wide-hung trees,
The vines, the flowers in their beds,
The vivid corn that to the breeze
Rustles along the garden-rows,
Visibly lift their heads,—
And, as the shower wilder grows,
Upleap with answering kisses to the rain.

Then, the slow and pleasant murmur
Of its subsiding,
As the pulse of the storm beats firmer,
And the steady rain
Drops into a cadenced chiding.
Deep-breathing rain,
The sad and ghostly noise
Wherewith thou dost complain,—
Thy plaintive, spiritual voice,

Heard thus at close of day
Through vaults of twilight-gray,—
Doth vex me with sweet pain!
And still my soul is fain
To know the secret of that yearning
Which in thine utterance I hear returning.

Hush, oh hush!
Break not the dreamy rush
Of the rain:
Touch not the marring doubt
Words bring, to the certainty
Of its soft refrain,
But let the flying fringes flout
Their gouts against the pane,
And the gurgling throat of the water-spout
Groan in the eaves amain.

The earth is wedded to the shower.
Darkness and awe, gird round the bridal-hour!

II.

O many-tonèd rain!
It hath caught the strain
Of a wilder tune,

Ere the same night's noon,
When dreams and sleep forsake me,
And sudden dread doth wake me,
To hear the booming drums of heaven beat
The long roll to battle; when the knotted cloud,
With an echoing loud,
Bursts asunder
At the sudden resurrection of the thunder;
And the fountains of the air,
Unsealed again sweep, ruining, everywhere,
To wrap the world in a watery winding-sheet.

III.

O myriad sweet voices of the rain!
When the airy war doth wane,
And the storm to the east hath flown,
Cloaked close in the whirling wind,
There 's a voice still left behind
In each heavy-hearted tree,
Charged with tearful memory
Of the vanished rain:
From their leafy lashes wet
Drip the dews of fresh regret
For the lover that 's gone!

All else is still.
But the stars are listening;
And low o'er the wooded hill
Hangs, upon listless wing
Outspread, a shape of damp, blue cloud,
Watching, like a bird of evil
That knows no mercy nor reprieval,
The slow and silent death of the pallid moon.

IV.

But soon, returning duly,
Dawn whitens the wet hill-tops bluely.
To her vision pure and cold
The night's wild tale is told
On the glistening leaf, in the mid-road pool,
The garden mold turned dark and cool,
And the meadow's trampled acres.
But hark, how fresh the song of the wingèd music-makers!
For now the moanings bitter,
Left by the rain, make harmony
With the swallow's matin-twitter,
And the robin's note, like the wind's in a tree:

The infant morning breathes sweet breath,
And with it is blent
The wistful, wild, moist scent
Of the grass in the marsh which the sea nourisheth:
And behold!
The last reluctant drop of the storm,
Wrung from the roof, is smitten warm
And turned to gold;
For in its veins doth run
The very blood of the bold, unsullied sun!

THE SONG-SPARROW.

Glimmers gray the leafless thicket
Close beside my garden gate,
Where, so light, from post to picket
Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;
Who, with meekly folded wing,
Comes to sun himself and sing.

It was there, perhaps, last year,
That his little house he built;
For he seems to perk and peer,
And to twitter, too, and tilt
The bare branches in between,
With a fond, familiar mien.

Once, I know, there was a nest,
Held there by the sideward thrust
Of those twigs that touch his breast;
Though 't is gone now. Some rude gust
Caught it, over-full of snow,—
Bent the bush,—and robbed it so.

Thus our highest holds are lost,
By the ruthless winter's wind,
When, with swift-dismantling frost,
The green woods we dwelt in, thinn'd
Of their leafage, grow too cold
For frail hopes of summer's mold.

But if we, with spring-days mellow,
Wake to woeful wrecks of change,
And the sparrow's ritornello
Scaling still its old sweet range;
Can we do a better thing
Than, with him, still build and sing?

Oh, my sparrow, thou dost breed
Thought in me beyond all telling;
Shootest through me sunlight, seed,
And fruitful blessing, with that welling
Ripple of ecstatic rest,
Gurgling ever from thy breast!

And thy breezy carol spurs
Vital motion in my blood,
Such as in the sapwood stirs,
Swells and shapes the pointed bud

Of the lilac; and besets
The hollows thick with violets.

Yet I know not any charm
That can make the fleeting time
Of thy sylvan, faint alarm
Suit itself to human rhyme:
And my yearning rhythmic word
Does thee grievous wrong, dear bird.

So, however thou hast wrought
This wild joy on heart and brain,
It is better left untaught.
Take thou up the song again:
There is nothing sad afloat
On the tide that swells thy throat!

FAIRHAVEN BAY.

I push on through the shaggy wood,
I round the hill: 't is here it stood;
And there, beyond the crumbled walls,
The shining Concord slowly crawls,

Yet seems to make a passing stay,
And gently spreads its lilied bay,
Curbed by this green and reedy shore,
Up toward the ancient homestead's door.

But dumbly sits the shattered house,
And makes no answer: man and mouse
Long since forsook it, and decay
Chokes its deep heart with ashes gray.

On what was once a garden-ground
Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound;
And boldly whistles the shy quail
Within the vacant pasture's pale.

Ah, strange and savage, where he shines,
The sun seems staring through those pines
That once the vanished home could bless
With intimate, sweet loneliness.

The ignorant, elastic sod
The feet of them that daily trod
Its roods hath utterly forgot:
The very fire-place knows them not.

For, in the weedy cellar, thick
The ruined chimney's mass of brick
Lies strown. Wide heaven, with such an ease
Dost thou, too, lose the thought of these?

Yet I, although I know not who
Lived here, in years that voiceless grew
Ere I was born,—and never can,—
Am moved, because I am a man.

Oh glorious gift of brotherhood!
Oh sweet elixir in the blood,
That makes us live with those long dead,
Or hope for those that shall be bred

Hereafter! No regret can rob
My heart of this delicious throb;
No thought of fortunes haply wrecked,
Nor pang for nature's wild neglect.

And, though the hearth be cracked and cold,
Though ruin all the place enfold,
These ashes that have lost their name
Shall warm my life with lasting flame!

CHANT FOR AUTUMN.

Veiled in visionary haze,
Behold, the ethereal autumn days
Draw near again!
In broad array,
With a low, laborious hum
These ministers of plenty come,
That seem to linger, while they steal away.

O strange, sweet charm
Of peaceful pain,
When yonder mountain's bended arm
Seems wafting o'er the harvest-plain
A message to the heart that grieves,
And round us, here, a sad-hued rain
Of leaves that loosen without number
Showering falls in yellow, umber,
Red, or russet, 'thwart the stream!
Now pale Sorrow shall encumber
All too soon these lands, I deem;

Yet who at heart believes
The autumn, a false friend,
Can bring us fatal harm?
Ah, mist-hung avenues in dream
Not more uncertainly extend
Than the season that receives
A summer's latest gleam!

But the days of death advance:
They tarry not, nor turn!
I will gather the ashes of summer
In my heart, as an urn.

Oh draw thou nearer,
Thou
Spirit of the distant height,
Whither now that slender flight
Of swallows, winging, guides my sight!
The hill doth seem to me
A fading memory
Of long delight,
And in its distant blue
Half-hideth from my view
This shrinking season that must now retire;
And so shall hold it, hopeful, a desire

And knowledge old as night and always new.
Draw nigher! And, with bended brow,
I will be thy reverer
Through the long winter's term!

So, when the snows hold firm,
And the brook is dumb;
When sharp winds come
To flay the hill-tops bleak,
And whistle down the creek;
While the unhappy worm
Crawls deeper down into the ground,
To 'scape Frost's jailer on his round;
Thy form to me shall speak
From the wide valley's bound,
Recall the waving of the last bird's wing,
And help me hope for spring.

BEFORE THE SNOW.

Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare
Shatters the windy rain. A thousand leaves,
Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air,
Flutter away from the old forest's eaves.

Autumn is gone: as yonder silent rill,
Slow eddying o'er thick leaf-heaps lately shed,
My spirit, as I walk, moves awed and still,
By thronging fancies wild and wistful led.

Autumn is gone: alas, how long ago
The grapes were plucked, and garnered was the grain!
How soon death settles on us, and the snow
Wraps with its white alike our graves, our gain!

Yea, autumn 's gone! Yet it robs not my mood
Of that which makes moods dear,—some shoot of spring

Still sweet within me; or thoughts of yonder wood
We walked in,—memory's rare environing.

And, though they die, the seasons only take
A ruined substance. All that 's best remains
In the essential vision that can make
One light for life, love, death, their joys, their pains.

THE GHOSTS OF GROWTH.

Last night it snowed; and Nature fell asleep.
Forest and field lie tranced in gracious dreams
Of growth, for ghosts of leaves long dead, meseems,
Hover about the boughs; and wild winds sweep
O'er whitened fields full many a hoary heap
From the storm-harvest mown by ice-bound streams!
With beauty of crushed clouds the cold earth teems,
And winter a tranquil-seeming truce would keep.

But such ethereal slumber may not bide
The ascending sun's bright scorn—not long, I fear;
And all its visions on the golden tide
Of mid-noon gliding off, must disappear.
Fair dreams, farewell! So in life's stir and pride
You fade, and leave the treasure of a tear!

THE LILY-POND.

Some fairy spirit with his wand,
I think, has hovered o'er the dell,
And spread this film upon the pond,
And touched it with this drowsy spell.

For here the musing soul is merged
In moods no other scene can bring,
And sweeter seems the air when scourged
With wandering wild-bees' murmuring.

One ripple streaks the little lake,
Sharp purple-blue; the birches, thin
And silvery, crowd the edge, yet break
To let a straying sunbeam in.

How came we through the yielding wood,
That day, to this sweet-rustling shore?
Oh, there together while we stood,
A butterfly was wafted o'er,

In sleepy light; and even now
His glimmering beauty doth return
Upon me, when the soft winds blow,
And lilies toward the sunlight yearn.

The yielding wood? And yet 't was loth
To yield unto our happy march;
Doubtful it seemed, at times, if both
Could pass its green, elastic arch.

Yet there, at last, upon the marge
We found ourselves, and there, behold,
In hosts the lilies, white and large,
Lay close, with hearts of downy gold!

Deep in the weedy waters spread
The rootlets of the placid bloom:
So sprung my love's flower, that was bred
In deep, still waters of heart's-gloom.

So sprung; and so that morn was nursed
To live in light, and on the pool
Wherein its roots were deep immersed
Burst into beauty broad and cool.

Few words were said; a moment passed;
I know not how it came—that awe
And ardor of a glance that cast
Our love in universal law!

But all at once a bird sang loud,
From dead twigs of the gleamy beech;
His notes dropped dewy, as out of a cloud,
A blessing on our married speech.

Ah, Love! how fresh and rare, even now,
That moment and that mood return
Upon me, when the soft winds blow,
And lilies toward the sunlight yearn!