University of Virginia Library

Deep in the warm heart of Brazil
There lay a diamond bright and still;
The summers sinking through the ground,
Dead flowers and some lost water-rill,
Dim secrets of the earth profound,
Long symphonies of all her sound—
These things enriched and nourished it
With splendours of their infinite.
And, through each dark terrestrial birth,
Regenerating to the light,
That quenchless star of central night
Passed upward from the occult earth;
Became an emanating dew,
Bloomed forth a passion-flower, or flew
A humming-bird with crimson-crest,
Or melting in a virgin's breast,
Made for her heart a diamond too.

Among the forest-folk that child
Seemed a sweet wonder. Strange and wild
From the first years she grew, as one
With superhuman secrets, things
Unspeakable; who oft must shun
Her people for far communings;
Having unclouded sights and clues
Of swift ways to an unknown land
Past all the trails their feet might use.
A spell they could not understand
Was with her, that she did begin
To move unwontedly their hearts,
And there was nought she might not win
With her charmed smile and lovely arts.
Her fellow-children's forest-play
Grew beautiful when she was there;
The butterflies they chased would stay
With blue wings closed, and seemed more rare
And of a gaudier kind; the way
Led more resplendently along,
Lit vividly with the forked ray
The sun shot through the trees; and song
And sweet, unbridled folly reigned,
As though that day the summer bright
Trebled with joyance unexplained.
The children thought she had some might
With all the glowing things, whose flight
Was like an arrow's flash, or fair
And buoyant on the rapturous air.
They thought for her the flowers could talk,
Each one upon its quivering stalk,
In an enchanted tongue she knew
And all day long was listening to;
And sure were they she was a queen
Far in the forest-lands unseen,
Whence wondrous voices that they heard
Shouted her many a magic word,
Or sang or called confusedly.
So that all through the radiant hour
A sweet awe mingled with their glee,
And they had called her Colibri,
Thinking her brother was the bird
Whose sister was the passion-flower.

Oft in the middle flush of sport
She fled them waywardly, and went
Smiling and singing, till the short
Impenetrable paths that bent
Inwardly through the trees were closed
Behind the echoes of her song.
But when all lovely she reposed
In dense, sweet places where days long
No foot drew near and no eye saw;
Where purple-scented stillness grew,
And red trees had not stirred, for awe
Of the eternal thing they knew;
Strange richness of thought undivulged
Would roll upon her heart, and dreams,
In whose remote joy she indulged
Until the warm day's yellowing beams
Fell vaguely on her dazzled cheek.
For soon within her there began
To grow more thoughts than she could speak,
Than she could show to any man,
Sometimes for joy, sometimes for shame,
Since they were measureless and vast
As great blue skies, or went and came
As troops of fair birds flying fast,
Since each was stranger than the last,
And none of them had yet a name.
She could but feel the solitude
Held something of their endless mood,
That they were a mysterious part
Of flower's sweet soul and bird's strong heart;
She could but think it was a share
Of her rich secrets that did gleam
On many a bell-bloom red and fair;
And that in truth it was her dream
The palms dreamed in the lofty air.

The forest voices great and sweet,
The speaking, yea, and singing there,
That seemed so often to repeat
Some powerless murmur of her own,
Were in a language better known
Than any of her kindred's speech.
And what those strange, sweet tongues could teach
Her yielding spirit day by day
Prevailed to lure her far away
And ever farther: till she grew
United more to each wild thing
Of furtive foot or rushing wing,
Than to the sister that she knew;
And many a nameless flower had been
With rich effusive spell between
Her and her mother's heart.

Her friends
Were none else than the blue macaw,
The troupial, whose long nest she saw
Dragging down all the plantain's ends
Close to the canes and swaying sedge
Of every dim lake's hidden edge;
Or, more than these, the tanager,
Whose bright eye had no fear of her;
She loved to hear the joyous stir
He made among the leaves all round,
And knew he followed her for miles
About the forest, with swift bound
Through sidelong ways and green defiles
He only, or the lithe tree snake,
Had skill to thread; and, but for him,
Sometimes she felt her heart would break
With the great throng of thoughts so dim,
So wonderful and hard to speak,
When, watching his shape, vivid, slim,
Ecstatic, she could well believe
He too was bearing in his breast
A secret rapture unconfest.
And more and more she did conceive
That all these in their several ways
Were telling her for days and days
Of one whose face she had not seen,
Who surely some long while had been
Roaming about the forest, felt
By bird and flower, and many a time
Dreamed of by her; strangely sublime
And beautiful, with a great kind
Of power and sweetness, such as dwelt
Perchance in no one man. And still
More than that dream she thought to find,
Wandering with yet a mightier thrill
Deeper and deeper through the wild
Magnificence of trees. Each bird
Had newly seen him, and just heard
Some rare harmonious speech that died
Into its liquid song; each place
Was awed yet, having felt him glide
Loftily through it, leaving trace
Of luminous majesty and grace
And strange transfigurement on all.
O! there was many a clear footfall
Approaching grandly, shaking long
The attentive solitudes with strong
Rythmical thunder,—O the leaves!
The ponderous draperies of green
The dragon-like liana weaves,
Were ofttimes stirred, ay, parted e'en,
As though a hand would have been laid
That moment on her wondering head,
And sudden revelations made
Of all the mystery of her thought—
And yet no miracle was wrought;
While only lasted there instead
The great appalling quiet noon,
With yellow glints of sunlight shed
Through long bright inlets; or too soon
The day in momentary glare
Went down, and joyless, shook the air
With the immense night-shudder.

Then
A weary melancholy ill
Became her life to her, as when
Some crushed palm-sapling fades or dies
Whom its rich inward scents must kill,
And the repression of flushed leaves
That cannot rise to wave and thrill
In azure heights of tropic skies:
So seemed it with her, and she went
To a lone forest lake that heaves
With no fond swell of cadenced waves,
But hollows out its liquid tomb,
And deepens shadowy and content
In the green hollows of its gloom;
Above it monstrously the trees
Have stridden, and their crossèd limbs are bent
And locked in the contorted throes
Of savage strife, while o'er them grows,
Darkening with cumbersome increase,
The dank black parasite. Alone
She sat there drooping; a disease
Her melancholy thought was grown,
Her love of a great thing unknown,
Or known to all and hidden from her.
She was estranged now from blithe day,
And left the fair birds far away,
Nor chose to hear the tanager,
Whose black eye seemed to know so well
All things she sought, and would not tell.

Greater it seemed her heart must grow
Than bird or flower at all might know,
And very desolate was her walk
Through the green lovely solitude;
For no wild creature of the wood
Was high enough to feel or talk
Or commune with her. For her love
Might be the God who reigned above,
Unknown, tremendous in the blue;
But the slim palm-trees were so high,
She might no way ascend thereto.
Or perchance he was wandering through
Some mightier forest all remote,
Or dwelt in marvellous countries nigh
The world's end, where the salt wave smote
The shadowy blue Bahamas' shore,
And she must dream on evermore.
And lo! her dream's exalted joy,
And endless wonder and vague sweet—
The faith no long day might destroy,
The vast hope making her heart beat
Through silent hours of the sun's heat,
The vision that had filled the fiery west,
And rose up making the huge night
Speak and sing wondrously—were best
Of all things to her life, and more,
Yea, e'en than that strange country, bright
With manifold shapes and hues, and more
Than its red warrior-folk, whose town
Boisterous along the river shore
Held yet a home that seemed her own.
And to the lover who now bore
Such hopeless passionate looks, that wooed
With their dumb desolation, nought
She yielded, save some pitying thought
And strange word he scarce understood—
How a surpassing god, unsought,
Unknown, was holding all her heart
Close to his mysteries, and no part
He or her brethren had therein,
Unless some flower should quite begin
To teach them out of its rare hues
Unheard of secrets, or with loose
O'erflowing song, a forest bird
Should tell such things, as when they heard
They should be changed and live again
Could he who loved her say one word?
The countless voices sang so plain,
Passing her charmed ear, from height
Or depth or far unfathomed green,
Gave answer to her, making bright
Some dim place in her heart; could e'en
That love of his for summer have been
To one of those unfading blooms
Of speechless and transcendant thought
That grew up, filling with perfumes
And fervours all her being, fraught
With unknown seed within? But well,
Alas! she saw that bird and flower,
And all the eloquent forest, turned
Their dim side unto him, or fled,
Or shut their sweet mouths, or sang lower
Their song, or sang mere vain things, learned
Of empty echoes and dull dread;
And even the tanager would glance
Full of bright scorn amid his dance,
Mocking him, out of arrow-reach
On topmost bough. Full of dumb love,
That youth would follow afar off,
Daring no longer to beseech,
Stricken through to his warrior's heart
More keenly than his whistling dart
Was wont to strike in war or chase,
All silent and with scarce a stir
More than a gliding snake made,—her
He followed, hearkening many a space
In the side forest's hiding-place.