University of Virginia Library

Refulgent moment of supreme emotion,
Sweetening the earth, swelling the lurid ocean,
Making a flagrant painting of the sky,
Burdening the soul of things with dumb devotion,
Urging the heart of man to speak and die,
Speaking then in a bird's despairing cry,
Breaking then, agonizing, passing by!

So the tremendous evening fades, and night,
Like a great noiseless eagle, at one flight
Covers the glowing country of the light.

Hark how, a mile away, the wild Savannah
Wakens and heaves and roars! Inward this road,
And then a rush through plantain and banana,
And then the forest. Where the strange flower glowed,
The giant yellow flower between the trees,
The blossom of the dragon-like liana,
There she awaits me; there her hands will seize
And hold me to the fire of her heart,
That wild Brazilian fire, whose diamond dart
Makes the small bosom of the humming-bird
A coruscation.

Who would speak a word
Through such transcendant silence? All was done.
And once more in the day, beneath the sun,
She and I journey, as though two were one.
She and I, in a gliding boat of bark,
Are going up the mighty Amazon;
On either side of us a forest dark
With wonders that the light ne'er looked upon,
Whence ever here and there some brilliant thing
Issues enchanted. Sometimes great trees fling
Their tortuous arms across, and endless trails
And coils and thongs of leafage and of bloom
Hang down and sweep the wave, and scarce leave room,
Or stretch their dense impenetrable veils
All overhead. And now the waters dream
And darken in the shadows where they keep
Rich stains of leaf and flower buried deep,
In pastures where the feeding fishes gleam,
Spangled with suns and stars; and now the stream,
Bounding with glossy back beneath some cape,
Goes onward like an oscillating snake,
Until one midmost rock's unyielding shape
Thwarts it, and lo! whole seas of fury break
From lashèd sides, and the rock and river wage
A roaring, endless strife; but slim and swift
As the Anhinga bird, we dart or drift,
Or hurry through the eddies, and the rage
Of the wave's desperate onset far behind
Is lost among rich murmurs. Then the noon,
In some delicious spot where slowly wind
The weakened currents round soft oases,
Linked by their joining flowers, allures us soon
So overwhelmingly with perfumed breeze,
And purple glow and wonderful appeal
Of supernatural colours that reveal
Strange speechless yearnings of the heart, and steal
Into its subtlest communings, that long
We linger, feeling what the waters feel,
And what the flowers are faint with, and a throng
Of passionate thought goes mingling with the song
Of low-voiced love-birds, till we join the dream
Of all their emerald Eden. Nothing said
Around, beneath, or answered overhead,
Yet all one soul in one effusion seem
The opulent odours, the transcendent gleam,
The radiant heights of verdure—the cool gloom,
The flowering orgies of unwonted bloom,
The love, the thought—one soul, one dream, one doom!
Nursed in the noiseless water haunt where night
And day are softened, and the liquid light
And shallow fawning wastes for ever dwell
In unison beneath an amber spell,
We watch some burnished miracle of green,
Piercing the hollow shade with vivid sheen,
The plume-tailed halcyon, with scintillant wing,
Sudden and flashing, like a meteor stone;
Or gazing upwards, long enamouring
Enthralling moments, all that world unknown,
That labyrinth of leaves and blossoming,
That waving ocean of sonorous day,
Where the red palms expand in vast array,
And the sun works his wonders, opens deep
Surpassing vistas; and enchantments keep,
Or visions lure us thitherward in sleep.
Unnumbered pass those redolent hours: a trance
Of luminous magic lulls the whole expanse
Of lovely wilderness. At length a call
Comes from the waters; then the clamorous din
Of some amphibious host: then aimless fall
The spent red arrows of the lurid light
Among the tree stems, and a sun akin
To flame leaves crimson on the palm-trees' height,
And orange on the wave. Then sudden night.

This Indian girl came softly to my side,
In the resplendent border-land, one noon.
I, lingering through the day's luxurious swoon,
Communing with colossal sadness hewn
In the red sunset, felt her long look steal
Into my soul, as some dark glade may feel
The sweet insinuation of the light;
And when I turned the momentary sight
Of her unfaining face touched me with yet
One other thing my soul may not forget.
Neither shall I forget a long rich hour,
Eloquent between pausing sun and moon,
The darkening forest and the closing flower
Spoke in the silence with an unknown power.
She stirred not at my side; but let her cheek
Fall in its soft effusion on my breast,
The while her long, dark yearning gaze exprest
Thoughts wonderful, and things she could not speak.
And looking on her face, I saw indeed
How inwardly that hour her soul took heed
Of love and far-off fate, and life and death,
In some great height of sadness, passionate
And pensive. And the woodlands' wavering breath
Seemed tremulous, because it bore a freight
Of unrequited tears. On either hand
Brethren and sisters of her tribe did stand,
Speechless and saddened; then, a little while,
Made farewells fading, and in shadowy file
Passed onward through the shadowy forest land,
Leaving her there and me; and at her feet
Her Indian lover, dying, making sweet
His death with gazing on her.

Here is our oasis. Slow water-ways
Murmur meandering through the golden maze:
All the lulled river, like a winding snake,
Fondles the flowerage of the bending shores,
Glistens half hidden under blooming brake,
Or basks in glossy opening. Secret pores
Enchant the air with an exhaling scent,
And great corollas tossing redolent,
Like high-swung censers, lavish a large gift
Of magical strange fragrance; while the palms,
Rising exuberant, emulously lift
Crowned heads surpassing to the exalted calms
And luminous heats of high ethereal day.
In such an Eden glorious creatures stay,
Fearless of foe, and many a nest is made
Safe in the blue recesses of the shade,
By lazy golden fowl, whose feathers flame
Most like the burning phoenix of old fame.

Here, when our gliding soft canoe was heard,
Failed there a flower or ceased there any bird
His lone ecstatic song? The red canes stirred
Only with wonted music, shuddering sweet
In long unanimous revelry: the wave
Fawned on insatiably about their feet;
The large leaves met behind us to repave
The blossoming path for wading water-hen,
And glossy green-billed trampler of the fen.
And nothing broke the high beatitude,
Harmonious through the one-voiced solitude,
Where jubilant birds and scents of dreaming flowers,
Poured out rich souls and blended them with ours.

And, truly, to be here in this our isle,
In the red hour of the sun's last smile,
Is fair and full of wonder; for the banks
Gleam with a moving splendour; dazzling ranks
Of lories, and the parrots manifold,
In fluttering glory, crimson, green and gold,
Flown banded from the forest hitherward,
Dapple with shifting hues the bended sward
Down to the wave; or, lighting on some space
Of rustling cane and undulating rush,
Amaze the forests with their swaying grace,
And break the deepening blue with sudden gush
And pageantry of colour.

Colibri!
Yea, let me live for ever here, and see
Only the beauty of the place, and thee,
Strangest and loveliest. There is some part
Of the snake's fascinating soul in thee;
'Twas a surpassing flower that made thy heart
Of passionate secrecy, of hues that start
And rise and fill the soft depths in thy face,
As unknown crimsons formed beneath the wave
Expand and fade; and all thy wild swift grace
Belongeth to the bird that dims the eye
With sunny lightning: whence one name they gave
To thee and to the bird.

And by-and-by
I shall know better all thy mystery.
Here thou shalt bind me, and the flowers maybe
Shall also bind me for thee day by day,
Adding inscrutably some lasting link
Of fragrance round my heart; here thou and they,
Joining soft league against me, lull away
My life to dream a life again, or think
In lofty-cadenced rhapsodies that hold
The long sonorous winds in worlds of gold,
Singing transcendently above the palms.

Already I have felt the inward balms,
Rich stealing emanations from the deep
Unfathomable forest, healing me,
O'erwhelming me in an enchanted sleep
Of unremembering, buoyant luxury,
Whence colour, perfume, sound, on painless wings,
Issue immortal in wide liquid thrill
Of softest dissolution. Unknown things,
Reaching the secret of my kindred sense,
Lure me, moreover; so that I fulfil
A daily-growing bond with the immense
Exuberant solitude; while now the will
Of some long-stifled ancient being intense
Wakes me to soar forth boundless.

Oh, last night,
The great voice of the universal soul
Seemed to be speaking to me from the height
And from the depth, bidding me rise up whole,
Blasting my weakness in the scornful roll
Of thousand-throated thunder. Every tongue
Of fair infuriate creature, gracious, strong,
Uttered or roared or sang the frenzied song
Of its appalling self, that once more flung
A loud defiance through the fearless night,
Great and without a grief. And I, like one
Roused by some vast resuscitating voice
From death's drugged lethargy, watched with delight,
Against the jaggèd blue, the faultless poise
And sheer intrepid leap or violent run
Of ounce or jaguar—hearkening while the noise
Of all that hurricane of life and strife
Roared and rolled on terrific through the leagues
Of shaken woodland, till a loftier life
Of great primeval passions and fatigues
Rose and grew mine—a long exuberant breath
Of pauseless life to end in dreamless death.