The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 2 (of 5)

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Title: The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 2 (of 5)

Author: Madison Julius Cawein

Illustrator: Eric Pape

Release date: June 13, 2017 [eBook #54902]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

file was produced from images generously made available

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF MADISON CAWEIN, VOLUME 2 (OF 5) ***

THE POEMS OF

MADISON CAWEIN

VOLUME II

NEW WORLD IDYLLS AND

POEMS OF LOVE

Ah, girlhood, through the rosy haze

Come like a moonbeam slipping.       Page 3

One Day and Another

THE   POEMS   OF

M A D I S O N   C A W E I N

Volume II

NEW WORLD

IDYLLS AND POEMS

OF LOVE

Illustrated

WITH PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS

BY ERIC PAPE

INDIANAPOLIS

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1905 and 1907, BY MADISON CAWEIN

COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY COPELAND AND DAY; 1898, BY R. H RUSSELL; 1901, BY RICHARD G. BADGER AND COMPANY

PRESS OF

BRAUNWORTH & CO.

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS

BROOKLYN, N. Y.

WITH ENDURING FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND LOYALTY

TO

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

CONTENTS

NEW WORLD IDYLLS

PAGE

BROTHERS, THE

246

DEAD MAN’S RUN

241

DEEP IN THE FOREST

196

EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK, AN

180

FEUD, THE

237

IDYLL OF THE STANDING-STONE, THE

161

LYNCHERS

239

MOSBY AT HAMILTON

235

NIELLO, A

192

ONE DAY AND ANOTHER

1

RAID, THE

244

RED LEAVES AND ROSES

116

SIREN SANDS

217

SOME SUMMER DAYS

171

WAR-TIME SILHOUETTES

224

WILD THORN AND LILY

122

WRECKAGE

209

POEMS OF LOVE

AFTER DEATH

482

AMONG THE ACRES OF THE WOOD

343

AN AUTUMN NIGHT

519

ANDALIA AND THE SPRINGTIME

304

APART

356

APOCALYPSE

327

AT HER GRAVE

386

AT NINEVEH

476

AT PARTING

509

AT SUNSET

405

AT THE STILE

288

AT TWENTY-ONE

351

AT TWILIGHT

391

BLIND GOD, THE

357

BURDEN OF DESIRE, THE

274

CAN I FORGET?

328

CARA MIA

358

CARISSIMA MEA

517

CARMEN

473

CASTLE OF LOVE, THE

295

CAVERNS OF KAF, THE

431

CHORDS

382

CHRISTMAS CATCH, A

378

“COME TO THE HILLS”

512

CONCLUSION

529

CONFESSION, A

388

CONSECRATION

298

CONSTANCE

362

CONTRASTS

516

CREOLE SERENADE

321

DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW, THE

414

DAUGHTER OF THE STATES, A

521

DAY AND NIGHT

392

DEAD AND GONE

406

EPILOGUE

261

EVASION

513

FERN-SEED

290

FINALE

527

FLORIDIAN

374

FOREST POOL, THE

403

GERTRUDE

267

GLORY AND THE DREAM, THE

501

GHOST WEATHER

402

GYPSYING

278

HEART’S DESIRE, THE

395

HEART OF MY HEART

269

HELEN

365

HER EYES

354

HER VESPER SONG

499

HER VIOLIN

492

HER VIVIEN EYES

496

IDEAL DIVINATION

324

“IF I WERE HER LOVER”

337

IN A GARDEN

335

IN AUTUMN

488

INDIFFERENCE

401

IN MAY

503

IN JUNE

331

IN THE GARDEN OF GIRLS

511

KINSHIP

352

LAST DAYS

390

LORA OF THE VALES

313

LOST LOVE

283

LOVE

268

LOVE AND A DAY

369

LOVE IN A GARDEN

372

LYANNA

447

LYDIA

364

MARCH AND MAY

486

MARGERY

360

MASKS

469

MEETING IN SUMMER

494

MEMORIES

485

MESSENGERS

355

METAMORPHOSIS

350

MIGNON

367

MIRIAM

524

MY ROSE

329

NOCTURNE

348

NOËRA

340

OLD MAN DREAMS, THE

483

OLIVIA IN THE AUTUMN

306

ONE NIGHT

407

ORIENTAL ROMANCE

317

OUT OF THE DEPTHS

397

OVERSEAS

285

PASTORAL LOVE

302

PLEDGES

315

PORPHYROGENITA

292

PUPIL OF PAN, A

312

QUARREL, THE

522

REASONS

497

REED CALL FOR APRIL

490

RESTRAINT

330

ROMANTIC LOVE

300

SALAMANDER, THE

438

SENORITA

479

“SHE IS SO MUCH”

353

SINCE THEN

481

SIRENS, THE

346

SNOW AND FIRE

502

SONG FOR YULE, A

380

SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS, THE

454

SPIRIT OF THE STAR, THE

417

SPIRIT OF THE VAN, THE

423

STROLLERS

271

SUCCUBA, THE

464

SUMMER SEA, THE

525

SYLVIA OF THE WOODLAND

308

THE PARTING

412

THE RIDE

507

THE TRYST

276

“THIS IS THE FACE OF HER”

399

THREE BIRDS

393

TOLLMAN’S DAUGHTER, THE

319

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

368

UNCERTAINTY

280

UNREQUITED

394

WATER WITCH, THE

459

“WERE I AN ARTIST”

505

“WHEN SHE DRAWS NEAR”

489

WHEN SHIPS PUT OUT TO SEA

376

WHY?

347

WILL O’ THE WISPS

333

WILL YOU FORGET?

515

WITNESSES

310

WORDS

345

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

AH, GIRLHOOD, THROUGH THE ROSY HAZE COME LIKE A MOONBEAM SLIPPING. (See page 3)

Frontispiece

PAGE

WHERE THE WOODCOCK CALL. (See page 161)

160

SOMETHING DREW ME, UNRETURNING, FILLED ME WITH A FINER FLAME. (See page 419)

350

I LOOK INTO THY HEART AND THEN I KNOW THE WONDROUS POETRY OF THE LONG-AGO. (See page 497)

490

NEW WORLD IDYLLS

O lyrist of the lowly and the true,

The song I sought for you

Still bides unsung. What hope for me to find,

Lost in the dædal mind,

The living utterance with lovely tongue,

To sing,—as once he sung,

Rare Ariosto, of Knight-Errantry,—

How you in Poesy,

Song’s Paladin, Knight of the Dream and Day,

The shield of magic sway!

Of that Atlantes’ power, sweet and terse,

The skyey-builded verse!

The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise,

Our unanointed eyes.—

Oh, could I write as it were worthy you,

Each word, a spark of dew,—

As once Ferdusi wrote in Persia,—

Would string each rosy spray

Of each unfolding flower of my song;

And Iran’s bulbul tongue

Would sob its heart out o’er the fountain’s slab

In gardens of Afrasiab.

ONE DAY AND ANOTHER

A Lyrical Eclogue

PART I

LATE SPRING

The mottled moth at eventide

Beats glimmering wings against the pane;

The slow, sweet lily opens wide,

White in the dusk like some dim stain;

The garden dreams on every side

And breathes faint scents of rain:

Among the flowering stocks they stand;

A crimson rose is in her hand.

I

Outside her garden. He waits musing:

Herein the dearness of her is;

The thirty perfect days of June

Made one, in maiden loveliness

Were not more sweet to clasp and kiss,

With love not more in tune.

Ah me! I think she is too true,

Too spiritual for life’s rough way:

So say her eyes,—her soul looks through,—

Two bluet blossoms, watchet-blue,

Are not more pure than they.

So kind, so beautiful is she,

So soft and white, so fond and fair,

Sometimes my heart fears she may be

Not long for Earth, and secretly

Sweet sister to the air.

II

Dusk deepens. A whippoorwill calls.

The whippoorwills are calling where

The golden west is graying;

“ ’Tis time,” they say, “to meet him there—

Why are you still delaying?

“He waits you where the old beech throws

Its gnarly shadow over

Wood violet and the bramble rose,

Frail lady-fern and clover.

“Where elder and the sumac peep

Above your garden’s paling,

Whereon, at noon, the lizards sleep,

Like lichen on the railing.

“Come! ere the early rising moon’s

Gold floods the violet valleys;

Where mists, like phantom picaroons

Anchor their stealthy galleys.

“Come! while the deepening amethyst

Of dusk above is falling—

’Tis time to tryst! ’tis time to tryst!”

The whippoorwills are calling.

They call you to these twilight ways

With dewy odor dripping—

Ah, girlhood, through the rosy haze

Come like a moonbeam slipping.

III

He enters the garden, speaking dreamily:

There is a fading inward of the day,

And all the pansy sunset clasps one star;

The twilight acres, eastward, glimmer gray,

While all the world to westward smoulders far.

Now to your glass will you pass for the last time?

Pass! humming some ballad, I know.

Here where I wait it is late and is past time—

Late! and the moments are slow, are slow.

There is a drawing downward of the night;

The bridegroom Heaven bends down to kiss the moon:

Above, the heights hang silver in her light;

Below, the vales stretch purple, deep with June.

There in the dew is it you hiding lawny?

You? or a moth in the vines?—

You!—by your hand! where the band twinkles tawny!

You!—by your ring, like a glow-worm that shines!

IV

She approaches, laughing. She speaks:

You’d given up hope?

He

Believe me!

She

Why! is your love so poor?

He

No. Yet you might deceive me!

She

As many a girl before.—

Ah, dear, you will forgive me?

He

Say no more, sweet, say no more!

She

Love trusts; and that’s enough, my dear.

Trust wins through love; whereof, my dear,

Love holds through trust: and love, my dear,

Is—all my life and lore.

He

Come, pay me or I’ll scold you.—

Give me the kiss you owe.—

You run when I would hold you?

She

No! no! I say! now, no!—

How often have I told you,

You must not use me so?

He

More sweet the dusk for this is,

For lips that meet in kisses.—

Come! come! why run from blisses

As from a dreadful foe?

V

She stands smiling at him, shyly, then speaks:

How many words in the asking!

How easily I can grieve you!—

My “yes” in a “no” was a-masking,

Nor thought, dear, to deceive you.—

A kiss?—the humming-bird happiness here

In my heart consents.... But what are words,

When the thought of two souls in speech accords?

Affirmative, negative—what are they, dear?

I wished to say “yes,” but somehow said “no.”

The woman within me knew you would know,

Knew that your heart would hear.

He speaks:

So many words in the doing!—

Therein you could not deceive me;

Some things are sweeter for the pursuing:

I knew what you meant, believe me.—

Bunched bells of the blush pomegranate, to fix

At your throat.... Six drops of fire they are....

Will you look—where the moon and its following star

Rise silvery over yon meadow ricks?

While I hold—while I bend your head back, so....

For I know it is “yes” though you whisper “no,”

And my kisses, sweet, are six.

VI

Moths flutter around them. She speaks:

Look!—where the fiery

Glow-worm in briery

Banks of the moon-mellowed bowers

Sparkles—how hazily

Pinioned and airily

Delicate, warily,

Drowsily, lazily,

Flutter the moths to the flowers.

White as the dreamiest

Bud of the creamiest

Rose in the garden that dozes,

See how they cling to them!

Held in the heart of their

Hearts, like a part of their

Perfume, they swing to them

Wings that are soft as a rose is.

Dim as the forming of

Dew in the warming of

Moonlight, they light on the petals;

All is revealed to them;

All!—from the sunniest

Tips to the honiest

Heart, whence they yield to them

Spice, through the darkness that settles.

So to our tremulous

Souls come the emulous

Agents of love; through whose power

All that is best in us,

All that is beautiful,

Selfless and dutiful,

Is manifest in us,

Even as the scent of a flower.

VII

Taking her hand he says:

What makes you beautiful?

Answer, now, answer!—

Is it that dutiful

Souls are all beautiful?

Is it romance or

Beauty of spirit,

Which souls, that merit,

Of heaven inherit?—

Have you an answer?

She, roguishly:

What makes you lovable?

Answer, now, answer!—

Is it not provable

That man is lovable

Just because chance, or

Nature, makes woman

Love him?—Her human

Part’s to illumine.—

Have you an answer?

VIII

Then, regarding him seriously, she continues:

Could I recall every joy that befell me

There in the past with its anguish and bliss,

Here in my heart it hath whispered to tell me,—

They were no joys like this.

Were it not well if our love could forget them,

Veiling the Was with the dawn of the Is?

Dead with the past we should never regret them,

Being no joys like this.

Now they are gone and the Present stands speechful,

Ardent of word and of look and of kiss,—

What though we know that their eyes are beseechful!—

They were no joys like this.

Were it not well to have more of the spirit,

Living high Futures this earthly must miss?

Less of the flesh, with the Past pining near it?

Knowing no joys like this!

IX

Leaving the garden for the lane. He, with lightness of heart:

We will leave reason,

Sweet, for a season:

Reason were treason

Now that the nether

Spaces are clad, oh,

In silvery shadow—

We will be glad, oh,

Glad as this weather!

She, responding to his mood:

Heart unto heart! where the moonlight is slanted,

Let us believe that our souls are enchanted:—

I in the castle-keep; you are the airy

Prince who comes seeking me; love is the fairy

Bringing us two together.

He

Starlight in masses

Over us passes;

And in the grass is

Many a flower.—

Now will you tell me

How ’d you enspell me?

What once befell me

There in your bower?

She

Soul unto soul!—in the moon’s wizard glory,

Let us believe we are parts in a story:—

I am a poem; a poet you hear it

Whispered in star and in flower; a spirit,

Love, puts my soul in your power.

X

He, suddenly and very earnestly:

Perhaps we lived in the days

Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid;

And loved, as the story says

Did the Sultan’s favorite one

And the Persian Emperor’s son,

Ali ben Bekkar, he

Of the Kisra dynasty.

Do you know the story?—Well,

You were Haroun’s Sultana.

When night on the palace fell,

A slave, through a secret door,—

Low-arched on the Tigris’ shore,—

By a hidden winding stair

Brought me to your bower there.

Then there was laughter and mirth,

And feasting and singing together,

In a chamber of wonderful worth;

In a chamber vaulted high

On columns of ivory;

Its dome, like the irised skies,

Mooned over with peacock eyes;

Its curtains and furniture,

Damask and juniper.

Ten slave girls—so many blooms—

Stand, holding tamarisk torches,

Silk-clad from the Irak looms;

Ten handmaidens serve the feast,

Each maid like a star in the east;

Ten lutanists, lutes a-tune,

Wait, each like the Ramadan moon.

For you, in a stuff of Merv

Blue-clad, unveiled and jeweled,

No metaphor made may serve:

Scarved deep with your raven hair,

The jewels like fireflies there—

Blossom and moon and star,

The Lady Shemsennehar.

The zone that girdles your waist

Would ransom a Prince and Emeer;

In your coronet’s gold enchased,

And your bracelet’s twisted bar,

Burn rubies of Istakhar;

And pearls of the Jamshid race

Hang looped on your bosom’s lace.

You stand like the letter I;

Dawn-faced, with eyes that sparkle

Black stars in a rosy sky;

Mouth, like a cloven peach,

Sweet with your smiling speech;

Cheeks, that the blood presumes

To make pomegranate blooms.

With roses of Rocknabad,

Hyacinths of Bokhara,—

Creamily cool and clad

In gauze,—girls scatter the floor

From pillar to cedarn door.

Then, a pomegranate bloom in each ear,

Come the dancing-girls of Kashmeer.

Kohl in their eyes, down the room,—

That opaline casting-bottles

Have showered with rose-perfume,—

They glitter and drift and swoon

To the dulcimer’s languishing tune;

In the liquid light like stars

And moons and nenuphars.

Carbuncles, tragacanth-red,

Smoulder in armlet and anklet:

Gleaming on breast and on head,

Bangles of coins, that are angled,

Tinkle: and veils, that are spangled,

Flutter from coiffure and wrist

Like a star-bewildered mist.

Each dancing-girl is a flower

Of the Tuba from vales of El Liwa.—

How the bronzen censers glower!

And scents of ambergris pour,

And of myrrh, brought out of Lahore,

And of musk of Khoten! how good

Is the scent of the sandalwood!

A lutanist smites her lute,

Sings loves of Mejnoon and Leila:—

Her voice is an Houri flute;—

While the fragrant flambeaux wave,

Barbaric, o’er free and slave,

O’er fabrics and bezels of gems

And roses in anadems.

Sherbets in ewers of gold,

Fruits in salvers carnelian;

Flagons of grotesque mold,

Made of a sapphire glass,

Brimmed with wine of Shirâz;

Shaddock and melon and grape

On plate of an antique shape.

Vases of frosted rose,

Of alabaster graven,

Filled with the mountain snows;

Goblets of mother-of-pearl,

One filigree silver-swirl;

Vessels of gold foamed up

With spray of spar on the cup.

Then a slave bursts in with a cry:

“The eunuchs! the Khalif’s eunuchs!—

With scimitars bared draw nigh!

Wesif and Afif and he,

Chief of the hideous three,

Mesrour!—the Sultan ’s seen

’Mid a hundred weapons’ sheen!”

Did we part when we heard this?—No!

It seems that my soul remembers

How I clasped and kissed you, so....

When they came they found us—dead,

On the flowers our blood dyed red;

Our lips together, and

The dagger in my hand.

XI

She, musingly:

How it was I can not tell,

For I know not where nor why;

But I know we loved too well

In some world that does not lie

East or west of where we dwell,

And beneath no earthly sky.

Was it in the golden ages?—

Or the iron?—that I heard,—

In the prophecy of sages,—

Haply, how had come a bird,

Underneath whose wing were pages

Of an unknown lover’s word.

I forget. You may remember

How the earthquake shook our ships;

How our city, one huge ember,

Blazed within the thick eclipse:

When you found me—deep December

Sealed my icy eyes and lips.

I forget. No one may say

That such things can not be true:—

Here a flower dies to-day,

There, to-morrow, blooms anew....

Death is silent.—Tell me, pray,

Why men doubt what God can do?

XII

He, with conviction:

As to that, nothing to tell!

You being all my belief,

Doubt can not enter or dwell

Here where your image is chief;

Here where your name is a spell,

Potent in joy and in grief.

Is it the glamour of spring

Working in us so we seem

Aye to have loved? that we cling

Even to some fancy or dream,

Rainbowing everything,

Here in our souls, with its gleam?

See! how the synod is met

There of the planets to preach us:—

Freed from the earth’s oubliette,

See how the blossoms beseech us!—

Were it not well to forget

Winter and death as they teach us?

Dew and a bud and a star,

All,—like a beautiful thought,

Over man’s wisdom how far!—

God for some purpose hath wrought.—

Could we but know why they are,

And that they end not in naught!

Stars and the moon; and they roll

Over our way that is white.—

Here shall we end the long stroll?

Here shall I kiss you good night?

Or, for a while, soul to soul,

Linger and dream of delight?

XIII

They reënter the garden. She speaks somewhat pensively:

Myths tell of walls and cities, lyred of love,

That rose to music.—Were that power my own,

Had I that harp, that magic barbiton,

What had I builded for our lives thereof?—

In docile shadows under bluebell skies,

A home upon the poppied edge of eve,

Beneath pale peaks the splendors never leave,

’Mid lemon orchards whence the egret flies.

Where, pitiless, the ruined hand of death

Should never reach. No bud, no flower fade:

Where all were perfect, pure and unafraid:

And life serener than an angel’s breath.

The days should move to music: song should tame

The nights, attentive with their listening stars:

And morn outrival eve in opal bars,

Each preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame.

O home! O life! desired and to be!

How shall we reach you?—Far the way and dim.—

Give me your hand, sweet! let us follow him,

Love with the madness and the melody.

XIV

He, observing the various dowers around them:

Violets and anemones

The surrendered Hours

Pour, as handsels, round the knees

Of the Spring, who to the breeze

Flings her myriad flowers.

Like to coins, the sumptuous day

Strews with blossoms golden

Every furlong of his way,—

Like a Sultan gone to pray

At a Kaaba olden.

Warlock Night, with spark on spark,

Clad in dim attire,

Dots with stars the haloed dark,—

As a priest around the Ark

Lights his lamps of fire.

These are but the cosmic strings

Of the harp of Beauty,

Of that instrument which sings,

In our souls, of love, that brings

Peace and faith and duty.

XV

She, seriously:

Duty?—Comfort of the sinner

And the saint!—When grief and trial

Weigh us, and within our inner

Selves,—responsive to love’s viol,—

Hope’s soft voice grows thin and thinner.

It is kin to self-denial.

Self-denial! Through whose feeling

We are gainer though we ’re loser;

All the finer force revealing

Of our natures. No accuser

Is the conscience then, but healing

Of the wound of which we ’re chooser.

Who the loser, who the winner,

If the ardor fail as preacher?—

None who loved was yet beginner,

Though another’s love-beseecher:

Love’s revealment ’s of the inner

Life and God Himself is teacher.

Heine said “no flower knoweth

Of the fragrance it revealeth;

Song, its heart that overfloweth,

Never nightingale’s heart feeleth”—

Such is love the spirit groweth,

Love unconscious if it healeth.

XVI

He, looking smilingly into her eyes, after a pause, lightly:

An elf there is who stables the hot

Red wasp that sucks on the apricot;

An elf, who rowels his spiteful bay,

Like a mote on a ray, away, away;

An elf, who saddles the hornet lean

And dins i’ the ear o’ the swinging bean;

Who straddles, with cap cocked, all awry,

The bottle-green back o’ the dragon-fly.

And this is the elf who sips and sips

From clover-horns whence the perfume drips;

And, drunk with dew, in the glimmering gloam

Awaits the wild-bee’s coming home;

In ambush lies where none may see,

And robs the caravan bumblebee:

Gold bags of honey the bees must pay

To the bandit elf of the fairy-way.

Another ouphen the butterflies know,

Who paints their wings with the hues that glow

On blossoms: squeezing from tubes of dew

Pansy colors of every hue

On his bloom’s pied pallet, he paints the wings

Of the butterflies, moths, and other things.

This is the elf that the hollyhocks hear,

Who dangles a brilliant in each one’s ear;

Teases at noon the pane’s green fly,

And lights at night the glow-worm’s eye.

But the dearest elf, so the poets say,

Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;

Who curls in a dimple or slips along

The strings of a lute to a lover’s song;

Who smiles in her smile and frowns in her frown,

And dreams in the scent of her glove or gown;

Hides and beckons, as all may note,

In the bloom or the bow of a maiden’s throat.

XVII

She, pensively, standing among the flowers:

Soft through the trees the night wind sighs,

And swoons and dies.

Above, the stars hang wanly white;

Here, through the dark,

A drizzled gold, the fireflies

Rain mimic stars in spark on spark.—

’Tis time to part, to say good night.

Good night.

From fern to flower the night-moths cross

At drowsy loss.

The moon drifts, veiled, through clouds of white;

And pearly pale,

In silvery blurs, through beds of moss,

Their tiny moons the glow-worms trail.—

’Tis time to part, to say good night.

Good night.

XVIII

He, at parting, as they proceed down the garden:

You say we can not marry, now

That roses and the June are here?

To your decision I must bow.—

Ah, well!—perhaps ’t is best, my dear.

Let’s swear again each old love vow

And love another year.

Another year of love with you!

Of dreams and days, of sun and rain!

When field and forest bloom anew,

And locust clusters pelt the lane,

When all the song-birds wed and woo,

I’ll not take “no” again.

Oft shall I lie awake and mark

The hours by no clanging clock,

But, in the dim and dewy dark,

Far crowing of some punctual cock;

Then up, as early as the lark

To meet you by our rock.

The rock, where first we met at tryst;

Where first I wooed and won your love.—

Remember how the moon and mist

Made mystery of the heaven above

As now to-night?—Where first I kissed

Your lips, you trembling like a dove.

So, then, we will not marry now

That roses and the June are here,

That warmth and fragrance weigh each bough?

And, yet, your reason is not clear ...

Ah, well! We ’ll swear anew each vow

And wait another year.

PART II

EARLY SUMMER

The cricket in the rose-bush hedge

Sings by the vine-entangled gate;

The slim moon slants a timid edge

Of pearl through one low cloud of slate;

Around dark door and window-ledge

Like dreams the shadows wait.

And through the summer dusk she goes,

On her white breast a crimson rose.

I

She delays, meditating. A rainy afternoon.

Gray skies and a foggy rain

Dripping from streaming eaves;

Over and over again

Dull drop of the trickling leaves:

And the woodward-winding lane,

And the hill with its shocks of sheaves

One scarce perceives.

Shall I go in such wet weather

By the lane or over the hill?—

Where the blossoming milkweed’s feather

The diamonded rain-drops fill;

Where, draggled and drenched together,

The ox-eyes rank the rill

By the old corn-mill.

The creek by now is swollen,

And its foaming cascades sound;

And the lilies, smeared with pollen,

In the dam look dull and drowned.

’Tis the path I oft have stolen

To the bridge; that rambles round

With willows bound.

Through a bottom wild with berry,

And packed with the ironweeds

And elder,—washed and very

Fragrant,—the fenced path leads

Past oak and wilding cherry,

Where the tall wild-lettuce seeds,

To a place of reeds.

The sun through the sad sky bleaches—

Is that a thrush that calls?—

A bird in the rain beseeches:

And see! on the balsam’s balls,

And leaves of the water-beeches—

One blister of wart-like galls—

No rain-drop falls.

My shawl instead of a bonnet!...

’Though the woods be dripping yet,

Through the wet to the rock I’ll run it!—

How sweet to meet in the wet!—

Our rock with the vine upon it,—

Each flower a fiery jet,—

Where oft we ’ve met.

II

They meet. He speaks:

How fresh the purple clover

Smells in its veil of rain!

And where the leaves brim over

How musky wild the lane!

See, how the sodden acres,

Forlorn of all their rakers,

Their hay and harvest makers,

Look green as spring again.

Drops from the trumpet-flowers

Rain on us as we pass;

And every zephyr showers,

From tilted leaf or grass,

Clear beads of moisture, seeming

Pale, pointed emeralds gleaming;

Where, through the green boughs streaming,

The daylight strikes like glass.

She speaks:

How dewy, clean and fragrant

Look now the green and gold!—

And breezes, trailing vagrant,

Spill all the spice they hold.

The west begins to glimmer;

And shadows, stretching slimmer,

Make gray the ways; and dimmer

Grow field and forest old.

Beyond those rainy reaches

Of woodland, far and lone,

A whippoorwill beseeches;

And now an owlet’s moan

Drifts faint upon the hearing.—

These say the dusk is nearing.

And, see, the heavens, clearing,

Take on a tender tone.

How feebly chirps the cricket!

How thin the tree-toads cry!

Blurred in the wild-rose thicket

Gleams wet the firefly.—

This way toward home is nearest;

Of weeds and briers clearest....

We ’ll meet to-morrow, dearest;

Till then, dear heart, good-by.

III

They meet again under the greenwood tree. He speaks:

Here at last! And do you know

That again you ’ve kept me waiting?

Wondering, anticipating

That your “yes” meant “no.”

Now you ’re here we ’ll have our day....

Let us take this daisied hollow,

And beneath these beeches follow

This wild strip of way

To the stream; wherein are seen

Stealing gar and darting minnow;

Over which snake-feeders winnow

Wings of black and green.

Like a cactus flames the sun;

And the mighty weaver, Even,

Tenuous colored, there in heaven,

His rich weft ’s begun....

How I love you! from the time—

You remember, do you not?—

When, within your orchard-plot,

I was reading rhyme,

As I told you. And ’t was thus:—

“By the blue Trinacrian sea,

Far in pastoral Sicily

With Theocritus”—

That I answered you who asked.

But the curious part was this:—

That the whole thing was amiss;

That the Greek but masked

Tales of old Boccaccio:

Tall Decameronian maids

Strolled for me among the glades,

Smiling, sweet and slow.

And when you approached,—my book

Dropped in wonder,—seemingly

To myself I said, “ ’Tis she!”

And arose to look

In Lauretta’s eyes and—true!

Found them yours.—You shook your head,

Laughing at me, as you said,

“Did I frighten you?”

You had come for cherries; these

Coatless then I climbed for while

You still questioned with a smile,

And still tried to tease.

Ah, love, just two years have gone

Since then.... I remember, you

Wore a dress of billowy blue

Muslin.—Was it “lawn”?—

And your apron still I see—

All its whiteness cherry-stained—

Which you held; wherein I rained

Ripeness from the tree.

And I asked you—for, you know,

To my eyes your serious eyes

Said such deep philosophies—

If you ’d read Rousseau.

You remember how a chance,

Somewhat like to mine, one June

Happened him at castle Toune,

Over there in France?

And a cherry dropping fair

On your cheek, I, envying it,

Cried—remembering Rousseau’s wit—

“Would my lips were there!” ...

Here we are at last. We ’ll row

Down the stream.—The west has narrowed

To one streak of rose, deep-arrowed.—

There ’s our skiff below.

IV

Entering the skiff, she speaks:

Waters flowing dark and bright

In the sunlight or the moon,

Fill my soul with such delight

As some visible music might;

As some slow, majestic tune

Made material to the sight.

Blossoms colored like the skies,

Sunset-hued and tame or wild,

Fill my soul with such surmise

As the mind might realize

If one’s thoughts, all undefiled,

Should take form before the eyes.

So to me do these appeal;

So they sway me every hour:

Letting all their beauty steal

On my soul to make it feel

Through a rivulet or flower,

More than any words reveal.

V

He speaks, rowing:

See, sweetheart, how the lilies lay

Their lambent leaves about our way;

Or, pollen-dusty, bob and float

Their nenuphars around our boat.—

The middle of the stream is reached

Three strokes from where our boat was beached.

Look up. You scarce can see the sky,

Through trees that lean, dark, dense and high;

That, coiled with grape and trailing vine,

Build vast a roof of shade and shine;

A house of leaves, where shadows walk,

And whispering winds and waters talk.

There is no path. The saplings choke

The trunks they spring from. There an oak,

Floods from the Alleghanies bore,

Lies rotting; and that sycamore,

Which lays its bulk from shore to shore,—

Uprooted by the rain,—perchance

May be the bridge to some romance:

Its heart of punk, a spongy white,

Glows, ghostly foxfire, in the night.

Now opening through a willow fringe

The waters creep, one tawny tinge

Of sunset; and on either marge

The cottonwoods make walls of shade,

With breezy balsam pungent: large,

The gradual hills loom; darkly fade

The waters wherein herons wade,

Or wing, like Faëry birds, from grass

That mats the shore by which we pass.

She speaks:

On we pass; we rippling pass,

On sunset waters still as glass.

A vesper-sparrow flies above,

Soft twittering, to its woodland love.

A tufted-titmouse calls afar;

And from the west, like some swift star,

A glittering jay flies screaming. Slim

The sand-snipes and kingfishers skim

Before us; and some twilight thrush—

Who may discover where such sing?—

The silence rinses with a gush

Of limpid music bubbling.

He speaks:

On we pass.—Now let us oar

To yonder strip of ragged shore,

Where, from a rock with lichens hoar,

A ferny spring falls, babbling frore

Through woodland mosses. Gliding by

The sulphur-colored firefly

Lights its pale lamp where mallows gloom,

And wild-bean and wild-mustard bloom.—

Some hunter there within the woods

Last fall encamped, those ashes say

And campfire boughs.—The solitudes

Grow dreamy with the death of day.

VI

She sings:

Over the fields of millet

A young bird tries its wings;

And wild as a woodland rillet,

Its first mad music rings rings—

Soul of my soul, where the meadows roll

What is the song it sings?

“Love, and a glad good-morrow,

Heart where the rapture is!

Good-morrow, good-morrow!

Adieu to sorrow!

Here is the road to bliss:

Where all day long you may hearken my song,

And kiss, kiss, kiss;”

Over the fields of clover,

Where the wild bee drones and sways,

The wind, like a shepherd lover,

Flutes on the fragrant ways—

Heart of my heart, where the blossoms part,

What is the air he plays?

“Love, and a song to follow,

Soul with the face a-gleam!

Come follow, come follow,

O’er hill and through hollow,

To the land o’ the bloom and beam:

Where, under the flowers, you may listen for hours,

And dream, dream, dream!”

VII

He speaks, letting the boat drift:

Here the shores are irised; grasses

Clump the water gray, that glasses

Broken wood and deepened distance.

Far the musical persistence

Of a field-lark lingers low

In the west’s rich tulip-glow.

White before us flames one pointed

Star; and Day hath Night anointed

King; from out her azure ewer

Pouring starry fire, truer

Than pure gold. Star-crowned he stands

With the starlight in his hands.

Will the moon bleach through the ragged

Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged

Rock that rises gradually,

Pharos of our homeward valley?—

All the west is smouldering red;

Embers are the stars o’erhead.

At my soul some Protean elf is:

You ’re Simætha; I am Delphis,

You are Sappho and your Phaon,

I.—We love.—There lies our way, on,—

Let us say,—Æolian seas,

To the violet Lesbian leas.

On we drift. I love you. Nearer

Looms our Island. Rosier, clearer,

The Leucadian cliff we follow,

Where the temple of Apollo

Shines—a pale and pillared fire....

Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre!—

Out of Hellas blows the breeze

Singing to the Sapphic seas.

VIII

Landing, he sings:

Night, night, ’t is night. The moon drifts low above us,

And all its gold is tangled in the stream:

Love, love, my love, and all the stars, that love us,

The stars smile down and every star ’s a dream.

In odorous purple, where the falling warble

Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows,

A columned ruin lifts its sculptured marble

Friezed with the chiselled rebeck and the rose.

She sings:

Sleep, sleep, sweet sleep sleeps at the drifting tiller,

And in our sail the Spirit of the Rain—

Love, love, my love, ah, bid thy heart be stiller,

And, hark! the music of the singing main.

What flowers are those that blow their balm unto us,

From mouths of wild aroma, each a flame?—

Or is it Love that breathes? sweet Love who drew us,

Who kissed our eyes and made us see the same?

He speaks:

Dreams; dreams we dream! no dream that we would banish!

The temple and the nightingale are there!

Our love hath made them, nevermore to vanish,

Real as yon moon, this wild-rose in your hair.

Night, night, ’tis night!—and Love’s own star ’s before us,

Its starred reflection in the starry stream.—

Yes, yes, ah yes! his presence shall watch o’er us,

To-night, to-night, and every night we dream.

IX

Homeward through flowers; she speaks:

Behold the offerings of the common hills!

Whose lowly names have made them three times dear:

One evening-primrose and an apron-full

Of violets; and there, in multitudes,

Dim-seen in moonlight, sweet cerulean wan,

The bluet, making heaven of every dell

With morn’s ambrosial blue: dew-dropping plumes

Of the mauve beard’s-tongue; and the red-freaked cups

Of blackberry-lilies all along the creek,

Where, lulled, the freckled silence sleeps, and vague

The water flows, when, at high noon, the cows

Wade knee-deep, and the heat is honied with

The drone of drowsy bees and dizzy flies.

How bright the moon is on that fleur-de-lis;

Blue, streaked with crystal like a summer day:

And is it moonlight there? or is it flowers?

White violets? lilies? or a daisy bed?

And now the wind, with softest lullaby,

Swings all their cradled heads and rocks-to-sleep

Their fragrant faces and their golden eyes,

Curtained, and frailly wimpled with the dew.

Simple suggestions of a life most fair!

Flowers, you speak of love and untaught faith,

Whose habitation is within the soul,

Not of the Earth, yet for the Earth indeed....

What is it halcyons my heart? makes calm,

With calmness not of knowledge, all my soul

This night of nights?—Is ’t love? or faith? or both?—

The lore of all the world is less than these

Simple suggestions of a life most fair,

And love most sweet that I have learned to know!

X

He speaks, musingly:

Yes, I have known its being so;

Long ago was I seeing so—

Beckoning on to a fairer land,

Out of the flowers it waved its hand;

Bidding me on to life and love,

Life with the hope of the love thereof.

What is the value of knowing it,

If you are shy in showing it?—

Need of the earth unfolds the flower,

Dewy sweet, at the proper hour;

And, in the world of the human heart,

Love is the flower’s counterpart.

So when the soul is heedable,

Then is the heart made readable.—

I in the book of your heart have read

Words that are truer than truth hath said:

Measures of love, the spirit’s song,

Writ of your soul to haunt me long.

Love can hear each laudable

Thought of the loved made audible,

Spoken in wonder, or joy, or pain,

And reëcho it back again:

Ever responsive, ever awake,

Ever replying with ache for ache.

XI

She speaks, dreamily:

Earth gives its flowers to us

And heaven its stars. Indeed,

These are as lips that woo us,

Those are as lights that lead,

With love that doth pursue us,

With hope that still doth speed.

Yet shall the flowers lie riven,

And lips forget to kiss;

The stars fade out of heaven,

And lights lead us amiss—

As love for which we ’ve striven;

As hope that promises.

XII

He laughs, wishing to dispel her seriousness:

If love I have had of you, you had of me,

Then doubtless our loving were over;

One would be less than the other, you see;

Since what you returned to your lover

Were only his own; and—

XIII

She interrupts him, speaking impetuously:

But if I lose you, if you part with me,

I will not love you less

Loving so much now. If there is to be

A parting and distress,—

What will avail to comfort or relieve

The soul that’s anguished most?—

The knowledge that it once possessed, perceive,

The love that it has lost.

You must acknowledge, under sun and moon

All that we feel is old;

Let morning flutter from night’s brown cocoon

Wide wings of flaxen gold;

The moon burst through the darkness, soaring o’er,

Like some great moth and white,

These have been seen a myriad times before

And with renewed delight.—

So ’tis with love;—how old yet new it is!—

This only should we heed,—

To once have known, to once have felt love’s bliss,

Is to be rich indeed.—

Whether we win or lose, we lose or win,

Within our gain or loss

Some purpose lies, some end unseen of sin,

Beyond our crown or cross.

XIV

Nearing her home, he speaks:

True, true!—Perhaps it would be best

To be that lone star in the west;

Above the earth, within the skies,

Yet shining here in your blue eyes.

Or, haply, better here to blow

A flower beneath your window low;

That, brief of life and frail and fair,

Finds yet a heaven in your hair.

Or well, perhaps, to be the breeze

That sighs its soul out to the trees;

A voice, a breath of rain or drouth,

That has its wild will with your mouth.

These things I long to be. I long

To be the burthen of some song

You love to sing; a melody,

Sure of sweet immortality.

XV

At the gate. She speaks:

Sunday shall we ride together?

Not the root-rough, rambling way

Through the wood we went that day,

In last summer’s sultry weather.

Past the Methodist camp-meeting,

Where religion helped the hymn

Gather volume; and a slim

Minister, with textful greeting,

Welcomed us and still expounded.—

From the service on the hill

We had passed three hills and still

Loud, though far, the singing sounded.

Nor that road through weed and berry

Drowsy days led me and you

To the old-time barbecue,

Where the country-side made merry.

Dusty vehicles together;

Darkies with the horses near

Tied to trees; the atmosphere

Redolent of bark and leather,

And of burgoo and of beef; there

Roasting whole within the trench;

Near which spread the long pine bench

Under shading limb and leaf there.

As we went the homeward journey

You exclaimed, “They intermix

Pleasure there and politics,

Love and war: our modern tourney.”

And the fiddles!—through the thickets,

How they thumped the old quadrille!

Scraping, droning on the hill,

It was like a swarm of crickets....

Neither road! The shady quiet

Of that path by beech and birch,

Winding to the ruined church

Near the stream that sparkles by it.

Where the silent Sundays listen

For the preacher—Love—we bring

In our hearts to preach and sing

Week-day shade to Sabbath glisten.

XVI

He, at parting:

Yes, to-morrow. Early morn.—

When the House of Day uncloses

Portals that the stars adorn,—

Whence Light’s golden presence throws his

Flaming lilies, burning roses,

At the wide wood’s world of wall,

Spears of sparkle at each fall:

Then together we will ride

To the wood’s cathedral places;

Where, like prayers, the wildflowers hide,

Sabbath in their fairy faces;

Where, in truest, untaught phrases,

Worship in each rhythmic word,

God is praised by many a bird.

Look above you.—Pearly white,

Star on star now crystallizes

Out of darkness: Afric night

Hangs them round her like devices

Of strange jewels. Vapor rises,

Glimmering, from each wood and dell.—

Till to-morrow, then, farewell.

XVII

She tarries at the gate a moment, watching him disappear down the lane. He sings, and the sound of his singing grows fainter and fainter and at last dies away in the distance:

Say, my heart, O my heart,

These be the eves for speaking!

There is no wight will work us spite

Beneath the sunset’s streaking.

Yes, my sweet, O my sweet,

Now is the time for telling!

To walk together in starry weather

Down lanes with elder smelling.

O my heart, yes, my heart,

Now is the time for saying!

When lost in dreams each wildflower seems

And every blossom praying.

Lean, my sweet, listen, sweet,—

No sweeter time than this is,—

So says the rose, the moth that knows,—

To take sweet toll in kisses.

PART III

LATE SUMMER

Heat lightning flickers in one cloud,

As in a flower a firefly;

Some rain-drops, that the rose-bush bowed,

Jar through the leaves and dimly lie:

Among the trees, now low, now loud,

The whispering breezes sigh.

The place is lone; the night is hushed;

Upon the path a rose lies crushed.

I

Musing, he strolls among the quiet lanes by farm and field:

Now rests the season in forgetfulness,

Careless in beauty of maturity;

The ripened roses round brown temples, she

Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess.

Now Time grants night the more and day the less:

The gray decides; and brown,

Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express

Themselves and redden as the year goes down.

Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high

Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die,

And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.—

Deeper to tenderness,

Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along

The lonesome west; sadder the song

Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow.—

Deeper and dreamier, ay!

Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky

Above lone orchards where the cider-press

Drips and the russets mellow.

Nature grows liberal: from the beechen leaves

The beech-nuts’ burrs their little pockets thrust,

Bulged with the copper of the nuts that rust;

Above the grass the spendthrift spider weaves

A web of silver for which dawn designs

Thrice twenty rows of pearls: beneath the oak,

That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,—

The polished acorns, from their saucers broke,

Strew oval agates.—On sonorous pines

The far wind organs; but the forest near

Is silent; and the blue-white smoke

Of burning brush, beyond that field of hay,

Hangs like a pillar in the atmosphere;

But now it shakes—it breaks and all the

vines And tree-tops tremble;—see! the wind is here!

Billowing and boisterous; and the smiling day

Rejoices in its clamor. Earth and sky

Resound with glory of its majesty,

Impetuous splendor of its rushing by.—

But on those heights the forest still is still,

Expectant of its coming.... Far away

Each anxious tree upon each waiting hill

Tingles anticipation, as in gray

Surmise of rapture. Now the first gusts play,

Like laughter low, about their rippling spines;

And now the wildwood, one exultant sway,

Shouts—and the light at each tumultuous pause,

The light that glooms and shines,

Seems hands in wild applause.

How glows that garden! though the white mists keep

The vagabonding flowers reminded of

Decay that comes to slay in open love,

When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep;

Unheeding still, their cardinal colors leap

And laugh encircled of the scythe of death,—

Like lovely children he prepares to reap,—

Staying his blade a breath

To mark their beauty ere, with one last sweep,

He lays them dead and turns away to weep.—

Let me admire,—

Before the sickle of the coming cold

Shall mow them down,—their beauties manifold:

How like to spurts of fire

That scarlet salvia lifts its blooms, which heap

Yon square of sunlight. And, as sparkles creep

Through charring parchment, up that window’s screen

The cypress dots with crimson all its green,

The haunt of many bees.

Cascading dark those porch-built lattices,

The nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood,

Hanging in clusters, ’mid the blue monk’s-hood.

There, in that garden old,

The bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold

Their formal flowers; and the marigold

Lifts its pinched shred of orange sunset caught

And elfed in petals. The nasturtium,

All pungent leaved and acrid of perfume,

Hangs up its goblin bonnet, fairy-brought

From Gnomeland. There, predominant red,

And arrogant, the dahlia lifts its head,

Beside the balsam’s rose-stained horns of honey,

Deep in the murmuring, sunny,

Dry wildness of the weedy flower-bed;

Where crickets and the weed-bugs, noon and night,

Shrill dirges for the flowers that soon will die,

And flowers already dead.—

I seem to hear the passing Summer sigh:

A voice, that seems to weep,

“Too soon, too soon the Beautiful passes by!

And soon, amid her bowers,

Will dripping Autumn mourn with all her flowers.”—

If I, perchance, might peep

Beneath those leaves of podded hollyhocks,

That the bland wind with odorous whispers rocks,

I might behold her,—white

And weary,—Summer, ’mid her flowers asleep,

Her drowsy flowers asleep,

The withered poppies knotted in her locks.

II

He is reminded of another day with her:

The hips were reddening on this rose,

Those haws were hung with fire,

That day we went this way that goes

Up hills of bough and brier.

This hooked thorn caught her gown and seemed

Imploring her to linger;

Upon her hair a sun-ray streamed

Like some baptizing finger.

This false-foxglove, so golden now

With yellow blooms, like bangles,

Was bloomless then. But yonder bough,—

The sumac’s plume entangles,—

Was like an Indian’s painted face;

And, like a squaw, attended

That bush, in vague vermilion grace,

With beads of berries splendid.

And here we turned to mount that hill,

Down which the wild brook tumbles;

And, like to-day, that day was still,

And mild winds swayed the umbels

Of these wild-carrots, lawny gray:

And there, deep-dappled o’er us,

An orchard stretched; and in our way

Dropped ripened fruit before us.

With muffled thud the pippin fell,

And at our feet rolled dusty;

A hornet clinging to its bell,

The pear lay bruised and rusty:

The smell of pulpy peach and plum,

From which the juice oozed yellow,—

Around which bees made sleepy hum,—

Made warm the air and mellow.

And then we came where, many-hued,

The wet wild morning-glory

Hung its balloons in shadows dewed

For dawning’s offertory:

With bush and bramble, far away,

Beneath us stretched the valley,

Cleft of one creek, as clear as day,

That rippled musically.

The brown, the bronze, the green, the red

Of weed and brier ran riot

To walls of woods, whose pathways led

To nooks of whispering quiet:

Long waves of feathering goldenrod

Ran through the gray in patches,

As in a cloud the gold of God

Burns, that the sunset catches.

And there, above the blue hills rolled,

Like some far conflagration,

The sunset, flaming marigold,

We watched in exultation:

Then, turning homeward, she and I

Went in love’s sweet derangement—

How different now seem earth and sky,

Since this undreamed estrangement.

III

He enters the woods. He sits down despondently:

Here where the day is dimmest,

And silence company,

Some might find sympathy

For loss, or grief the grimmest,

In each great-hearted tree—

Here where the day is dimmest—

But, ah, there ’s none for me!

In leaves might find communion,

Returning sigh for sigh,

For love the heavens deny;

The love that yearns for union,

Yet parts and knows not why.—

In leaves might find communion—

But, ah, not I, not I!

My eyes with tears are aching.—

Why has she written me?

And will no longer see?—

My heart with grief is breaking,

With grief that this should be.—

My eyes with tears are aching—

Why has she written me?

IV

He proceeds in the direction of a stream:

Better is death than sleep,

Better for tired eyes.—

Why do we weep and weep

When near us the solace lies?

There, in that stream, that, deep,—

Reflecting woods and skies,—

Could comfort all our sighs.

The mystery of things,

Of dreams, philosophies,

To which the mortal clings,

That can unriddle these.—

What is ’t the water sings?

What is ’t it promises?—

End to my miseries!

V

He seats himself on a rock and gazes steadily into the stream:

And here alone I sit and it is so!—

O vales and hills! O valley-lands and knobs!

What cure have you for woe?

What balm that robs

The brain of thought, the knowledge of its woe?

None! none! ah me! that my sick heart may know!—

The wearying sameness!—yet this thing is so!

This thing is so, and still the waters flow,

The leaves drop slowly down; the daylight throbs

With sun and wind, and yet this thing is so!

There is no sympathy in heaven or earth

For human sorrow! all we see is mirth,

Or madness; cruelty or lust;

Nature is heedless of her children’s grief;

Man is to her no more than is a leaf,

That buds and has its summer, that is brief,

Then falls, and mixes with the common dust.

Here, at this culvert’s mouth,

The shadowy water, flowing toward the south,

Seems deepest, stagnant-stayed.—

What is it yonder that makes me afraid?

Of my own self afraid?—I do not know!—

What power draws me to the striate stream?

What evil? or what dream?

Me! dropping pebbles in the quiet wave,

That echoes, strange as music in a cave,

Hollow and thin; vibrating in the shade,

As if ’t were tears that fell, and, falling, made

A crystal sound, a shadow wail of woe,

Wrung from the rocks and waters there below;

An ailing phantom that will not be laid;

Complaining ghosts of sobs that fill my breast,—

That will not forth,—and give my heart no rest.

There, in the water, how the lank sword-grass

Mats its long blades, each blade a crooked kris,

Making a marsh; ’mid which the currents miss

Their rock-born melodies.

But there and there, one sees

The wide-belled mallow, as within a glass,

Long-pistiled, leaning o’er

The root-contorted shore,

As if its own pink image it would kiss.

And there the tangled wild-potato vine

Lifts beakered blossoms, each a cup of wine,

As pale as moonlight is:—

No mandrake, curling convolutions up,

Loops heavier blossoms, each a conical cup

That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent’s hiss.—

And there tall gipsy lilies, all a-sway,

Of coppery hue

Streaked as with crimson dew,

Mirror fierce faces in the deeps,

O’er which they lean, bent in inverted view.—

And where the stream around those rushes creeps,

The dragon-fly, in endless error, keeps

Sewing the pale-gold gown of day

With tangled stitches of a burning blue:

Its brilliant body is a needle fine,

A thread of azure ray,

Black-pinioned, shuttling the shade and shine.

But here before me where my pensive shade

Looks up at me, the stale stream, stagnant, lies,

Deep, dark, but clear and silent; streaked with hues

Of ragweed pollen, and of spawny ooze,

Through which the seeping bubbles, bursting, rise.—

All flowers here refuse

To grow or blossom; beauties, too, are few,

That haunt its depths: no glittering minnows braid

Its sleepy crystal; and no gravels strew

With colored orbs its bottom. Half afraid

I shrink from my own eyes

There in its cairngorm of reflected skies.—

I know not why, and yet it seems I see—

What is ’t I see there moving stealthily?

I know not what!—But where the kildees wade,

Slim in the foamy scum,

From that direction hither doth it come,

Whate’er it is, that makes my soul afraid.

Nearer it draws to where those low rocks ail,

Warm rocks, on which some water-snake hath clomb,

Basking its spotted body, coiling numb,

Brown in the brindled shade.—

At first it seemed a prism on the grail,

A bubble’s prism, like the shadow made

Of water-striders; then a trail,

An angled sparkle in a webby veil

Of duckweed, green as verdigris, it swayed

Frog-like through deeps, to crouch, a flaccid, pale,

Squat bulk below....

I gaze, and though I would, I can not go.

Reflected trees and skies,

And breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss,

Seem in its stolid eyes,

Its fishy gaze, that holds me in strange wise.

Ghoul-like it seems to rise,

And now to sink; its eldritch features fail,

Then come again in rhythmic waviness,

With arms like tentacles that seem to press

Thro’ weed and water: limbs that writhe and fade,

And clench, and twist, and toss,

Root-like and gnarled, and cross and inter-cross

Through flabby hair of smoky moss.

How horrible to see this thing at night!

Or when the sunset slants its brimstone light

Above the pool! when, blue, in phantom flight,

The will-o’-the-wisps, perhaps, above it reel.

Then, haply, would it rise, a rotting green,

Up, up, and gather me with arms of steel,

Soft steel, and drag me where the wave is white,

Beneath that boulder brown, that plants a keel

Against the ripple there, a shoulder lean.—

No, no! I must away before ’tis night!

Before the fireflies dot

The dark with sulphur blurrings bright!

Before, upon that height,

The white wild-carrots vanish from the sight;

And boneset blossoms, tossing there in clusters,

Fade to a ridge, a streak of ghostly lustres:

And, in that sunlit spot,

Yon cedar tree is not!

But a huge cap instead, that, half-asleep,

Some giant dropped while driving home his sheep:

And ’mid those fallow browns

And russet grays, the fragrant peak

Of yonder timothy stack,

Is not a stack, but something hideous, black,

That threatens and, grotesquely demon, frowns.

I must away from here.—

Already dusk draws near.

The owlet’s dolorous hoot

Sounds quavering as a gnome’s wild flute;

The toad, within the wet,

Begins to tune its goblin flageolet:

The slow sun sinks behind

Those hills; and, like a withered cheek

Of Quaker quiet, sorrow-burdened, there

The spectral moon ’s defined

Above those trees,—as in a wild-beast’s lair

A golden woman, dead, with golden hair,—

Above that mass of fox-grape vines

That, like a wrecked appentice, roofs those pines.—

Oh, I am faint and weak.—

I must away, away!

Before the close of day!—

Already at my back

I feel the woods grow black;

And sense the evening wind,

Guttural and gaunt and blind,

Whining behind me like an unseen wolf.

Deeper now seems the gulf

Into whose deeps I gaze;

From which, with madness and amaze,

That seems to rise, the horror there,

With webby hands and mossy eyes and hair.—

Oh, will it pierce,

With all its feelers fierce,

Beyond the pool’s unhallowed water-streak?—

Yes; I must go, must go!

Must leave this ghastly creek,

This place of hideous fear!

For everywhere I hear

A dripping footstep near,

A voice, like water, gurgling at my ear,

Saying, “Come to me! come and rest below!

Sleep and forget her and with her thy woe!”—

I try to fly.—I can not.—Yes, and no!—

What madness holds me!—God! that obscene, slow,

Sure mastering chimera there,

Perhaps, has fastened round my neck,

Or in my matted hair,

Some horrible feeler, dire, invisible!—

Off, off! thou hoop of Hell!

Thou devil’s coil!...

Back, back into thy cesspool! Off of me!—

See, how the waters thrash and boil!

At last! at last! thank God! my soul is free!

My mind is freed of that vile mesmerism

That drew me to—what end? my God! what end?

Haply ’twas merely fancy, that strange fiend:

My fancy, and a prism

Of sunset in the stream, a firefly fleck,

That now, a lamp of golden fairy oil,

Lights me my homeward way, the way I flee.

No more I stare, magnetic-fixed; nor reck,

Nor little care to foil

The madness there! the murder there! that slips

Back to its lair of slime, that seeps and drips,

That sought in vain to fasten on my lips.

VI

Taking a letter from his pocket, he hurries away:

What can it mean for me? what have I done to her?

I, in our season of love as a sun to her:

She, all my heaven of silvery, numberless

Stars and its moon, shining golden and slumberless;

Who on my life, that was thorny and lowery,

Came—and made beautiful; smiled—and made flowery.

She, to my heart and my soul a divinity!

She, who—I dreamed!—seemed my spirit-affinity!—

What have I done to her? what have I done?

What can she mean by this?—what have I said to her?

I, who have idolized, worshiped, and pled to her;

Sung with her, laughed with her, sorrowed and sighed for her;

Lived for her only; and gladly had died for her!

See! she has written me thus! she has written me—

Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me!—

Would you had shriveled ere ever you’d read of it,

Eyes, that are wide to the grief and the dread of it!—

What have I said to her? what have I said?

What shall I make of it? I who am trembling,

Fearful of losing.—A moth, the dissembling

Flame of a taper attracts with its guttering,

Flattering on till its body lies fluttering,

Scorched in the summer night.—Foolish, importunate,

Why didst thou quit the cool flowers, unfortunate!—

Such has she been to me, making me such to her!—

Slaying me, saying I never was much to her!—

What shall I make of it? what can I make?

Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless,

Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless:

I, with no thought but the day that did lock us in,

Set naked feet ’mid the cottonmouth-moccasin,

Under the roses, the Cherokee, eying me:—

I,—in the heav’n with the egrets that, flying me,

Winging like blooms from magnolias, rose slenderly,

Pearl and pale pink: where the mocking-bird tenderly

Sang, making vistas of mosses melodious,

Wandered,—unheeding my steps,—in the odious

Ooze and the venom. I followed the wiry

Violet curve of thy star falling fiery—

So was I lost in night! thus am undone!

Have I not told to her—living alone for her—

Purposed unfoldments of deeds I had sown for her

Here in the soil of my soul? their variety

Endless—and ever she answered with piety.

See! it has come to this—all the tale’s suavity

At the ninth chapter grows hateful with gravity;

Cruel as death all our beautiful history—

Close it!—the final is more than a mystery.—

Yes; I will go to her; yes; and will speak.

VII

After the final meeting; the day following:

I seem to see her still; to see

That blue-hung room. Her perfume comes

From lavender folds, draped dreamily,—

A-blossom with brocaded blooms,—

Some stuff of orient looms.

I seem to hear her speak; and back,

Where sleeps the sun on books and piles

Of porcelain and bric-à-brac,

A tall clock ticks above the tiles,

Where Love’s framed profile smiles.

I hear her say, “Ah, had I known!—

I suffer too for what has been—

For what must be.”—A wild ache shone

In her sad gaze that seemed to lean

On something far, unseen.

And as in sleep my own self seems

Outside my suffering self.—I flush

’Twixt facts and undetermined dreams,

And stand, as silent as that hush

Of lilac light and plush.

Smiling, but suffering, I feel,

Beneath that face, so sweet and sad,

In those pale temples, thoughts, like steel,

Pierce burningly.... I had gone mad

Had I once thought her glad.—

Unconsciously, with eyes that yearn

To look beyond the present far,

For one faint future hope, I turn—

There, in her garden, one fierce star,

A cactus, red as war,

Vermilion as a storm-sunk sun,

Flames torrid splendor,—brings to life

A sunset; memory of one

Rich eve she said she ’d be my wife;

An eve with beauty rife.

Again amid the heavy hues,

Soft crimson, seal, and satiny gold

Of flowers there, I stood ’mid dews

With her; deep in her garden old,

While sunset’s flame unrolled.

And now!... It can not be! and yet

To see ’tis so!—In heart and brain

To know ’tis so!—While, warm and wet,

I seem to smell those scents again,

Verbena scents and rain.

I turn, in hope she ’ll bid me stay.

Again her cameo beauty mark

Set in that smile.—She turns away.

No farewell! no regret! no spark

Of hope to cheer the dark!

That sepia sketch—conceive it so—

A jaunty head with mouth and eyes

Tragic beneath a rose-chapeau,

Silk-masked, unmasking—it denies

The look we half surmise,

We know is there. ’Tis thus we read

The true beneath the false; perceive

The ache beneath the smile.—Indeed!

Whose soul unmasks?... Not mine!—I grieve,—

Oh God!—but laugh and leave....

VIII

He walks aimlessly on:

Beyond those knotted apple-trees,

That partly hide the old brick barn,

Its tattered arms and tattered knees

A scarecrow tosses to the breeze

Among the shocks of corn.

My heart is gray as is the day,

In which the rain-wind drearily

Makes all the rusty branches sway,

And in the hollows, by each way,

The dead leaves rustle wearily.

And soon we ’ll hear the far wild-geese

Honk in frost-bitten heavens under

Arcturus; when my walks must cease,

And by the fireside’s log-heaped peace

I ’ll sit and nod and ponder.—

When every fall of this loud creek

Is silent with the frost; and tented

Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak

And shaggy with the snows, that streak

The hillsides, hollow-dented;

I ’ll sit and dream of that glad morn

We met by banks with elder snowing;

That dusk we strolled through flower and thorn,

By tasseled meads of cane and corn,

To where the stream was flowing.

Again I ’ll oar our boat among

The dripping lilies of the river,

To reach her hat, the grape-vine long

Struck in the stream; we ’ll row to song;

And then ... I ’ll wake and shiver.

Why is it that my mind reverts

To that sweet past? while full of parting

The present is: so full of hurts

And heartache, that what it asserts

Adds only to the smarting.

How often shall I sit and think

Of that sweet past! through lowered lashes

What-might-have-been trace link by link;

Then watch it gradually sink

And crumble into ashes.

Outside I ’ll hear the sad wind weep

Like some lone spirit, grieved, forsaken;

Then, shuddering, to bed will creep,

To lie awake, or, haply, sleep

A sleep by visions shaken.

By visions of the past, that draw

The present in a hue that’s wanting;

A scarecrow thing of sticks and straw,—

Like that just now I, passing, saw,—

Its empty tatters flaunting.

IX

He compares the present day with a past one:

The sun a splintered splendor was

In trees, whose waving branches blurred

Its disc, that day we went together,

’Mid wild-bee hum and whirring buzz

Of locusts, through the fields that purred

With summer in the perfect weather.

So sweet it was to look, and lean

To her young face and feel the light

Of eyes that met my own unsaddened!

Her laugh that left lips more serene;

Her speech that blossomed like the white

Life-everlasting there and gladdened.

Maturing summer, you were fraught

With more of beauty then than now

Parades the pageant of September:

Where What-is-now contrasts in thought

With What-was-once, that bloom and bough

Can only help me to remember.

X

He pauses before a deserted house by the wayside:

Through ironweeds and roses

And scraggy beech and oak,

Old porches it discloses

Above the weeds and roses

The drizzling raindrops soak.

Neglected walks a-tangle

With dodder-strangled grass;

And every mildewed angle

Heaped with dead leaves that spangle

The paths that round it pass.

The creatures there that bury

Or hide within its rooms

And spidered closets—very

Dim with old webs—will hurry

Out when the evening glooms.

Owls roost on beam and basement;

Bats haunt its hearth and porch;

And, by each ruined casement,

Flits, in the moon’s enlacement,

The wisp, like some wild torch.

There is a sense of frost here,

And winds that sigh alway

Of something that was lost here,

Long, long ago was lost here,

But what, they can not say.

My foot, perhaps, would startle

Some owl that mopes within;

Some bat above its portal,

That frights the daring mortal,

And guards its cellared sin.

The creaking road winds by it

This side the dusty toll.—

Why do I stop to eye it?

My heart can not deny it—

The house is like my soul.

XI

He proceeds on his way:

I bear a burden—look not therein!

Naught will you find save sorrow and sin;

Sorrow and sin that wend with me

Wherever I go. And misery,

A gaunt companion, my wretched bride,

Goes ever with me, side by side.

Sick of myself and all the earth,

I ask my soul now: Is life worth

The little pleasure that we gain

For all our sorrow and our pain?

The love, to which we gave our best,

That turns a mockery and a jest?

XII

Among the twilight fields:

The things we love, the loveliest things we cherish,

Pass from us soonest, vanish utterly.

Dust are our deeds, and dust our dreams that perish

Ere we can say They be!

I have loved man and learned we are not brothers—

Within myself, perhaps, may lie the cause;—

Then set one woman high above all others,

And found her full of flaws.

Made unseen stars my keblahs of devotion;

Aspired to knowledge, and remained a clod:

With heart and soul, led on by blind emotion,

The way to failure trod.

Chance, say, or fate, that works through good and evil;

Or destiny, that nothing may retard,

That to some end, above life’s empty level,

Perhaps withholds reward.

PART IV

LATE AUTUMN

They who die young are blest.—

Should we not envy such?—

They are Earth’s happiest,

God-loved and favored much!—

They who die young are blest.

I

Sick and sad, propped with pillows, she sits at her window:

When the dog’s-tooth violet comes

With April showers,

And the wild-bee haunts and hums

About the flowers,

We shall never wend as when

Love laughed leading us from men

Over violet vale and glen,

Where the red-bird sang for hours,

And we heard the flicker drum.

Now November heavens are gray:

Autumn kills

Every joy—like leaves of May

In the rills.—

Here I sit and lean and listen

To a voice that has arisen

In my heart; with eyes that glisten

Gazing at the happy hills,

Fading dark blue, far away.

II

She looks down upon the dying garden:

There rank death clutches at the flowers

And drags them down and stamps in earth.

At morn the thin, malignant hours,

Shrill-voiced, among the wind-torn bowers,

Clamor a bitter mirth—

Or is it heartbreak that, forlorn,

Would so conceal itself in scorn.

At noon the weak, white sunlight crawls,

Like feeble age, once beautiful,

From mildewed walks to mildewed walls,

Down which the oozing moisture falls

Upon the cold toadstool:—

Faint on the leaves it drips and creeps—

Or is it tears of love who weeps?

At night a misty blur of moon

Slips through the trees,—pale as a face

Of melancholy marble hewn;—

And, like the phantom of some tune,

Winds whisper in the place—

Or is it love come back again,

Seeking its perished joy in vain?

III

She muses upon the past:

When, in her cloudy chiton,

Spring freed the frozen rills,

And walked in rainbowed light on

The blossom-blowing hills;

Beyond the world’s horizon,

That no such glory lies on,

And no such hues bedizen,

Love led us far from ills.

When Summer came, a sickle

Stuck in her sheaf of beams,

And let the honey trickle

From out her bee-hives’ seams;

Within the violet-blotted

Sweet book to us allotted,—

Whose lines are flower-dotted,—

Love read us many dreams.

Then Autumn came,—a liar,

A fair-faced heretic;—

In gypsy garb of fire,

Throned on a harvest rick.—

Our lives, that fate had thwarted,

Stood pale and broken-hearted,—

Though smiling when we parted,—

Where love to death lay sick.

Now is the Winter waited,

The tyrant hoar and old,

With death and hunger mated,

Who counts his crimes like gold.—

Once more, before forever

We part—once more, then never!—

Once more before we sever,

Must I his face behold!

IV

She takes up a book and reads:

What little things are those

That hold our happiness!

A smile, a glance; a rose

Dropped from her hair or dress;

A word, a look, a touch,—

These are so much, so much.

An air we can’t forget;

A sunset’s gold that gleams;

A spray of mignonette,

Will fill the soul with dreams,

More than all history says,

Or romance of old days.

For, of the human heart,

Not brain, is memory;

These things it makes a part

Of its own entity;

The joys, the pains whereof

Are the very food of love.

V

She lays down the book, and sits musing:

How true! how true!—but words are weak,

In sympathy they give the soul,

To music—music, that can speak

All the heart’s pain and dole;

All that the sad heart treasures most

Of love that ’s lost, of love that ’s lost.—

I would not hear sweet music now.

My heart would break to hear it now.

So weary am I, and so fain

To see his face, to feel his kiss

Thrill rapture through my soul again!—

There is no hell like this!—

Ah, God! my God, were it not best

To give me rest, to give me rest!—

Come, death, and breathe upon my brow.

Sweet death, come kiss my mouth and brow.

VI

She writes to her lover to come to her:

Dead lie the dreams we cherished,

The dreams we loved so well;

Like forest leaves they perished,

Like autumn leaves they fell.

Alas! that dreams so soon should pass!

Alas! alas!

The stream lies bleak and arid,

That once went singing on;

The flowers once that varied

Its banks are dead and gone:

Where these were once are thorns and thirst—

The place is curst.

Come to me. I am lonely.

Forget all that occurred.

Come to me; if for only

One last, sad, parting word:

For one last word. Then let the pall

Fall over all.

The day and hour are suited

For what I ’d say to you

Of love that I uprooted.—

But I have suffered, too!—

Come to me; I would say good-by

Before I die.

VII

The wind rises; the trees are agitated:

Woods that beat the wind with frantic

Gestures and sow darkly round

Acorns gnarled and leaves that antic

Wildly on the rustling ground,

Is it tragic grief that saddens

Through your souls this autumn day?

Or the joy of death that gladdens

In exultance of decay?

Arrogant you lift defiant

Boughs against the moaning blast,

That, like some invisible giant,

Wrapped in tumult, thunders past.

Is it that in such insurgent

Fury, tossed from tree to tree,

You would quench the fiercely urgent

Pangs of some old memory?

As in toil and violent action,

That still help them to forget,

Mortals drown the dark distraction

And insistence of regret.

VIII

She sits musing in the gathering twilight:

Last night I slept till midnight; then woke, and, far away,

A cock crowed; lonely and distant I heard a watch-dog bay:

But lonelier yet the tedious old clock ticked on to’ards day.

And what a day!—remember those morns of summer and spring,

That bound our lives together! each morn a wedding-ring

Of dew, aroma, and sparkle, and buds and birds a-wing.

Clear morns, when I strolled my garden, awaiting him, the rose

Expected too, with blushes,—the Giant-of-battle that grows

A bank of radiance and fragrance, and the Maréchal-Niel that glows.

Not in vain did I wait, departed summer, amid your phlox!

’Mid the powdery crystal and crimson of your hollow hollyhocks;

Your fairy-bells and poppies, and the bee that in them rocks.

Cool-clad ’mid the pendulous purple of the morning-glory vine,

By the jewel-mine of the pansies and the snapdragons in line,

I waited, and there he met me whose heart was one with mine.

Around us bloomed my mealy-white dusty-millers gay,

My lady-slippers, bashful of butterfly and ray;

My gillyflowers, spicy, each one, as a day of May.

Ah me! when I think of the handfuls of little gold coins, amass,

My bachelor’s-buttons scattered over the garden grass,

The marigolds that boasted their bits of burning brass;

More bitter I feel the autumn tighten on spirit and heart;

And regret those days, remembered as lost, that stand apart,

A chapter holy and sacred, I read with eyes that smart.

How warm was the breath of the garden when he met me there that day!

How the burnished beetle and humming-bird flew past us, each a ray!—

The memory of those meetings still bears me far away:

Again to the woods a-trysting by the water-mill I steal,

Where the lilies tumble together, the madcap wind at heel;

And meet him among the flowers, the rocks and the moss conceal:

Or the wild-cat gray of the meadows that the black-eyed Susans dot,

Fawn-eyed and leopard-yellow, that tangle a tawny spot

Of languid panther beauty that dozes, summer-hot....

Ah! back again in the present! with the winds that pinch and twist

The leaves in their peevish passion, and whirl wherever they list;

With the autumn, hoary and nipping, whose mausolean mist

Entombs the sun and the daylight: each morning shaggy with fog,

That fits gray wigs on the cedars, and furs with frost each log;

That velvets white the meadows, and marbles brook and bog.—

Alone at dawn—indifferent: alone at eve—I sigh:

And wait, like the wind complaining: complain and know not why:

But ailing and longing and pining because I can not die.

How dull is that sunset! dreary and cold, and hard and dead!

The ghost of those last August that, mulberry-rich and red,

The wine of God’s own vintage, poured purple overhead.

But now I sit with the sighing dead dreams of a dying year;

Like the fallen leaves and the acorns, am worthless and feel as sere,

With a soul that ’s sick of the body, whose heart is one big tear.

As I stare from my window the daylight, like a bravo, its cloak puts on.

The moon, like a cautious lanthorn, glitters, and then is gone.—

Will he come to-night? will he answer?—Ah, God! would it were dawn!

IX

He enters. Taking her in his arms he speaks:

They said you were dying.—

You shall not die!...

Why are you crying?

Why do you sigh?—

Cease that sad sighing!—

Love, it is I.

All is forgiven!—

Love is not poor;

Though he was driven

Once from your door,

Back he has striven,

To part nevermore!

Will you remember

When I forget

Words, each an ember,

That you regret,

Now in November,

Now we have met?

What if love wept once!

What though you knew!

What if he crept once

Pleading to you!—

He never slept once,

Nor was untrue.

Often forgetful,

Love may forget;

Froward and fretful,

Dear, he will fret;

Ever regretful,

He will regret.

Life is completer

Through his control;

Lifted, made sweeter,

Filled and made whole,

Hearing love’s metre

Sing in the soul.

Flesh may not hear it,

Being impure;

But in the spirit,

There we are sure;

There we come near it,

There we endure.

So when to-morrow

Ceases and we

Quit this we borrow,

Mortality,

What chastens sorrow

So it may see?—

(When friends are sighing;

Round one, and one

Nearer is lying,

Nearer the sun,

When one is dying

And all is done?

When there is weeping,

Weary and deep,—

God’s be the keeping

Of those who weep!—

When our loved, sleeping,

Sleep their long sleep?—)

Love! that is dearer

Than we’re aware;

Bringing us nearer,

Nearer than prayer;

Being the mirror

That our souls share.

Still you are weeping!

Why do you weep?—

Are tears in keeping

With joy so deep?

Gladness so sweeping?

Hearts so in keep?

Speak to me, dearest!

Say it is true!

That I am nearest,

Dearest to you.—

Smile, with those clearest

Eyes of gray blue.

X

She smiles on him through her tears; holding his hand she speaks:

They did not say I could not live beyond this weary night,

But now I know that I shall die before the morning’s light.

How weak I am!—but you ’ll forgive me when I tell you how

I loved you—love you; and the pain it is to leave you now?

We could not wed!—Alas! the flesh, that clothes the soul of me,

Ordained at birth a sacrifice to this heredity,

Denied, forbade.—Ah, you have seen the bright spots in my cheeks

Glow hectic, as before comes night the west burns blood-red streaks?

Consumption.—“But I promised you my hand?”—a thing forlorn

Of life; diseased!—O God!—and so, far better so, forsworn!—

Oh, I was jealous of your love. But think: if I had died

Ere babe of mine had come to be a solace at your side!

Had it been little then—your grief, when Heaven had made us one

In everything that’s good on earth and then the good undone?

No! no! and had I had a child—what grief and agony

To know that blight born in him, too, against all help of me!

Just when we cherished him the most, and youthful, sunny pride

Sat on his curly front, to see him die ere we had died.—

Whose fault?—Ah, God!—not mine! but his, that ancestor who gave

Escutcheon to our sorrowful house, a Death’s-head and a Grave.

Beneath the pomp of those grim arms we live and may not move;

Nor faith, nor truth, nor wealth avail to hurl them down, nor love!

How could I tell you this?—not then! when all the world was spun

Of morning colors for our love to walk and dance upon.

I could not tell you how disease hid here a viper germ,

Precedence slowly claiming and so slowly fixing firm.

And when I broke my plighted troth and would not tell you why,

I loved you, thinking, “time enough when I have come to die.”

Draw off my rings and let my hands rest so ... the wretched cough

Will interrupt my feeble speech and will not be put off ...

Ah, anyhow, my anodyne is this: to know that you

Are near and love me!—Kiss me now, as you were wont to do.

And tell me you forgive me all; and say you will forget

The sorrow of that breaking-off, the fever and the fret.—

Now set those roses near me here, and tell me death’s a lie—

Once it was hard for me to live ... now it is hard to die.

PART V

WINTER

We, whom God sets a task,

Striving, who ne’er attain,

We are the curst!—who ask

Death, and still ask in vain.

We, whom God sets a task.

I

In the silence of his room. After many days:

All, all are shadows. All must pass

As writing in the sand or sea:

Reflections in a looking-glass

Are not less permanent than we.

The days that mold us—what are they?

That break us on their whirling wheel?

What but the potters! we the clay

They fashion and yet leave unreal.

Linked through the ages, one and all,

In long anthropomorphous chain,

The human and the animal

Inseparably must remain.

Within us still the monstrous shape

That shrieked in air and howled in slime,

What are we?—partly man and ape—

The tools of fate, the toys of time!

II

The bitterness of his bereavement speaks in him:

Vased in her bedroom window, white

As her glad girlhood, never lost,

I smelt the roses—and the night

Outside was fog and frost.

What though I claimed her dying there!

God nor one angel understood

Nor cared, who from sweet feet to hair

Had changed to snow her blood.

She had been mine so long, so long!

Our harp of life was one in word—

Why did death thrust his hand among

The chords and break one chord!

What lily lilier than her face!

More virgin than her lips I kissed!

When morn, like God, with gold and grace,

Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist!

III

Her dead face seems to rise up before him:

The face that I said farewell to,

Pillowed a flower on flowers,

Comes back, with its eyes to tell to

My soul what my heart should quell to

Calm, that is mine at hours.

Dear, is your soul still daggered

There by something amiss?

Love—is he ever laggard?

Hope—is her face still haggard?

Tell me what it is!

You, who are done with to-morrow!

Done with these worldly skies!

Done with our pain and sorrow!

Done with the griefs we borrow!

Joys that are born of sighs!

Must we say “gone forever?”

Or will it all come true?

Does mine touch your thought ever?

And, over the doubts that sever,

Rise to the fact that ’s you?

Love, in my flesh so fearful,

Medicine me this pain!—

Love, with the eyes so tearful,

How can my soul be cheerful,

Seeing its joy is slain!...

Gone!—’t was only a vision!—

Gone! like a thought, a gleam!—

Such to our indecision

Utter no empty mission;—

Truth is in all we dream!

IV

He sinks into deep thought:

There are shadows that compel us,

There are powers that control:

More than substance these can tell us,

Speaking to the human soul.

In the moonlight, when it glistened

On my window, white of glow,

Once I woke and, leaning, listened

To a voice that sang below.

Full of gladness, full of yearning,

Strange with dreamy melody,

Like a bird whose heart was burning,

Wildly sweet it sang to me.

I arose; and by the starlight,

Pale beneath the summer sky,

There I saw it, full of far light,—

My dead joy go singing by.

In the darkness, when the glimmer

Of the storm was on the pane,

Once I sat and heard a dimmer

Voice lamenting in the rain.

Full of parting and unspoken

Heartbreak, faint with agony,

Like a bird whose heart was broken,

Moaning low it cried to me.

I arose; and in the darkness,

Wan beneath the winter sky,

There I saw it, cold to starkness,—

My dead love go wailing by.

V

He arouses from his abstraction, buries his face in his hands and thinks:

So long it seems since last I saw her face,

So long ago it seems,

Like some sad soul in unconjectured space,

Still seeking happiness through perished grace

And unrealities, a little while

Illusions lead me, ending in the smile

Of Death, triumphant in a thorny place,

Among Love’s ruined roses and dead dreams.

Since she is gone, no more I feel the light,—

Since she has left all dark,—

Cleave, with its revelation, all the night.

I wander blindly, on a crumbling height,

Among the fragments and the wrecks and stones

Of Life, where Hope, amid Life’s skulls and bones,

With weary face, disheartened, wild and white,

Trims her pale lamp with its expiring spark.

Now she is dead, the Soul, naught can o’erawe,—

Now she is gone from me,—

Questions God’s justice that seems full of flaw,

As is His world, where misery is law,

And all men fools, too willing to be slaves.—

My House of Faith, built up on dust of graves,

The wind of doubt sweeps down as made of straw,

And all is night and I no longer see.

VI

He looks from his window toward the sombre west:

Ridged and bleak the gray, forsaken

Twilight at the night has guessed;

And no star of dusk has taken

Flame unshaken in the west.

All day long the woodlands, dying,

Moaned, and drippings as of grief

Rained from barren boughs with sighing

Death of flying twig and leaf.

Ah, to live a life unbroken

Of the flings and scorns of fate!

Like that tree, with branches oaken,

Strength’s unspoken intimate.—

Who can say that we have never

Lived the life of plants and trees?—

Not so wide the lines that sever

Us forever here from these.

Colors, odors, that are cherished,

Haply hint we once were flowers:

Memory alone has perished

In this garnished world that’s ours.

Music,—that all things expresses,

All for which we’ve sought and sinned,—

Haply in our treey tresses

Once was guesses of the wind.

But I dream!—The dusk, dark braiding

Locks that lack both moon and star,

Deepens; and, the darkness aiding,

Earth seems fading, faint and far.

And within me doubt keeps saying—

“What is wrong, and what is right?

Hear the cursing! hear the praying!

All are straying on in night.”

VII

He turns from the window, takes up a book, and reads:

The soul, like Earth, hath silences

Which speak not, yet are heard:

The voices mute of memories

Are louder than a word.

Theirs is a speech which is not speech;

A language that is bound

To soul-vibrations, vague, that reach

Deeper than any sound.

No words are theirs. They speak through things,

A visible utterance

Of thoughts—like those some sunset brings,

Or withered rose, perchance.

The heavens that once, in purple and flame,

Spake to two hearts as one,

In after years may speak the same

To one sad heart alone.

Through it the vanished face and eyes

Of her, the sweet and fair,

Of her the lost, again shall rise

To comfort his despair.

And so the love that led him long

From golden scene to scene,

Within the sunset is a tongue

That speaks of what has been.—

How loud it speaks of that dead day,

The rose whose bloom is fled!

Of her who died; who, clasped in clay,

Lies numbered with the dead.

The dead are dead; with them ’tis well

Within their narrow room;—

No memories haunt their hearts who dwell

Within the grave and tomb.

But what of those—the dead who live!

The living dead, whose lot

Is still to love—ah, God forgive!—

To live and love, forgot!

VIII

The storm is heard sounding wildly outside with wind and hail:

The night is wild with rain and sleet;

Each loose-warped casement claps or groans:

I hear the plangent woodland beat

The tempest with long blatant moans,

Like one who fears defeat.

And sitting here beyond the storm,

Alone within the lonely house,

It seems that some mesmeric charm

Holds all things—even the gnawing mouse

Has ceased its faint alarm.

And in the silence, stolen o’er

Familiar objects, lo, I fear—

I fear—that, opening yon door,

I ’ll find my dead self standing near,

With face that once I wore.

The stairway creaks with ghostly gusts:

The flue moans; all its gorgon throat

One wail of winds: ancestral dusts,—

Which yonder Indian war-gear coat

With gray, whose quiver rusts,—

Are shaken down.—Or, can it be,

That he who wore it in the dance,

Or battle, now fills shadowy

Its wampumed skins? and shakes his lance

And spectral plume at me?—

Mere fancy!—Yet those curtains toss

Mysteriously as if some dark

Hand moved them.—And I would not cross

The shadow there, that hearthstone’s spark,

A glow-worm sunk in moss.

Outside ’t were better!—Yes, I yearn

To walk the waste where sway and dip

Deep, dark December boughs—where burn

Some late last leaves, that drip and drip

No matter where you turn.

Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,

Fills oozy footprints—but the blind

Night there, though like the frown of God,

Presents no fancies to the mind,

Like those that have o’erawed.—

The months I count: how long it seems

Since summer! summer, when with her,

When on her porch, in rainy gleams

We watched the flickering lightning stir

In heavens gray as dreams.

When all the west, a sheet of gold,

Flared,—like some Titan’s opened forge,—

With storm; revealing, manifold,

Vast peaks of clouds with crag and gorge,

Where thunder-torrents rolled.

Then came the wind: again, again

Storm lit the instant earth—and how

The forest rang with roaring rain!—

We could not read—where is it now?—

That tale of Charlemagne:

That old romance! that tale, which we

Were reading; till we heard the plunge

Of distant thunder sullenly,

And left to watch the lightning lunge,

And storm-winds toss each tree.

That summer!—How it built us there,

Of sorcery and necromance,

A mental-world, where all was fair;

A land like one great pearl, a-trance

With lilied light and air.

Where every flower was a thought;

And every bird, a melody;

And every fragrance, zephyr brought,

Was but the rainbowed drapery

Of some sweet dream long sought.

’Mid which we reared our heart’s high home,

Fair on the hills; with terraces,

Vine-hung and wooded, o’er the foam

Of undiscovered fairy seas,

All violet in the gloam.

O land of shadows! shadow-home,

Within my world of memories!

Around whose ruins sweeps the foam

Of sorrow’s immemorial seas,

To whose dark shores I come!

How long in your wrecked halls, alone

With ghosts of joys must I remain?

Between the unknown and the known,

Still hearing through the wind and rain

My lost love moan and moan.

IX

He sits by the slowly dying fire. The storm is heard with increased violence:

Wild weather. The lash of the sleet

On the gusty casement, clapping—

The sound of the storm like a sheet

My soul and senses wrapping.

Wild weather. And how is she,

Now the rush of the rain falls serried

There on the turf and the tree

Of the place where she is buried?

Wild weather. How black and deep

Is the night where the mad winds scurry!—

Do I sleep? do I dream in my sleep

That I hear her footsteps hurry?

Hither they come like flowers—

And I see her raiment glisten,

Like the robes of one of the hours

Where the stars to the angels listen.

Before me, behold, how she stands!

With lips high thoughts have weighted,

With testifying hands,

And eyes with glory sated.

I have spoken and I have kneeled:

I have kissed her feet in wonder—

But, lo! her lips—they are sealed,

God-sealed, and will not sunder.

Though I sob, “Your stay was long!

You are come,—but your feet were laggard!—

With mansuetude and song

For the heart your death has daggered.”

Never a word replies,

Never, to all my weeping—

Only a sound of sighs,

And of raiment past me sweeping....

I wake; and a clock tolls three—

And the night and the storm beat serried

There on the turf and the tree

Of the place where she is buried.

RED LEAVES AND ROSES

I

And he had lived such loveless years

That suffering had made him wise;

And she had known no graver tears

Than those of girlhood’s eyes.

And he, perhaps, had loved before—

One, who had wedded, or had died;—

So life to him had been but poor

In love for which he sighed.

In years and heart she was so young

Love paused and beckoned at the gate,

And bade her hear his songs, unsung;

She laughed that “love must wait.”

He understood. She only knew

Love’s hair was faded, face was gray—

Nor saw the rose his autumn blew

There in her heedless way.

II

If he had come to her when May

Danced down the wildwood,—every way

Marked with white flow’rs, as if her gown

Had torn and fallen,—it might be

She had not met him with a frown,

Nor used his love so bitterly.

Or if he had but come when June

Set stars and roses to one tune,

And breathed in honeysuckle throats

Clove-honey of her spicy mouth,

His heart had found some loving notes

In hers to cheer his life’s long drouth.

He came when Fall made mad the sky,

And on the hills leapt like a cry

Of battle; when his youth was dead;

To her, the young, the wild, the white;

Whose symbol was the rose, blood-red,

And his the red leaf pinched with blight.

He might have known, since youth was flown,

And autumn claimed him for its own;

And winter neared with snow, wild whirled,

His love to her would seem absurd;

To youth like hers; whose lip had curled

Yet heard him to his last sad word.

Then laughed and—well, his heart denied

The words he uttered then in pride;

And he remembered how the gray

Was his of autumn, ah! and hers,

The rose-hued colors of the May,

And May was all her universe.

And then he left her: and, like blood,

In her deep hair, the rose; whose bud

Was badge to her: while unto him,

His middle-age, must still remain

The red-leaf, withering at the rim,

As symbol of the all-in-vain.

III

“Such days as these,” she said, and bent

Among her marigolds, all dew,

And dripping zinnia stems, “were meant

For spring not autumn; days we knew

In childhood; these endearing those;

Much dearer since they have grown old:

Days, once imperfect with the rose,

Now perfect with the marigold.”

“Such days as these,” he said, and gazed

Long with unlifted eyes that held

Sad autumn nights, “our hopes have raised

In futures that are mist-enspelled.

And so it is the fog blows in

Days dearer for the death they paint

With hues of life and joy,—as sin,

At death, puts off all earthly taint.”

IV

Like deeds of hearts that have not kept

Their riches, as a miser, when

Sad souls have asked, with eyes that wept,

Among the toiling tribes of men,

The summer days gave Earth sweet alms

In silver of white lilies, while

Each night, with healing, outstretched palms

Stood Christ-like with its starry smile.

Will she remember him when dull

Months drag their duller hours by?

With feet that crush the beautiful

And leave the beautiful to die?

Or never see? nor sit with lost

Dreams withered, ’mid hope’s empty husks,

And wait, heart-counting-up the cost

Of love’s illusions ’mid life’s dusks?

V

He is as one who, treading salty scurf

Of lonely sea-sands, hears the roaring rocks

Of some lost isle of misty crags and lochs;

Who sees no sea, but, through a world of surf,

Gray ghosts of gulls and screaming petrel flocks:

When, from the deep’s white ruin and wild wreck,

Above the fog, beneath the ghostly gull,

The iron ribs of some storm-shattered hull

Loom, packed with pirate treasure to the deck

A century rotten: feels his wealth replete,

When long-baulked ocean claims it; and one dull

Wave flings, derisive at despondent feet,

A skull, one doubloon rattling in the skull.

VI

And when full autumn sets the dahlia stems

On fire with flowers, and the chill dew turns

The maple trees, above geranium urns,

To Emir tents, and strings with flawless gems

The moon-flower and the wahoo-bush that burns;

Calmly she sees the year grow sad and strange,

And stands with one among the wilted walks

Of the old garden of the gray, old grange,

And feels no sorrow for the frost-maimed stalks

Since—though the wailing autumn to her talks—

Youth marks swift spring on life’s far mountain-range.

Or she will lean to her old harpsichord;

A youthful face beside her; and the glow

Of hickory on the hearth will balk the blow

Of blustering rain that beats the casement hard;

And sing of summer and so thwart the snow.

“Haply, some day, she yet may sit alone,”

He thinks, “within the shadow-saddened house,

When round the gables stormy echoes moan,

And in the closet gnaws the lonesome mouse;

And Memory come stealing down the stair

From dusty attics where is piled the Past—

Like so much rubbish that we hate to keep—

And turn the knob; and, framed in frosty hair,

A grave, forgotten face look in at last,

And she will know, and bow her head and weep.”

WILD THORN AND LILY

I

That night, returning to the farm, we rode

Before a storm. Uprolling from the west,

Incessant with distending fire, loomed

The multitudes of tempest: towering here

A shadowy Shasta, there a cloudy Hood,

Veined as with agonies, aurora-born,

Of torrent gold; resplendent heaven to heaven,

Far peak to peak, terrific spoke; the vast

Sierras of the storm, within which beat

The caverned thunder like a mighty stream:

Vibrating on, with rushing wind and flame,

Now th’ opening welkin shone, one livid sheet

Of instantaneous gold, a giant’s forge,

Wild-clanging; now, with streak on angled streak

Of momentary light, a labyrinth

Where shouting Darkness stalked with Titan torch:

Again the firmament hung hewn with fire

Whence leapt the thunder; and it seemed that hosts

Of Heaven rushed to war with blazing shields

And swords of splendor. And before the storm

We galloped, while the frantic trees above

Went wild with rain, through whose mad limbs and leaves

Splashed black the first big drops. On, on we drove,

And gained the gates, pillaring the avenue

Of ancient beech, at whose far, flickering end,

At last, beaconed the lights of home.

And she?

Was it the lightning that lent lividness

And terror to her countenance? or fear

Of her own heart? revulsion? memory?

Did deep regret, that, now the thing was done,

That she was mine, a yearning to be free,

Away from me, assail her? or, the thought,

The knowledge, that she did not love the man

Whom she had wedded? knowing better now

That all her heart was Julien’s from the first,

And would be Julien’s until the end.

And did she now look backward on the past?

Or forward—on the barrier that the church

For all the future years had placed between

The possible and impossible? God knows!

Yet I had won her honestly with words

Love, only, uttered out of its soul’s truth;

Had won her—was it openly?—perhaps!—

Although engaged to Julien.—What else

Had led us to elopement?—Well, ’t was done!

The whole, mad, lovely, miserable affair

Of love and youthful folly. Being done

We must abide the reckoning. That is,

I would; and she?—she saw her duty there

Beside her husband. And within myself,

When we alighted from the carriage, thus,—

Beneath the porch,—my mind resolved the thing:

“I am her husband now, and she my wife.

Less than her husband, I, much less a man,

Were I not able to regain and keep

The love she gave me, that she thinks is his,

That is not his. ’T is pity merely now

That makes her pensive. I am pensive, too,

For Julien, the poet and the friend;

The dreamer and the lover.—But all ’s fair

In love they say; and I,—well, willingly

I’ll bear the burthen of the blame of all.”

Scarce had we entered when high heaven oped

Vast gates of bronze and doors of booming brass

That dammed a deluge, and the deluge poured.—

I thought of him still; for I felt that she

Was thinking too of Julien and his moods,

That often swept his soul with storm like this,

Yet oftener with sunlight than with storm;

That soul of sun and tempest, ray and rain,

My school-friend Julien! whom once she won

To think she loved—I know not how. My play

Was open as the morning, and as fair.

His poverty and genius here, and here

My wealth and—platitude; and I had won.

But it was hard for him. I did not dream

That it would end so. And when Gwendolyn

Used every gentleness—and that is much—

I did not dream his poet’s temperament

Were so affected of a love affair,

A wrong or right; he, whose sole aim seemed song.

I did not dream he ’d take it desperately,

And end so tragically. Who ’d have thought

His character, although so sensitive,

Would fall into extremes of morbidness

And melancholy! Had it now been I,

Whose heart had lost in the great game of love,

None would have wondered; for I am of those

Whose vigorous iron does not bend, but break

At one decisive blow: his should have sprung—

Or so I think, not broken as it had—

Elastic as fine-tempered steel that bends

And then resumes its usual usefulness.

A pale smile strained the corners of her mouth

When, from the porch, into the parlor’s blaze

I led her. And her mother met us there,

Her mother and her father. And I saw

The slow reflection of their happiness

Make glad her eyes, as their approval grew

From half-severe rebukes, that were well meant,

To open, glad avowal of their joy.

She had done well, and we were soon forgiven....

But I resumed his letter when alone:

His letter written her three months before,

When all was over, and we two were one,

And well upon our way to Italy

For six sweet months of honeymoon. His word,

His letter, all of her, that came to me

At Venice, that I opened in mistake,

Amid a lot of papers sent from home.

She had not read, and never should while I

Had power to conceal until I ’d read.

I would not let the dead scrawl mar or soil

My late-won joy, my testament of love.

No! I would read it, afterwards destroy.

Thoughts made of music for a last farewell,

When he knew all and asked her to perpend

Expressions of past things her gift of love

Had given speech to in the happy days.

And so I read:—

II

“The rhyme is mine, but yours

The thought and all the music, springing from

The rareness of the love that dawned on me

A little while to make my sad life glad.

Should I regret the sunset it refused,

Since all my morn was richer than the world?

Or that my day should stride without a change

Of crimson, or of purple, or of gold,

Into the barren blackness where the moon

And all God’s stars lay dead? Should I complain,

Upbraid or censure or one moment curse,

I with my morning? ’T is a memory

That stains the midnight now: one wild-rose ray

Laid like a finger pointing me the path

I follow, and I go rejoicingly.

Our love was very young (nor had it aged—

If we had lived long lifetimes—here in me),

When one day, strolling in the sun, you spoke

Words I perceived should hint a coming change:

I made three stanzas of the thought, you see:

But now ’t is like the sea-shell that suggests,

And still associates us with the sea

In its vague song and elfland workmanship.

Yet it has lost a something that it had

There by the far sand’s foaming; something rare,

A different beauty like an element:

I wonder on what life will do

When love is loser of all love;

When life still longs to love anew

And has not love enough:—

I ’ll turn my heart into a ray,

And wait—a day?

I wonder on what love will hold

When life is weary of all life;

And life and love have both grown old

With scars of sin and strife:—

I’ll change my soul into a flower,

And wait—an hour?

I wonder on why men forget

The life that love made laugh; and why

Weak women will remember yet

The life that love made sigh:—

I’ll sing my thought into a song,

And wait—how long?

III

“And once you questioned of our mocking-bird,

And of the German nightingale, and I

Knowing a sweeter bird than those sweet two,

Made fast associates of birds and brooks

And learned their numbers. Middle April made

The path of lilac leading to your porch

A rift of fallen Paradise; a blue

So full of fragrance that the birds that built

Among the lilacs thought that God was there,

And of God’s goodness they would sing and sing,

Till every throat seemed bursting with its song,

Note on wild note, diviner each than each.

And waiting by the gate, that reached the lane,

For you, who gave sweet eloquence to all,

The afternoon, the lilacs and the spring,

My heart was singing and it sang of you:

Two glow-worms are the jewels in

Her ears; and underneath her chin

A diamond like a firefly:

There is no starlight in the sky

When Gwendolyn stands in the maze

Of woodbine, near the portico;

For all the stars are in her gaze,

The night and stars I know.

A clinging dream of mist the lawn

She wears; and like a bit of dawn

Her fan with one red jewel pinned:

Among the boughs there breathes no wind

When Gwendolyn comes down the path

Of lilacs from the portico;

For all the breeze her coming hath,

The beam and breeze I know.

Two locust-blooms her hands; and slips

Of eglantine her cheeks and lips;

Her hair, a hyacinth of gloom:

The balmy buds give no perfume

When Gwendolyn draws near to me,

The gate beyond the portico;

For all aroma sweet is she,

All fragrance that I know.

Life, love, and faith are in her face,

And in her presence all their grace:

And my religion is a word,

A wish of hers. No mocking-bird,

When Gwendolyn laughs near, dare float

One bubble from the portico;

For all of song is in her throat,

All music that I know.

IV

“The mocking-bird! and then weird fancy filled

My soul with vision, and I saw a song

Pursue a bird that was no bird—a voice

Concealed in dim expressions of the spring,—

Who sits among the forests and the fields,

With dark-blue eyes smiling to life the flowers,—

Where we strolled happy as the April hills:

A sunbeam, all the day that fell

Upon the fountain,—

Like laughter gurgling in the dell

Below the mountain,—

Drank, with its sparkle, one by one,

The water-words that, in the sun,

Made melody,—the sun-rays tell,—

That never yet was done.

A moon-ray, that had gone astray

’Mid wildwood alleys,

Where Echo haunts the forest way

Among the valleys,

The livelong night upon the rocks

Slept, hid among girl Echo’s locks,

And stole her voice,—the moonbeams say,—

That mocks and only mocks.

A shadow, that had made its seat

Amid the roses

And thorns—the bitter and the sweet

That life discloses—

Mixed with the rose-balm and the dew

And crimson thorns that pierced it through,

Until its soul,—the shades repeat,—

Was portion of them, too.

A Fairy found the beam of gold,

And ray of glitter;

The shadow, whose dim soul did hold

Both sweet and bitter;

And made a bird, that haunts the morn

And night; that flits from flower to thorn,

A voice of laughter,—it is told,—

Love, mockery, and scorn.

V

“Among the white haw-blossoms, where the creek

Droned under drifts of dogwood and of haw,

The red-bird, like a crimson blossom blown

Against the snow-white bosom of the Spring,

The chaste confusion of her lawny breast,

Sang on, prophetic of serener days,

As confident as June’s completer hours.

And I stood listening like a hind, who hears

A wood-nymph breathing in a forest flute

Among gray beech-trees of myth-haunted ways:

And when it ceased, the memory of the air

Blew like a syrinx in my brain: I made

A lyric of the notes that men might know:

He flies with flirt and fluting—

As flies a falling star

From flaming star-beds shooting shooting—

From where the roses are.

Wings past and sings; and seven

Notes, sweet as fragrance is,—

That turn to sylphs in heaven,—

Float round him full of bliss.

He sings; each burning feather

Thrills, throbbing at his throat;

A song of glow-worm weather,

And of a firefly boat:

Of Elfland and a princess

Who, born of a perfume,

His music lulls,—where winces

That rose’s cradled bloom.

No bird is half so airy,

No bird of dusk or dawn,

O masking King of Fairy!

O red-crowned Oberon.

VI

“Alas! the nightingale I never heard.

Yet I, remembering how your voice would thrill

Me with exalted expectation, felt

The passion-throated nightingale would win

Into my soul in some wild way like this,

With reminiscences of dusks long dead,

Presentiments of nights, that mate the flowers

And the prompt stars, and marry them with song.

Of such,—love whispered me when deep in dreams,—

I made my nightingale. It is a voice

Heard in the April of our year of love:

Between the stars and roses

There lies a path no man may see,

Where every breeze that blows is

A wandering melody;

Down which each bright star gazes

Upon each rose that raises

Its face up lovingly,

As if with prayers and praises.

The star and rose are wiser

Than all but love beneath the skies;

No hoard of any miser

Is rich as these are wise:

No bee may reach or rifle,

No mist may cloud or stifle

Their love that never dies,

That knows nor trick nor trifle.

There is a bird that carries

Love-messages; and comes and goes

Between each star that tarries,

And every rose that blows:

A bird that can not tire,

Whose throat ’s a throbbing lyre,

Whose song is now a rose,

And now a starry fire.

VII

“O May-time woods! O May-time lanes and hours!

And stars, that knew how often there at night

Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew

Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk,—

When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon

Hung, silvering long windows of your room,—

I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.

I watched and waited for—I know not what—

Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf’s

Unfolding to caresses of the spring:

A rustle of your footsteps: or the dew

That softly rolled, a syllable of love,

In sweet avowal, from a rose’s lips

Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word

Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose—

The word young lips half murmur in a dream:

Serene with sleep, light visions load her eyes;

And underneath her window blooms a quince.

The night is a sultana who doth rise

In slippered caution, to admit a prince,

Love, who her eunuchs and her lord defies.

Are these her dreams? or is it that the breeze

Pelts me with petals of the quince, and lifts

The Balm-of-Gilead buds? and seems to squeeze

Aroma on aroma through sweet rifts

Of Eden, dripping from the rainy trees?

Along the path the buckeye trees begin

To heap their hills of blossoms.—Oh, that they

Were Romeo ladders, whereby I might win

Her chamber’s sanctity,—where love must pray

And guard her soul!—so stainless of all sin!

There might I see the balsam scent erase

Its sweet intrusion; and the starry night

Conclude majestic pomp; the virgin grace

Of every bud abashed before the white,

Pure passion-flower of her sleeping face.

VIII

“And once, in early May, a sparrow sang

Among the garden bushes; and you asked

If the suave song stayed knocking at my heart.

I smiled some answer, and, behold, that night

Found that my heart had locked this fancy in:

Rain, rain, and a ribbon of song

Uncurled where the blossoms are sprinkled;

The song-sparrow sings, and I long

For, the silver-sweet throat, that has tinkled,

To sing in the bloom and the rain,

Sing again, and again, and again,

Under my window-pane.

Rain, rain, and the trickling tips

Of the million pink blooms of the quinces;

And I hear the song rill from the lips,

The lute-haunted lips of my princess:

O love! in the rain and the bloom,

Sing again in the pelting perfume,

Sweetheart, under my room.

Rain, rain, and the dripping of drops

From cups of the blossoms they load, or

Tilt over with tipsiest tops:

And eyes as of sun-beam and odor,

There, under the bloom-blowing tree—

A face like a flower to see,

Love is looking at me.

IX

“Once in the village I had heard a song,

A melody which I wrote down for you,

And which you sang. But, there among your hills,

The dawns and sunsets and the serious stars

Made trite its thought and words, that seemed as stale

As musty parlors of the commonplace.

I changed its words, and here and there its thought,

But, though you praised, you never sang it more,

And so I knew, like some poor poet, it

Had fallen on disfavor, God knows why,

With its high patron. Thus its metre ran:

Look, happy eyes, and let me know

The timid flower her love hath cherished

Fades not before the fruit shall show,

Seen in the clear truth of your glow

Where naught of love hath perished.

Lift, happy lips, and let me take

The sacred secret of her spirit

To mine in kisses, that shall make

Mute marriage of our souls, and wake

The heart’s sweet silence near it.

X

“And so I wrote another filled with birds,

Deliberate twilight and eve’s punctual star;

And made the music of that song obey

The metre of my own and melody:

Only to hear that you love me,

Only to feel it is true;

Stars and the gloaming above me,

I in the gloaming with you.

Staining through violet fire,

A sunset of poppy and gold,

Red as a heart with desire,

Rich with a secret untold.

Deep where the shadows are doubled,

Deep where the blossoms are long,

Listen!—deep love in the bubbled

Breath of a mocking-bird’s song.

You, who have made them the dearer,

Drawing them near from afar!—

Stars and the heaven the nearer,

Sweet, through the joy that you are.

XI

“Confronted with the certainty that I

Had no approval for my love from you,

No visible sign, but my own prompting hope’s,

Conforming with my heart’s one wild desire,

Who had not dreaded disappointment there!

The shadow of a heart’s unformed denial,

That should take form and soon confirm the doubt:

The doubt that would content itself with this:

If I might hold her by the hand,—

Her hands so full of soothing peace!—

Her heart would hear and understand

My heart’s demand,

And all her idling cease.

If she would let my eyes look in

Her eyes, whose deeps are full of truth,

Her soul might see how mine would win

Her, without sin,

In all her happy youth.

If I might kiss her mouth, and lead

The kiss up to her eyes and hair,

There is no prayer that so could plead,—

And find sure heed,—

My love’s divine despair.

XII

“And, uninstructed, smiled and wrote ‘despair,’

Enamoured, yet fearful of the shade that should

Some day come stealing through my silent door

To sit unbidden through the lonely hours.—

I cast the shudder off, and in the fields

Found hope again, and beauty born of dreams:

For it was summer, and all living things,

The common flowers and the birds and bees,

Became interpreters of love for me:

Say that he can not tell her how he loves her—

Words, for such adoration, often fail,—

When but a bow of ribbon, glove that gloves her,

Clothes her fair femininity in mail.

So many ways and wisdoms to express what

To th’ language of devotion is denied;

Ambassadors to make the maiden guess what

Before her heart’s high fortress long has sighed.

A bird to sing his secret—she’ll perpend him:

A bee to bid her soul to hear and see:

A blossom, like a sweet appeal, to bend him,

Before her there, upon a worshiping knee.

XIII

“So was my love confessed to you. I thought

You loved me as love led me to believe:

And so, no matter where I, dreaming, went

Among the hills, the woods, and quiet fields,

All had a poetry so intimate,

So happy and so ready that, for me,

’Twas but to stoop and gather as I went,

As one goes reaching roses in the June.

Three withered wild ones that I gathered then

I send you now. Their scent and bloom are dust:

1

What wild-flower shows perfection

Such as thy face, no blemish mars?

I leave to the selection

Of all the wild-flower stars:

To every wildwood bloom that blows,

Wild phlox, wild daisy, and wild rose.

What cascade hath suspicion

O’ the marvel that thy whiteness is?

I leave to the decision

Of each proclaiming breeze:

To winds that kiss the buds awake,

And roll the ripple on the lake.

What bird can sing the naming

Of all the music that thou art?

I leave to the proclaiming

Of that within my heart:

My heart, wherein, the whole day long,

Sits adoration rapt in song.

2

What witch then hast thou met,

Who wrought this amulet?

This charm, that makes each look, love,

Of thine a rose;

Thy face an open book, love,

Where beauty gleams and glows,

And thought to music set.

What fairy of the wood,

To whom thou once wast good,

Gave thee this gift?—Thy words, love,

Should be pure gold;

And all thy songs as bird’s, love,

Sweet as the Mays of old

With youth and love imbued.

What elfin of the glade

This white enchantment made,

That filled thee with the essence

Of all the Junes?

That made thy soul, thy presence,

Like to the moon’s

Above a far cascade.

What wizard of the cave

Hath made my heart thy slave?

That dreams of thee when sleeping,

And, when awake,

My anxious spirit keeping

’Neath spells I can not break,

Sweet spells, whence naught can save.

3

Dear, (though given conclusion to),

Songs,—no memory surrenders,—

Still their music breathe in you;

Silence meditation renders

Audible with notes it knew.

Sweet, when all the flowers are dead,

Perfumes,—that the heart remembers

Made of them a marriage-bed,—

Shall not fail me in December’s

Gloom, but from your face be shed.

Dear, when night denies a star,

Darkness will not suffer, seeing

Song and fragrance are not far;

Starlight of the summer being

In the loveliness you are.

XIV

“Revealing distant vistas where I thought

I saw your love stand as ’mid lily blooms,

Long, angel goblets molded out of stars,

Pouring aroma at your feet: and life

Took fire with thoughts your soul must help you read:

A song; and songs (who does not know?)

Reveal no music but is thine.

Thou singest, and the waters flow,

The breezes blow,

The sunbeams shine,

And all the earth grows young, divine.

Low laughter; and I look away;

Whate’er the time of year, I dream

I walk beneath sweet skies of May

On ways where play

Both gloom and gleam,

And hear a bird and forest stream.

A thought; and straight it seems to me,

However dark, the stars arise,

And rain down memories of thee,—

As, it may be,

From Paradise

One feels an angel-lover’s eyes.

XV

“But is it well to tell you what I felt

When I beheld no change beyond the moods

That gloomed or glistened in your raven eyes?

When I sat singing ’neath one steadfast star

Of morning with no phantoms of strange fears

To slay the look or word that helped me sing:

When song came easier than come buds in spring,

That make the barren boughs one pomp of pearls:

Oh, let the happy day go past,

And let the night be short or long,

When life and love are one at last,

And hearts are full of song,

’Tis sweet midsummer of the dream,

And all the dreams thou hast

Are truer than they seem.

And once I dreamt in autumn of

Death with cadaverous eyes that gazed

From out a shadow.... It was love

Whose deathless eyes were raised

From the deep darkness that unrolled

Wild splendor; and, amazed,

Thy soul I did behold.

And then it seemed that some one said,

The dead are nearer than dost know.

And when they tell thee love is dead,—

Although it seems ’t is so,—

Still shalt thou feel in every beat

And heart-throb of thy woe

Love breathing, bitter-sweet.

XVI

“One evening when I came to talk with you,

Impatience hurt me in your brief replies.

And I who had refused,—because we dread

Approaching horror of our lives made maimed,—

The inevitable, could not help but see

Some change in you to’ards me.—That night I dreamed

I wandered ’mid old ruins, where the snake

And scorpion crawled in poison-spotted heat;

Plague-bloated bulks of hideous vine and root

Wrapped fallen fanes; and bristling cacti bloomed

Blood-red and death-white on forgotten tombs.

And from my soul went forth a bitter cry

That pierced the silence that was packed with death

And pale presentiment. And so I went,

A white flame beckoning before my face,

And in my ears sounds of primordial seas

That boasted preadamic gods and men:

A flame before me and, beyond, a voice:

But, lo, the white flame when I reached for it

Became thin ashes like a dead man’s dust;

And when I thought I should behold the sea,

Stagnation, turned to filth and rottenness,

Rolled out a swamp: the voice became a stench.

If we should pray together now

For sunshine and for rain,

And thou shouldst get fair weather now,

And I the clouds again,

Would ray and rain keep single,

Or for the rainbow mingle?

Dear, if this should be made to me,

That I had asked for light,

And God had given shade to me,

And all to thee that’s bright,

Wouldst thou go by with scorning,

Refusing darkness morning?

If all my life were winter, love,

And all thy life were spring,

And mine with frost should splinter, love,

While thine with birds should sing,

Wouldst thou walk past and glitter,

Forgetful mine is bitter?

XVII

“Still on the anguish of a dying hope

An infant hope was nourished; all in vain.

For, at the last, although we parted friends,

The friendship lay like sickness on my soul,

That saw all gladness perish from the world

With loss of thee; and, ’mid the future years,

Love building high a sepulchre for hope.

Ah, could you learn forgetfulness,

And teach my heart how to forget;

And I unlearn all fretfulness,

And teach your soul that still will fret;

The mornings of the world would burn

Before us and we would not turn,

For we would not regret.

Did you but know what sorrow keeps,

That drives the joy of life away,

And I what each to-morrow keeps

For us until it is to-day;

No grief or change would then surprise

Our lives with what our lives were wise,

And nothing could betray.

If you could be interior to

My dreams that are all love’s desire;

And I could be superior to

Myself and such in you inspire;

Long stairways would the years unroll

To lift us upward, soul to soul,

To what celestial fire!

XVIII

“There came no words of comfort from your lips.

Not that I asked for pity! that had been

As fire unto the scalded or dry bread

Unto the famished fallen ’mid the sands!

But all your actions said that I was wrong,

But how, I know not and have ceased to care;

Still standing like one stricken blind at noon,

Who gropes and fumbles, feeling all grow strange

That once was so familiar; cursing God

Who locks him in with darkness and despair.—

Your judgment had been juster had it had

A lesser love than mine to judge.—O love,

Where lay the justice of thy judge in this?—

‘If thou hadst praised thy God as long

As thou hast praised a woman’s eyes,

Perhaps thou hadst not suffered wrong,

As now, and sat with sighs:

But, through thy prayer and praise made strong,

Perhaps thou hadst grown wise.

‘If thou hadst bade thy God be more

Than I, thy life had not been sad;

His love to thee had not been poor

As mine. But thou wast mad,

And cam’st, a beggar, to my door,

And had more than I had.

‘If thou hadst taught me how to love,

Nor played with love as monarchs play,

My heart had learned right soon enough,

From thine, love’s lowlier way.

But all thy love stood far above,

Nor touched my soul to sway.’

XIX

“Thus did you write me, or in words like these,

When all was over and your heart was led,

Through pity, haply, thus to justify

Yourself, that needed not to justify,

Since all your reason lay in four small words,

Enough to wreck my world and all my life,

You did not love: what more is there to tell?—

Yet, haply, it was this: One soul, that still

Demanded more than it could well return;

And, searching inward, yet could never pierce

Beyond its superficiality.

You did not know; yet I had felt in me

The rich fulfillment of a rare accord,

And could not, though the longing lay like song

And music on me, win your soul’s response.

Were it well, lifting me

Eyes that give heed,

Down in your soul to see

Thought, the affinity

Of act and deed?

Knowing what naught may tell

Of heart and soul:

Yet were the knowledge whole,

And were it well?

Were it well, giving true

Love all enough,

Still to discover new

Depths of true love for you,

Infinite love?

Feeling what naught may tell

Of heart and soul:

Yet were the knowledge whole,

And were it well?

XX

“What else but, laboring for some good, to lift

Ourselves above the despotism of self,

All egoism strangling strength and hope,

To work and work, and, in the love of work,

Which takes the place, in some, of love’s real self,

To quench the flame that eats into the heart?

Art, our intensest and our truest love,

Immaculateness that has never led

One of her lovers wrong, his love all soul!

I followed beauty, and my ardor prayed

Your memory would, feature and form and face,

Be blotted out within me; rise no more

To mar the labor that I owed to Art.

I prayed, yea, to forget you, you I loved:

I prayed; and, see!—how Heaven answered me:

I have no song to tell thee

The love that I would sing;

The song that should enspell thee

With words, and so compel thee

That thou, with love, must wing

Into my life to-morrow—

For all my songs are sorrow.

My strength is not a giant

To hold thee with strong hands,

To make thee less defiant;

Thy spirit more compliant

With all my love demands:

Alas! my love is meekness,

And all my strength is weakness.

What hope have I to hover—

When wings refuse to rise—

Within thy heart’s close cover,

And there to play the lover,

Concealed from mortal eyes?

What hope! to give me boldness,

When all thy looks are coldness?

XXI

“I prayed; and for a time felt strong as strength,

And held both hands out to the loveliness

That lured in the ideal. And I felt

Compelling power upon me that would lift

My face to heaven, now, to see the stars,

Now bend it back to earth to see the flowers.

I learned long lessons ’twixt a look and look:

Breezes and linden blooms,

Sunshine and showers;

Rain, that the May perfumes,

Cupped in the flowers:

Clouds and the leaves that patter

Raindrops that glint and glare—

Or be they gems that scatter?

Sapphires the sylphides shake,

When their loose fillets break,

Out of their radiant hair?

Now is my heart a lute!

Now doth it pinion

Song in love’s swift pursuit

In thought’s dominion!

Dreaming of all thou meanest,

Thou, with uneager eyes,

Nature! of worlds thou queenest,

Whither thy mother hand

Draws us from land to land,

Far from the worldly wise!

XXII

“Thus would I scatter grain around my life,

Gold grain of song, to lure them down to me,

Cloud-colored doves of peace to fill my soul,

And find them turn to ravens while they flew,

Black ravens of despair that would not out.

The old, dull, helpless aching at the heart,

As if some scar had turned a wound again.

While idle grief stared at the brutal past,

Which held a loss that made the past more rich

Than all Earth’s arts: that marveled how it came

Such puny folly should usurp love’s high

Proud pedestal of life that held your form,

In Parian, sculptured by the hands of thought.

And oft I shook myself,—for nightmares weighed

Each sense,—and seemed to wake; yet evermore

Beheld a death’s-head grinning at my eyes.

So when the opening of the door doth thrill

My soul with sudden knowledge death is come,

Let me forget you or remember still,

It will not matter then that life went ill,

When death bends to me and my lips are dumb.

Then I shall not remember: and shall leave

No memory behind me, and no trace

Of aught my life accomplished. Let none grieve.

There is no heart my passing will bereave;

And there are thousands who can fill my place.

Who knocks?—The night camps on each hill and heath:

And round my door are minions of the night:

And like a weapon, riven from its sheath,

The wind sweeps, and the tempest grinds its teeth

Around me and my wild, hand-hollowed light.

Who knocks?—the door is open!—And I see

The Darkness threatening, with distorted fists

Of cloudy terror, Courage on her knee:

Shine far, O candle! for it so may be

Love is bewildered in the night and mists.—

No wandering wisp art thou, that haunts the rain

With pallid flicker, fading as it flies!—

The door is open!—Will he knock again?—

The door is open!—Shall it be in vain?—

Come in! delay not! thou, whose ways are wise!

Who knocked has entered: let the darkness pass,

The door be closed!—Now morning lights shall thrust

It open; and the sunlight shine and mass

Its splendor here where once but darkness was,

And in its rays—motes and a little dust.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

XXIII

And I had read, read to the bitter end;

Half hearing lone surmises of the rain

And trouble of the wind. At last I rose

And went to Gwendolyn. She did not know

The kiss I gave her had a shudder in it;

Nor how the form of Julien rose between

Me and her lips, a blood-stain o’er his heart.

THE IDYLL OF THE STANDING-STONE

I

She knows its windings and its crooks;

The wildflowers of its lovely woods;

The crowfoot’s golden sisterhoods,

That crowd its sunny nooks:

The iris, whose blue blossoms seem

Mab’s bonnets; and, each leaf a-gleam,

The trillium’s fairy-books.

He knows its shallows and its pools,

Its stair-like beds of rock that go,

Foaming, with waterfall and flow,

Where dart the minnow schools;

Its grassy banks that herons haunt,

Or where the woodcock call; and gaunt

The mushrooms lift their stools.

She seeks the columbine and phlox,

The bluebell, where the bushes fill

The old stones of the ruined mill;

She wades among the rocks:

Her feet are rose-pearl in the stream;

Her eyes are bluet-blue; a beam

Lies on her nut-brown locks.

He comes with fishing-reel and line

To angle in the darker deeps,

Where the reflected forest sleeps

Of sycamore and pine:

And now and then a shadow swoops

Above him of a hawk that stoops

From skies as clear as wine.

And will he see, if they should meet,

That she is fairer than each flower

Her apron fills? and in that hour

Feel life less incomplete?...

He stops below: she walks above—

The brook floats down, as white as love,

One blossom to his feet.

And she?—should she behold the tan

Of manly face and honest eyes,

Would all her soul idealize

Him? make him more than man?...

She dropped one blossom when she heard

Soft whistling—was it man or bird,

Whose notes so sweetly ran?

Where the woodcock call Page 161

The Idyll of the Standing-Stone

They knew before they came to meet;

For some divulging influence

Had touched them thro’ the starry lens

God holds to bring in beat

Two hearts—her heart one haunting wish,

And his—forgetful of the fish,

Her flower at his feet.

II

The sassafras twigs had just lit up

The yellow stars of their fragrant candles,

And the dogwood brimmed each blossom-cup

With spring to its brown-tipped handles;

When down the orchard, ’mid apple blooms—

Say, ho, the hum o’ the honey-bee!—

A glimpse of Spring in the sprinkled glooms?

Or only a girl? with the warm perfumes

Blown round her breezily.

The maple, as red as the delicate flush

Of an afterglow, was airy crimson;

And the haw-tree, white in the wing-whipped hush,

Gleamed cool as a cloud that the moonlight dims on;

And under the oak, whose branches strung—

Say, heigh, the rap o’ the sapsuckér!—

Gray buds in tassels that sweetly swung,

They stood and listened a bird that sung,

As glad as the heart in her.

Yellow the bloom of the rattle-weed,

And white the bloom of the plum and cherry;

And red as a stain the red-bud’s brede,

And clover the color of sherry:

And a wren sings there in the orchard drift,—

And, ho! the dew from the web that slips!—

And a thrush sings there in the woodland rift,

Where he to his face her face doth lift,

Her face with the willing lips.

For a while they sat on the moss and grass,

Where the forest bloomed a great wild garden;—

Then the beam from the hollow—it seemed to pass,

And the ray on the hills to harden,

When she rose to go, and his joy fell flat;—

And, heigh, the wasp i’ the pawpaw bell!—

As she waved her hand—why, it seemed at that

’Twas Spring’s own self he was gazing at,

And the life of his life as well.

III

The teasel and the horsemint spread

The hillsides, as with sunset sown,

Blooming along the Standing-Stone

That ripples in its rocky bed:

There are no treasuries that hold

Gold yellower than the marigold

That crowds its mouth and head.

’T is harvest-time: a mower stands

Among the morning wheat and whets

His scythe, and for a space forgets

The labor of the ripening lands;

Then bends, and through the dewy grain

His long scythe hisses, and again

He swings it in his hands.

And she beholds him where he mows

On acres whence the water sends

Faint music of reflecting bends

And falls that interblend with flows:

She stands among the old bee-gums,—

Where all the apiary hums,—

Like some sweet bramble-rose.

She hears him whistling as he leans,

And, reaping, sweeps the ripe wheat by;

She sighs and smiles and knows not why:—

These are but simple country scenes:

He whets his scythe again, and sees

Her smiling near the hives of bees

Beneath the flowering beans.

The peacock-purple lizard creeps

Along the rail; and deep the drone

Of insects makes the country lone

With summer where the water sleeps:

She hears him singing as he swings

His scythe; he thinks of other things—

Not toil, and, singing, reaps.

IV

Into the woods they went again,

Over the wind-blown oats;

Out of the acres of golden grain,

In where the light was a violet stain,

In where the lilies’ throats

Were brimmed with the summer rain.

Hung on a bough a reaper’s hook,

Over the wind-blown oats;

A girl’s glad laugh and a girl’s glad look,

And the hush and ripple of tree and brook,

And a wild bird’s silvery notes,

And a kiss that a strong man took.

Out of the woods the lovers went,

Over the wind-waved wheat;

She with a face, where love was blent,

Like to an open testament;

He, from his head to feet,

Dazed with his hope that was eloquent.

Here how oft had they come to tryst,

Over the wind-waved wheat!

Here how oft had they laughed and kissed!

Talked and tarried where no one wist,

Here where the woods are sweet,

Dim and deep as a dewy mist.

V

Her pearls are blossoms-of-the-vale,

Her only diamonds are the dews;

Such jewels never can grow stale,

Nor any value lose.

Among the millet beards she stands:

The languid wind lolls everywhere:

There are wild roses in her hands,

One wild rose in her hair.

To-morrow, where the shade is warm,

Among the unmown wheat she’ll stop,

And from one daisy-loaded arm

One ox-eyed daisy drop.

She’ll meet his brown eyes, true and brave,

With blue eyes, false yet dreamy sweet:

He is her lover and her slave,

Who mows among the wheat.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

When buds broke on the apple trees

She wore an apple-blossom dress,

And laughed with him across the leas,

And love was all a guess.

When goose-plums ripened in the rain,

Plum-colored was her gown of red;

He kissed her in the creek-road lane—

She was his life, he said.

When apples thumped the droughty land,

A russet color was her gown:

Another came, and—won her hand?—

Nay! carried off to town....

When grapes hung purple in the hot,

None missed her and her simple dress,

Save one, whom, haply, she forgot,

Who loved her none the less.

When snow made white each harvest sheaf,

He sought her out amid her show;

Her rubies, redder than the leaf

That autumn forests sow.

Not one regret her shame reveals;

She smiles at him, then puts him by;

He pleads; and she? she merely steels

Her heart and—lives her lie.

VI

And he returned when poppies strewed

Their golden blots o’er moss and leaf,—

Blond little Esaus of the wood,

So fair of face, of life so brief.—

Did he forget?—Not he, in truth!—

“No month,” he thought, “holds so much grace,

No month of spring, such grace and youth,

As the sweet April of her face.”

In fall the frail gerardia

Hung hints of sunset and of dawn

On root and rock, as if to draw

Her lips, remind him of one gone:—

Of one unworthy, in pursuit

Of butterflies, who does not dream

A flower, broken by her foot,

Sweeps, helpless, with her down the stream.

SOME SUMMER DAYS

I

If you had seen her waiting there

Among the tiger-lily blooms,—

That sowed their jewels everywhere

Among the woodland gleams and glooms,—

You had confessed her very fair,

And sweeter than the wood’s perfumes.

A country girl with bare brown feet,

She waits, while day slopes down the deeps:

The afternoon is dead with heat,

And all the weary shadow sleeps

Like toil, arm-pillowed in the wheat,

Beside the scythe with which he reaps.

There is no sound more distant than

The cow-bell on the vine-hung hill;

No nearer than the locust’s span

Of noise that makes the silence shrill:

And now there comes a sun-browned man

Through tiger-lilies of the rill.

Long will they talk: till, in the end,

The clear west glows, the east grows pale;

Until the glow and pallor blend

Like moonlight on a shifting sail;

And then he ’ll clasp her; she will bend

Her head, consenting. Day will fail:

The west will flame, then fade away

Through heavy orange, rose, and red,

And leave the heavens violet gray

Above a gypsy-lily bed:

Then they will go; and he will say

Such words to her as none has said.

A million stars the night will win

Above them; and one firefly

Pulse like a tangled starbeam in

The cedar dark against the sky:

Then he will lift her dimpled chin

And take the kiss she ’ll not deny.

And when the moon, like the great book

Of Judgment, golden with the light

Of God, lies open o’er yon nook

Of darkest wood and wildest height,

Together they will cross the brook

And reach the gate and kiss good night.

II

And now he wipes his hand along

The beaded fire of his brow

Hard toil has heated; and the strong

Face flushes fuller health as now

He fills his hay-fork to the prong,

And, tossing it, again doth bow.

And now he rests, and looks away

Across the sun-fierce hills and meads

No rolling cloud has cooled to-day;

And from his face the brawny beads

Drip; and he marks the heaps of hay,

The fields of corn, the fields of weeds.

At last he sees the tempest build

Black battlements along the west,

Black breastworks that are thunder filled;

And bares his brow; and on his chest

The sweat of toil is cooled; and stilled

The pulse of toil within his breast.

A strong wind brings the odorous death

Of far hay-meadows, and the scent

Is good within his nostrils’ breath:

The mighty trees are bowed, that leant

For no man, as when Power saith

“Bow down!” and stalwart men are bent.

He laughs, long-gazing as he goes

Along the elder-sweetened lane:

He feels the storm wind as it blows

Across the sheaves of golden grain,

And stops to pull one bramble-rose,

And watch the swiftly coming rain.

And there, ’mid locust trees, the farm

Dreams in a martin-haunted place:

He marks the far-off streaks of storm

That, driven of the thunder, race:

He sees his child upon her arm,

And in the door his wife’s fair face.

III

Below the sunset’s range of rose,

Below the heaven’s bending blue,

Down woodways where the balsam blows,

And milkweed tufts hang, gray of hue,

A Jersey heifer stops and lows—

The cows come home by one, by two.

There is no star yet: but the smell

Of hay and pennyroyal mix

With herb-aromas of the dell;

And the root-hidden cricket clicks:

Among the ironweeds a bell

Clangs near the rail-fenced clover-ricks.

She waits upon the slope beside

The windlassed well the plum-trees shade,

The well-curb that the goose-plums hide;

Her light hand on the bucket laid,

Unbonneted she waits, glad-eyed,

Her dress as simple as her braid.

She sees fawn-colored backs among

The sumacs now; a tossing horn;

A clashing bell of brass that rung:

Long shadows lean upon the corn,

And all the day dies scarlet-stung,

The cloud in it a rosy thorn.

Below the pleasant moon, that tips

The tree-tops of the hillside, fly

The evening bats; the twilight slips

Some fireflies like spangles by;

She meets him, and their happy lips

Touch; and one star leaps in the sky.

He takes her bucket, and they speak

Of married hopes while in the grass

The plum lies glowing as her cheek;

The patient cows look back or pass;

And in the west one golden streak

Burns like a great cathedral glass.

IV

The skies are amber, blue, and green

Before the coming of the sun;

And all the deep hills sleep, serene

As if enchanted; every one

Is ribbed with morning mists that lean

On woods through which vague whispers run.

Birds wake: and on the vine-hung knobs,

Above the brook, a twittering

Confuses songs; one warbler robs

Another of its note; a wing

Beats by; and now a wild throat throbs

Triumphant; all the woodlands sing.

The sun is up: the hills are heaped

With instant splendor; and the vales

Surprised with shimmers that are steeped

In purple where the thin mist trails;

The water-fall, the rock it leaped,

Are burning gold that foams and fails.

He drives his horses to the plow

Along the vineyard slopes, where bask

Dew-heavy grapes, half-ripened now,

In sun-shot shafts of shade: no mask

Of joy he wears; his face and brow

Glow as he enters on his task.

Before him, soaring through the mist,

The gray hawk wildly wings and screams;

Its dewy back gleams, sunbeam-kissed,

Above the wood that drips and dreams;

He guides the plow with one strong fist;

The soil rolls back in level seams.

Packed to the right the sassafras

Lifts leafy walls of spice that shade

The blackberries, whose tendrils mass

Big berries in the coolness made;

And drop their ripeness on the grass

Where trumpet-flowers fall and fade.

White on the left the fence and trees

That mark the garden; and the smoke,

Uncurling in the early breeze,

Tells of the roof beneath the oak;

He turns his team, and, turning, sees

The damp, dark soil his coulter broke.

Bees hum; and o’er the berries poise

Lean-bodied wasps; loud blackbirds turn

Following the plow: there is a noise

Of insect wings that buzz and burn;—

And now he hears his wife’s low voice,

The song she sings to help her churn.

V

There are no clouds that drift around

The moon’s pearl-kindled crystal, (white

As some sky-summoned spirit wound

In raiment lit with limbs of light),

That have not softened like the sound

Of harps when Heaven forgets to smite.

The vales are deeper than the dark,

And darker than the vales the woods

That shadowy hill and meadow mark

With broad, blurred lines, whereover broods

Deep calm; and now a fox-hound’s bark

Upon the quietude intrudes.

And though the night is never still,

Yet what we name its noises makes

Its silence:—now a whippoorwill;

A frog, whose hoarser tremor breaks

The hush; then insect sounds that fill

The night; an owl that hoots and wakes.

They lean against the gate that leads

Into the lane that lies between

The yard and orchard; flowers and weeds

Smell sweeter than the odors keen

That day distils from hotness; beads

Of dew make cool the gray and green.

Their infant sleeps. They feel the peace

Of something done that God has blessed,

Still as the pulse that will not cease

There in the cloud that lights the west:

The peace of love that shall increase

While soul to soul still gives its best.

AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK

I

The wild brook gleams on the sand and ripples

Over the rocks of the riffle; brimming

Under the elms like a nymph who dripples,

Dips and glimmers and shines in swimming:

Under the linns and the ash-trees lodging,

Loops of the limpid waters lie,

Shaken of schools of the minnows, dodging

The glancing wings of the dragon-fly.

Lower, the loops are lines of laughter

Over the stones and the crystal gravel;

Afar they gloom, like a face seen after

Mirth, where the waters slowly travel;

Shadowy slow where the Fork is shaken

Of the dropping bark of the sycamore,

Where the water-snake, that the footsteps waken,

Slides like a crooked root from shore.

Peace of the forest; and silence, dimmer

Than dreams. And now a wing that winnows

The willow leaves, with their shadows slimmer

In the shallow there than a school of minnows:

Calm of the creek; and a huge tree twisted,

Ringed, and turned to a tree of pearl;

A gray-eyed man, who is farmer-fisted,

And a dark-eyed, sinewy country girl.

The brow of the man is gnarled and wrinkled

With the weight of the words that have just been spoken;

And the girl has smiled and her eyes have twinkled,

Though the bonds and the bands of their love lie broken:

She smiles, nor knows how the days have knotted

Her to the heart of the man who says:

“Let us follow the paths that we think allotted.

I will go my ways and you your ways.

“And the man between us is your decision.

Worse or better he is your lover.—

Shall I say he ’s worse since the sweet Elysian

Prize he wins where I discover

Only the hell of the luckless chooser?—

Shall I say he ’s better than I, or more,

Since he is winner and I am loser,

His life ’s made rich and mine made poor?”

“I tell you now as I oft and ever

Have told,” she answered, the laughter dying

Down in her eyes, “that his arms have never

Held me!—no!—but you think me lying,

And you are wrong. And I think it better

To part forever than still to dwell

With the sad distrust, like an evil tetter,

On our lives forever, and so farewell.”

And she turned away; and he watched her going,

The girlish pride in her eyes a-smoulder:

He saw her go, and his lips were glowing

Fever that parched. And he stood, one shoulder

Slouched to the tree; and he saw her stooping,

There by the bank, with a reckless foot;

Straighten; and tear from her breast his drooping

Lilies and fasten the pleurisy-root.

With its orange fire he saw her passing

On and on; and the blood beat, burning

His brain to madness; and seemingly massing

The weight of the world on his heart in yearning ...

Butterflies swarmed in the moist sand-alleys;

A fairy fleet of Ionian sails

They seemed with their wings, or of pirate galleys,

Maroon and yellow, for Elfland gales.

He watched her going; and harder, thicker

The pulse of his breath and his heart’s hard throbbing.—

How should he know that her heart was sicker?

How should he know that her soul was sobbing?—

She never looked back: and he saw her vanish

In swirls of the startled butterflies,

Like a storm of flowers; and he could not banish

The thought he had lost his all through lies.

II

He heard the cocks crow out the lonely hours.

How long the night! how far away the dawn!

It seemed long months since he had seen the flowers,

The leaves, the sunlight, and the bee-hived lawn;

Had heard the thrush flute in the tangled showers.

His burning eyes ached, staring at the black

Stolidity of midnight. Would God send

No cool relief unto his mind,—a rack

Of inquisition,—tortures to unbend,

That stretched him forward and now strained him back?

Incomprehensible and undivulged,

The thought that took him back, retraced their walks,

Through woods, on which the sudden perfumes bulged,

The bird-songs and the brilliant-blossomed stalks;

And all the freedom which their talk indulged.

Oh, strong appeal! And he would almost yield;

When, firmly forward, he could feel her fault

Oppose the error of a rock-like shield,

And to resisting phalanxes cry halt—

And, lo! bright cohorts broken on the field.

O mulct of morning! to the despot night

Count down unminted gold, and let the day

Walk free from dungeons of the dark; delight

Herself on mountains of the violet ray,

Clad in white maidenhood and morning white!

A melancholy coast, plunged deep in dream

And death and silence, stretched the drowsy dark,

Wherein he heard a round-eyed screech-owl scream,

In lamentation, and a watch-dog bark,

Vague as oblivion, lost in night’s deep stream.

And then hope moved him to divide the blinds

To see if those bright sparkles were a star’s,

Or but his feverish eyelids, which the mind’s

Commotion weighed.—No hint of morning bars

With glimmer heaven’s swart tapestry he finds.

So he remained, impatient, till the first

Exploring crevices of Aztec morn,

Dim cracks of treasure, Eldorados burst:

Then could he face his cowardice and scorn

His jealousy that thus his life had cursed.

Love knew no barriers now. And where he went

Each woodland path was musical with birds;

Each flow’r was richer, more divine of scent;

For love sought love with such expressive words

That dawn’s delivery was less eloquent.

III

Who is it hunts with his dog

There where the heron is flying

Gray through the feathering fog

Over the Fork, where is lying,

Bridge-like, a butternut log,

There where the horsemint is drying?

Who is it hunts in the brush,

Under the linns and the beeches,

Here where the water-falls rush,

Dark, where the noon never reaches?

Here where the Fork is one crush

Of flags with a bloom like the peach’s?

He is handsome and supple and tall,

Blond-haired and vigorous-chested,

Blue-eyed as the bud by the fall

Where he listens,—his rifle half rested,

Half leaned on the crumbling stone wall,—

Whose briers he lately has breasted.

He waits; and the sun on the dew

Of the cedars and leaves of the bushes

Strikes glittering frostiness through ...

If a covey of partridges flushes

What good will a Winchester do,

Or the dog to his feet that he crushes?

Then a man breaks strong through the weeds

Where the buck-bushes toss and the spires

Of the white-blossomed cohosh; ’mid reeds

Wild-carrots, and trammelling briers:

It is he! to his loved one who speeds—

And the man in the bushes—he fires....

From leaves of the wind-shaken wood

The dew of the dawn is still falling:

He is gone from the place where he stood,

Just there where the black crow is calling:

There is blood on the weeds: is it blood

On the face of the man who is crawling?

Red blood or a smudge of the dawn?—

Now he lies with his gray eyes wide, staring,

Stiff, still at the sun: he has drawn

His limbs in a heap: and the faring

Bee-martins light near or pass on,

Not one of them knowing or caring.

It is noon: and the wood-dove is deep

In the calm of its cooing: and over

The tops of the forest trees sweep

The shadows of buzzards that hover:

Wide-winged they sail on as asleep:

And the bob-white is whistling from cover.

It is dusk: and the heat, that made wilt

The leaves and the wildflowers’ faces,

Gives place to the dew-drops that tilt

With coolness the weeds where are traces

Of horror and darkness and guilt,

That nothing can wash from those places.

It is night: and the hoot-owlet mocks

The dove of the day with wild weeping,

The Fork is scarce heard on its rocks

Where the man is so quietly sleeping:

Through the woods snaps the bark of a fox;

The lightning is fitfully leaping.

IV

All day, ’twixt hope and fear,

She waited at the gate,

Looking for him, more dear

Now that he made her wait:

Day went and night draws near:

Stormy it grows and late.

Still, still she waits: great limbs

The winds rend from the ridge;

Each swollen shallow swims

Head-deep below the bridge;

The drift, that breaks and brims

Swirls lighter than the midge.

The night grows wildly gray

With lightning-litten rain;

The forests sound and sway,

An oak is rent in twain;

The thunder rolls away

Like some vast bolt and chain.

The Fork is whirling wreck

Of field and farm and wood;

And many a foaming fleck

Drives where the rock-fence stood;—

A torrent sweeps break-neck

Above the washed-out blood.

Night deepens: still she waits

Expectant in despair:

The Fork has reached the gates,

The wood’s wreck everywhere.

But when the storm abates,

She thinks, he will be there.

She sees the lightning rush

Its blazing hells above;

She hears the thunder crush

Heaven as if earthquake-clove—

Loud in the tempest’s hush

She calls with all her love.

He comes, she feels; and stands

The rushing waters o’er

Her feet, and on her hands

And hair the wild down-pour,

The lightnings are wild brands

To light him to her door.

Night deepens: but she knows

God will not fail to send

Her love to soothe her woes,

And one day’s errors mend.—

The wild stream foams and flows

Booming in fall and bend.

Again the lightnings light

The night like some wild torch;

The waters foam and fight;

And one uprooted larch

Sweeps down, with something white

Wedged in it, by her porch.

She stoops: the lurid rain

Beats on her back and head—

Ay! he hath come again!

With livid lips once red!

A bullet in his brain

The night hath brought him—dead!

A NIELLO

I

It is not early spring and yet

Of bloodroot blooms along the stream,

And blotted banks of violet,

My heart will dream.

Is it because the wind-flower apes

The beauty that was once her brow,

That the white thought of it still shapes

The April now?

Because the wild-rose learned its blush

From her fresh cheeks of maidenhood,

Their thought makes June of barren brush

And empty wood?

And then I think how young she died—

Straight, barren death stalks down the trees,

The hard-eyed hours by his side

That kill and freeze.

II

When orchards are in bloom again

My heart will bound, my blood will beat,

To hear the red-bird so repeat,

On boughs of rosy stain,

His blithe, loud song,—like some far strain

From out the past,—among the bloom,—

(Where bee, and wasp, and hornet boom)—

Fresh, redolent with rain.

When orchards are in bloom once more,

Invasions of lost dreams will draw

My feet, like some insistent law,

Through blossoms to her door:

In dreams I’ll ask her, as before,

To let me help her at the well;

And fill her pail; and long to tell

My love as once of yore.

I shall not speak until we quit

The farm-gate, leading to the lane

And orchard, all in bloom again,

’Mid which the wood-doves sit

And coo; and through whose blossoms flit

The cat-birds crying while they fly:

Then tenderly I’ll speak, and try

To tell her all of it.

And in my dream again she’ll place

Her hand in mine, as oft before,—

When orchards are in bloom once more,—

With all her old-time grace:

And we will tarry till a trace

Of sunset dyes the heav’ns; and then—

We’ll part, and, parting, I again

Will bend and kiss her face.

And homeward, dreaming, I will go

Along the cricket-chirring ways,

While sunset, like one crimson blaze

Of blossoms, lingers low:

And my lost youth again I’ll know,

And all her love, when spring is here—

Hers! hers! now dead this many a year

Whose love still haunts me so.

III

I would not die when Springtime lifts

The white world to her maiden mouth,

And heaps its cradle with gay gifts,

Breeze-blown from out the singing South:

Too full of life and loves that cling,

Too heedless of all mortal woe,

The young, unsympathetic Spring,

That death should never know.

I would not die when Summer shakes

Her daisied locks below her hips,

And, naked as a star that takes

A cloud, into the silence slips.

Too rich is Summer; poor in needs;

Wrapped in her own warm loveliness

Her pomp goes by, and never heeds

If one be more or less.

But I would die when Autumn goes,

The sad rain dripping from her hair,

Through forests where the wild wind blows

Death and the red wreck everywhere:

Sweet as love’s last farewells and tears

’T would be to die, when heavens are gray,

In the old autumn of my years,

Like a dead leaf borne far away.

DEEP IN THE FOREST

I

SPRING ON THE HILLS

Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,

The Spring, as wild wings follow?

Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,

Crab-apple trees the hollow,

Haunts of the bee and swallow?

In red-bud brakes and flowery

Acclivities of berry;

In dogwood dingles, showery

With dew, where wrens make merry?

Or drifts of swarming cherry?

In valleys of wild-strawberries,

And of the clumped May-apple;

Or cloud-like trees of hawberries,

With which the south-winds grapple,

That brook and pathway dapple?

With eyes of far forgetfulness,—

Like some white wood-thing’s daughter,

Whose feet are bee-like fretfulness,—

To see her run like water

Through boughs that slipped or caught her.

O Spring, to seek, yet find you not,

To search and still continue;

To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not,

To lose and then to win you,

All sweet evasion in you.

In pearly, peach-blush distances

You gleam; the woods are braided

Of myths, of dream-existences;—

There, where the brook is shaded,

Some splendor surely faded.

O presence, like the primrose’s,

Once more I feel your power!

In rainy scents of dim roses

I breathe you for an hour,

Elusive as a flower.

II

THE WOOD SPIRIT

Ah me! I still remember

How flushed, before the shower,

The dusk was; like a scarlet rose,

Or blood-red poppy-flower.

Now heaven is starred; the moonlight

Lays blurs upon the grain—

You may not know it from white frost,

The moonlight on the rain.

And all the forest utters

A restless moan in rest,

For all the deep, dark shadow lies

Like iron on its breast.

I mark the moveless shadow,

I mark the unreaped corn,

Then something whispers overhead,

“Come to me, mortal-born.”

I sit alone and listen;

The low leaves sound and sigh;

The dew drips from the bearded grain,

A mist slips from the sky.—

I hear her whisper, whisper,

And breathe in some dim place;

Her feet are easier than the dew,

And than the mist her face.

I may not clasp her ever,

This spirit made for song,

Who dwelleth in the young, young oak

The old, old oaks among.

Her limbs are molded moonlight;

Her breasts are silver moons:

She glimmers and she glitters where

The purple shadow swoons.

And since she knows I love her,

She says my soul has died,

And laughs and mocks me in the mist

That haunts the forest-side.

When winds run mad in woodlands

And all the great boughs swing,

I see her wild hair blow and blow

Black as a raven’s wing.

When winds are tamed and tethered

And stars are keen as frost,

I search and seek within the wood,

There where my soul was lost.

I seek her, and she flies me;

I follow; and the whole

Dim woodland echoes with her voice,

Soft calling to my soul.

III

OWL ROOST

The slope is a mass of vines:

If you walk in the daylight there,

A gleam as of twilight shines

Through the vines massed everywhere:

Each trunk, that a creeper twines,

Is a column, strong to bear

The dome of its leaves that wave,

Cathedral-dim and grave.

Black moss makes silent the feet:

And, above, the fox-grapes lace

So thick that the noonday heat

Is chill as a murdered face:

And the winds for miles repeat

The fugue of a rolling bass:

The deep leaves twinkle and turn

But over no flower or fern.

An angular spider weaves

Great webs between the trees,

Webs that are witches’ sieves:

And honey-and bumblebees

Go droning among the leaves,

Like the fairies’ oboës:

At dark the owlets croon

To the stars and the sickle-moon.

At dark I will not go

There where the branches sigh;

Where naught but the glow-worms glow,

Each one like a demon’s eye:

O’er which, like a battle-bow,

With an arrow that it lets fly,

The new-moon and one star

Hang and glimmer afar.

At dawn, if my mood be dim,

And the day be a cloudless one,

There where the sad winds hymn

I ’ll walk, but its shade will shun;

Its shade, where I feel the grim

Horror of something done

Here in the years long past,

That the place conceals to the last.

IV

MOSS AND FERN

Where rise the brakes of bramble there,

Wrapped with the trailing rose,

Through cane where waters ramble, there

Where deep the green cress grows,

Who knows?

Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man,

Hides Pan.

Perhaps the creek, whose pebbles make

A foothold for the mint,

May bear,—where soft its trebles make

Confession,—some vague hint—

(The print,

Goat-hoofed, of one who lightly ran)—

Of Pan.

Where, in the hollow of the hills

Ferns deepen to the knees,

What sounds are those above the hills,

And now among the trees?—

No breeze!—

The syrinx, haply, none may scan,

Of Pan.

In woods where waters break upon

The hush like some soft word;

Where sun-shot shadows shake upon

The moss, who has not heard—

No bird!—

The flute, as breezy as a fan,

Of Pan?

Far in, where mosses lay for us

Still carpets, cool and plush;

Where bloom and branch and ray for us

Swoon in the noonday flush,

The hush

May sound the satyr hoof a span

Of Pan.

In woods where thrushes sing to us,

And brooks dance sparkling heels;

Where wild aromas cling to us,

And all our worship kneels,—

Who steals

Upon us, haunch and face of tan,

But Pan?

V

WOODLAND WATERS

Through leaves of the nodding trees,

Where blossoms sway in the breeze,

Pink bag-pipes made for the bees,

Whose slogan is droning and drawling:

Where the columbine scatters its bells,

And the wild bleeding-heart its shells,

O’er mosses and rocks of the dells

The brook of the forest is falling.

You can hear it under the hill

When the wind in the wood is still,

And, strokes of a fairy drill,

Sounds the bill of the yellow-hammer:

By the solomon’s-seal it slips,

Cohosh and the grass that drips—

Like the words of an Undine’s lips,

Is the sound of its falls that stammer.

I lie in the woods: and the scent

Of the honeysuckle is blent

With the sound: and a Sultan’s tent

Is my dream, with the East enmeshéd:—

A slave-girl sings; and I hear

The languor of lute-strings near,

And a dancing-girl of Cashmere

In the harem of good Er Reshid.

From ripples of Irak lace

She flashes the amorous grace

Of her naked limbs and her face,

While her golden anklets tinkle:

Then over mosaic floors

Open seraglio doors

Of cedar: by twos, by fours,—

Like stars that tremble and twinkle,—

While the dulcimers sing, unseen,

The handmaids come of the Queen

’Neath silvern lamps, one sheen

Of jewels of Afrite treasure:

And I see the Arabia rise

Of the Nights that were rich and wise,

Beautiful, dark, in the eyes

Of Zubeideh, the Queen of Pleasure.

VI

THE THORN-TREE

The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold,

And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old,

Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the fairy people know,

With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow,

Whom the boyish South-wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping rain,

Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again;

She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew,

That could change the dew to glow-worms and the glow-worms into dew.

There’s a thorn-tree in the forest, and the fairies know the tree,

With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;

But the May-time brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white,

Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light.

And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn

How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn:

How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness

Till he told her demon secrets that but made his magic less.

How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree’s thorns to lie

Forever with his passion that should never dim or die:

And with wicked laughter looking on this thing that she had done,

Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun;

How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard,

All in mockery, at parting, and mock pity of his weird:

But her magic had forgotten that “who bends to give a kiss

Will bring down the curse upon them of the person whose it is”:

So the silence tells the secret.—And at night the fairies see

How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,

In the thorny arms of Merlin, who, forever, is the tree.

VII

THE HAMADRYAD

She stood among the longest ferns

The valley held; and in her hand

One blossom like the light that burns,

Vermilion, o’er a sunset land;

And round her hair a twisted band

Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms:

And darker than dark pools, that stand

Below the star-communing glooms,

Her eyes beneath her hair’s perfumes.

I saw the moon-pearl sandals on

Her flower-white feet, that seemed too chaste

To tread pure gold: and, like the dawn

On splendid peaks that lord a waste

Of solitude lost gods have graced,

Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped,

Bound with the cestused silver,—chased

With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped

With oak-leaves,—whence her chiton slipped.

Limbs that the gods call loveliness!—

The grace and glory of all Greece

Wrought in one marble form were less

Than her perfection!—’Mid the trees

I saw her; and time seemed to cease

For me—And, lo! I lived my old

Greek life again of classic ease,

Barbarian as the myths that rolled

Me back into the Age of Gold.

WRECKAGE

I

Love and the drift of many dreams,

Under the moon of a Florida night,

Over the beach with its silvery seams

White as a sail is white.

Love that entered into two lives

Out of the dreams that the nights have borne,

Over the waves where the vapor drives,

Mists that the stars have torn.

Love that welded two hearts and hands

There by the sea, ’neath the shell-white moon,

Like to the stars and the mists and the sands

Setting two lives in tune.

Nights of love that one still keeps

Sacred;—nights, that the faith of one

Heartened there in the treacherous deeps,

Under a tropic sun.

II

Parting he said to her: “Let us be true to them,—

All of our dreams, of the night, of the morning:

What is our present, its hope, but a clew to them?

What is our past but a dream and a warning?

Have you considered the life that regretfully

Foldeth weak arms to the fate it might master?—

Had I been true to my dreams, never fretfully

Halted, my future and joy had been faster.”

They had come down to the ocean that, bellowing,

Boiled on the sand and the shells that were broken;

All of the summer was fading and yellowing;

Now they must part and their vows had been spoken.

It had befallen that heaven was lowering;

Over the sea, like the wraith of a wrecker,

Clamored the gull; and the mist in the showering

East seemed the ghost of a lofty three-decker.

Infinite foam; and the boom of the hollowing

Breakers that buried the rocks to their shoulders;

Battle and boast of the deep in the wallowing

World of the waves where the red sunset smoulders.

Long was the leap of the foam on the thunderous

Beach; and each end of the beach was a flying

Fog of the spray: and she said, “Let it sunder us!

Still we will love, for love is undying!”

Yet, if it comes to the thing he has said to her?—

Wreckage and death?—the love she has given

Turned into sorrow?—Oh, that was a dread to her!

He, like a weed, by the waters far driven!

Weeping, her bosom with shudders was shaken as

She for a moment hard clung to her sailor,

Kissed him and—parted. His boat had been taken; as

Paler it grew the woman grew paler.

III

All day the rain drove, falling

Upon the sombre sea;

All day, his wet sail hauling,

The sailor tacked a-lea;

And through the wild rain calling,

What was it?—was it he?

At dusk the gull clanged, drifting

Above the boiling brine;

And, through the wan west sifting,

Streamed one red sunset line;

And in its wild light shifting,

His far sail seemed to shine.

All night the wind wailed, sighing

Along the wreck-strewn coast;

All night the surf, defying,

Rolled thunder in and boast;

All night she heard a crying—

The sea? or some lost ghost?

IV

The balm of the night and the glory,

The music and scent of the sea,

Are as song to her heart or a story

Of the never-to-be.

The stars and the night and the whiteness

Of foam on the stretch of the sand;

Faint foam that is tossed, like the brightness

Of a mermaiden’s hand.

No sail on the ocean; no sailor

On shore, and the winds all asleep;

And her face in the starlight far paler

Than women who weep.

A mist on the deep; and the ghostly

White moon in the deep of the night;

And a light that is neither; that mostly

Is shadow not light.

No sea-gull, that vanished with gleaming

Of wings, in the swing of the spray;

Perhaps it was only her dreaming,

Or merely a ray

Of moonlight; the glimmering essence

Of all that is grayest and dim—

But never his face, or his presence

That dripped in each limb.

And she cried through the night, “Let perish!

O God, let me die of despair!

If he whom I love, whom I cherish,

Is weltering there!”

She seemed but a sea-mist made woman,

And he but a sound of the sea

Made man where nothing was human,

And never would be.

V

Long he sailed the deep that glasses

The face of God and His majesty;

Passed the Horn and the Seas of Grasses,

Drifting aimlessly.

Time went by with its days that ever

Burden the hearts of those who be

Far away from their love; whom sever

Leagues of the shapeless sea.

Land at last, whose reefs rolled broken

Foam of the balked waves everywhere;

Land; one tangle of weeds and oaken

Wreck and of rocks laid bare.

Here and there the sand stretched livid

Leagues of famine, one blinding glare;

Crags, o’er which gaunt birds winged vivid,

Harsh in the earthquake air.

A little cloud in the sunset’s splendor;

A little cloud that the sunset stains:

Night, and a wisp of a moon that, slender,

Dreams of the hurricanes.

Winds that stride as with sounding sandals;

Winds that the tempest has loosed from chains:

Light that leaps like a spear he handles,

Shaking his thunder-manes.

Wrenching the world in wreck asunder,

Black rebellion of hell and night;

Wrath and roar of the rocks and thunder,

Flame and the winds that fight ...

Beating the drift and the hush together,

Waves and winds that the morn makes white;

Calm and peace of the tropic weather

After the typhoon’s might.

Clouds blow by and the storm’s forgotten.

Savage coasts where the sea-cow feeds.

Wash of weeds and the sea-weeds rotten.

And a dead face in the weeds.

None to know him or name him brother;

Only the savage in feathers and beads;

The South-Sea Islander, fitting another

Barb in the shaft he speeds.

Far away where the sea-gulls gather;

Far away where the evening falls,

Lone she stands where the wild waves lather,

Rolling the sea in walls.—

Who shall tell her, the lonely tryster?

Tell her of him on whom she calls?—

Suns that beat on his face and blister?

Stars? or the sea that crawls?

VI

She dreamed that there, beside the ocean sitting,

Alone she watched, when, at her feet, behold!

Between the foam-ridge and the sea-gull’s flitting,

His body rolled.

All was not as it was before they parted;

She dreamed he had remembered, she forgot;

He ’d said he would forget her, angry-hearted,

And yet could not.

And then it seemed that, had she known, she surely

Had given pity when she could not give

Her love to him, who loved her madly, purely,

And bade him live.

And then she dreamed she looked upon the slanted

Hulk of a wreck: and high above the wave,

Worn of the wind and of the cactus planted,

His nameless grave.

SIREN SANDS

I

The rhododendrons bloom and shake

Their petals wide and gleam and sway

Among palmettoes, by the lake,

Beyond the bay.

Shores where we watched the eve reveal

Her cloudy sanctuaries, while

The bay lay lavaed into steel

For mile on mile.

We watched the purple coast confuse

Soft outlines with the graying light;

And towards the gulf a vessel lose

Itself in night.

We saw the sea-gulls dip and soar;

The wild-fowl gather past the pier;

And from rich skies, as from God’s door,

Gold far and near.

Two foreign seamen passed and we

Heard mellow Spanish; like twin stars,

Where they lounged smoking, we could see

Their faint cigars.

Night; and the heavens stained and strewn

With stars the waters idealized,

Until their light the rising moon

Epitomized.

Morn; and the pine-wood balms awake;

Winds roll the dew-drop from the rose;

The wide lake burns; and, on the lake,

The ripple glows.

Far coasts detach deep purple from

The blue horizon, and the day

Beholds the sunburnt sailor come

And sail away.

The bird that slept at dusk, at dawn

Awakes again within the thorn.—

Sweet was the night to it, now gone;

And sweet is morn.

II

Through halls of columned scarlet,

Like some dark queen, the Dusk

Trails skirts of myrrh and musk,

Hung in each ear, a starlet

Gleams,—gems the clouds’ gaunt Jinn

Guard; and, beneath her chin,

The moon, an opal tusk.

There lies a ghostly glory

Upon the sea and sand;

A gleam, as of a hand,

Stretched from the realms of story,

Of rosy golden ray;

Pointing the world the way

To some far Fairyland.

As fades the west’s vermilion

Above the distant coasts,

The stars come out in hosts;

Within the night’s pavilion,

As flower speaks to flower,

Dim hour calls to hour,

Pale with the past’s sweet ghosts.

III

Music that melts through moonlight,

Faint on the summer breeze;

Fireflies, moonlight, and foaming

Susurrus of the seas.

Music that drifts like perfume,

And touches like a hand;

Dreams and stars and the ocean,

And we alone on the sand.

Glimmers and vague reflections,

And the white swirl of the foam;

Pale on the purple a vessel,

And a light that beckons home.

And I seem to see the music,

On a moonbeam bar that floats,

For the music is moonlight magic,

And the flies are its golden notes.

And I seem to hear one singing

Of a brown old coast and sea,

Of lives that were filled with passion,

And old-world tragedy.

And I hear the harsh reef’s calling

For a noble ship at sea,

And the winds of the ocean singing

A dirge for the dead to be.

Till it seems that I am the pilot,

And you are the mermaidén,

Who lures him on to the wrecking

And into her arms again.

Song

Over the hills where the winds are waking

All is lone as the soul of me;

Over the hills where the stars are shaking,

Breton hills by the sea.

These were with me to tell me often

How she pined in her Croisic home,

Winds that sing and the stars that soften

Over the miles of foam.

Fishers’ nets and the sailor faces;

Sad salt marshes and granite piers;

Brown, loud coast where the long foam races—

And a parting full of tears.

A gray sail’s ghost where the autumn lies on

Wraiths of the mist and the squall-blown rain;

Her dark girl eyes that search the horizon,

Grave with a haunting pain.

Stars may burn and the wild winds whistle

Over the rocks where the sea-gulls rave—

My heart is bleak as the wind-worn thistle

on her seaside grave.

IV

Sad as sad eyes that ache with tears

The stars of night shine through the leaves;

And shadowy as the Fates’ dim shears

The weft that twilight weaves.

The summer sunset marched long hosts

Of gold adown one golden peak,

That flamed and fell; and now gray ghosts

Of mist the far west streak.

They seem the shades of things that weep,

Wan things the heavens would conceal;

Blood-stained; that bear within them, deep,

Red wounds that will not heal.

Night comes, and with it storm, that slips

Wild angles of the jagged light:—

I feel the wild rain on my lips,—

A wild girl is the Night.

A moaning tremor sweeps the trees;

And all the stars are packed with death:—

She holds me by the neck and knees,

I feel her wild, wet breath.

Hell and its hags drive on the rain:—

Night holds me by the hair and pleads;

Her kisses fall like blows again;

My brow is dewed with beads.

The thunder plants wild beacons on

Each volleying height.—My soul seems blown

Far out to sea. The world is gone,

And night and I alone.

Tampa, Florida, February, 1893.

WAR-TIME SILHOUETTES.

I

THE BATTLE

The night had passed. The day had come,

Bright-born, into a cloudless sky:

We heard the rolling of the drum,

And saw the war-flags fly.

And noon had crowded upon morn

Ere Conflict shook her red locks far,

And blew her brazen battle-horn

Upon the hills of War.

Noon darkened into dusk—one blot

Of nightmare lit with hell-born suns;—

We heard the scream of shell and shot

And booming of the guns.

On batteries of belching grape

We saw the thundering cavalry

Hurl headlong,—iron shape on shape,—

With shout and bugle-cry.

When dusk had moaned and died, and night

Came on, wind-swept and wild with rain,

We slept, ’mid many a bivouac light,

And vast fields heaped with slain.

II

IN HOSPITAL

Wounded to death he lay and dreamed

The drums of battle beat afar,

And round the roaring trenches screamed

The hell of war.

Then woke; and, weeping, spoke one word

To the kind nurse who bent above;

Then in the whitewashed ward was heard

A song of love.

The song she sang him when she gave

The portrait that he kissed; then sighed,

“Lay it beside me in the grave!”

And smiled and died.

III

THE SOLDIER’S RETURN

A brown wing beat the apple leaves and shook

Some blossoms on her hair. Then, note on note,

The bird’s wild music bubbled. In her book,

Her old romance, she seemed to read. No look

Betrayed the tumult in her trembling throat.

The thrush sang on. A dreamy wind came down

From one white cloud of afternoon and fanned

The dropping petals on her book and gown,

And touched her hair, whose braids of quiet brown

Gently she smoothed with one white jeweled hand.

Then, with her soul, it seemed, from feet to brow

She felt him coming: ’t was his heart, his breath

That stirred the blossom on the apple bough;

His step the wood-thrush warbled to. And now

Her cheek went crimson, now as white as death.

Then on the dappled page his shadow—yes,

Not unexpected, yet her haste assumed

Fright’s startle; and low laughter did confess

His presence there, soft with his soul’s caress

And happy manhood, where the rambo bloomed.

Quickly she rose and all her gladness sent

Wild welcome to him. Her his unhurt arm

Drew unresisted; and the soldier leant

Fond lips to hers. She wept. And so they went

Deep in the orchard towards the old brick farm.

IV

THE APPARITION

A day of drought, foreboding rain and wind,

As if stern heaven, feeling earth had sinned,

Frowned all its hatred. When the evening came,

Along the west, from bank on bank unthinned

Of clouds, the storm unfurled its oriflamme.

Then lightning signaled, and the thunder woke

Its monster drums, and all God’s torrents broke.—

She saw the wild night when the dark pane flashed;

Heard, where she stood, the disemboweled oak

Roar into fragments when the welkin crashed.

Long had she waited for a word. And, lo!

Anticipation still would not say “No:”

He has not written; he will come to her;

At dawn!—to-night!—Her heart hath told her so;

And so expectancy and love aver.

She seems to hear his fingers on the pane—

The glass is blurred, she can not see for rain:

Is that his horse?—the wind is never still:

And that his cloak?—ah, surely that is plain!—

A torn vine tossing at the window-sill.

She hurries forth to meet him; pale and wet,

She sees his face; the war-soiled epaulet;

A sabre-scar that bleeds from brow to cheek;

And now he smiles, and now their lips have met,

And now ... Dear heart, he fell at Cedar Creek!

V

WOUNDED

It was in August that they brought her news

Of his bad wounds; the leg that he must lose.

And August passed, and when October raised

Red rebel standards on the hills that blazed,

They brought a haggard wreck; she scarce knew whose,

Until they told her, standing stunned and dazed.

A shattered shadow of the stalwart lad,

The five-months husband, whom his country had

Enlisted, strong for war; returning this,

Whose broken countenance she feared to kiss,

While health’s remembrance stood beside him sad,

And grieved for that which was no longer his.

They brought him on a litter; and the day

Was bright and beautiful. It seemed that May

In woodland rambles had forgot her path

Of season, and, disrobing for a bath,

By the autumnal waters of some bay,

With her white nakedness had conquered Wrath.

Far otherwise she wished it: wind and rain;

The sky, one gray commiserative pain;

Sleet, and the stormy drift of frantic leaves;

To match the misery that each perceives

Aches in her hand-clutched bosom, and is plain

In eyes and mouth and all her form that grieves.

Theirs, a mute meeting of the lips; she stooped

And kissed him once: one long, dark side-lock drooped

And brushed against the bandage of his breast;

With feeble hands he held it and caressed;

Then all his happiness in one look grouped,

Saying, “Now I am home, I crave but rest.”

Once it was love! but then the battle killed

All that sweet nonsense of his youth, and filled

His heart with sterner passion.—Ah, well! peace

Must balm its pain with patience; whose surcease

Means reconcilement; e’en as God hath willed,

With war or peace who shapes His ends at ease.—

What else for these but, where their mortal lot

Of weak existence drags rent ends, to knot

The frail unravel up!—while love (afraid

Time will increase the burthen on it laid),

Seeks consolation, that consoleth not,

In toil and prayer, waiting what none evade.

VI

THE MESSAGE

Long shadows toward the east: and in the west

A blaze of garnet sunset, wherein rolled

One cloud like some great gnarly log of gold;

Each gabled casement of the farm seemed dressed

In ghosts of roses blossoming manifest.

And she had brought his letter there to read,

There on the porch, that faced the locust glade;

To watch the summer sunset burn and fade,

And breathe the twilight scent of wood and weed,

Forget all care and her soul’s hunger feed.

And on his face her fancy mused a while:

“Dark hair, dark eyes.—And now he has a beard

Dark as his hair.”—She smiled; yet almost feared

It changed him so she could not reconcile

Her heart to that which hid his lips and smile.

Then tried to feature, but could only see

The beardless man who bent to her and kissed

Her and their child and left them to enlist:

She heard his horse grind in the gravel: he

Waved them adieu and rode to fight with Lee.

Now all around her drowsed the hushful hum

Of evening insects. And his letter spoke

Of love and longings to her: nor awoke

One echo of the bugle and the drum,

But all their future in one kiss did sum.

The stars were thick now; and the western blush

Drained into darkness. With a dreamy sigh

She rocked her chair.—It must have been the cry

Of infancy that made her rise and rush

To where their child slept, and to hug and

hush.

Then she returned. But now her ease was gone.

She knew not what, she felt an unknown fear

Press, tightening, at her heart-strings; then a tear

Scalded her eyelids, and her cheeks grew wan

As helpless sorrow’s, and her white lips drawn.

With stony eyes she grieved against the skies,

A slow, dull, aching agony that knew

Few tears, and saw no answer shining to

Her silent questions in the stars’ still eyes

“Where Peace delays and where her soldier lies.”

They could have told her. Peace was far away,

Beyond the field that belched black batteries

All the red day. ’Mid picket silences,

On woodland mosses, in a suit of gray,

Shot through the heart, he by his rifle lay.

VII

THE WOMAN ON THE HILL

The storm-red sun, through wrecks of wind and rain,

And dead leaves driven from the frantic boughs,

Where, on the hill-top, stood a gaunt, gray house,

Flashed wildest ruby on each rainy pane.

Then woods grew darker than unburdened grief;

And, crimson through the woodland’s ruin, streamed

The sunset’s glare—a furious eye, which seemed

Watching the moon rise like a yellow leaf.

The rising moon, against which, like despair,

High on the hill, a woman, darkly drawn,

The wild leaves round her, stood; with features wan,

And tattered dress and wind-distracted hair.

As still as death, and looking, not through tears,

For the young face of one she knows is lost,

While in her heart the melancholy frost

Gathers of all the unforgotten years.

What if she heard to-night a hurrying hoof,

Wild as the whirling of the withered leaf,

Bring her a more immedicable grief,

A shattered shape to live beneath her roof!

The shadow of him who claimed her once as wife;

Her lover!—no!—the wreck of all their past

Brought back from battle!—Better to the last

A broken heart than heartbreak all her life!

MOSBY AT HAMILTON

Down Loudon lanes, with swinging reins,

And clash of spur and sabre,

And bugling of the battle-horn,

Six score and eight we rode that morn,

Six score and eight of Southern born,

All tried in war’s hot labor.

Full in the sun, at Hamilton,

We met the South’s invaders;

Who, over fifteen hundred strong,

’Mid blazing homes had marched along

All night, with Northern shout and song,

To crush the rebel raiders.

Down Loudon lanes, with streaming manes,

We spurred in wild March weather;

And all along our war-scarred way

The graves of Southern heroes lay—

Our guide-posts to revenge that day,

As we rode grim together.

Old tales still tell some miracle

Of Saints in holy writing—

But who shall say why hundreds fled

Before the few that Mosby led,

Unless it was that even the dead

Fought with us then when fighting.

While Yankee cheers still stunned our ears,

Of troops at Harper’s Ferry;

While Sheridan led on his Huns,

And Richmond rocked to roaring guns,

We felt the South still had some sons

She would not scorn to bury.

THE FEUD

Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone

The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream

Through brambles, where the mountain spring lies lone,—

A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows dream,—

And one wild road winds like a saffron seam.

Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note

Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June;

Here cat-and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote

Their presence on the silence with a tune;

And here the fox drank ’neath the mountain moon.

Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush,—

Impenetrable briers, deep and dense,

And wiry bushes;—brush, that seemed to crush

The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence

Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence.

A wasp buzzed by; and then a butterfly

In orange and amber, like a floating flame;

And then a man, hard-eyed and very sly,

Gaunt-cheeked and haggard and a little lame,

With an old rifle, down the mountain came.

He listened, drinking from a flask he took

Out of the ragged pocket of his coat;

Then all around him cast a stealthy look;

Lay down; and watched an eagle soar and float,

His fingers twitching at his hairy throat.

The shades grew longer; and each Cumberland height

Loomed, framed in splendors of the dolphin dusk.

Around the road a horseman rode in sight;

Young, tall, blond-bearded. Silent, grim, and brusque,

He in the thicket aimed—Quick, harsh, then husk,

The echoes barked among the hills and made

Repeated instants of the shot’s distress.—

Then silence—and the trampled bushes swayed:—

Then silence, packed with murder and the press

Of distant hoofs that galloped riderless.

LYNCHERS

At the moon’s down-going, let it be

On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree.

The red-rock road of the underbrush,

Where the woman came through the summer hush.

The sumac high and the elder thick,

Where we found the stone and the ragged stick.

The trampled road of the thicket, full

Of footprints down to the quarry pool.

The rocks that ooze with the hue of lead,

Where we found her lying stark and dead.

The scraggy wood; the negro hut,

With its doors and windows locked and shut.

A secret signal; a foot’s rough tramp;

A knock at the door; a lifted lamp.

An oath; a scuffle; a ring of masks;

A voice that answers a voice that asks.

A group of shadows; the moon’s red fleck;

A running noose and a man’s bared neck.

A word, a curse, and a shape that swings;

The lonely night and a bat’s black wings.

At the moon’s down-going, let it be

On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree.

DEAD MAN’S RUN

He rode adown the autumn wood,

A man dark-eyed and brown;

A mountain girl before him stood

Clad in a homespun gown.

“To ride this road is death for you!

My father waits you there;

My father and my brother, too—

You know the oath they swear.”

He holds her by one berry-brown wrist,

And by one berry-brown hand;

And he hath laughed at her and kissed

Her cheek the sun hath tanned.

“The feud is to the death, sweetheart:

But forward must I ride.”—

“And if you ride to death, sweetheart,

My place is by your side.”

Low hath he laughed again and kissed

And helped her with his hand;

And they have galloped into the mist

That belts the autumn land.

And they had passed by Devil’s Den,

And come to Dead Man’s Run,

When in the brush rose up two men,

Each with a levelled gun.

“Down! down! my sister!” cries the one;—

She gives the reins a twirl.—

The other shouts, “He shot my son!

And now he steals my girl!”

The rifles crack: she will not wail:

He will not cease to ride:

But, oh! her face is pale, is pale,

And the red blood stains her side.

“Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart!

The road is rough to ride!”—

The road is rough by gulch and bluff,

And her hair blows wild and wide.

“Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart!

The bank is steep to ride!”—

The bank is steep for a strong man’s leap,

And her eyes are staring wide.

“Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart!

The Run is swift to ride!”—

The Run is swift with mountain drift,

And she sways from side to side.

Is it a wash of the yellow moss,

Or drift of the autumn’s gold,

The mountain torrent foams across

For the dead pine’s roots to hold?

Is it the bark of the sycamore,

Or peel of the white birch-tree,

The mountaineer on the other shore

Hath followed and still can see?

No mountain moss or leaves, wild rolled,

No bark of birchen-gray!—

Young hair of gold and a face death-cold

The wild stream sweeps away.

THE RAID

I

Far in the forest, where the rude road winds

Through twisted briers and weeds, stamped down and caked

With mountain mire, the clashing boughs are raked

Again with rain whose sobbing frenzy blinds.

There is a noise of winds; a gasp and gulp

Of swollen torrents; and the sodden smell

Of woodland soil, dead trees—that long since fell

Among the moss—red-rotted into pulp.

Fogged by the rain, far up the mountain glen,

Deep in a cave, an elfish wisp of light;

And stealthy shadows stealing through the night

With strong, set faces of determined men.

II

’Twixt fog and fire, in pomps of chrysoprase,

Above vague peaks, the morning hesitates

Ere, o’er the threshold of her golden gates,

Speeds the wild splendor of her chariot’s rays.

A gleaming glimmer in the sun-speared mist,

A cataract, reverberating, falls:

Upon a pine a gray hawk sits and calls,

Then soars away no bigger than a fist.

Along the wild path, through the oaks and firs,—

Rocks, where the rattler coils himself and suns,—

Big-booted, belted, and with twinkling guns,

The posse marches with its moonshiners.

THE BROTHERS

Not far from here, it lies beyond

That low-hilled belt of woods. We ’ll take

This unused lane where brambles make

A wall of twilight, and the blond

Brier-roses pelt the path and flake

The margin waters of a pond.

This is its fence—or that which was

Its fence once—now, rock rolled from rock,

One tangle of the vine and dock,

Where bloom the wild petunias;

And this its gate, the ragweeds block,

Hot with the insects’ dusty buzz.

Two wooden posts, wherefrom has peeled

The weather-blistered paint, still rise;

Gaunt things—that groan when some one tries

The gate whose hinges, rust-congealed,

Snarl open:—on each post still lies

Its carven panther with a shield.

We enter; and between great rows

Of locusts winds a grass-grown road;

And at its glimmering end,—o’erflowed

With quiet light,—the white front shows

Of an old mansion, grand and broad,

With grave, Colonial porticoes.

Grown thick around it, dark and deep,

The locust trees make one vast hush;

Their brawny branches crowd and crush

Its very casements, and o’ersweep

Its rotting roofs: their tranquil rush

Haunts all its spacious rooms with sleep.

Still is it called The Locusts; though

None lives here now. A tale ’s to tell

Of some dark thing that here befell;

A crime that happened years ago,

When past its walls, with shot and shell,

The war swept on and left it so.

For one black night, within it, shame

Made revel, while, all here about,

With prayer or curse or battle-shout,

Men died and homesteads leapt in flame:

Then passed the conquering Northern rout,

And left it silent and the same.

Why should I speak of what has been?

Or what dark part I played in all?

Why ruin sits in porch and hall

Where pride and gladness once were seen;

And why beneath this lichened wall

The grave of Margaret is green.

Heart-broken Margaret! whose fate

Was sadder far than his who won

Her hand—my brother Hamilton—

Or mine, who learned to know too late;

Who learned to know, when all was done,

And naught I did could expiate.

To expiate is still my lot!—

And, like the Ancient Mariner,

To show to others how things were,

And what I am, still helps me blot

A little from that crime’s red blur,

That on my life is branded hot.

He was my only brother. She

A sister of my brother’s friend.

They met, and married in the end.

And I remember well when he

Brought her rejoicing home, the trend

Of war moved towards us sullenly.

And scarce a year of wedlock when

Its red arms tore him from his bride.

With lips by hers thrice sanctified

He left to ride with Morgan’s men.

And I—I never could decide—

Remained behind. It happened then.

Long days went by. And, oft delayed,

A letter came of loving word

Scrawled by some camp-fire, sabre-stirred,

Or by a pine-knot’s fitful aid,

When in the saddle, armed and spurred

And booted for some hurried raid.

Then weeks went by. I do not know

How long it was before there came,

Blown from the North, the clarion fame

Of Morgan, who, with blow on blow,

Had drawn a line of blood and flame

From Tennessee to Ohio.

Then letters ceased; and days went on.

No word from him. The war rolled back,

And in its turgid crimson track

A rumor grew, like some wild dawn,

All ominous and red and black,

With news of our lost Hamilton.

News hinting death or capture. Yet

No word was sure; till one day,—fed

By us,—some men rode up who said

They’d been with Morgan and had met

Disaster, and that he was dead,

My brother.—I and Margaret

Believed them. Grief was ours too:

But mine was more for her than him:

Grief, that her eyes with tears were dim:

Grief, that became the avenue

For love, who crowned the sombre brim

Of death’s dark cup with rose-red hue.

In sympathy,—unconsciously

Though it be given,—I hold, doth dwell

The germ of love that time shall swell

To blossom. Sooner then in me—

When close relations so befell—

That love should spring from sympathy.

Our similar tastes and mutual bents

Combined to make us intimates

From our first meeting. Different states

Of interest then our temperaments

Begot. Then friendship, that abates

No love, whose soul it represents.

These led to talks and dreams: how oft

We sat at some wide window while

The sun sank o’er the hills’ far file,

Serene; and of the cloud aloft

Made one vast rose; and mile on mile

Of firmament grew sad and soft.

And all in harmony with these

Dim clemencies of dusk, afar

Our talks and dreams went; while the star

Of evening brightened through the trees:

We spoke of home; the end of war;

We dreamed of life and love and peace.

How on our walks, in listening lanes

Or confidences of the wood,

We paused to hear the dove that cooed;

Or gathered wildflowers, taking pains

To find the fairest; or her hood

Filled with wild fruit that left deep stains.

No echo of the drum or fife,

No hint of conflict entered in

Our thoughts then. Will you call it sin—

Indifference to a nation’s strife?

What side might lose, what side might win,

Both immaterial to our life.

Into the past we did not look:

Beyond what was we did not dream;

While onward rolled the thunderous stream

Of war, that, in its torrent, took

One of our own. No crimson gleam

Of its wild course around us shook.

At last we knew. And when we learned

How he had fallen, Margaret

Wept; and, albeit my eyes were wet,

Within my soul I half discerned

A joy that mingled with regret,

A grief that to relief was turned.

As time went on and confidence

Drew us more strongly each to each,

Why did no intimation reach

Its warning hand into the dense

Soul-silence, and confuse the speech

Of love’s unbroken eloquence!

But, no! no hint to turn the poise,

Or check the impulse of our youth;

To chill it with the living truth

As with the awe of God’s own voice;

No hint, to make our hope uncouth;

No word, to warn us from our choice.

To me a wall seemed overthrown

That social law had raised between;

And o’er its ruin, broad and green

A path went, I possessed alone;

The sky above seemed all serene;

The land around seemed all my own.

What shall I say of Margaret

To justify her part in this?

That her young heart was never his?

But had been mine since first we met?

So would you say!—Enough it is

That when he left she loved him yet.

So passed the spring, and summer sped;

And early autumn brought the day

When she her hand in mine should lay,

And I should take her hand and wed:

And still no hint that might gainsay,

No warning word of quick or dead.

The day arrived; and with it born,

A battle, sullying the East

With boom of cannon, that increased,

And throb of musket and of horn:

Until at last, towards dusk, it ceased;

And men with faces wild and worn,

In fierce retreat, swept past; now groups;

Now one by one: now sternly white,

Or blood-stained; now with looks whose fright

Said all was lost: then sullen troops

That, beaten, still kept up the fight.—

Then came the victors: shadowy loops

Of men and horse, that left a crowd

Of officers in hall and porch....

While through the land, around, the torch

Circled, and many a fiery cloud

Marked out the army’s iron march

In furrows red that pillage plowed,

Here were we wedded.... Ask the years

How such could be, while over us

A sword of wrath swung ominous,

And on our cheeks its breath struck fierce!—

All I remember is—’t was thus;

And Margaret’s eyes were wet with tears.

No other cause my memory sees

Save this, that night was set; and when

I found my home filled with armed men

With whom were all my sympathies

Of Union—why postpone it then?

So argued conscience into peace.

And then it was, when night had passed,

There came to me an orderly

With word of a Confederate spy

Just taken; who, with head downcast,

Had asked one favor, this: “That I

Would see him ere he breathed his last.”

I stand alone here. Heavily

My thoughts go back. Had I not gone,

The dead had still been dead! (for none

Had yet believed his story) he,

My dead-deemed brother, Hamilton,

Who in the spy confronted me.

O you who never have been tried,

How can you judge me!—In my place

I saw him standing,—who can trace

My heart-thoughts then!—I turned aside,

A son of some unnatural race,

And did not speak: and so he died....

In hospital or prison, when

It was he lay; what had forbid

His home return so long: amid

What hardships he had suffered, then

I dared not ask; and when I did,

Long afterwards, inquire of men,

No thing I learned. But this I feel—

He who had so returned to life

Was not a spy. Through stress and strife,—

This makes my conscience hard to heal!—

He had escaped: he sought his wife;

He sought his home that should conceal.

And Margaret! Oh, pity her!

A criminal I sought her side,

Still thinking love was justified

In all for her—whatever were

The price: a brother thrice denied,

Or thrice a brothers murderer.

Since then long years have passed away.

And through those years, perhaps, you ’ll ask

How to the world I wore my mask

Of honesty?—I can but say

Beyond my powers it was a task;

Before my time it turned me gray.

And when at last the ceaseless hiss

Of conscience drove, and I betrayed

All to her, she knelt down and prayed:

Then rose: and ’twixt us an abyss

Was opened; and she seemed to fade

Out of my life: I came to miss

The sweet attentions of a bride:

For each appealing heart’s caress

In me her heart assumed a dress

Of dull indifference; till denied

To me was all responsiveness;

And then I knew her love had died.

Ah, had she loaded me, perchance,

With wild reproach or even hate,

Such would have helped me hope and wait

Forgiveness and returned romance:

But ’twixt our souls, instead, a gate

She closed of silent tolerance.

Yet, ’t was for love of her I lent

My soul to crime.... I question me

Often, if less entirely

I’d loved her, then, in that event

She had been justified to see

The deed alone stand prominent.

The deed alone! But love records

In his own heart, I will aver,

No depth I did not feel for her

Beyond the plummet-reach of words:

And though there may be worthier,

No truer love this world affords

Than mine was, though it could not rise

Above itself. And so ’t was best,

Perhaps, that she saw manifest

The crime, so I,—as saw her eyes,—

Might see; and so, in soul confessed,

Some life atonement might devise.

Sadly my heart one comfort keeps,

That, towards her end, she took my hands

And said,—as one who understands,—

“Had I but seen!—But love that weeps

Sees only as its loss commands.”

And sighed.—Beneath this stone she sleeps.

Yes; I have suffered for that sin:

Yet in no instance would I shun

What I should suffer. Many a one,

Who heard my tale, has tried to win

Me to believe that Hamilton

It was not; and, though proven kin,

This had not saved him. Still the stain

Of the intention—had I erred

And ’t was not he—had writ the word

Red on my soul that branded Cain:

For still my error had incurred

The fact of guilt that would remain.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ah, love at best is insecure,

And lives with doubt and vain regret;

And hope and faith, with faces set

Upon the past, are never sure;

And through their fever, grief, and fret

The heart may fail that should endure.

For in ourselves, however blend

The passions that make heaven and hell,

Is evil not accountable

For most the good we comprehend?

And through these two,—or ill, or well,—

Man must evolve his spiritual end.

It is with deeds that we must ask

Forgiveness: for, upon this earth,

Life walks alone from very birth

With death, hope tells us is a mask

For life beyond of vaster worth,

Where sin no more sets love a task.

EPILOGUE

Would I could sing of joy I only

Remember as without alloy:

Of life full-filled, that once was lonely:

Of love a treasure, not a toy:

Of grief, regret but makes the keener,

Of aspiration, failure mars—

These would I sing, and sit serener.

Than song among the stars.

Would I could sing of faith unbroken;

Of heart-kept vows, and not of tears:

Of promised faith and vows love-spoken,

That have been kept through many years:

Of truth, the false but leaves the truer;

Of trust, the doubt makes doubly sure—

These would I sing, the noble doer

Whose dauntless heart is pure.

I would not sing of time made hateful;

Of hope that only clings to hate:

Of charity, that grows ungrateful;

And pride that will not stand and wait.—

Of humbleness, care hath imparted;

Of resignation, born of ills,

These would I sing, and stand high-hearted

As hope upon the hills.

Once on a throne of gold and scarlet

I touched a harp and felt it break;

I dreamed I was a king—a varlet,

A slave, who only slept to wake!—

Still on that harp my memory lingers,

While on a tomb I lean and read,

“Dust are our songs, and dust we singers,

And dust are all who heed.”

POEMS OF LOVE

What though I dreamed of mountain heights,

Of peaks, the barriers of the world,

Around whose tops the Northern Lights

And tempests are unfurled!

Mine are the footpaths leading through

Life’s lowly fields and woods,—with rifts,

Above, of heaven’s Eden blue,—

By which the violet lifts

Its shy appeal; and, holding up

Its chaliced gold, like some wild wine,

Along the hillside, cup on cup,

Blooms bright the celandine.

Where soft upon each flowering stock

The butterfly spreads damask wings;

And under grassy loam and rock

The cottage cricket sings.

Where overhead eve blooms with fire,

In which the new moon bends her bow,

And, arrow-like, one white star by her

Burns through the afterglow.

I care not, so the sesame

I find; the magic flower there,

Whose touch unseals each mystery

In water, earth, and air.

That in the oak tree lets me hear

Its heart’s deep speech, its soul’s dim words;

And to my mind makes crystal clear

The messages of birds.

Why should I care, who live aloof

Beyond the din of life and dust,

While dreams still share my humble roof,

And love makes sweet my crust.

GERTRUDE

When first I gazed on Gertrude’s face,

Beheld her loveliness and grace;

Her brave gray eyes, her raven hair,

Her ways, more winsome than the spring’s;

Her smile, like some sweet flower, that flings

Its fragrance on the summer air;

And when, like some wild-bird that sings,

I heard her voice,—I did declare,—

And still declare!—there is no one,

No girl beneath the moon or sun,

So beautiful to look upon!

And to my heart, as I know well,

Nothing seems more desirable,—

Not Ophir gold, nor Orient pearls—

Than seems this jewel-girl of girls.

LOVE

For him, who loves, each mounting morn

Breathes melody more sweet than birds’;

And every wind-stirred flower and thorn

Whispers melodious words:—

Would you believe that everything

Through her loved voice is made to sing?

For her, the faultless skies of day

Grow nearer in eternal blue,

Where God is felt as wind and ray,

And seen as fire and dew:—

Would you believe that all the skies

Are Heaven only through his eyes?

For them, the dreams that haunt the night

With mystic beauty and romance,

Are presences of starry light,

And moony radiance:—

Would you believe this love of theirs

Could make for them a universe?

HEART OF MY HEART

I

Here where the season turns the land to gold,

Among the fields our feet have known of old,—

When we were children who would laugh and run,

Glad little playmates of the wind and sun,—

Before came toil and care and years went ill,

And one forgot and one remembered still;

Heart of my heart, among the old fields here,

Give me your hands and let me draw you near,

Heart of my heart.

II

Stars are not truer than your soul is true;

What need I more of heaven then than you?

Flowers are not sweeter than your face is sweet—

What need I more to make my world complete?

O woman nature, love that still endures,

What strength hath ours that is not born of yours?

Heart of my heart, to you, whatever come,

To you the lead, whose love hath led me home.

Heart of my heart.

STROLLERS

I

We have no castles,

We have no vassals,

We have no riches, no gems and no gold:

Nothing to ponder;

Nothing to squander—

Let us go wander

As minstrels of old.

II

You with your lute, love;

I with my flute, love,

Let us make music by mountain and sea:

You with your glances,

I with my dances,

Singing romances

Of old chivalry.

III

“Derry down derry!

Good folk, be merry!

Hither! and hearken where happiness is!

Never go borrow

Care of to-morrow,

Never go sorrow

While life hath a kiss!”

IV

Let the day gladden,

Or the night sadden,

We will be merry in sunshine or snow:

You with your rhyme, love,

I with my chime, love,

We will make Time, love,

Dance as we go.

V

Nothing is ours;

Only the flowers,

Meadows, and stars, and the heavens above:

Nothing to lie for,

Nothing to sigh for,

Nothing to die for

While still we have love.

VI

“Derry down derry!

Good folk, be merry!

Hither! and hearken a word that is sooth:—

Care ye not any,

If ye have many,

Or not a penny,

If still ye have youth!”

THE BURDEN OF DESIRE

I

In some dim way I know thereof:

A garden glows down in my heart,

Wherein I meet and often part

With many an ancient tale of love.

A Romeo garden, banked with bloom,

And trellised with the eglantine;

In which a rose climbs to a room,

A balcony one mass of vine,

Dim, haunted of perfume.

A balcony, whereon she gleams,

The soft Desire of all Dreams,

And smiles and bends like Juliet,

Year after year,

While to her side, all dewy wet,

A rose stuck in his ear,

Love climbs to draw her near.

II

And in another way I know,

Down in my soul a graveyard lies,

Wherein I meet, in ghostly wise,

With many an ancient tale of woe.

A graveyard of the Capulets,

Deep-vaulted with ancestral gloom,

Through whose dark yews the moonlight jets

On many a wildly carven tomb,

That mossy mildew frets.

A graveyard where the Soul’s Desire

Sleeps, pale-entombed; and, kneeling by her,

Love, like that hapless Montague,

Year after year,

Weary and worn and wild of hue,

Within her sepulchre,

Falls bleeding on her bier.

THE TRYST

At dusk there fell a shower:

The leaves were dripping yet:

Each fern and rain-weighed flower

Around was gleaming wet,

When, through the evening glower,

His feet towards her were set.

The dust’s damp odor sifted

Around him, cool with rain,

Mixed with the musk that drifted

From woodland and from plain,

Where white her garden lifted

Its pickets down the lane.

And there she stood! ’mid scattered

Clove-pink and pea and whorl

Of honeysuckle,—flattered

To sweetness wild,—a girl,

O’er whom the clouds hung shattered

In moonlit peaks of pearl.

She made the night completer

For him; and earth and air,

In that small spot, far sweeter

Than heaven or anywhere.—

Swift were his lips to greet her,

Her lips love lifted there.

GYPSYING

Your heart ’s a-tune with April and mine a-tune with June,

So let us go a-roving beneath the summer moon.

Oh, was it in the sunlight, or was it in the rain,

We met among the blossoms within the locust lane?

All that I can remember ’s the bird that sang aboon,

And with its music in our hearts we ’ll rove beneath the moon.

A love-word of the wind, dear, of which we ’ll read the rune,

While we two go a-roving beneath the summer moon.

A love-word of the water we ’ll often stop to hear—

The echoed words and whispers of our own hearts, my dear.

And all our paths shall blossom with wild-rose sweets that swoon,

And with their fragrance in our hearts we ’ll rove beneath the moon.

It will not be forever; yet merry goes the tune

While we two still are rovers beneath the summer moon.

A cabin, in the clearing, of flickering firelight,

When old-time lanes we strolled in the winter snows make white:

Where we can dream together above the logs and croon

The songs we sang when roving beneath the summer moon.

UNCERTAINTY

“‘He cometh not,’ she said.”—Mariana.

It will not be to-day and yet

I think and dream it will; and let

The slow uncertainty devise

So many sweet excuses, met

With the old doubt in hope’s disguise.

The panes were sweated with the dawn;

Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn,

The aigret of one princess-feather,

One monk’s-hood tuft with oilets wan,

I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather.

This morning when my window’s chintz

I drew, how gray the day was!—Since

I saw him, yea, all days are gray!—

I gazed out on my dripping quince,

Defruited, torn; then turned away

To weep, but did not weep: but felt

A colder anguish than did melt

About the tearful-visaged Year!—

Then flung the lattice wide and smelt

The autumn sorrow. Rotting near

The rain-drenched sunflowers bent and bleached,

Up which the frost-nipped gourd-vines reached

And morning-glories, seeded o’er

With ashen aiglets; whence beseeched

One last bloom, frozen to the core.

The podded hollyhocks—that Fall

Had stripped of finery—by the wall

Rustled their tatters; dripped and dripped,

The fog thick on them: near them, all

The tarnished, hag-like zinnias tipped.

I felt the death and loved it: yea,

To have it nearer, sought the gray,

Chill, fading garth. Yet could not weep,

But wandered in an aimless way,

And yearned with weariness to sleep.

Mine were the fog, the frosty stalks,

The weak lights on the leafy walks,

The shadows shivering with the cold;

The breaking heart; the lonely talks;

The last, dim, ruined marigold.

But when, to-night, the moon swings low—

A great marsh-marigold of glow—

And all my garden with the sea

Moans, then, through moon and mist, I know

His ghost will come to comfort me.

LOST LOVE

I loved her madly. For—so wrought

Young Love, divining Isles of Truth

Large in the central seas of Youth—

“Love will win love,” I thought.

Once when I brought a rare wild pink

To place among her plants, the wise,

Soft lifting of her speaking eyes

Said more than thanks, I think....

She loved another.—Yes, I know

All you would say of woman. You,

Like other men, would comfort too....

But then I loved her so.

She loved another.—Ah! too well

I know the story of her soul!—

A weary tale the weary whole

Of how she loved and fell.

I loved her so!... Remembering now

My mad grief then, I wonder why

Grief never kills.... I could not die.—

She died—I know not how.

Strange, is it not? For she was dear

To me as life once.—A regret

She is now; just to make eyes wet

And bring a fullness here.

Yet, had she lived as dead in shame

As now in death, Love would have used

Pride’s pitying pencil and abused

The memory of her name.

This helps me thank my God, who led

My broken life in sunlight of

This pure affection, that my love

Lives through her being dead.

OVERSEAS

Non numero horas nisi serenas.

When fall drowns morns in mist, it seems

In soul I am a part of it;

A portion of its humid beams,

A form of fog, I seem to flit

From dreams to dreams.

An old chateau sleeps ’mid the hills

Of France: an avenue of sorbs

Conceals it: drifts of daffodils

Bloom by a ’scutcheoned gate with barbs

Like iron bills.

I pass the gate unquestioned, yet,

I feel, announced. Broad holm-oaks make

Dark pools of restless violet.

Between high bramble banks a lake,—

As in a net.

The tangled scales twist silver,—shines ...

Gray, mossy turrets swell above

A sea of leaves. And where the pines

Shade ivied walls, there lies my love,

My heart divines.

I know her window, dimly seen

From distant lanes with hawthorn hedged:

Her garden, with the nectarine

Espaliered, and the peach-tree, wedged

’Twixt walls of green.

Cool-babbling a fountain falls

From gryphons’ mouths in porphyry;

Carp haunt its waters; and white balls

Of lilies dip it that the bee

Sucks in and drawls.

And butterflies, each with a face

Of faëry on its wings, that seem

Beheaded pansies, softly chase

Each other down the gloom and gleam

Trees interspace.

And roses! roses, soft as vair,

Round sylvan statues and the old

Stone dial—Pompadours that wear

Their royalty of purple and gold

With queenly air....

Her scarf, her lute, whose ribbons breathe

The perfume of her touch; her gloves,

Modeling the daintiness they sheathe;

Her fan, a Watteau, gay with loves,

Lie there beneath

A bank of eglantines that heaps

A rose-strewn shadow.—Naïve-eyed,

With lips as suave as they, she sleeps;

The romance by her, open wide,

O’er which she weeps.

AT THE STILE

Young Harry leapt over the stile and kissed her,

Over the stile when the sun was sinking;

’T was only Carrie; just Mary’s sister!—

And love hath a way of thinking.

“Thy pail, sweetheart, I will take and carry.”

Over the stile one star hung yellow.—

“Just to the spring, my dearest Harry.”—

And Love is a heartless fellow.

“Thou saidst me ‘yea’ in an April shower

Under this tree with leaves a-quiver.”—

“I say thee nay now the cherry ’s in flower,

And love is taker and giver.”

“O false! thou art false to me, sweetheart!”—

The light in her eyes grew trist and trister:

“To thee, the stars, and myself, sweetheart,

I never was aught but Mary’s sister.

“Sweet Mary’s sister! just little Carrie!—

But what avail my words or weeping?—

Next month, perhaps, you two will marry—

And I in my grave be sleeping.”

Alone she stands ’mid the meadow millet,

Wan as the petals the wind is strewing:

Some tears in her pail as she stoops to fill it—

And love hath a way of doing.

FERN-SEED

“We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible.”—Henry IV.

And you and I have met but thrice!—

Three times enough to make me love!—

I praised your hair once; then your glove;

Your eyes; your gown—you were like ice.

And yet this might suffice, my love,

And yet this might suffice.

I know now what it is I’ll do:

I’ll search and find the ferns that grow,

The fern-seed that the fairies know,

And sprinkle fern-seed in my shoe,

And haunt the steps of you, my dear,

And haunt the steps of you.

You ’ll see the poppy-pods dip here,

The blow-ball of the thistle slip,

And no wind breathing—but my lip

Next to your anxious cheek and ear,

To tell you I am near, my love,

To tell you I am near.

On wood-ways I will tread your gown—

You ’ll know it is no brier!—then

I’ll whisper words of love again,

And smile to see your quick face frown;

And then I ’ll kiss it down, my dear,

And then I ’ll kiss it down.

You ’ll sit at home and read or knit,

When suddenly the page is blotted—

My hands!—or all your needles knotted:

And in your rage you ’ll cry a bit:

But I—I ’ll laugh at it, my love,

But I—I ’ll laugh at it.

The secrets which you say at prayer

I too will hear; or, when you sing,

I too will sing, and whispering

Bend down and kiss your eyes and hair,

And you will know me there, my dear,

And you will know me there.

Would it were true what people say!—

Would I could find that faëry seed!

Then would I win your love, indeed,

By being near you night and day:—

There is no other way, my love,

There is no other way.

PORPHYROGENITA

I

Was it when Kriemhild was queen

That we rode by ways forgotten

Through the Rhineland, dimly seen

’Neath a low moon white as cotton?

I, a knight? or troubadour?

Thou, a princess?—or a poor

Damsel of the Royal Closes?—

For, I met thee—somewhere sure!...

Was it ’mid Kriemhilda’s roses?

II

Or in Venice, by the sea?—

What romance grew up between us?

Thou, a doge’s daughter?—She,

Titian painted once as Venus?—

I, a gondolier whose barque

Glided past thy palace dark?—

Near St. Mark’s? or Casa d’Oro?—

From thy casement didst thou hark

To my barcarolle’s “Te oro”?

III

Klaia wast, of Egypt: yea,

Languid as its sacred lily.

Didst with me a year and day

Love upon the Isle of Philæ?

I, a priest of Isis?—Sweet,

’Neath the date-palms did we meet

By a temple’s pillared marble?

While, from its star-still retreat,

Sank the nightingale’s wild warble?

IV

Have I dreamed that I, thy slave,

From thy lattice, my sultana,

Beckoning, thy white hand did wave,

Dropped me once a rose? sweet manna

Of thy kiss warm in its heart?

That, through my Chaldæan art,

With thy Khalif’s bags of treasure,

From Damascus we did start,

Fled to some far land of pleasure?

V

Was I one? another thou?—

Let it be. What of it, dearest?—

Haply ’tis the memory now

Of these passions dead thou fearest?—

Nay! those loves are portions of,

Evolutions of this love,

Present love, where thou appearest

To combine them all and prove.

THE CASTLE OF LOVE

He speaks

I

Now listen! ’tis time that you knew it.—

Like the prince in the Asian tale,

I wandered on deserts that panted

With noon to a castle enchanted,

That Afrits had built in a vale;

A vale where the sunlight lay pale

As moonlight. And round it and through it

I searched and I searched. Like the tale,

II

No eunuch, black-browed as a Marid,

Prevented me. Shadows it seemed

Were the slaves there, with kohl and with henné

In eyes and on fingers; and many

The phantoms of beauty, that dreamed

Where censers of ambergris steamed.

And I came on a colonnade, quarried

From silvery marble it seemed.

III

And here, in a court, wide, estraded,

Rich tulips, like carbuncles, bloomed,

And jonquils and roses:—and lories,

And cockatoos, brilliant in glories

Of plumes, like great blossoms illumed,

Winged, splashed in a fountain perfumed:

Kept captive by network of braided,

Spun gold where stone galleries gloomed.

IV

From nipples of back-bending Peris

Of gold, glowing auburn, in rays

The odorous fountain sprang calling:

I heard through the white water’s falling,—

As soft as the zephyr that plays

With moonlight on bloom-haunted ways,—

A music; a sound, as if fairies

Touched wind-harps whose chords were of rays.

V

I followed: through corridors paneled

With sandal; through doorways deep-draped

With stuffs of Chosroës, rich-garded

With Indian gold; up the corded

Stone stairway, bronze-dragoned, wing-shaped:

Through moon-spangled hangings escaped—

’Twixt pillars of juniper channeled—

To a room constellated and draped.

VI

As in legends of witchcraft: a vassal

Of visions beholds naught yet hears

Sweet voices that call and he follows,—

So me, like the fragrance of aloes,

That chamber with song, it appears,

Surrounded; the song of the spheres ...

My soul found your soul such a castle—

Your love is the music it hears.

CONSECRATION

She speaks.

Last night you told me, where we, parting, waited,

Of love somehow I’d known before you told.—

Long, long ago, perhaps, this love was fated,

For why was it made suddenly so old?

Is it because the love we have and cherish

Born with us seems, and as ourselves shall last?

Part of our lives, we can not let it perish

Out of our present’s future or its past?

Yet, all was changed; and, still, I did not wonder

That, robed in vaster splendor, broke the dawn:

Nor marvel that, beside my feet and under,

Each flower seemed fairer than the flower gone.

The wild bird’s silvery warble seemed completer;

A whiter magic filled the morn and noon,

And night—each night!—seemed holier grown and sweeter

With Babylonian witchcraft of the moon.—

Is love an emanation? whose ideal

Communicates its beauty?—Is it moved

Through some strange means to consecrate the real?

Making the world the worthier to be loved?

ROMANTIC LOVE

I

Is it not sweet to know?—

The moon hath told me so—

That in some lost romance, love,

Long lost to us below,

A knight with casque and lance, love,

A thousand years ago,

I kissed you from a trance, love?—

The moon hath told me so.

II

Or were it strange to wis?—

The stars have told me this—

That once a nightingale, love,

Sang on an Isle of Greece;

From whose melodious wail, love,

Its song’s wild harmonies,

Was born a spirit-woman—

Yourself! whom I, a human,

Made mine!... So goes the tale, love!—

The stars have told me this.

III

Is it not quaint to tell?—

The flowers remember well—

How once a wild-rose blew, love,

Dim in a haunted dell;

To which a bee was true, love.

The bee, so it befell,

Was I: the rose was you, love!...

The flowers remember well.

IV

To moon and flower and star

We are not what we are.—

Sometimes, from o’er that sea, love,

Whose golden sands are far,—

From shores of Destiny, love,—

The dreams that know no bar,

Will waft a truth that glistens

To Memory who listens,

Reminding you and me, love,

We are not what we are.

PASTORAL LOVE

The pied pinks tilt in the wind that worries—

Sing, Oh, the wind and the red o’ her cheek!—

And the slow sun creeps on the rye nor hurries—

And what shall a lover speak?

The toad-flax brightens the flaxen hollows—

Sing, Ay, the bloom and her yellow hair!—

And the greenwood brook a wood-way follows—

And what shall a lover dare?

The deep woods gleam that the sunlight sprinkles—

Sing, Hey, the day and her laughing eye!—

And a brown bird pipes and a wild fall tinkles—

And what may a maid reply?

Hey, the hills when the evening settles!

Oh, the heavens within her eyes!

What will he ask ’mid the dropping petals?

And what will she say with sighs?—

“Look, where the west is a blur of roses!”—

“There’s naught like the rose o’ the cheeks I see!”—

“Look, where the first star’s eye uncloses!”—

“But what of your eyes, my destiny?”

ANDALIA AND THE SPRINGTIME

I

Blow, winds, and waken her!

You, who have taken her,

Never forsaken her,

Filled her with spring!

My mad and merriest

Part of the veriest

Season and cheeriest:

Blow, winds! and sing,

Birds of the spring! that taught her

Airs of the woods; this daughter

Wild of the winds, that waft her

Into my heart with laughter,

Wild as a wildwood thing.

II

She, who is fraught with it,

Thrilled with it, brought with it,

Spring!—like a thought, with it

Beautiful too!

Now like a dream of it;

Filled with the gleam of it;

Now a bright beam of it,

Piercing me through,

Sweet, with her eyes that are often

Laughter and languor; that soften

Dreamily, drowsily, slowly,

Then, on a sudden, are wholly

Dancing as dew.

III

Face,—like the sweetest of

Perfumes,—completest of

Flowers God’s fleetest of

Months ever bear!—

Listen, O lisper wind,—

Lighter and crisper wind,—

Have you a whisper, wind,

Soft as her hair?

Night and the stars did spin it;

Darkness and brightness are in it:

Let but a ray of it bind me,

Wrap it around me and wind me,

Blind as the blind are and blinder,

Yet through my heart would I find her,

Lost though I were.

OLIVIA IN THE AUTUMN

Not redder than her lips

This weather!

Not rosier two rose-hips

Together!

As she comes carolling

Down wildwood ways, where sing

The birds, and flowers swing

In many a feather.

Of her belovéd cheeks

October

Makes flame-flushed leaves, and speaks,—

Now sober,

Now wild,—its happiness

In gold, and on her dress

Lays many a bright caress

As if to robe her.

The wild-birds praise her eyes

Each hour;

Above her bend the skies

And shower

Around her, there and here,

Strays of the passing year,

Azure and gold and sere

Of weed and flower.

The wood-winds kiss her hair

And wonder

What flower blossoms there:

And, under

Its deeps of acorn-brown,

Her glory and her crown,

The sunbeams lay them down,

And dream and ponder.

And I—I take her hands,

Her lover;

And kiss her where she stands;

And over

Our heads the soft winds call,

And heav’n smiles down; and all

The golden dreams of Fall

Around us hover.

SYLVIA OF THE WOODLAND

I

O you, who know our Mays that blow

The bluets by the ways;

The Indian-pink,—whose bloom you ’d think

Was blood for some wild bee to drink,—

How—can you say—in their wise way

Is it you ’re like our Mays?—

In gleam and gloom and wild perfume

Of moods that run from shade to sun:—

While in you seems the light that dreams

In thoughts of other days.

II

Meseems some song, for which I long,

From you to me takes wing

Each time you speak; a bird, whose beak

Is in my heart; whose wildwood art

Makes every beat say “Sweet, sweet, sweet,”

And all its pulses sing.

And when I gaze upon your face,

I seem to look into a brook,

That laughs through buds and leafing woods,

Reflecting all the spring.

III

You spoke but now—and, lo! I vow,

From haunts of hart and hind

I seemed to hear Romance draw near,

White hand in hand with Song, and stand,

In some green aisle of wood, and smile,

Beguiling soul and mind:

You laugh—and, lo! I seem to go

In Mirth’s young train; and bird-songs rain

Around, above; and Joy and Love

Come dancing down the wind.

WITNESSES

I

You say I do not love you!—Tell me why,

When I have gazed a little on your face,

And then gone forth into the world of men,

A beauty, neither of the earth nor sky,

A glamour, that transforms each common place,

Attends my spirit then?

II

You say I do not love you!—Yet, I know,

When I have heard you speak and dwelt upon

Your words a while, my heart has gone away

Filled with strange music, very soft and low,

A dim companion, touching with sweet tone

The discords of the day.

III

You say I do not love you!—Yet, it seems,

When I have kissed your hand and said farewell,

A fragrance, wilder than the wood’s wild bloom,

Companions dim my soul and fills, with dreams,

The sad and sordid streets where people dwell,

Dreams of spring’s wild perfume.

A PUPIL OF PAN

My love’s adorable and wise

As heaven and the winds of spring:

Go thou and gaze into her eyes—

Such scholars of the starry skies!

—Canst marvel at the thing?

My love is like a bud that blows

With fragrant honey in its heart:

Go, watch her smile—Wouldst not suppose

She from some warm, white, serious rose

Had learned the happy art?

The thoughts she speaks are pearls unstrung

That strew her fancy’s golden floor:

Go listen—For, the woods among,

She met with Pan, when very young,

Who taught her all his lore.

LORA OF THE VALES

Lora is her name that slips

Soft as love between the lips:

You must know she is so wise

All she does is lift her eyes,—

Larkspur-blue as April skies,—

At her name—and that replies—

She ’s so wise, is Lora.

Lora is her name whose sound

Hedges all my heart around

With the gold of happiness:

When she speaks, you will confess,

Music’s self her words express,

Every vowel a caress—

She ’s so kind, is Lora.

Lora is her name that brings

Thoughts to me of morning things:

Songs of birds; of bees that creep

In the rumpled bluebells deep;

Butterflies, that, half asleep,

On some rose their vigil keep—

She ’s so young, is Lora.

Lora, lean to mine your face;

So; and round you let me lace

One firm arm, and gently woo

Your small mouth, as fresh as dew,

Till it says your heart is true,

True to me as mine to you,

Sunny-hearted Lora!

PLEDGES

I

What the May-apple or

Woodland anemone—

Star-perfect as a star—

Says to the honey-bee:

Or to the winds that woo,

Filling their hearts with dew:

What says the bluet’s blue

To the sun’s ray—do you

Know or do I?—

II

Listen, and you may hear

What the oxalis says

Into the downy ear

Of the pale moth that sways

There on its heart and drinks:

Or what the forest-pinks

Say to the dew that winks,

Butterfly-wing that blinks—

Glimmering by.

III

They say: “When April trod

By in a blowing blush,—

Wise as a word of God

Holding all Heaven a-hush,—

Singing a song of love,

We, as she passed above,

Sprang from the notes thereof,

Filling with joy each grove,

Beauty and mystery.”

ORIENTAL ROMANCE

I

Beyond lost seas of summer she

Dwelt on an island of the sea,

Last scion of that dynasty,

Queen of a race forgotten long,—

With eyes of light and lips of song,

From seaward groves of blowing lemon,

She called me in her native tongue,

Low-leaned on some rich robe of Yemen.

II

I was a king. Three moons we drove

Across green gulfs, the crimson clove

And cassia spiced, to claim her love.

Packed was my barque with gums and gold;

Rich fabrics; sandalwood, grown old

With odor; gems; and pearls of Oman,—

Than her white breasts less white and cold;—

And myrrh, less fragrant than this woman.

III

From Bassora I came. We saw

Her condor castle on a claw

Of soaring precipice, o’erawe

The surge and thunder of the spray:

Like some great opal, far away

It shone, with battlement and spire,

Wherefrom, with wild aroma, day

Blew splintered lights of sapphirine fire.

IV

Lamenting caverns, dark and deep,

That catacombed the haunted steep,

Led upward to her castle-keep ...

Fair as the moon, whose light is shed

In Ramadan, was she, who led

My love unto her island bowers,

To find her ... lying young and dead

Among her maidens and her flowers.

THE TOLLMAN’S DAUGHTER

She stood waist-deep among the briers:

Above, in twisted lengths, were rolled

The sunset’s tangled whorls of gold,

Blown from the west’s cloud-pillared fires.

And in the hush, no sound did mar,

You almost heard, o’er hill and dell,

Deep, bubbling over, star on star,

The night’s blue cisterns slowly well.

A crane, a shadowy crescent, crossed

The sunset, winging ’thwart the west;

While up the east her silver breast

Of light the moon brought, white as frost.

So have I painted her, you see,

The tollman’s daughter.—What an arm

And throat were hers! and what a form!

—Art dreams of such divinity.

What braids of night to smooth and kiss!—

There is no pigment anywhere

A man might use to picture this—

The splendor of her raven hair.

A face as beautiful and bright,

As rosy fair as twilight skies,

Lit with the stars of hazel eyes

And eyebrowed black with penciled night.

For her, I know, where’er she trod

Each dewdrop raised a looking-glass,

To catch her image, from the grass;

That wildflowers bloomed along the sod,

And whispered perfume when she smiled;

The wood-bird hushed to hear her song,

Or, heart-enamoured, tame though wild,

Before her feet flew fluttering long:

The brook went mad with melody,

Eddied in laughter when she kissed

With naked feet its amethyst—

And I—she was my world, ah me!

CREOLE SERENADE

Under moss-draped oak and pine,

Murmuring, falls the fountained stream;

In its pool the lilies shine,

Silvery, each a glimmering gleam.

Roses bloom and roses die

In the warm rose-scented dark,

Where the firefly, like an eye,

Winks and glows, a golden spark.

Amber-belted through the night

Drifts the alabaster moon,

Like a big magnolia white

On the fragrant heart of June.

With a broken syrinx there,

With bignonia overgrown,

Is it Pan in hoof and hair?—

Or his image carved from stone?

See! her casement’s jessamines part;—

Through their stars and swooning scent

Like the moon she leans. O heart,

’T is another firmament!

Sings:

The dim verbena drugs the dusk

With lemon odors; everywhere

Wan heliotropes breathe drowsy musk

Into the jasmine-heavy air;

The moss-rose bursts its dewy husk

And spills its attar there.

The orange at thy casement flings

Star-censers oozing rich perfumes;

The clematis, long-petaled, swings

Deep clusters of dark purple blooms;

With flowers, like moons or sylphide wings,

Magnolias light the glooms.

Awake, awake from sleep!

Thy balmy hair,

Unbounden, deep on deep,

Like blossoms there,—

That dew and fragrance weep,—

Will fill the night with prayer.

Awake, awake from sleep!

And dreaming here it seems to me

A dryad’s bosom grows confessed,

Nude in the dark magnolia tree,

That rustles with the murmurous West—

Or is it but some bloom I see,

White as thy virgin breast?

Through Southern heavens above are rolled

A million feverish stars, that burst,

Like gems, from out the caskets old

Of night, with fires that throb and thirst:

An oleander, showering gold,

The heav’n seems, star-immersed.

Unseal, unseal thine eyes!—

Too long her rod

Queen Mab sways o’er their skies

In realms of Nod!—

Their starry majesties

Will fill the night with God.

Unseal, unseal thine eyes!

IDEAL DIVINATION

How I have thought of her,

Her I have never seen!—

Now from a raying air

She, like the Magdalene,

Flowers—a face serene,

Radiant with raven hair.

Now in a balsam scent

Laughs from the stars that gleam;

Naked and redolent,

Bends to me breasts of beam,

Eyes that were made to dream,

Throat that the dimples dent.

Would she were real, ah me!

Would she were real and here!

And no “impossible she”!

But one to draw me near,

Hold me and name me dear!—

But, that can never be!

“Living, each learns to know

Life is not worth its pain;

Loving, each finds a woe

Or, at the end, a chain:

Fardled of hope we strain

Whither no hope may know.

“Life is too credulous

Of time that beckons on.

Memory still serves us thus—

Gauging each coming dawn

By a day dead and gone,

Day that ’s a part of us.”

So says my soul, that ’s mocked

Here of the flesh and held;

Ever rebellion rocked,

Fighting, forever quelled;

Titan-like, fate-compelled,

Yearning to rise, but locked

Supine where torrents pour

Hellward; on crags that, high,

Scarred of the thunder, gore

Heaven.... The vulture’s eye

Swims, and the harpies’ cry

Clangs through the ocean’s roar....

Then, like æolian light,

Calling, it hears her lips:

Scorched by her burning white

Splendor of arms and hips,

Slimy each horror slips

Back to its native night....

Rul’st thou some brighter star?

Inviolable queen

Of what the destinies are?

Thou, with thy light unseen

Filling my life with sheen,

Leading my soul afar!

Thou, who oft leav’st thy skies,

Comest in dreams to me,

With amaranthine eyes,

Asphodel shadowy

Hair, and mysteriously

Say’st to my heart, “Arise!

“Be not afraid to dare

All of life’s tyranny!

I will reward thee there!

There, where my love shall be

Thine to eternity!—

Only be brave and bear!”

APOCALYPSE

Before I found her I had found

Within my heart, as in a brook,

Reflections of her: now a sound

Of imaged beauty, now a look.

So when I found her, gazing in

Those Bibles of her eyes, above

All earth, I saw no word of sin;

Their holy chapters all were love.

I read them through. I read and saw

The soul impatient of the sod—

Her soul, that through her eyes did draw

Mine—to the higher love of God.

CAN I FORGET?

Can I forget how Love once led the ways

Of our two lives together, joining them;

How every hour was his anadem,

And every day a tablet in his praise!

Can I forget how, in his garden’s place,

Among the purple roses, stem to stem,

We heard the rumor of his robe’s bright hem,

And saw the aureate radiance of his face!—

Though I beheld my soul’s high dreams down-hurled,

And Falsehood sit where Truth once towered white,

And in Love’s place usurping Lust and Shame,

Though flowers be dead within the winter world,

Are flowers not there? and starless though the night,

Are stars not there, eternal and the same?

MY ROSE

There was a rose in Eden once: it grows

On Earth now, sweeter for its rare perfume:

And Paradise is poorer by one bloom,

And Earth is richer. In this blossom glows

More loveliness than old seraglios

Or courts of kings did ever yet illume:

More purity than ever yet had room

In soul of nun or saint.—O human rose!—

Who art initial and sweet period of

My heart’s divinest sentence; where I read

Love, first and last, and in the pauses, love;

Who art the dear ideal of each deed

Through which my life is strong to attain its goal,—

Set in the mystic garden of my soul!

RESTRAINT

Dear heart and love! what happiness is it

To watch the firelight’s varying shade and shine

On thy young face; and through those eyes of thine—

As through clear windows—to behold them flit,

In sumptuous chambers of thy mind’s chaste wit,

Thy soul’s fair fancies! then to take in mine

Thy hand, whose pressure brims my heart’s divine

Hushed rapture as with music exquisite!

When I remember how thy look and touch

Sway, like the moon, my blood with ecstasy,

I dare not think to what fierce heaven might lead

Thy soft embrace; or in thy kiss how much

Sweet hell,—beyond all help of me,—might be,

Where I were lost, where I were lost indeed!

IN JUNE

I

Hotly burns the amaryllis,

Starred with ruby red:

Coolly stand the snowy lilies

In the lily-bed:

Emerald gleams the wild May-apple,

’Neath its parasol,

And where gold the sunbeams dapple

Woods, and thrushes call,

Marion strolls with Moll,

Singing, “Fol-de-rol;

Fol-de, fol-de-rol.

II

“March was but a blustering liar;

April, sad as night:

May, a milkmaid from the byre,

Full of love but light.

June, sweet June!—ah! she’s My Lady,

Fair and fine and tall,

Strolling down the woodways shady—

June is best of all!

She is like my Moll!

Fol-de-rol-de-rol!

She is like sweet Moll!”

WILL O’ THE WISPS

Beyond the barley meads and hay,

What was the light that beckoned there?

That made her young lips smile and say:

“Oh, busk me in a gown of May,

And knot red poppies in my hair.”

Over the meadow and the wood

What was the voice that filled her ears?

That sent into pale cheeks the blood,

Until each seemed a wild-brier bud

Mowed down by mowing harvesters?...

Beyond the orchard, down the hill,

The water flows, the water swirls;

And there they found her past all ill,

Her pale dead face, sweet, smiling still,

The cresses caught among her curls.

At twilight in the willow glen

What sound is that the silence hears,

When deep the dusk is hushed again,

And homeward from the fields strong men

And women go, the harvesters?

One seeks the place where she is laid,

Where violets bloom from year to year—

“O sunny head! O bird-like maid!

The orchard blossoms fall and fade

And I am lonely, lonely here.”

Two stars look down upon the vale;

They seem to him the eyes of Ruth:

The low moon rises very pale

As if she, too, had heard the tale,

All heartbreak, of a maid and youth.

IN A GARDEN

The pink rose drops its petals on

The moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn;

The moon, like some wide rose of white,

Drops down the summer night.

No rose there is

As sweet as this—

Thy mouth, that greets me with a kiss.

The lattice of thy casement twines

With jasmine vines, with jasmine vines;

The stars, like jasmine blossoms, lie

About the glimmering sky.

No jasmine tress

Can so caress

Like thy white arms’ soft loveliness.

About thy door magnolia blooms

Make sweet the glooms, make sweet the glooms;

A moon-magnolia is the dusk

Closed in a dewy husk.

However much,

No bloom gives such

Soft fragrance as thy bosom’s touch.

The flowers blooming now will pass,

And strew the grass, and strew the grass;

The night, like some frail flower, dawn

Will soon make gray and wan.

Still, still above,

The flower of

True love shall live forever, Love.

“IF I WERE HER LOVER”

I

If I were her lover,

I’d wade through the clover

Over the fields before

The gate that leads to her door;

Over the meadows,

To wait, ’mid the shadows,

The shadows that circle her door,

For the heart of my heart and more.

And there in the clover

Close by her,

Over and over

I’d sigh her:

“Your eyes are as brown

As the Night’s, looking down

On waters that sleep

With the moon in their deep” ...

If I were her lover to sigh her.

II

If I were her lover,

I’d wade through the clover

Over the fields before

The lane that leads to her door;

I’d wait, ’mid the thickets,

Or there by the pickets,

White pickets that fence in her door,

For the life of my life and more.

I’d lean in the clover—

The crisper

For the dews that are over—

And whisper:

“Your lips are as rare

As the dewberries there,

As ripe and as red,

On the honey-dew fed” ...

If I were her lover to whisper.

III

If I were her lover,

I’d wade through the clover

Over the fields before

The pathway that leads to her door;

And watch, in the twinkle

Of stars that sprinkle

The paradise over her door,

For the soul of my soul and more.

And there in the clover

I’d reach her;

And over and over

I’d teach her—

A love without sighs,

Of laughterful eyes,

That reckoned each second

The pause of a kiss,

A kiss and ... that is

If I were her lover to teach her.

NOËRA

Noëra, when sad fall

Has grayed the fallow,

Leaf-cramped the wood-brook’s brawl

In pool and shallow;

When, by the wood-side, tall

Stands sere the mallow:

Noëra, when gray gold

And golden gray

The crackling hollows fold

By every way,

Shall I thy face behold,

Dear bit of May?

When webs are cribs for dew,

And gossamers

Streak past you, silver-blue;

When silence stirs

One leaf, of rusty hue,

Among the burrs:

Noëra, thro’ the wood,

Or thro’ the grain,

Come, with the hoiden mood

Of wind and rain

Fresh in thy sunny blood,

Sweetheart, again!

Noëra, when the corn,

Heaped on the fields,

The asters’ stars adorn—

And purple shields

Of ironweeds lie torn

Among the wealds:

Noëra, haply then,

Thou being with me,

Each ruined greenwood glen

Will bud and be

Spring’s with the spring again,

The spring in thee.

Thou of the breezy tread,

Feet of the breeze:

Thou of the sunbeam head,

Heart like a bee’s:

Face like a woodland-bred

Anemone’s.

Thou to October bring

An April part!

Come, make the wild-birds sing,

The blossoms start!

Noëra, with the spring

Wild in thy heart!

Come with our golden year;

Come as its gold:

With the same laughing, clear,

Loved voice of old:

In thy cool hair one dear

Wild marigold.

AMONG THE ACRES OF THE WOOD

I

“I know, I know;

The way doth go

Athwart a greenwood glade, oh!

White bloom the wild-plums in that glade,

White as the bosom of the maid

Who, stooping, sits, and milks and sings

Among the dew-dashed clover rings,

When fades the flush, the henna blush,

The orange-glow of sunset low,

And all the winds are laid, oh!”

II

“I wot, I wot.—

And is it not

Right o’er the viney hill?—”

“Yea: where the wild-grapes mat and make

Penthouses of each bramble-brake,

And dangle plumes of fragrant blooms:

Where threads of sunbeams string the glooms

With beaded gold; and flowers unfold

Their eyes of blue;—and all night through

Sings, wildly shrill, one whippoorwill.”

III

“I ween, I ween,

The path is green

’Neath beechen boughs that let

Soft glimpses of the sapphire sky

Gleam downward like a wood-nymph’s eye:

At night one far and lambent star

Shines o’er it, like a watching Lar,

’Mid branching buds a tangled bud

Among the acres of the wood,

Where blooms the wet wild violet

And only we have, trysting, met.”

WORDS

I can not tell what I would tell thee,

What I would say, what thou shouldst hear;

Words of the soul that should compel thee,

Words of the heart to draw thee near.

For when thou smilest, thou, who fillest

My life with joy, and I would speak,

’Tis then my lips and tongue are stillest,

Knowing all language is too weak.

Look in my eyes: read there confession:

The truest love hath least of art:

Nor needs it words for its expression

When soul speaks soul and heart speaks heart.

THE SIRENS

Wail! wail! and smite your lyres’ sonorous gold,

And beckon naked beauty; luring me

With arms and breasts and hips of godly mold,

Dark, wind-wild locks seen through the surf-blown sea!

Vain all your magic! dull in unclosed ears!

Beside one voice sweet-calling o’er the foam,

That, in my heart, like some strong hand appears

To gently, firmly draw my vessel home.

WHY?

Why are the bright stars brighter after rain?

Why is strong love the stronger after pain?

Reply, reply!

Why sings the wild swan heavenliest when it dies?

Why is fair love the fairest when it flies?

Oh why! Oh why!

Why are sweet kisses sweetest when they’re dead?

Why is love loveliest when ’tis buriéd?

Reply, reply!

NOCTURNE

A disc of violet blue,

Rimmed with a thorn of fire,

The new moon hangs in a sky of dew;

And under the vines, where the sunset’s hue

Is blent with blooms, first one, then two,

Begins the crickets’ choir.

Bright blurs of golden white,

With points of pearly glimmer,

The first stars wink in the web of night;

And through the flowers the moths take flight,

In the honeysuckle-colored light,

Where the shadowy shrubs grow dimmer.

Soft through the dim and dying eve,

Sweet through the dusk and dew,

Come, while the hours their witchcraft weave,

Dim in the House of the Soul’s-sweet-leave,

Here in the pale and perfumed eve,

Here where I wait for you.

A great, dark, radiant rose,

Dripping with starry glower,

Is the night, whose bosom overflows

With the balsam musk of the breeze that blows

Into the heart, as each one knows,

Of every nodding flower.

A voice that sighs and sighs,

Then whispers like a spirit,

Is the wind, that kisses the drowsy eyes

Of the primrose open, and, rocking, lies

In the lily’s cradle, and soft unties

The rose-bud’s crimson near it.

Sweet through the deep and dreaming night,

Soft through the dark and dew,

Come, where the moments their magic write,

Deep in the Book of the Heart’s-delight,

Here in the hushed and haunted night,

Here where I wait for you.

METAMORPHOSIS

Before Love’s lofty goddess—Life hath toiled

To mold from burning dew and dewy fire—

Who kneel and worship with a heart sin-soiled,

Within the secret Temple of Desire;

Their curse is such: that, even while they pray,—

They shall not see, nor shall they know thereof!—

Their Deity is changed from fire to clay—

Lust! fashioned in the very form of Love.

AT TWENTY-ONE

The rosy hills of her high breasts,

Whereon, like misty morning, rests

The breathing lace; her auburn hair,

Wherein, a star-point sparkling there,

One jewel burns: her eyes, that keep

Recorded dreams of love and sleep:

Her mouth, with whose comparison

The richest rose were poor and wan:

Her throat, her form—what masterpiece

Of man can picture half of these!—

She comes! a classic from the hand

Of God! wherethrough I understand

What Nature means and Art and Love,

And all the immortal myths thereof.

KINSHIP

There is no flower of wood or lea,

No April flower, as fair as she:

O white anemone, who hast

The wind’s wild grace,

Know her a cousin of thy race,

Into whose face

A presence like the wind’s hath passed.

There is no flower of wood or lea,

No May-day flower, as fair as she:

O bluebell, tender with the blue

Of sapphire skies,

Thy lineage hath kindred ties

In her, whose eyes

The heaven’s own qualities imbue.

There is no flower of wood or lea,

No June-time flower, as fair as she:

Rose,—odorous with beauty of

Her lips that pressed,—

Behold thy sister here confessed!

Whose maiden breast

Is fragrant with the dreams of love.

“SHE IS SO MUCH”

She is so much to me, to me,

And, oh, I love her so,

I look into my soul and see

How comfort keeps me company

In hopes she, too, may know.

I love her, I love her, I love her,

This I know.

So dear she is to me, so dear,

And, oh, I love her so,

I listen in my heart and hear

The voice of gladness singing near

In thoughts she, too, may know.

I love her, I love her, I love her,

This I know.

So much she is to me, so much,

And, oh, I love her so,

In heart and soul I feel the touch

Of angel callers, that are such

Dreams as she, too, may know.

I love her, I love her, I love her,

This I know.

HER EYES

In her dark eyes dreams poetize;

The soul sits lost in love:

There is no thing in all the skies,

To gladden all the world I prize,

Like the deep love in her dark eyes,

Or one sweet dream thereof.

In her dark eyes, where thoughts arise,

Her soul’s soft moods I see:

Of hope and faith, that make life wise;

And charity, whose food is sighs—

Not truer than her own true eyes

Is truth’s divinity.

In her dark eyes the knowledge lies

Of an immortal sod,

Her soul once trod in angel guise,

Nor can forget its heavenly ties,

Since, there in Heaven, upon her eyes

Once gazed the eyes of God.

MESSENGERS

The wind, that gives the rose a kiss,

With murmured music of the south,

Hath kissed a sweeter thing than this;—

The wind, that gives the rose a kiss,—

Hath kissed the red rose of her mouth.

The brook, that mirrors skies and trees,

And echoes in a grottoed place,

Hath held a fairer thing than these;—

The brook, that mirrors skies and trees,

Hath held the image of her face.

O happy wind! O happy brook!

What message from her do you bear?—

“We bear from her her kiss and look—”

O happy wind! O happy brook!—

“That blessed us unaware.”

APART

I

While sunset burns and stars are few,

And roses scent the fading light;

And, like a slim urn, dripping dew,

A spirit carries through the night,

The pearl-pale moon hangs new,—

I think of you, of you.

II

While waters flow, and soft winds woo

The golden-hearted bud with sighs;

And, like a flower an angel threw,

Out of the momentary skies

A star falls, burning blue,—

I dream of you, of you.

III

While love believes and hearts are true,

So let me think, so let me dream;

The thought and dream so wedded to

Your face, that, far apart, I seem

To see each thing you do,

And be with you, with you.

THE BLIND GOD

I know not if she be unkind;

If she have faults, I do not care.

Search through the world—where will you find

A face like hers, a form, a mind?—

I love her to despair!

If she be cruel, cruelty

Is a great virtue, I will swear:

If she be proud, then pride must be

Better than all humility.—

I love her to despair!

Why speak to me of that or this?

All you may say weighs not a hair!

To me, naught but perfection is

In her, whose lips I may not kiss!—

I love her to despair!

CARA MIA

I

Sweet lips, where kisses sleep,

Soft eyes, so filled with dreams,

Waken, oh waken!

Open your blossoms deep,

Sweet lips, where kisses sleep:

Unfold your brightest beams,

Soft eyes, so filled with dreams:

Waken, oh, waken!

II

Sweet lips, that give perfume,

Soft eyes, that kindle light,

Come, let me kiss you!—

To every flower in bloom,

Sweet lips, you lend perfume!

In every star at night,

Soft eyes, you kindle light!—

Come, let me kiss you!

III

Who would not love to rest?

Who would not love to lie?

Who would not love them?

Of such sweet flowers caressed,

Who would not love to rest?

With such stars in their sky,

Who would not love to lie?

Who would not love them?

MARGERY

I

When spring is here and Margery

Goes walking in the woods with me,

She is so white, she is so shy,

The little leaves clap hands and cry—

“Perdie;

So white is she, so shy is she,

Ah me!

The maiden May hath just passed by!”

II

When summer ’s here and Margery

Goes walking in the fields with me,

She is so pure, she is so fair,

The wildflowers eye her and declare—

“Perdie!

So pure is she, so fair is she,

Just see,

Where our sweet cousin takes the air!”

III

Why is it that my Margery

Hears nothing that these say to me?

She is so good, she is so true,

My heart it maketh such ado,

Perdie!

So good is she, so true is she,

You see,

She can not hear the other two.

CONSTANCE

Beyond the orchard, in the lane,

The crested red-bird sings again—

O bird, whose song says, “Have no care,”

Should I not care when Constance there,—

My Constance with the bashful gaze,

Pink-gowned like some sweet hollyhock,—

If I declare my love, just says

Some careless thing as if in mock?

Like—“Past the orchard, in the lane,

Hark! how the red-bird sings again!”

There, while the red-bird sings his best,

His listening mate sits on the nest—

O bird, whose patience says, “All ’s well,”

How can it be with me, come, tell?

When Constance, with averted eyes,—

Soft-bonneted as some sweet-pea,—

If I talk marriage, just replies

With some such quaint irrelevancy,

As, “While the red-bird sings his best,

His loving mate sits on the nest.”

What shall I say? what can I do?

Would such replies mean aught to you,

O birds, whose music says, “Be glad”?

Have I not reason to be sad

When Constance, with demurest glance,

Her face all poppied with distress,

If I reproach her, pouts, perchance,

And answers thus in waywardness?—

“What shall I say? what can I do?

My meaning should be plain to you!”

LYDIA

When Autumn’s here and days are short,

Let Lydia laugh and, hey!

Straightway ’t is May-day in my heart,

And blossoms strew the way.

When Summer ’s here and days are long,

Let Lydia sigh and, ho!

December’s fields I walk among,

And shiver in the snow.

No matter what the seasons are,

My Lydia is so dear,

My heart admits no calendar

Of Earth when she is near.

HELEN

Heaped in raven loops and masses

Over temples smooth and fair,

Have you marked it, as she passes,

Night and starlight mingled there,—

Braided strands of midnight air,—

Helen’s hair?

Deep with dreams and moony mazes

Of the thought that in them lies,

Have you seen them, as she raises

Them in question or surprise,—

Two gray gleams of daybreak skies,—

Helen’s eyes?

Fresh as dew and honied wafters

Of a music sweet that slips,

Have you marked them, brimmed with laughter’s

Song and sunshine to their tips,—

Blossoms whence the perfume drips,—

Helen’s lips?

He who sees her needs must love her:

But, beware, whoe’er thou art!

Lest like me thou shouldst discover

Nature overlooked one part,

In this masterpiece of art—

Helen’s heart.

MIGNON

Oh, Mignon’s mouth is like a rose,

A red, red rose, that half uncurls

Sweet petals o’er a crimson bee:

Or like a shell, that, opening, shows

Within its rosy curve white pearls,

White rows of pearls,

Is Mignon’s mouth that smiles at me.

Oh, Mignon’s eyes are like blue gems,

Two azure gems that gleam and glow,

Soft sapphires set in ivory:

Or like twin violets, whose stems

Bloom blue beneath the covering snow,

The lidded snow,

Are Mignon’s eyes that laugh at me.

O mouth of Mignon, Mignon’s eyes!

O eyes of violet, mouth of fire!—

Within which lies all ecstasy

Of tears and kisses and of sighs:—

O mouth, O eyes, and O desire,

O love’s desire,

Have mercy on the soul of me!

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

I

A sunbeam and a drop of dew

Lay on a red rose in the South:

God took the three and made her mouth,

Her sweet, small mouth,

So red of hue,—

The burning baptism of His kiss

Still fills my heart with heavenly bliss.

II

A dream of truth and love come true

Slept on a star in daybreak skies:

God mingled these and made her eyes,

Her dear, clear eyes,

So gray of hue,—

The high communion of His gaze

Still fills my soul with deep amaze.

LOVE AND A DAY

I

In girandoles of gladioles

The day had kindled flame;

And Heaven a door of gold and pearl

Unclosed, whence Morning,—like a girl,

A red rose twisted in a curl,—

Down sapphire stairways came.

Said I to Love: “What must I do?

What shall I do? what can I do?”

Said I to Love: “What must I do,

All on a summer’s morning?”

Said Love to me: “Go woo, go woo.”

Said Love to me: “Go woo.

If she be milking, follow, O!

And in the clover hollow, O!

While through the dew the bells clang clear,

Just whisper it into her ear,

All on a summer’s morning.”

II

Of honey and heat and weed and wheat

The day had made perfume;

And Heaven a tower of turquoise raised,

Whence Noon, like some pale woman, gazed—

A sunflower withering at her waist—

Within a crystal room.

Said I to Love: “What must I do?

What shall I do? what can I do?”

Said I to Love: “What must I do,

All in the summer nooning?”

Said Love to me: “Go woo, go woo.”

Said Love to me: “Go woo.

If she be ’mid the rakers, O!

Among the harvest acres, O!

While every breeze brings scents of hay,

Just hold her hand and not take ‘nay,’

All in the summer nooning.”

III

With song and sigh and cricket cry

The day had mingled rest;

And Heaven a casement opened wide

Of opal, whence, like some young bride,

The Twilight leaned, all starry eyed,

A moonflower on her breast.

Said I to Love: “What must I do?

What shall I do? what can I do?”

Said I to Love: “What must I do,

All in the summer gloaming?”

Said Love to me: “Go woo, go woo.”

Said Love to me: “Go woo,

Go meet her at the trysting, O!

And ’spite of her resisting, O!

Beneath the stars and afterglow,

Just clasp her close and kiss her—so,

All in the summer gloaming.”

LOVE IN A GARDEN

I

Between the rose’s and the canna’s crimson,

Beneath thy window in the night I stand;

The jeweled dew hangs little stars, in rims, on

The white moonflowers; each a spirit hand

That points the path to mystic Shadowland.

Awaken, sweet and fair!

And add to night thy grace!

Suffer its loveliness to share

The white moon of thy face,

The dark cloud of thy hair.

Awaken, sweet and fair!

II

A moth, like down, swings on th’ althea’s pistil,—

Ghost of a tone that haunts its bell’s deep dome;—

And in the August-lily’s cone of crystal

A firefly hangs the lantern of a gnome,

Green as a gem that gleams through hollow foam.

Approach! the moment flies!

O sweetheart of the South!

Come! mingle with night’s mysteries

The red rose of thy mouth,

The dark stars of thine eyes.—

Approach! the moment flies!

III

Dim through the dusk, like some unearthly presence,

The night-song silvers of a dreaming bird;

And with it borne, faint on a breeze-blown essence,

The rainy whisper of a fountain’s heard—

As if young lips had breathed a perfumed word.

How long, my love, my bliss!

How long must I await

With night—that all impatience is—

Thy greeting at the gate,

And at the gate thy kiss?

How long, my love, my bliss!

FLORIDIAN

I

The cactus and the aloe bloom

Beneath the window of your room;

That window where, at evenfall,

Beneath the twilight’s first pale star,

You linger, tall and spiritual,

And hearken my guitar.

It is the hour

When every flower

Is wooed of moth or bee—

Would, would you were the flower, dear,

And I the moth to draw you near,

To draw you near to me,

My dear,

To draw you near to me!

II

The jasmine and bignonia spill

Their balm about your windowsill;

That sill where, when magnolia-white,

In foliage mists, the moon hangs far,

You lean with bright deep eyes of night,

And hearken my guitar.

It is the hour

When from each flower

The wind woos essences—

Would, would you were the flower, love,

And I the wind to breathe above,

To breathe above and kiss,

My love,

To breathe above and kiss!

WHEN SHIPS PUT OUT TO SEA

I

It’s “Sweet, good-by,” when pennants fly

And ships put out to sea;

It ’s a loving kiss, and a tear or two

In an eye of brown or an eye of blue:—

And you’ll remember me,

Sweetheart,

And you’ll remember me.

II

It’s “Friend or foe?” when signals blow

And ships sight ships at sea;

It’s “Clear for action! and man the guns!”

As the battle nears and the battle runs;—

And you’ll remember me,

Sweetheart,

And you’ll remember me.

III

It’s deck to deck, and wrath and wreck,

When ships meet ships at sea;

It’s scream of shot and shriek of shell,

And hull and turret a roaring hell;—

And you’ll remember me,

Sweetheart,

And you’ll remember me.

IV

It’s doom and death, and pause a breath,

When ships go down at sea;

It’s hate is over and love begins,

And war is cruel whoever wins;—

And you’ll remember me,

Sweetheart,

And you’ll remember me.

A CHRISTMAS CATCH

When roads are mired with ice and snow,

And the air of morn is crisp with rime;

When the holly hangs by the mistletoe,

And bells ring in the Christmas-time:—

It’s—Saddle, my Heart! and ride away

To the sweet-faced girl with eyes of gray!

Who waits with a smile for the gifts you bring—

A man’s strong love and a wedding-ring—

It’s—Saddle, my Heart, and ride!

When vanes veer north and storm-winds blow,

And the sun at noon is a blur o’erhead;

When the holly hangs by the mistletoe,

And the Christmas service is sung and said:—

It’s—Come, O my Heart, and wait a while,

Where the organ peals, in the altar aisle,

For the gifts that the church now gives to you—

A woman’s hand and a heart that’s true.

It’s—Come, O my Heart, and wait!

When rooms gleam warm with the fire’s glow,

And the sleet raps sharp on the window-pane:

When the holly hangs by the mistletoe,

And Christmas revels begin again:—

It’s—Home, O my Heart, and love, at last!

And her happy breast to your own held fast:

A song to sing and a tale to tell,

A good-night kiss and all is well.

It’s—Home, O my Heart, and love!

A SONG FOR YULE

I

Sing, Hey, when the time rolls round this way,

And bells peal out, ’Tis Christmas Day!

The world is better then by half,

For joy, for joy:

In a little while you will see it laugh—

For a song’s to sing and a glass to quaff,

My boy; my boy.

So here ’s to the man who never says nay!—

Sing, Hey, a song of Christmas Day!

II

Sing, Ho, when roofs are white with snow,

And homes are hung with mistletoe:

Old Earth is not half bad, I wis—

What cheer! what cheer!

How it ever seemed sad the wonder is—

With a gift to give and a girl to kiss,

My dear; my dear.

So here ’s to the girl who never says no!

Sing, Ho, a song of the mistletoe!

III

No thing in the world to the heart seems wrong

When the soul of a man walks out with song;

Wherever they go, glad hand in hand,

And glove in glove,

The round of the land is rainbow-spanned,

And the meaning of life they understand

Is love; is love.

Let the heart be open, the soul be strong,

And life will be glad as a Christmas song.

CHORDS

I

When love delays, when love delays and joy

Steals like a shadow o’er the happy hills;

When hope is gone; and no to-morrow fills

The promise of to-day; still I employ

My soul with thoughts of thee,

Who ’rt not for me, for me!

When love delays, when love delays and song

Aches at wild lips, unutterable, as the sound

Of ocean strives, within the shell’s mouth bound;

And hope is gone for ever, slain of wrong;

Still in my heart one word

Keeps calling like a bird.

When love delays, when love delays and sleep

Seals tired eyelids,—like the sound of foam,

Heard ’mid familiar flowers far from home,—

When hope lies dead; in dreams, in dreams I keep

Feeling thy lips’ sweet touch,—

And, oh! it is too much!

When love delays, when love delays and sorrow

Drinks her own tears that add but to her thirst;

When song and sleep and love itself seem curst,

And hope lies dead; still, still I dream to-morrow

Will bring some word of cheer

From thee who art not here.

Will love delay, will love delay till death

Hath sealed these lips and locked these eyes in night?

Till unto love and hate indifferent quite

This form shall lie? Then wilt thou, wild of breath,

Bend down and kiss me there

When I no more shall care?

II

If thou wouldst know the Beautiful that breathes

And beckons through the World, far must thou seek!...

She is no shadow wreathed with hemlock wreaths;

No drowsy sorrow whose wan eyes are weak

With melancholy vigils; and no shade

Of tragic sin of the sweet sun afraid:

No tearful anger torn of truthless love,

Who stabs her sick heart to the dagger’s hilt

For vengeance sweet; no miser mood, or maid,

In owlet towers!—Nay! she sings above

On morning meads ’mid flowers that never wilt.

If thou dost seek the Beautiful, beware!

Lest thou discover her, nor know ’tis she;

And she enslave thee to thy heart’s despair,

And fill thy soul with yearning, utterly,

For that wild-rose which is her mouth, that brings

Dew-odors of the dawn; for those twin springs

Of light, her eyes; the bloom of her white brow,

O’er which the foliage of her dark hair lies:

The melody which is her heart, that sings

The poetry of love, to which all bow,

Both gods and men, the love that never dies.

Lost art thou then, lost as the first lone star

Set in the splendor of the sunset’s wave;

Lost in thy loneliness of searching far,

Striving to clasp her, evermore her slave:

Lost—gladly lost! a devotee to her

Who, in the end, perhaps may let thee share

A portion of her bliss, her heritage

Of happiness in the same way and wise

As woods and waters share it.—Then prepare

Thy soul,—made perfect,—for its final wage,

Her kiss, whose touch shall apotheosize.

III

Now that the orchard’s leaves are sere,

And drip with rain instead of dew,

No moon-bright fruit hangs moon-like here,

And dead your long white lilies too,—

And dead the heart that broke for you:

How comes the dim touch of your arm?

Your faint lips on my feverish cheek?

Your eyes near mine? deep as a charm,

And gray, so gray! till I am weak,

Weak with wild tears and can not speak.

I am as one who walks in dreams;

Sees, as in youth, his father’s home;

Hears from his native mountain streams

Far music of continual foam,

And one sweet voice that bids him come.

AT HER GRAVE

I

With your eyes of April blue,

And your mouth

Like a May-rose, fresh with dew,

Of the South,

With your hair as golden sweet

As the ripples of ripe wheat,

How you make my old heart beat!—

Who are you?

II

There is something that I knew,

Long ago,

In your voice that thrills me through

With the glow

Of remembered happiness;

And your look—I can not guess

What it is there, nor express.—

Who are you?

III

You are like her! even the hue

Of her eyes!—

It is strange you stop here, too,

Where she lies!—

Where she lies who was, you see,

All to me a girl could be—

But no wife.—You stare at me.—

Who are you?

IV

Well, I left her. That ’s not new—

God above!

Men, who live so, often do.

’T is n’t love.

So I broke her heart, they say,—

And been wretched since that day:

And our child—don’t turn away!—

Who are you?

A CONFESSION

These are the facts:—I was to blame.

I brought her here and wrought her shame.

She came with me all trustingly.

Lovely and innocent her face:

And in her perfect form, the grace

Of purity and modesty.

I think I loved her then: would dote

On her ambrosial breast and throat,

Young as a wildflower’s tenderness:

Her eyes, that were both glad and sad:

Her cheeks and chin, that dimples had:

Her mouth, red-ripe to kiss and kiss.

Three months passed by; three moons of fire;

When in me sickened all desire:

And in its place a devil,—who

Filled all my soul with deep disgust,

And on the victim of my lust

Turned eyes of loathing,—swiftly grew.

One night, when by my side she slept,

I rose: and leaning, while I kept

The dagger hid, I kissed her hair

And mouth: and, when she smiled asleep,

Into her heart I drove it deep—

And left her dead, still smiling there.

LAST DAYS

Ah! heartbreak of the tattered hills,

And heartache of the autumn sky!

Heartbreak and heartache, since God wills,

Are mine, and God knows why!

I held one dearer than each day

Of life God sets in sunny gold—

But Death hath ta’en that gem away,

And left me poor and old.

The heartbreak of the hills is mine,

Of trampled twig and rain-beat leaf,

Of wind that sobs through thorn and pine

An unavailing grief.

The sorrow of the loveless skies’

“Farewells” are wild as those I said

When last I kissed my child’s blue eyes

And lips, ice-dumb and dead.

AT TWILIGHT

Once more she holds me with her pensive eyes;

Once more I feel her voice’s witchery

Within my heart unfountain tears and sighs,

And fill the soul of me.

Once more she bends a silent face above;

Once more I feel her hands’ soft touches shake

My life, unbinding long-imprisoned love,

Bidding my lost dreams wake.

Once more I see her serious smile; and touch

Once more the lips of her whose kisses say—

“The night was long, and thou hast suffered much:

At last, dear heart, ’t is day!”

DAY AND NIGHT

They said to me, “The days are not so far off

When she will come, who gave her heart to thee;”

And still I wait, while twilight’s lonely star, off

Her long-loved hills, dips dewy to the sea.

And I recall that night, which gave its soul of

Calm beauty to the earth, when she did give

Her love’s white starlight to the rugged whole of

My barren life and bade me see and live.

The days go by, and my sick soul recalls but

The revelation of that evening sky:

The days! whose hours are as narrow walls,—but

Of whiter shadow,—where hearts break and die.

The day is error’s: it can but deceive us

With shows of Earth, blind with the primal curse.

The night is truth’s: its myriad fires weave us

The thoughts of God, the visible universe.

THREE BIRDS

A red bird sang upon the bough

When wind-flowers nodded in the dew:

My spring of bird and flower wast thou,

O tried and true!

A brown bird warbled on the wing

When poppy buds were hearts of heat:

I wooed thee with a golden ring,

O sad and sweet!

A black-bird twittered in the mist

When nightshade blooms were filled with frost:

The leaves upon thy grave are whist,

O loved and lost!

UNREQUITED

Passion? not hers! who held me with pure eyes:

One hand among the deep curls of her brow,

I drank the girlhood of her gaze with sighs:

She never sighed, nor gave me kiss or vow.

So have I seen a clear October pool,

Cold, liquid topaz, set within the sere

Gold of the woodland, tremorless and cool,

Reflecting all the heartbreak of the year.

Sweetheart? not she! whose voice was music-sweet;

Whose face was sweeter than melodious prayer.

Sweetheart I called her.—When did she repeat

Sweet to one hope, or heart to one despair!

So have I seen a wildflower’s fragrant head

Sung to and sung to by a longing bird,

And at the last, albeit the bird lay dead,

No blossom wilted, for it had not heard.

THE HEART’S DESIRE

God made her body out of foam and flowers,

And for her hair the dawn and darkness blent;

Then called two planets from their heavenly towers,

And in her face, divinely eloquent,

Gave them a firmament.

God made her heart of rosy ice and fire,

Of snow and flame, that freezes while it burns;

And of a starbeam and a moth’s desire

He made her soul, to’ards which my longing turns,

And all my being yearns.

So is my life a prisoner unto passion,

Enslaved of her who gives nor sign nor word;

So in the cage her loveliness doth fashion

Is love endungeoned, like a golden bird

That sings but is not heard.

Could it but once convince her with beseeching!

But once compel her as the sun the south!

Could it but once, fond arms around her reaching,

Upon the red carnation of her mouth

Dew its eternal drouth!

Then might I rise victorious over sadness,

O’er fate and change, and, with but little care,

Torched by the glory of that moment’s gladness,

Breast the black mountain of my life’s despair,

And die, or do and dare.

OUT OF THE DEPTHS

I

Let me forget her face!

So fresh, so lovely! the abiding place

Of tears and smiles that won my heart to her;

Of dreams and moods that moved my soul’s dim deeps,

As strong winds stir

Dark waters where the starlight glimmering sleeps.—

In every lineament the mind can trace,

Let me forget her face!

II

Let me forget her form!

Soft and seductive, that contained each charm,

Each grace the sweet word maidenhood implies;

And all the sensuous youth of line and curve,

That makes men’s eyes

Bondsmen of beauty, eager still to serve.—

In every part that memory can warm,

Let me forget her form!

III

Let me forget her, God!

Her who made honeyed love a bitter rod

To scourge my heart with, barren with despair;

To tear my soul with, sick with vain desire!—

Oh, hear my prayer!

Out of the hell of love’s unquenchable fire

I cry to thee, with face against the sod,

Let me forget her, God!

“THIS IS THE FACE OF HER”

This is the face of her

I’ve dreamed of long

That in my heart I bear:

This is the face of her

Pictured in song.

Look on the lily lids,

The eyes of dawn,—

Deep as a Nereid’s,

Swimming with dewy lids

In waters wan.

Look on the brows of snow,

The locks of night:

Only the gods can show

Such brows of placid snow,

Such locks of light.

The cheeks, like rosy moons;

The lips of fire:

Love sighs no sweeter tunes

Under romantic moons

Than these suspire.

Loved lips and eyes and hair!

Look, this is she!

She, who sits smiling there,

Throned in my heart’s despair,

Never for me!

INDIFFERENCE

She is so dear the wildflowers near

Each path she passes by,

Are over fain to kiss again

Her feet and then to die.

She is so fair the wild birds there

That sing upon the bough,

Have learned the staff of her sweet laugh,

And sing no other now.

Alas! that she should never see,

Should never care to know,

The wildflower’s love, the bird’s above,

And his, who loves her so.

GHOST WEATHER

Wild gusts of drizzle hoot and hiss

Through writhing lindens torn in two—

The dead’s own days are days like this!

Yea; let me sit and be with you.

Here in your willow chair, whose seat

Spreads purple plush.—Hark! how the gusts

Seem moaning voices that repeat

Some grief here; in this room, where dusts

Make dim each ornament and chair;

This locked-in memory where you died:

Since angels stood here, saintly fear

Guards each dark corner, mournful-eyed.

Through this dim light bend your dim face;

Or, like a rain-mist, gray of gleam,

A soft, dim cloudiness of lace,

Stand near me while I dream, I dream.

THE FOREST POOL

One memory persuades me when

Dusk’s lonely star burns overhead,

To take the gray path through the glen—

That finds the forest pool, made red

With sunset—and forget again,

Forget that she is dead.

Once more I look into the spring,

That on one rock a finger white

Of foam that beckons still doth bring—

Some moon-wan spirit of the night,

Who dwells within its murmuring,

Her life the sad moonlight.

I see the red dusk touch it here

With fire like a blade of blood;

One star reflected, white and clear,

Like a wood-blossom’s drowning bud;

While all my grief stands very near,

Pale in the solitude.

And then, behold, while yet the moon

Hangs—silver as a twisted horn

Blown out of Elfland—sweet with June,

White in white clusters of the thorn,

Slow, in the water as a tune,

An image pale is born:

That has her throat of frost; her lips—

Her mouth where God’s anointment lies;

Her eyes, wherefrom love’s arrow-tips

Break, like the starlight from dark skies;

Her hair, a hazel heap that slips;

Her throat and hair and eyes.

And then I stoop; the water kissed,

The face fades from me into air;

And in the pool’s dark amethyst

My own pale face returns my stare:

Then night and mist—and in the mist

One dead leaf drifting there.

AT SUNSET

Into the sunset’s turquoise marge

The moon dips, like a pearly barge

Enchantment sails through magic seas,

To fairyland Hesperides,

Over the hills and away.

Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,

The young-eyed dusk comes slowly down;

Her apron filled with stars she stands.

And one or two slip from her hands

Over the hills and away.

Above the wood’s black caldron bends

The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends

The dew and heat, whose bubbles make

The mist and musk that haunt the brake

Over the hills and away.

Oh, come with me, and let us go

Beyond the sunset lying low,

Beyond the twilight and the night,

Into Love’s kingdom of long light,

Over the hills and away.

DEAD AND GONE

Can you tell me how he rests,

Flowers, growing o’er him there?

His a right warm heart, my sweets,—

So, cover it with care.

Can you tell me how he lies

Such nights out in the cold,

O cricket, with your plaintive call,

O glow-worm, with your gold?

If my eyes are sorrowful,

Well may they weep, I trow,—

Since his dead eyes gazed into them,

They have been sad enow.

If my heart make moan and ache,

Well may it break, I’m sure—

For his dead love is more, ah me!

More than it can endure.

ONE NIGHT

I

A night of rain. The wind is out.

And I had wished it otherwise:

A calm, still night; no scudding skies;

Or, in the scud, above the rout,

The moon; by whose pale light my eyes

Might meet her eyes; the smile that tries

To come but will not; lips, that pout

With seeming anger, all surmise,

When I have said “I love your lies”—

Lips I shall kiss before she dies.

II

What force this wind has! As it runs

Around each unprotecting tree

It seems some beast; and now I see

Its form, its eyes; a woman’s once:—

Dark eyes! that blaze as lionly

As some bayed beast’s, that will not flee

The pine-knots and derides the guns.—

Or is it but the thought in me!

The thought of that which is to be,

The deed, that rises shadowy?

III

And now the trees and whipping rain

Confuse them.... I must drive it hence,

The memory of her eyes! the tense

Wild look within them of hard pain!...

Yet she must die—with every sense

Strung to beholding knowledge, whence

My heart shall be made whole again.—

Here I will wait where night is dense.

Soon she will come, like Innocence,

Thinking her youth is her defense.

IV

And when she leaves,—and none perceives,—

The old gray manor, where the eight

Old locusts, (twisted shadows), freight

With mossy murmurings its eaves,

One moment at the iron gate

She ’ll tarry. Then, with breath abate,

Come rustling through the autumn leaves.

And I will take both hands and sate

My mouth on hers and say, “You ’re late”;

She ’ll laugh to hear I had to wait....

V

O passion of past vows, revive

Imagination, and renew

The ardor of love’s language you

For love’s rose-altar kept alive!

Repeat the oaths that rang with dew

And starlight!—Tell her she is true

As beautiful.—I will contrive

To make her think I have no clue

To all her falseness. I will woo

As once I wooed before I knew.

VI

And we will walk against the wind;

The shuffling leaves about our feet;

Our ruin, as the wood’s, complete,

Because one woman so hath sinned

And never suffered. She shall meet

No murder in my eyes; no heat

Of fate in holding hand that ’s pinned

To hers. To make her trust to beat,

I ’ll kiss her hand, her hair,—like wheat

Of affluent summer,—saying “Sweet.”

VII

And should I bungle in this thing,

This purpose that must see her dead

To cure this fever in my head?—

What other thing is there to bring

Soul satisfaction? when is shed

No real blood, save what makes red

The baulked intention?—I will fling

The mask aside!—But hate hath led

Desire too far now to be fed

With failure. I have naught to dread.

VIII

When we have reached the precipice

That thwarts the battling of the sea,

And wallows out great rocks, that knee

The giant foam with roar and hiss,

I will not cease to coax and be

The anxious lover. Trusting she

Will not suspect my farewell kiss

Until it turns a curse, and we

Sway for an instant totteringly,

And she has shrieked some prayer at me.

IX

O let me see wild terror there

Upon her face! the wilder frown

Of crime’s apprisal, and renown

Of my life’s injury, that bare

This horror with its bloody crown!—

No pity, God! For, if her gown,

Suspending looseness of her hair,

Delay the plunge ... the night is brown ...

My heel must crush her white face down,

And Hell and Heaven see her drown.

THE PARTING

She passed the thorn-trees, whose gaunt branches tossed

Their spider-shadows round her; and the breeze,

Beneath the ashen moon, was full of frost,

And mouthed and mumbled in the sickly trees,

Like some starved hag who sees her children freeze.

Dry-eyed she waited by the sycamore.

Some stars made misty blotches in the sky.

And all the wretched willows on the shore

Looked faded as a jaundiced cheek or eye.

She felt deep sorrow yet could only sigh.

She heard his skiff grind on the river rocks

Whistling he came into the shadow made

By the great tree. He kissed her on her locks;

And round her form his eager arms were laid.

Passive she stood her purpose unbetrayed.

And then she spoke, while still his greeting kiss

Stung in her hair. She did not dare to lift

Her face to his; her anguished eyes to his

While tears smote crystal in her throat. One rift

Of weakness humored might set all adrift.

Anger and shame were his. She meekly heard.

And then the oar-locks sounded, and her brain

Remembered he had said no farewell word;

And swift emotion swept her; and again

Left her as silent as a carven pain....

She, in the old sad farm-house, wearily

Resumed the drudgery of her common lot,

Regret remembering.—’Midst old vices, he,

Who would have trod on, and somehow did not,

The wildflower, that had brushed his feet, forgot.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW

Though the panther’s footprints show,

And the wild-cat’s, in the snow,

You will never find a trace

Of the footsteps of a certain

Maiden with a paler face

Than the drifts that fill and curtain

Hillside, valley, and the wood,

Where the hunter’s wigwam stood

In the winter solitude.

What white beast hath grown the fur

For the whiter limbs of her?—

Raiment of the frost and ice

To her supple beauty fitting;

Wampum strouds, as white as rice,

Of the frost’s fantastic knitting,

Wrap her form and face complete;

Glove her hands with ice; her feet

Moccasin with beaded sleet.

’Though he knew she made a haunt

Of the dell, it did not daunt:

Where the hoar-frost mailed each tree

In soft, phantom alabaster,

And hung ghosts of bud and bee

On each autumn-withered aster;

By the frozen waterfall,

There she stood, beneath its wall,

In the ice-sheathed chaparral.

Where the beech-tree and the larch

Built a white triumphal arch

For the Winter, marching down

With his icy-armored leaders;

Where each hemlock had a crown,

And pale diadems the cedars;

Where the long icicle shone,

There he saw her, standing lone,

Like a mist-wraith turned to stone.

And she led him many a mile

With her hand-wave and her smile,

And the printless swiftness of

Feet of frost, and snowy flutter

Of her raiment; now above,

Now below, the boughs of utter

Winter whiteness. Led him on

Till the dawn and day were gone,

And the evening star hung wan....

Hunters found him dead, they tell,

In the winter-wasted dell,

With his quiver and his bow,

Where the cascade ran a rafter,

White, of crystal and of snow;

Where he listened to her laughter,

Promises, that were as far

As the secrets of a star,

And her love that naught could mar.

And her countenance is this

Stamped on his: and this her kiss,

Haunting still his mouth and eyes,

Colder than the cold December:

This her passion, that defies

All control, the stars remember

Filled him, killed him: this is she

Clinging to him, neck and knee,

Where his limbs sank wearily.

THE SPIRIT OF THE STAR

(Love Spiritual)

“This union of the human soul with the divine æthereal substance of the universe, is the ancient doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato.”—Divine Legation.

There is love for love: the heaven

Teems with possibilities:

And, when love is purely given,

Love returns from where none sees:

And such love becomes a ladder

Reaching heavenward, from the sadder

Night of Earth; from out the driven

Darkness of its miseries.

There is love for love: and Beauty,

From her star above the Earth,

Smiles, and straight each cloud of sooty

Night takes on celestial worth:

And, like some white flower unfolding,

Love is born; and softly holding

Up its face, as if in duty,

Grows to that which gave it birth.

Earth and Heaven are prolific

Of love’s wonders: and the sky

Teems with spirits, fair, terrific,

Who, if loved, shall never die:

Dæmons, haggard as their mountains;

Naiads, sparkling as their fountains;

Sylphids of the winds, pacific

As the stars they tremble by....

Such was I; who long had waited

For the everlasting sleep:

Where, around me, worlds dilated,

Waned or waxed within the deep:

Where, beneath my star, a planet

Whirled and shone, like glowing granite,

While around it ne’er abated

One white satellite its sweep.

I was sad: my beauty wearied,

Useless as a scentless bud

Fading ere it blooms. The serried

Mists of worlds, as red as blood,

Streamed beneath me. And the starry

Firmament above bent, barry

With the wild auroras, ferried

Of the meteors’ sisterhood.

Something drew me, unreturning,

Filled me with a finer flame

Page 418

The Spirit of the Star

I was loveless with a yearning

After love that never came;

All my astral being burning

Towards that world without a name,

World I knew not: till, with splendor

Of compulsion that was tender,

Something drew me, unreturning,

Filled me with a finer flame.

So I left my star, whose lances

Pierced with arrowy gold the heat

Of heaven’s hyacinth; its glances

Saddened me. No more to meet,

Then I left my star; and, beating

Downward, heard it still repeating

Far farewells; and through the trances

Of dark space its face looked sweet.

Passed your moon: a melancholy

Disc at first; then, vast and sharp,

Lo, a world, all white and holy!

Where, upon the crystal scarp

Of a mountain,—like a story

Of high Heaven revealed in glory,—

Gradual, as if music slowly

Built it, rolling from a harp,—

Rose a city: cloudy nacre

Were its walls, that towered round

Acre upon arch-piled acre

Of a marble-terraced ground:

Caryatids alternated

With Atlantes, sculpture-weighted:

And its gates—some god the maker—

Rhombs of symboled diamond.

In the white light glittered swimming

Domes of dazzle: swirl on swirl,

Temples lifted columns, brimming

Crystal flame, that seemed to whirl:

Battlemented moonstone darkled;

Palaces, pale-pillared, sparkled,

Cloudy opal: and, far dimming,

Aqueducts of ghostly pearl.

Streaming steeples shone, of dædal

Emblem; each an obelisk:

Minarets, each one a needle,

Balancing a bubble-disc;

Some of diamond, like a blister

Frozen; some of topaz-glister,

Vinous; in whose blinding middle

Blazed an orb of burning bisque.

And I saw where, silvery slanted,

A vast pyramidic heap

Rose of spar; whereon was planted

The acropolis of Sleep,—

God of these:—that, looming higher,

Wrought of seeming ice and fire,

Where pale rainbow-colors panted,

Gleamed above the lunar deep.

Robed in white simarre and chiton,

Visions filled its every square,

Moving like a finer light on

Light: and in the glory there

Music rang and golden laughter;

And before each shape, and after,

Radiance went, that shadowed white, on

Temple and on palace stair.

Though they called me, I descended

Earthward. For great longing drew

Me and, drawing me, was blended

With your world. I never knew

It was Earth, until,—forsaking

Heaven,—I beheld it taking,—

A great azure sphere,—its splendid

Way along the singing blue.

And when night came, here, above you,—

Sleeping by your folded sheep

On the hills,—I stooped: whereof you

Dreamed: I kissed you in your sleep:

I, your destiny, who wrought it

So you knew me: you, who thought it

Not so strange that I should love you,

I a spirit of the deep.

’Twas your love that sought and found me,

Drew me from that star-life sad;

Won my soul to yours and bound me

With such love as none hath had:

I am she, you may remember,

That fair star that seemed an ember

O’er you, that you loved.—Around me

Wrap your arms now and be glad.

Look above: what seems a petal,

Burning, of a rose; that far

Point of radiance, bright as metal,

Fiery silver, is your star!

Look above you: rise unto it.

Let it lead you now who drew it

Down to Earth, where shadows settle!—

On that star no shadows are!

THE SPIRIT OF THE VAN

(Love Ideal)

“Among the mountains of Carmarthen, lies a beautiful and romantic piece of water, named The Van Pools. Tradition relates, that after midnight, on New Year’s Eve, there appears on this lake a being named The Spirit of the Van. She is dressed in a white robe, bound by a golden girdle; her hair is long and golden; her face is pale and melancholy.”—Keightley’s “Fairy Mythology.”

Midsummer-night; the Van. Through night’s wan noon,

Wading the storm-scud of an eve of storm,

Pale o’er Carmarthen’s peaks the mounting moon.—

Wilds of Carmarthen! sombre heights, that swarm

Girdling this water, as old giants might

Crouch, guarding some enchanted gem of charm,—

Wilds of Carmarthen, that for me each night

Reëcho prayers and pleadings,—all the year

Unanswered,—made to listening waters white!

Mountains, behold me yet again! Bend near!

Behold her lover! hers, that shape of snow,

Who dwells amid these pools; who will not hear

My heart’s wild pleading, calling loud, now low,

Unhappy, to her, ’mid the lonely hills.

Whene’er a ripple trembles into glow,

Where yeasty moonshine scuds the foam, straight thrills

Heart’s expectation through my veins, and high

With “she!” each pulse the exultation fills.

But she ’tis never. Once ... and then! would I,

Would I had perished, so beholding!—World,

’Twas you, O world, who would not let me die!

Once I beheld her!—If some fiend had curled

Stiff talons in my hair, and, twisting tight,

Had raised me high, then into Hell had hurled;

Fresh from that vision of her beauty white,

With Heaven in my soul, I, unamerced,

Shackled with tortures, yet might mock Hell’s spite.

Immortal memory, quench in me this thirst!—

O starlike vision, that a moment clove

My sight, and then for ever left me curst!

Oh, make me mad with love, with all thy love!

Me, me, who seek thee ’mid these wilds when gloom

Storms or drip gold the sibylline stars above!—

Let thy high coming in a flash consume

The light of all the stars! and make me mad,

Mad with love’s madness! fill me with sweet doom!

Sleep will I not now, for my soul is sad:

For, should I sleep, there might come other dreams,—

Sadder than thou art,—in thy beauty clad

And all thy tyranny. To me it seems

Better to wake here, underneath this pine,

Until thy face upon my vision gleams.—

Thou, who art wrought of elements divine,

And I of crasser clay, clay that will think,

“Since I am hers, why should she not be mine?”

Again, its usual phantom, on the brink

Of thy lone lake, I ask thee: “Must I yearn

Forever, haunted of that vision’s wink?”—

When, glassing out great circles, which did urn

Some intense essence of interior light,

(As clouds, that clothe the moon, unbinding, burn,

Riven, erupt her orb, triumphant white,)

I saw, midmost the Van, a feathering fire

Dilating ivory-wan.—Expectant night

Tiptoed attentive, fearful to suspire.—

Wherefrom arose—what white divinity?

What godhead sensed with glory and desire?

Born for the moment for the eyes of me!

Then re-absorbed into the brassy gloom

Of whispering waves that sighed their ecstasy.

Thou! in whose path harmonious colors bloom,

Pale pearl and lilac, asphodel and rose,—

Like many flow’rs auroral of perfume,—

Thou leftst me thus, to marvel as who knows

He is not dead and yet it seems he is,

Since all his soul with spirit-rapture glows.—

O sylph-like brow! lips like an angel’s kiss!

High immortality! whose face was such

As starlight in a lily’s loveliness!...

The gold that bound thee seemed too base to clutch

Thy chastity, though clear as golden gum

That almugs sweat, and fragrance to the touch!

Thy hair—not hair!—seemed rays, like those that come

Strained through the bubble of a chrysolite.—

No word I said: thy beauty struck me dumb.

Thy face, that is upon my soul’s quick sight

Eternal seared, hath made of me a shade,

A wandering shadow of the day and night:

A seeker ’mid the hoary hills for aid,

The sole society of my sick heart, who

Shuns all companionship of man and maid:

Who, comrade of the mountain blossoms blue,

And intimate of old trees, goes dreaming they,—

As in that legendary world that drew

Oracles from lips in oaks—, may sometime say

Prophetic precepts to it: how were won

A spirit loved to love a mortal;—yea,

In vain.—

But one day, frog-like in the sun,

Beside a cave,—the nightshade vines made rank

And hairy henbane, where huge spiders spun,—

Wrinkled as Magic, I a grizzled, lank,

Squat something startled, naught save skin and hair;

With eyes wherein dwelt demons; flames, that shrank

And grew;—familiars, who fixed me with glare

As, raising claw-like hands when I drew near,

Frog-like he croaked, “Thou fool! go seek her there!

Woo her with thy heart’s actions! making clear

Thy soul’s white passage for her coming feet!—

In! in! thou fool! plunge in! Fear naught but fear!”

Yet I have waited many weeks. Repeat.

Acts of the heart with passionate offering

Of love whose anguish makes it seven times sweet.

Still all in vain, in vain. To-night I bring

My self alone; my soul unfearing, see!

My soul unto thee!—Shall the clay still cling

Clogging fulfillment? and achievement be

Balked still by flesh?—no! let me in—to die,

Haply; or, for a moment’s mystery,

Gaze in thine eyes: one splendid instant lie

In thy white arms and bosom; and thy kiss,

My elemental immortality!—

Part of thy breathing waves, to laugh or hiss

In foam; or winds, that rock the awful deeps,

Or build with song vast temples for thy bliss.

Wherein, responsive as thy white hand sweeps

The chords of some sad shell, I’ll dream and roam

Through glaucous chambers where the green day sleeps.

Dead not with death, what secrets hath thy home

Not mine then, epoched in exultant foam?...

Deeper, down deeper! yea, at last I come!

THE CAVERNS OF KAF

(Love Sensual)

“‘Where am I?’ cried he; ‘what are these dreadful rocks? these valleys of darkness? are we arrived at the horrible Kaf?’”—Vathek.

One, Benreddin, I have heard,

Near the town of Mosul sleeping,

In a dream beheld a bird,

Wonderful, with plumes of sweeping

Whiteness, crowned pomegranate-red:

And, it seemed, his soul it led,

Brilliant as a blossom, keeping

Near the Tigris as it fled.

Following, at last he came

To a haggard valley, shouldered

Under peaks that had no name:

Where it vanished. ’Mid the bouldered

Savageness a woman, fair,

In a white simarre, stood there,

Auburn-haired; around whom smoldered

Pensive lights of purple air.

And she led him down to vast

Caves of sardonyx, whose ceiling

Domed one chrysoberyl. Blast

On blast of music,—stealing

Out of aural atmospheres,—

Beat like surf upon his ears;

Then receded, faintly pealing

Psalteries and dulcimers.

Living figures seemed to heave

High the walls, where, wild, embattled,

Warred Amshaspand and the Deev:

Over all two splendors rattled

Arms of Heaven, arms of Hell;

Forms of flame that seemed to swell

Godlike: Aherman who battled

With Ormuzd he could not quell.

There she left him wond’ring; till

The reverberant music, drifting,

Strong beyond his utmost will,

Drew him onward where, high lifting

Pillar and entablature,

Vast with emblem, yawned a door—

Valves of liquid lightning, shifting

In and out and up and o’er.

Through the door he swept: deep-domed,

Green with serpentine and beryl,

Loomed a cavern, crusted, foamed,

Tortuous with gems of peril:

Difficult, a colonnade

Seemed, of satin-spar, to braid

Deeps of labyrinthed and sterile

Tiger-spar that, twisting, rayed.

Dizzy stones of magic price

Crammed volute and loaded corbel:

Irridescent shafts of ice

Leapt: with long reëchoed warble

Waters unto waters sang:

Crystal arc and column sprang

Into fire as each marble

Fountain flung its foam that rang.

And around him, filled with sound,

Streams of resonant colors jetted:

Rainbow surf that interwound

Crypts and arcades, crescent-fretted:

Mists of citron and of roon;

Lemon lights that mocked the moon;

Shot with scarlet, veined and netted,

Beating golden hearts of tune.

Suns arose, of blinding blue;

Moons of green-dilating splendor:

In whose centers slowly grew

Spots like serpents’ eyes that, slender,

Glared; at first, prismatic beams;

Then, intolerable gleams;

Hissing trails of fire, tender

As an houri’s breath that dreams.

Characters of Arabic,

Cabalistic, red as coral,

Flashed through violet veils, so quick

None might read: as if, in quarrel,

Iran wrote of Turan there

Hate and scorn, or, everywhere,

Wrought some talisman of moral

Strength no Afrit’s heart would dare.

Sounding splendors drew him on

To another cavern; hollow;

Hewn of alabastar wan;

Lucid; where his gaze could follow

Caves in caves; transparent flights

Rolling, lost in moving lights,

Glaucous gold: he like a swallow

O’er a lake the morning smites.

Down the dome flashed out and in

Instant faces of the Peris:

Restless eyes of Deevs and Jinn

In the walls watched: unseen Faeries

Out of rainbows rained and tossed

Flowers of fire full of frost;

Blossoms where the fire varies,

Gold and green and crimson-mossed.

Then there met him, face to face,

Seven odalisques of Heaven,

Swinging in a silver space

Flaming censers: and the seven,

Crowned with stars of burning green,

Seemed to turn to incense; seen,

As it rose, to be a driven

Hippogrif, or rosmarine.

Aloes, Nard, and Ambergris,

Sandal, Frankincense, and Civet,—

Genii of the fragrances,—

Rein each winged aroma; give it

Spurs and race it down the lull

Of the caverns, clouded dull

With wild manes of musk; now vivid,

Vaporous white and wonderful.

And Benreddin’s aching soul,

In each sense intoxicated,

Reached, at last, what seemed the goal

Of all passion: golden-gated,

Vast, a fountain: where he saw

Limbs of light without a flaw;

Breasts and arms of bloom; that waited

For his soul to nearer draw.

Houri faces shimmered there;

Fluid forms.—It, with a thunder

Of wild music, like the hair

Of a genie, flamed from under

Caverns of the demon-world:

Filled with voices, high it hurled,

Calling him, with beckoning wonder

Of cœrulean forms that swirled.

And with burning lips and eyes

In he plunged: hoarse laughter greeted,

Demon laughter: then sad sighs,

Dying downward: passion-heated

Hands seemed drawing him away,

Downward: where a rocking ray

Flamed and swung, and Eblis-sheeted

Shadows wandered ghostly gray.

. . . . . . . . . .

And, ’tis said, that he was young,

Young that morning. When the darting,

Anguish-throated bulbuls sung,

In the silent starlight starting,

One, a Baghdad merchant, led

By the hoarness of its head,

Found what seemed a mummy: parting

Hair from brow, Benreddin—dead.

THE SALAMANDER

(Love Dæmonic)

“The Fire-Philosophers, and the Rosicrucians, or Illuminati, taught that all knowable things (both of the soul and of the body) were evolved out of fire, and finally resolvable into it: and that fire was the last and the only-to-be known God: as that all things were capable of being searched down into it, and all things were capable of being thought up into it.”—The Rosicrucians.

Once she breathed upon my eyes,

Touched the soul that dreamed within me;

All the magic that might win me

Whispered to my heart with sighs—

Darkness can not make them lies!...

Bring me moly, hellebore!

Mix them for my soul’s nepenthe,

For my spirit’s dread Amenti,

For the curse that comes once more

With unutterable lore!

Sunlight, starlight or the moon,

Stormlight, firelight or the sheening

Witchlight intimate no meaning

Of her glory’s plenilune;

Of her soul’s unriddled rune,

And most awful beauty! nor

Actual, nor yet ideal!—

Insubstantial and yet real;

Partly flame and partly star,

Yet no part of what these are.

I am hers and—woe is mine!...

Has she drugged me with the sadness

Of some elemental madness?—

Like a demigod I pine

’Twixt the mortal and divine....

When I see her, lo, she stands

In the luminous electre

Of a star: a smiling spectre

With white scintillating hands

Luring to unhallowed lands.

Then, behold, in fearful file,

A mirage of tower and terrace,

Lawn and mountain range,—that buries

Flame in frost,—looms! mile on mile

Of her crescent-glowing Isle:

Where the lurid waters lull

Shores that roll the rainbow fire;

Where, with living lute and lyre,

Rose-red, swiftly as a gull,

Glides her star-like galley’s hull.

And, behold, before I know,

I am where her walls of amber,

Towers of limpid ruby, clamber

Over terraces below

Summits of refulgent snow.

Lambent lazuli and shell

Colonnade her courts of marble;

Where, of lightning, fountains warble

Out of basined pearl, or well

Into hollowed carbuncle.

Rosy silver seems her skin,

And a flame her arm commanding,

With its gleaming hand, me, standing

At her gates, to enter in,

Burning as a Seraphin.

Lucid darkness are her eyes,

Where the frozen fire smolders;

And upon her shining shoulders,

Like a tangible glitter, lies

Auburn hair like sunset skies.

Mouth of sibilant soft flame;

Lilith lips, whose roses lighten

With illusive love; and brighten

With wild passion and the name

Of desire no man may tame.

Passion, and the thoughts that wed

Love and loathing; such caresses

Of sweet touch as naught expresses

Here on Earth, yet full of dread,

Madness, whereof death is bred.

She hath drawn me to her lips;

Borne me through her palace portal;

And the fire, which is immortal,

From me like a garment slips—

Ah, the spirit-part’s eclipse!

As when moon and planet swoon

Unto each, my body kindles,

Strangely, while my spirit dwindles,

Like the Earth-o’ershadowed moon,

Darkening from lune to lune.

Then she laughs; and leads me where

Cloudy, wild, chameleon color

Marbles halls with hues, the duller

For her astral presence there,

Beaming white with beaming hair:

Where, in roses purple pale,—

Dropping like a ruby bubble

Through the moon dust,—“double double,”

Throbs the crimson nightingale,

There she lures me with some tale.

Or to where the scarlet snake

Coils beneath great flaming flowers;

Where the musk mimosa bowers

Roll their rosy clouds, and make

Sunset heavens of each lake.

Where the bees and moths go by,

Fiery diamond; opal-burning

Butterflies, and iris-turning

Peacock-painted birds, that vie

With the flow’rs, like fragments fly

Of wild rainbow: Where, in rills,

Down the rocks, that lichens redden,

Constellated moss and leaden

Fungus glow; and all the hills,

As with flames, the orchid fills.

Where, in coruscating light,

Glare the golden-checkered zinnias;

And the bugle-bloomed gloxinias,

Making morning of each height,

Float like mists of ruby white.

There, beneath some blazing vine,

Where the liquid moonlight glitters

Of a river,—coral litters

Red with grail,—like prisms in wine

I have watched the fishes shine.

Or, o’er sunset-colored moss,

Glow-worms trail their beryls; sprinkling

Green the smouldering shade; while, twinkling,

With convulsive sapphire gloss,

Fireflies rained blue lights across.

Where the reeds seemed rays of rose,

And white mirrored moons, the lotus—

Each a spirit giving notice

Of the inner light that glows

Where the under water flows—

Shapes arose of flashing spray:—

Where, a wild auroral splendor,

Rolled the forest,—emerald-tender

As the light of breaking day,—

Beckoned forms of starry ray.

Through the violetish light,

Winged with nautilus and lily

Flame, adown the forests stilly

Vistas, moony whirls of white,

Floated shapes with eyes of night.

I must follow where she leads.—

Blinding portals of her castle

To my entering feet are facile....

Love no terrible trumpet needs

At her gates to bugle deeds....

Lo, my being never veils

Aught from her. To her caresses

All my heart knows it confesses

With a faith that never fails,

Though it hears the truth that wails

In its soul’s admonishment,

Of the curse that sits in session

In each amorous expression

Of her love; its violent

Flame, by which my life is rent.

I have drained the feverish cup

Of all darkness. Made a leman

Of an elemental demon;

And my soul lies, staring up,

Draining poison at each sup.—

While she smiles on me ’tis well:

I shall follow, though she make me

What her self is; never wake me

From the dream I can not tell,

That is neither heaven nor hell:

Where I drink mesmeric gold

Of wild vision,—that romances

In informing Protean fancies

With a beauty never old,

And emotion never cold.—

Let me drink and never wake

From the trances that environ

Me, and ’neath the subtle siren

See the demon, like a snake,

With destroying eyes that ache.

While the slow laconic look

Of her eyes express no censure,

Gazing in them, I adventure,—

Far beyond the wisest book,—

Ways her serpent fancy took.

Yet I know I reverence

One whose gaze in God’s negation;

One who, like an emanation

Of all evil, chains my sense

With satanic influence.

Yet, while still I hear her say,

“One more kiss before the morning!

One more bliss for love’s adorning!

One more kiss ere break of day,”

Still my soul with her must stay.

Stay, nor know, nor ever see!

Till her basilisk beauty flashes,

And the curse, from out the ashes

Of her passion, fiery,

Strikes—destroying utterly.

LYANNA.

“These elementary beings, we are told, were by their constitution more long-lived than man, but with this essential disadvantage, that at death they wholly ceased to exist. In the meantime they were inspired with an earnest desire for immortality; and there was one way left for them, by which this desire might be gratified. If they were so happy as to awaken in any of the initiated (Rosicrucians) a passion, the end of which was marriage, then the sylph became immortal.”—Godwin’s “Lives of the Necromancers.”

Summer came over the Indian Ocean

Girdled with fire, tiaraed with light;

Her eyes all languor, her lips—a potion

To quaff—of poppy. And gold and white

She flashed and sparkled; all gleam and motion,

All blush and blossom she came; and I,

Of the race of the sylphs, o’er the Indian Ocean

Followed her through the sky.

Self-exiled so from the sylphs that cluster,

Pulsing with pearl and burning with blue,

In domes of the dawn,—where the organs bluster

Low of the winds,—where they glow like dew

As the day dreams up, and their armies muster,

Ranges of glitter, in cloudy gold,

At the gates of the Dawn, of blinding luster,

To forth when her gates unfold.

For Summer murmured me, “Follow! follow!”

Whispered one word that was all of love.—

Winged with the speed of the sweeping swallow,

I followed the word she had breathed above:

“Follow! follow!”—the god Apollo

Never followed, with speed as strong

The flying nymph through holt and hollow,

As I that word of song.

Fleet as the winds are fleet, yea, and fleeter

Far than the stars that throb, like foam,

Through the firmament’s blue, in musical metre

Winnowed my wings; and the golden gloam

Rang; and life was a passion, completer

Than a life in Eden; and love,—a lyre

That sang in my heart and made life sweeter

With hope,—a leaping fire.

Thus to the north my wings went maying

Radiant ways, till a castle shone

Gaunt on great cliffs, with the late skies graying

O’er walls of war and their towers lone,

With tortuous steps to the sea, where, spraying,

Thundered the breakers; and terrace and stair,

Rock o’er the waters, rose rosy and raying

Deep in the sunset’s glare.

A dewdrop burns when the dawn lights prickle:

And all my being tingled with light,

Bloomed when I saw her, tarrying fickle,

White on the castled height:

Slender she shone as the moon in sickle,

The slim new-moon, like a pearl-pale streak;

And golden, too, as the honey-trickle

Of combs where the wax is weak.

In dreams I came to her, lo! as a vision:

Yea, by her side as a dream I stood;

To her innermost spirit I sighed my mission,

In the vestal ear of her maidenhood:

And she deemed me a dream; and I made a prison

Of my arms for her soul while she, smiling, slept:

Her body lay still, but her soul had arisen,

And looked on my face and wept:

“Lyanna, I hoop thee with arms of fire!”—

My words were music, a harp afloat,—

“Lyanna, my heart is a vibrant wire,

Thy love is its only note.

Let it sing forever. Let it sound entire,

Full as the angels’ who hover and harp

To the glory that’s God, like a golden lyre

Borne in a beam that is sharp....

“Behold me, thy rose! full of flame and splendor!

Thy rose to pluck: thy ruby bloom:

Thy sylphid rose, with eyes that are tender;

Lips that are fire; and limbs of perfume

And fragrant fire: thy heart’s defender!

Thy airy lover!” ... And, bending above,

Sweeter my speech than a flower’s that, slender,

Tells to the stars its love.

Lo, as I spoke, with thoughts that thicken,

Her heart seemed filled; and she spoke; but sleep

Shadowed her words, till my kiss did quicken

And free, like stars from the night that leap:—

“Long I have waited; and long did sicken

To clasp thee thus, O my rose of love!

Oft have I dreamed of thee, yea, and was stricken

With joy at the thought thereof.

“White are the clouds; but I saw thee whiter

’Mid dazzling domes of the dawn; and knew

Tho’ bright are God’s stars, that thine eyes were brighter,

Brighter and burning blue.

And my heart was thine, though it held thee slighter

Than hues that the mists of the morning take:

And waited and yearned, and the yearning tighter

Than tears in the hearts that break.

“ ‘Lyanna! Lyanna!’ I heard thee ever

Calling ‘Lyanna,’ a ripple of flame:

‘Lyanna! Lyanna!’ like song forever;

And I marveled at my name.

The sound was such—that if stars could sever

And silver-syllable a word of beams,

So would it sound.—I turned; but never

Beheld thee, only in dreams.

“Thou walkedst a beauty afar: a glitter

Of gleaming aroma: and I, with moan,

Reached thee my arms: but thy gaze was bitter,

Calmer and sterner than stone:

Avoiding thou passedst in scorn: a sitter,

I seemed, on the uttermost bounds of bliss:

When, lo! on the wind,—a flame, a flitter

Of fire,—thy laugh, and thy kiss!”—

I had won her love. And, behold! the thunder

Trumpeted tempest: I heard the seas

Lunge at the walls like a roaring wonder,

And the rain-wind sing in the trees.—

Lyanna my bride.—And the heavens asunder

Rushed—chasms of glaring storm, where poured

The thunder’s cataracts, rolling under—

And showed me, horde on horde,

The shouting spirits of storm.—The portal

Of sleep was riven; she rose, and saw:

And I said to her soul, “Of the utterly mortal

Mine the eternal lot and law.”—

“I love thee!” she answered.—And I, “Immortal

Am I through thy love!” ... And so we fled....

Behold! when they came in the morn, astartle,

Men whispered—“Lyanna is dead!”

THE SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS

Voices of Darkness

Ere the birth of Death and of Time,

And of Hell, with its tears and its torments:

Ere the waves of heat and of rime,

And the winds to the heavens were as garments:

Cloud-like in the womb of Space,

Mist-like from her monster womb,

We sprang, a myriad race

Of thunder and tempest and gloom.

Voices of Light

As from the evil good

Springs, and desire:

As the white lily’s hood

Buds from the mire:

So from this midnight brood

Sprang we with fire.

Voices of Darkness

We had lain for long ages asleep

In her bosom, a bulk of torpor,

When down through the vasts of the deep

Clove a sound, like the notes of a harper:

Clove a sound, and the horrors grew

Tumultuous with turbulent night,

With whirlwinds of blackness that blew,

And storm that was godly in might.

And the walls of our dungeon were shattered

Like the crust of a fire-wrecked world:

As torrents of clouds that are scattered,

From the womb of the deep we were hurled.

Voices of Light

Us in unholy thought

Patiently lying,

Eöns of violence wrought,

Violence defying;

When, on a mighty wind,

Voiced of a godly mind,

Big with a motive kind,

Girdled with wonder,

Flame and a strength of song,

Rolling vast light along,

Thundered the Word, and Wrong

Vanished,—and we were strong,

Strong as the thunder.

Voices of Darkness

We people the lower spaces,

Where our cities of silence make scorn

Of the sun, and our shadowy faces

Are safe from the splendors of morn.

Our homes are wrecked worlds and each planet

Whose sun is a light that is sped;

Bleak moons, whose cold bodies of granite

Are hollow and flameless and dead.

Voices of Light

We in the living sun

Live like a passion:

Ere the sad Earth begun

We and the sun were one,

As God did fashion.

Lo! from our burning hands,

Flung like inspired brands,

Sowed we the worlds, like sands,

Countless as ocean:

And ’tis our breath gives life,

Life to those stars, all rife

With iridescent strife,

Music and motion.

Voices of Darkness

We joy in the hate of all mortals;

Inspire their crimes and the thought

That falters and halts at the portals

Of actions, intentions unwrought.

We cover the face of to-morrow:

We frown in the hours that be:

We breathe in the presence of sorrow:

And death and destruction are we.

Voices of Light

We are man’s hope and ease,

Joy and his pleasure;

Authors of love and peace,

Love that shall never cease,

Free as the azure.

Lo! we but look, and light

Heartens the world with might,

Vanquishes death and night

Hate and its burnings:

And from our bosoms stream

Beauty and yearnings

For a diviner dream,

Higher discernings.

Voices of the Break of Day

Morning and birth are ours;

Light that is blown

From our fair lips; and flowers,

Dropped from our hands in showers,

Seeds that are sown:

Song and the bursting buds,

Life of the fields and floods;

Strength that’s full-grown:

And, from our beryl jars,

Filled with the clouds and stars,

Pour we the winds and dew;

While by our eyes of blue

Darkness is rent in two,

Conquered and strown.

Voices of the Dawn

Ye in your darkness are

Dark and infernal;

Subject to death and mar!

But in the spaces far,

Like our effulgent star,

We are eternal.

THE WATER WITCH

See! the milk-white doe is wounded.

He will follow as it bounds

Through the woods. His horn has sounded,

Echoing, for his men and hounds.

But no answering bugle blew.

He has lost his retinue

For the shapely deer that bounded

Past him when his bow he drew.

Not one hound or huntsman follows.

Through the underbrush and moss

Goes the slot; and in the hollows

Of the hills, that he must cross,

He has lost it. He must fare

Over rocks where she-wolves lair;

Wood-pools where the wild-boar wallows:

So he leaves his hunter there.

Through his mind then flashed an olden

Legend told him by the monks:—

Of a girl, whose hair is golden,

Haunting fountains and the trunks

Of the woodlands; who, they say,

Is a white doe all the day,

But when woods are night-enfolden

Turns into an evil fay.

Then the story once his teacher

Told him: of a mountain lake

Demons dwell in; vague of feature,

Human-like; but each a snake,

She is queen of.—Did he hear

Laughter at his startled ear?

Or a bird?—And now, what creature

Is it,—or the wind,—stirs near?

Fever of the hunt! This water,

Falling here, will cool his head.

Through the forest, dyed in slaughter,

Slants the sunset; ruby-red

Are the drops that slip between

Hollowed hands, while on the green,—

Like the couch of some wild daughter

Of the forest,—he doth lean.

But the runnel, bubbling, dripping,

Seems to bid him to be gone;

As with crystal words and tripping

Steps of sparkle luring on.

Now a spirit in the rocks

Calls him; now a face that mocks,

From behind some boulder slipping,

Laughs at him through lilied locks.

And he follows through the flowers,

Blue and gold, that blossom there;

Thridding twilight-haunted bowers

Where each ripple seems the bare

Beauty of white limbs that gleam

Rosy through the running stream;

Or bright-shaken hair, that showers

Starlight in the sunset’s beam.

Till, far in the forest, sleeping

Like a luminous darkness, lay

A deep water, wherein, leaping,

Fell the Fountain of the Fay,

With a singing, sighing sound,

As of spirit things around,

Musically laughing, weeping

In the air and underground.

Not a ripple o’er it merried:

Like the round moon in a cloud,

In its rocks the lake lay buried:

And strange creatures seemed to crowd

Its dark depths: dim limbs and eyes

To the surface seemed to rise

Spawn-like; or, all formless, ferried

Through the water shadow-wise.

Foliage things with woman faces,

Demon-dreadful, pale and wild

As the forms the lightning traces

On the clouds the storm has piled

In the darkness.—On the strand—

What is that which now doth stand?—

’Tis a woman: and she places

On his arm a spray-white hand.

Ah! two mystic worlds of sorrow

Were her eyes; her hair, a place

Whence the moon its gold might borrow;

And a dream of ice her face:

Round her hair and throat in rims

Pearls of foam hung; and through whims

Of her robe, as breaks the morrow,

Gleamed the rose-light of her limbs.

Who could help but gaze with gladness

On such beauty? though within,

Deep within the beryl sadness

Of those eyes, the serpent sin

Seemed to coil.—She placed her cheek

Chilly upon his, and weak

With love-longing and its madness

Grew he. Then he heard her speak:—

“Dost thou love me?”—“If surrender

Of the soul means love, I love.”

“Dost not fear me?”—“Fear?—more slender

Art thou than a wildwood dove.

Yet I fear—I fear to lose

Thee, thy love.”—“And thou dost choose

Aye to be my heart’s defender?”—

“Take me. I am thine to use.”

“Follow then.—Ah, love, no lowly

Home I give thee.”—With fixed eyes

To the water’s edge she slowly

Drew him.... Nor did he surmise

Who this creature was, until

O’er his face the foam closed chill,

Whispering, and the lake unholy

Rippled, rippled and was still.

THE SUCCUBA

I have dreams where I believe

That a queen of some dim palace,

One, whose name is Genevieve,

Weighs me with her love or malice:

She is dead and yet my bride:

And she glimmers at my side

Offering a crystal chalice

Filled with fire, diamond-dyed.

I have dreams. Ah, would that I

Might forget them!—I remember

How her gaze, all icily

Draws me, like a glowing ember,

Up her castle-stair’s pale-paved

Alabaster, from the waved

Ocean, grayer than November,

Where I linger, soul-enslaved.

Walls of shadow and of night

Lit with casements full of fire,

Somber red or piercing white:

As the wind breathes lower, higher,

Round the towers spirit-things

Whisper, and the haunted strings

Moan of each huge, plangent lyre

Set upon its four chief wings.

In its corridors at tryst

Flame-eyed phantoms meet. Its sparry

Halls are misty amethyst:

Battlemented ’neath the starry

Skies it looms; the strange unknown

Skies where, green as glow-worms, sown,

Gloom the stars; the moon hangs barry

Beryl, low and large and lone....

Can it be a witch is she?

Or a vampire? she, far whiter

Than the spirits of the sea!—

She whose eyes are cold, yet brighter

Than her throat’s pale jewels. Lo!

Flame she is though seeming snow:

And her love lies tighter, tighter

On my heart than utter woe.

Though I dream, it seems I live;

And my heart is sick with sorrow

Of the love that it must give

To her; passion, it must borrow

Of herself, unhallowed, vain;

Then return it her again:

Thus she holds me; and to-morrow

Still will hold with sweetest pain.

In her garden’s moon-white space

Strangest flowers bloom: huge lilies,

Each one with a human face;

Knots of spirit-amaryllis;

Cactus-bulks with pulpy blooms

Gnome-like in the silver glooms;

And dim deeps of daffadillies,

Fay-like, brimming faint perfumes.

But to me their fragrance seems

Poison; and their lambent lustre,

Spun of twilight and of dreams,

Poison; and each pearly cluster

Hides a serpent’s fang. And I,

Looking from an oriel, sigh;

For my soul is fain to muster

Heart to breathe of them and die.

Then I feel big eyes, as bright

As the sea-stars. Gray with glitter,

She behind me, moony white,

Smiles, ’mid hangings wherein flitter

Loves and deeds of Amadis

Darkly worked. And then her kiss

On my mouth falls; sweet and bitter

With a bliss that is not bliss.

And I kiss her eyes and hair;

Smooth her tresses till their golden

Glimmer sparkles. Everywhere

Shapes of strange aromas, holden

Of the walls, around us troop;

And in golden loop on loop,—

Of the lull’d eyes vague beholden,—

Forms of music o’er us stoop.

Yet I see beneath it all,

All this sorcery, a devil,

Beautiful, and white, and tall,

Broods with shadowy eyes of evil:

She, who must resume with morn

Her true shape: a cactus-thorn,

Monstrous, on some lonely level

Of that demon-world forlorn.

I have dreams where I believe

That a queen of some dim palace,

One, whose name is Genevieve,

Weighs me with her love or malice:

And all night I am her slave

There beside the demon wave,

Where I drain the loathsome chalice

Of her love, that is my grave.

MASKS

Cucullus non facit monachum

Live it down! as you have spoken

You could live it ere you knew

What love was—“a bauble broken,

Foolish, of a thing untrue.”—

You, Viola, with your beauty,

Cloistered, die a nun? No! you—

You must wed: it is your duty.

There’s your poniard; for the second

In this tazza dropped: the blood

On it scarcely hard.... I reckoned

Happily that hour we stood

There upon your palace-stairway,

How, with the Franciscan hood

Cowled, I said, there was a bare way.

In the minster there I found it—

Our revenge. I saw him, wild,

Stalking towards the church: around it

Dogged him, marking how he smiled

In the moonlight where I waited.

When the great clock, beating, dialed

Ten, I knew he would be mated.

Heaven or my better devil!—

Hardly had his sword and plume

Vanished in the dark, when, level

On the long lagoon, did loom,

Under moonlight-woven arches,

Her slim gondola: all gloom:

One tall gondolier: no torches.

Dusky gondolas kept bringing

Revellers: and far the night

Rang with instruments and singing.—

From the imbricated light

Of the oar-vibrating water,

Gliding up the stairway, white,

Velvet-masked,—the count’s own daughter!

Quick I met her: whispered, “Flora,

Gaston.—Mia, till they go,

One brief moment here, Siora.—

She’ll perceive us—she, below,

See! the duchess’ diamonds sparkling

Round the inviolable glow

Of her throat—there, dimly darkling:

“That’s Viola!” ... Thus I drew her

In the church’s ancient pile—

Under her black mask I knew her,

By her chin, her lips, her smile.

Through one marble-foliated

Window fell the moon-rays. While

All the maskers passed we waited.

I had drawn the dagger. Turning

Called her by her name. Some lie

Of a passion sighed, her burning

Hand in mine; when, stalking by,

In the square, his form bejeweled

Gleamed. My very blood burned dry

With the hate his presence fueled.

Our revenge! up-pushing slightly

Cowl, the mask fell, and revealed

Balka, as the poniard whitely

Flashed. The hollow nave re-pealed

One long shriek the loft repeated.

Swift, I stabbed her thrice. She reeled

Dead. I thought of you, the heated

Horror on my hands; and tarried

Still as silence. Drawn aside

On her face the mask hung, married

To its camphor-pallor: wide

Eyes with terror—stone. One second

I regretted; then defied

All remorse. Your promise beckoned;

And I left her. Love had pointed

Me this way. I walked the way

Clear-eyed and ... it has anointed

Us fast lovers?—Do not say,

Now, that you will go and nun it!

For this man who scorned you?—Nay!—

Live to hate him! You ’ve begun it.

CARMEN

La Gitanilla, tall dragoons

In Andalusian afternoons,

With ogling eye and compliment,

Smiled on you as along you went

Some sleepy street of old Seville;

Twirled with a military skill

Moustaches; buttoned uniforms

Of Spanish yellow bowed your charms.

Proud, wicked head, and hair blue-black,

Whence the mantilla, half thrown back,

Discovered shoulders and bold breast

Bohemian brown. And you were dressed

In some short skirt of gypsy red

Of smuggled stuff; and stockings,—dead

White silk,—that, worn with many a hole,

Let the plump leg peep through; while stole,

Now in, now out, your dainty toes,

Sheathed in morocco shoes, with bows

Of scarlet ribbon.—Flirtingly

You walked by me; and I did see

Your oblique eyes, your sensuous lip

That gnawed the rose I saw you flip

At bashful José’s nose while loud

The gaunt guards laughed among the crowd.

And in your brazen chemise thrust,

Heaved with the swelling of your bust,

A bunch of white acacia blooms

Whiffed past my nostrils hot perfumes.

As in a cool neveria

I ate an ice with Mérimée,

Dark Carmencita, very gay

You passed, with light and lissome tread,

All holiday bedizenéd;

A new mantilla on your head:

Your crimson dress gleamed, spangled fierce;

And crescent gold, hung in your ears,

Shone, wrought Morisco; and each shoe,

Of Cordovan leather, buckled blue,

Glanced merriment; and from large arms

To well-turned ankles all your charms

Blew flutterings and glitterings

Of satin bands and beaded strings:

Around each tight arm, twisted gold

Coiled serpents, and, a single fold,

Wreathed wrists; each serpent’s jeweled head,

With rubies set, convulsive red.

In flowers and trimmings, to the jar

Of mandolin and gay guitar,

You in the grated patio

Danced: the curled coxcombs’ staring row

Rang pleased applause. I saw you dance,

With wily motion and glad glance,

Voluptuous, the wild romalis,

Where every movement was a kiss,

A song, a poem, interwound

With your Basque tambourine’s dull sound.

I,—as the ebon castanets

Clucked out dry time in unctuous jets,—

Saw angry José through the grate

Glare on us, a pale face of hate,

When some indecent officer

Presumed too lewdly to you there.

Some still night in Seville: the street

Candilejo: two shadows meet:

Swift sabres flash within the moon—

Clash rapidly.—A dead dragoon.

AT NINEVEH

There was a princess once, who loved the slave

Of an Assyrian king, her father; known

At Nineveh as Hadria; o’er whose grave

The sands of centuries have long been blown;

Yet sooner shall the night forget its stars

Than love her story:—How, unto his throne,

One day she came, where, with his warriors,

The King sat in his hall of audience,

’Mid pillared trophies of barbaric wars,

And, kneeling to him, asked, “O father, whence

Comes love and why?”—He, smiling on her said,—

“O Hadria, love is of the gods, and hence

Divine, is only soul-interpreted.

But why love is, ah, child, we do not know,

Unless ’t is love that gives us life when dead.”—

And then his daughter, with a face aglow

With all the love that clamored in her blood

Its sweet avowal, lifted arms of snow,

And, like Aurora’s rose, before him stood,

Saying,—“Since love is of the powers above,

I love a slave, O Asshur!—Let the good

The gods have giv’n be sanctioned.—Speak not of

Dishonor and our line’s ancestral dead!

They are imperial dust. I live and love.”—

Black as black storm then rose the King and said,—

A lightning gesture sweeping at her there,—

“Enough! ho, Rhana, strike me off her head!”

And at the mandate, with his limbs half bare

A slave strode forth. Majestic was his form

As some young god’s. He, gathering up her hair,

Wound it three times around his sinewy arm;

Then drew his sword. It for one moment shone

A semicircling light, and, dripping warm,

Lifting the head he stood before the throne.

Then said the despot, “By the horn of Bel!

This was no child of mine!”—Like chiseled stone

Stern stood the slave, a son of Israel.

Then striding towards the monarch, in his eye

The wrath of heaven and the hate of hell,

Shrieked, “Beast! I loved her! look on us and die!”

Swifter than fire clove him to the brain.

Then kissed her face, and, holding it on high,

Cried out, “Judge thou, O God, between us twain!”

And, fifty daggers in his heart, fell slain.

SENORITA

An agate black, her roguish eyes

Claim no proud lineage of the skies,

No starry blue; but of good earth

The reckless witchery and mirth.

Looped in her raven hair’s repose,

A hot aroma, one red rose

Droops; envious of that loveliness,

Through being near which, its is less.

Twin sea-shells hung with pearls, her ears;

Whose delicate rosiness appears

Part of the pearls; whose pallid fire

Binds the attention these inspire.

One slim hand crumples up the lace

About her bosom’s swelling grace;

A ruby at her samite throat

Lends the required color-note.

The moon brings up the violet night

An urn of pearly-chaliced light;

And from the dark-railed balcony

She stoops and waves her fan at me.

O’er orange blossoms and the rose

Vague, odorous lips the South Wind blows,

Peopling the night with whispers of

Romance and palely passionate love.

And now she speaks; and seems to reach

My soul like song that learned its speech

From some dim instrument—who knows?—

Or flow’r, a dulcimer or rose.

SINCE THEN

I found myself among the trees

What time the reapers ceased to reap;

And in the sunflower-blooms the bees

Huddled brown heads and went to sleep,

Rocked by the balsam-breathing breeze.

I saw the red fox leave his lair,

A shaggy shadow, on the knoll;

And, tunnelling his thoroughfare

Beneath the soil, I watched the mole—

Stealth’s own self could not take more care.

I heard the death-moth tick and stir,

Slow-honeycombing through the bark;

I heard the cricket’s drowsy chirr,

And one lone beetle burr the dark—

The sleeping woodland seemed to purr.

And then the moon rose: and a white

Low bough of blossoms—grown almost

Where, ere you died, ’t was our delight

To tryst,—dear heart!—I thought your ghost:

—The wood is haunted since that night.

AFTER DEATH

At moonset, when ghost speaks with ghost

And spirits meet where once they sinned,

Between the whispering wood and coast,

My soul met her soul on the wind,

My late-lost Evalind.

I kissed her mouth. Her face was wild.

Two burning shadows were her eyes,

Wherein the love,—that once had smiled

A heartbreak smile,—in some strange wise,

I did not recognize.

Then suddenly I seemed to see

How sin had damned my soul and doomed

To wander thus eternally

With love and loathing, that assumed

The form of her entombed.

THE OLD MAN DREAMS

The blackened walnut in its spicy hull

Rots where it fell;

And, in the orchard, where the trees stand full,

The pear’s brown bell

Drops; and the log-house in the bramble lane,

From whose low door

Stretch yellowing acres of the corn and cane,

He sees once more.

The cat-bird sings upon its porch of pine;

And o’er its gate,

All slender-podded, twists the trumpet-vine

Its leafy weight:

And in the woodland, by the spring, mayhap,

With eyes of joy

Again he bends to set a rabbit-trap,

A brown-faced boy.

Then, whistling, through the underwoods he goes,

Out of the wood,

Where, with young cheeks, red as an autumn rose,

In gingham hood,

His sweetheart waits, her school-books on her arm:

And now it seems

Beside his chair bends down his wife’s fair form—

The old man dreams.

MEMORIES

Here where Love lies perishéd,

Look not in upon the dead,

Lest the shadowy curtains, shaken

In my Heart’s dark chamber, waken

Ghosts, beneath whose garb of sorrow

Whilom gladness bows his head:

When you come at morn, to-morrow,

Look not in upon the dead,

Here where Love lies perishéd.

Here where Love lies cold interred,

Let no syllable be heard,

Lest the hollow echoes, housing

In my Soul’s deep tomb, arousing

Wake a voice of woe, once laughter

Claimed and clothed in joy’s own word:

When you come at dusk, or after,

Let no syllable be heard,

Here where Love lies cold interred.

MARCH AND MAY

Windy the sky and mad;

Surly the gray March day;

Bleak the forests and sad,—

Oh, that it only were May!

On maples, tasseled with red,

No blithe bird, fluting, swung;

The brook, in its swollen bed,

Raved on in an unknown tongue.

We walked in the wind-tossed wood:

Her face as the May’s was fair;

Her blood was the May’s own blood;

And May’s her radiant hair.

And we found in the woodland wild

One cowering violet,

Like a frail and timorous child,

In the caked leaves bowed and wet.

And I said, “We have walked in vain!

To find but this shivering bud,

Weighed down with its weight of rain,

Crouched here in the wild March wood.”

But she said, “Though the day be sad,

And the skies be dark with fate,

There is always something glad

That will help our hearts to wait.

“Look, now, at this beautiful thing,

In this wood’s wild hollow curled!

’Tis a promise of joy and spring,

And of love, to the waiting world.

“Ah, the sinless Earth is fair,

And man’s are the sin and the gloom—

Come, bury the days that were,

And look to’ard the days to come!”

. . . . . . . . . .

And the May came on with her charms,

With twinkle and rustle of feet;

Blooms stormed from her luminous arms

And songs that were wildly sweet.

Now I think of her words that day,

This day that I longed so to see,

That finds her dead with the May,

And my life but a withered tree.

IN AUTUMN

I

Sunflowers wither and lilies die,

Poppies are pods of seeds;

The first red leaves on the pathway lie,

Like blood of a heart that bleeds.

Weary alway will it be to-day,

Weary and wan and wet;

Dawn and noon will the clouds hang gray,

And the autumn wind will sigh and say,

“He comes not yet, not yet,

Weary alway, alway!”

II

Hollyhocks bend all tattered and torn,

Marigolds all are gone;

The last pale rose lies all forlorn,

Like love that is trampled on.

Weary, ah me! to-night will be,

Weary and wild and hoar;

Rain and mist will blow from the sea,

And the wind will sob in the autumn tree,

“He comes no more, no more.

Weary, ah me! ah me!”

“WHEN SHE DRAWS NEAR”

I

When she draws near,

I seem to hear

The shy approach of some wild innocence:

As if—in acorn crown—

A dryad should step down

From some dim oak-tree where the woods are dense.

II

When she’s with me,

I seem to see

The brambles blossom where just touched her dress:

As, with her love’s perfume,

She touches into bloom

The thorns of life and gives them loveliness.

REED CALL FOR APRIL

I

When April comes, and pelts with buds

And apple-blooms each orchard space,

And takes the dogwood-whitened woods

With rain and sunshine of her moods,

Like your fair face, like your sweet face:

It’s honey for the bud and dew,

And honey for the heart!

And, oh, to be away with you

Beyond the town and mart.

II

When April comes and tints the hills

With gold and beryl that rejoice,

And from her airy apron spills

The laughter of the winds and rills,

Like your young voice, like your sweet voice:

It’s gladness for God’s bending blue,

And gladness for the heart!

And, oh, to be away with you

Beyond the town and mart.

III

When April comes, and binds and girds

The world with warmth that breathes above,

And to the breeze flings all her birds,

Whose songs are welcome as the words

Of you I love, O you I love:

It’s music for all things that woo,

And music for the heart!

And, oh, to be away with you

Beyond the town and mart.

HER VIOLIN

I

Her violin!—Again begin

The dream-notes of her violin;

And tall and fair, with gold-brown hair,

I seem to see her standing there,

Soft-eyed and sweetly slender:

The room again, with strain on strain,

Vibrates to Love’s melodious pain,

As, sloping slow, is poised her bow,

While round her form the golden glow

Of sunset spills its splendor.

II

Her violin!—Now deep, now thin,

Again I hear her violin;

And, dream by dream, again I seem

To see the love-light’s tender gleam

Beneath her eyes’ long lashes:

While to my heart she seems a part

Of her pure song’s inspired art;

And, as she plays, the rosy grays

Of twilight halo hair and face,

While sunset burns to ashes.

III

O violin!—Cease, cease within

My soul, O haunting violin!

In vain, in vain, you bring again,

Back from the past, the blissful pain

Of all the love then spoken;

When on my breast, at happy rest,

A sunny while her head was pressed—

Peace, peace to these wild memories!

For, like my heart naught remedies,

Her violin lies broken.

MEETING IN SUMMER

A tranquil bar

Of rosy twilight under dusk’s first star.

A glimmering sound

Of whispering waters over grassy ground.

A sun-sweet smell

Of fresh-reaped hay from dewy field and dell.

A lazy breeze

Jostling the ripeness from the apple-trees.

A vibrant cry,

Passing, then gone, of bullbats in the sky.

And faintly now

The katydid upon the shadowy bough.

And far off then

The little owl within the lonely glen.

And soon, full soon,

The silvery arrival of the moon.

And, to your door,

The path of roses I have trod before.

And, sweetheart, you!

Among the roses and the moonlit dew.

HER VIVIEN EYES

Her Vivien eyes,—beware! beware!—

Though they be stars, a deadly snare

They set beneath her night of hair.

Regard them not! lest, drawing near—

As sages once in old Chaldee—

Thou shouldst become a worshiper,

And they thy evil destiny.

Her Vivien eyes,—away! away!—

Though they be springs, remorseless they

Gleam underneath her brow’s bright day.

Turn, turn aside, whate’er the cost!

Lest in their deeps thou lures behold,

Through which thy captive soul were lost,

As was young Hylas once of old.

Her Vivien eyes,—take heed! take heed!—

Though they be bibles, none may read

Therein of God or Holy Creed.

Look, look away! lest thou be cursed,—

As Merlin was, romances tell,—

And in their sorcerous spells immersed,

Hoping for Heaven thou chance on Hell.

I look into thy heart and then I know

The wondrous poetry of the long-ago

Page 496

Reasons

REASONS

I

Yea, why I love thee let my heart repeat:

I look upon thy face and then divine

How men could die for beauty, such as thine,—

Deeming it sweet

To lay my life and manhood at thy feet,

And for a word, a glance,

Do deeds of old romance.

II

Yea, why I love thee let my heart unfold:

I look into thy heart and then I know

The wondrous poetry of the long-ago,

The Age of Gold,

That speaks strange music, that is old, so old,

Yet young, as when ’t was born,

With all the youth of morn.

III

Yea, why I love thee let my heart conclude:

I look into thy soul and realize

The undiscovered meaning of the skies,—

That long have wooed

The world with far ideals that elude,—

Out of whose dreams, maybe,

God shapes reality.

HER VESPER SONG

The summer lightning comes and goes

In one white cloud above the hill,

As if within its soft repose

A burning heart were never still—

As in my bosom pulses beat

Before the coming of his feet.

All drugged with odorous sleep, the rose

Breathes dewy balm about the place,

As if the dreams the garden knows

Arose, in immaterial grace—

As in my heart sweet thoughts arise

Beneath the ardour of his eyes.

The moon above the darkness shows

An orb of silvery snow and fire,

As if the night would now disclose

To heav’n her one divine desire—

As in the rapture of his kiss

All my glad soul is drawn to his.

The cloud divines not that it glows;

The rose knows nothing of its scent;

Nor knows the moon that it bestows

Light on our earth and firmament—

So is the soul unconscious of

The beauties it reveals through love.

THE GLORY AND THE DREAM

There in the past I see her as of old,

Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room

Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold;

Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom

Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold

Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume,

As of a moonlit lily brimmed with rain,

Breathes from her presence, drowsing heart and brain.

Her head is bent; some red carnations glow

Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;—

Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow,

Her breasts, through which the veinéd violets stream.—

I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow

As thoughts of love that haunt a poet’s dream:

And at her feet once more I sit and hear

Wild words of passion—dead this many a year.

SNOW AND FIRE

Deep-hearted roses of the purple dusk

And lilies of the morn;

And cactus, holding up a slender tusk

Of fragrance on a thorn;

All heavy flowers, sultry with their musk,

Her presence puts to scorn.

For she is like the pale, pale snowdrop there,

Scentless and chaste of heart;

The moonflower, making spiritual the air,

Like some pure work of art;

Divine and holy, exquisitely fair,

And virtue’s counterpart.

Yet when her eyes gaze into mine, and when

Her lips to mine are pressed,—

Why are my veins all fire then? and then

Why should her soul suggest

Voluptuous perfumes, maddening unto men,

And prurient with unrest?

IN MAY

I

When you and I in the hills went Maying,

You and I in the bright May weather,

The birds, that sang on the boughs together,

There in the green of the woods, kept saying

All that my heart was saying low,

“I love you! love you!” soft and low;—

And did you know?

When you and I in the hills went Maying.

II

There where the brook on its rocks went winking,

There by its banks where the May had led us,

Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows,

Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking

All that my soul was thinking there,

“I love you! love you!” softly there;—

And did you care?

There where the brook on its rocks went winking.

III

Whatever befalls through fate’s compelling,

Should our paths unite or our pathways sever,

In the Mays to-come I shall feel forever

The wildflowers thinking, the wild-birds telling,

In words as soft as the falling dew,

The love that I keep here still for you,

As deep and true,

Whatever befalls through fate’s compelling.

“WERE I AN ARTIST”

Were I an artist, Lydia, I

Would paint you as you merit,

Not as my eyes, but dreams descry;

Not in the flesh, but spirit.

The canvas I would paint you on

Should be a strip of heaven;

My brush, a sunbeam; pigments, dawn

And night and starry even.

Your form and features to express

Likewise your soul’s chaste whiteness,

I’d take the primal essences

Of darkness and of brightness.

I’d take pure night to paint your hair;

Stars for your eyes; and morning

To paint your skin—the rosy air

Which is your limbs’ adorning.

To paint the love-bows of your lips,

I’d mix, for colors, kisses;

And for your breasts and finger-tips,

Sweet odors and soft blisses.

And to complete the picture well,

I’d temper all with woman,—

Some tears, some laughter; heaven and hell,

To show you yet are human.

THE RIDE

She rode o’er hill, she rode o’er plain,

She rode by fields of barley,

By morning-glories filled with rain,

Along the wood-side gnarly.

She rode o’er plain, she rode o’er hill,

By orchard land and berry;

Her eyes were sparkling as the rill,

Cheeks, redder than the cherry.

A bird sang here, a bird sang there,

Then blithely sang together;

Sang sudden greeting everywhere,

“Good-morrow!” and “Good weather!”

The sunlight’s laughing radiance

Laughed in her radiant tresses;

The bold breeze made her wild curls dance,

And flushed her face with kisses.

“Why ride you here, why ride you there,

Why ride you here so merry?

The sunlight living in your hair,

And in your cheek the berry?

“Why ride you with your sea-green plumes,

Your sea-green silken habit,

By balmy bosks of faint perfumes,

And haunts of roe and rabbit?”

“The morning ploughed the east with gold,

And planted it with holly;

And I was young and he was old,

And rich, and melancholy.

“A wife they ’d have me to his bed,

And to the church they hurried;

But now, gramercy! he is dead!

Thank God! is dead and buried.

“I ride by tree, I ride by rill,

I ride by rye and clover,

For by the church beyond the hill

Awaits my first true lover.”

AT PARTING

What is there left for us to say,

Now it is time to speak good-by?

And all our dreams of yesterday

Are one with yester-evening’s sky—

What is there left for us to say,

Now different ways before us lie?

A word of hope, a word of cheer,

A word of love, whose help shall last,

When we are far to bring us near

Through memories of the happy past;

A word of hope, a word of cheer,

To keep our young hearts true and fast.

What is there left for us to do,

Now it is time to say farewell?

And care, that bade us once adieu,

Returns again with us to dwell—

What is there left for us to do,

Now different ways our fates compel?

Clasp hands and kiss, touch lips and smile,

And look the love that shall remain—

When severed so by many a mile—

The sweetest balm for bitterest pain:

Clasp hands and kiss, touch lips and smile,

And trust to God to meet again.

IN THE GARDEN OF GIRLS

Serious, but smiling, stately and serene,

And lovelier than a flower,

She stands; in whom all sympathies convene

As perfumes in a bower;

Through whom I feel what soul and heart must mean,

And all their love and power.

Eyes, that commune with the frank skies of truth,

Beneath their cloud-like curls;

Lips of immortal rose, where joy and youth

Nestle like priceless pearls;

Hair, that suggests the Bible braids of Ruth,

Deeper than any girl’s.

When first I saw her, ’t was as if within

My gaze took shape some song—

Played by a master of the violin—

A music, pure and strong,

That rapt my soul above all earthly sin

To heights that know no wrong.

“COME TO THE HILLS”

Come to the hills, the woods are green—

The heart is high when lovers meet—

There is a brook that flows between

Mossed rocks where we will make our seat,

Where we will sit and speak unseen.

I hear you laughing in the lane—

The heart is high when lovers meet—

The clover smells of sun and rain

And spreads a carpet for our feet,

Where we will walk and dream again.

Come to the woods, the dusk is here—

The heart is high when lovers meet—

A bird upon the branches near

Sets music to our hearts’ sweet beat,

Our hearts that beat with something dear.

I hear your step; the lane is passed—

The heart is high when lovers meet—

The little stars come bright and fast,

Like happy eyes that watch us, Sweet,

That see us greet and kiss at last.

EVASION

I

Why do I love you, who have never given

My heart encouragement or any cause?

Is it because, as earth is held of heaven,

Your soul holds mine by some mysterious laws?

Perhaps, unseen of me, within your eyes

The answer lies.

II

From your sweet lips no word hath ever fallen

To tell my heart its love is not in vain—

The bee that woos the flow’r hath honey and pollen

To cheer him on and bring him back again:

But what have I, your other friends above,

To feed my love?

III

Still, still you are my dream and my desire;

Your love is an allurement and a dare

Set for attainment, like a shining spire,

Far, far above me in the starry air:

And gazing upward, ’gainst the hope of hope,

I breast the slope.

WILL YOU FORGET?

In years to come, will you forget,

Dear girl, how often we have met?

And I have gazed into your eyes

And there beheld no sad regret

To cloud the gladness of their skies,

While in your heart—unheard as yet—

Love slept, oblivious of my sighs?—

In years to come, will you forget?

Ah, me! I only pray that when,

In other days, some man of men

Has taught those eyes to laugh and weep

With joy and sorrow, hearts must ken

When love awakens in their deep,—

I only pray some memory then,

Or sad or sweet, you still will keep

Of me and love that might have been.

CONTRASTS

No eve of summer ever can attain

The gladness of that eve of late July,

When ’mid the roses, dripping with the rain,

Against the wondrous topaz of the sky,

I met you, leaning on the pasture bars,—

While heaven and earth grew conscious of the stars.

No night of blackest winter can repeat

The bitterness of that December night,

When, at your gate, gray-glittering with sleet,

Within the glimmering square of window-light,

We parted,—long you clung unto my arm,—

While heaven and earth surrendered to the storm.

CARISSIMA MEA

I look upon my sweetheart’s face,

And, in the world about me, see

No face like hers in any place.

It is not made, as others sing

Of their young loves, like ivory,

But like a wild-rose in the spring.

Her brow is low and very fair,

And o’er it, smooth and shadowy,

Lies deep the darkness of her hair.

Beneath her brows her eyes gleam gray,

And gaze out glad and fearlessly—

Their wonder haunts me night and day.

Her eyebrows, arched and delicate,—

Twin curves of penciled ebony,—

Within their spans contain my fate.

Her mouth, that was for kisses curved,—

So small and sweet!—it well may be

That it for me is yet reserved.

Between her hair and rounded chin,

Calm with her soul’s calm purity,

There lies no shadow of a sin.

Of perfect form, she is not tall,—

Just higher than the heart of me,

O’er which I place her, all in all.

She is not shaped, as some have sung

Of their young loves, like some slim tree,

But like the moon when it is young.

Her hands, that smell of violet,

So white and fashioned fragrantly,

Have woven round my heart a net.

Yea, I have loved her many a day;

And though for me she may not be,

Still at her feet my love I lay.

Albeit she be not for me,

God send her grace and grant that she

Know naught of sorrow all her days,

And help me still to sing her praise!

AN AUTUMN NIGHT

Some things are good on autumn nights,

When with the storm the forest fights,

And in the room the heaped hearth lights

Old-fashioned press and rafter:

Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat,

A mug of cider, sharp and sweet,

And at your side a face petite,

With lips of laughter.

Upon the roof the rolling rain,

And, tapping at the window-pane,

The wind that seems a witch’s cane

That summons spells together:

A hand within your own a while;

A mouth reflecting back your smile;

And eyes, two stars, whose beams exile

All thoughts of weather.

And, while the wind lulls, still to sit

And watch her fire-lit needles flit

A-knitting, and to feel her knit

Your very heart-strings in it:

Then, when the old clock ticks “ ’t is late,”

To rise, and at the door to wait

Two words, or, at the garden-gate,

A kissing minute.

A DAUGHTER OF THE STATES

She has the eyes of some barbarian Queen

Leading her wild tribes into battle; eyes,

Wherein th’ unconquerable soul defies,

And Love sits throned, imperious and serene.

And I have thought that Liberty, alone

Among her mountain stars, might look like her,

Kneeling to God, her only emperor,

Kindling her torch on Freedom’s altar-stone.

For in her self, regal with riches of

Beauty and youth, again those Queens seem born—

Boadicea, meeting scorn with scorn,

And Ermengarde, returning love for love.

THE QUARREL

An instant only and her eyes

Flashed lightning like the angry skies;

And o’er her forehead, curving down,

Fell dark the shadow of a frown;

Then backward, deep and stormy fair,

She tossed the tempest of her hair;

Then of her lips’ full rose disdain

Made a pink-folded bud again;

Then quicker than all utterance,

All changed: and at a word, a glance,

Her anger rained its tears, then passed;

And she was in my arms at last;

The austere woman, doubly dear,

And lovelier for each falling tear:

But why we quarreled, how it grew,

I can not tell, I never knew:

Perhaps ’t was Love; he, who, with tears,

Would show how fair a face appears;

As, after storm, the sky ’s more blue,

A wildflower ’s fairer for the dew.

MIRIAM

What better praise for all her ways

Than that all days her ways illume?

Such brightness as the maiden year

Knows, when God’s kindness seems as near

As flowers whose wisdom ’s but to bloom.

Hers the deep hair: a face more fair

Than roses June sets blossoming:

The sunshine of her gladness gleams

In bloom-bright lips and cheeks, and dreams

Upon her throat’s soft coloring.

Her voice is sweet as birds that greet

With song the coming of the light:

The serious happy gleam that lies

In the dark lustre of her eyes

Is as the starlight to the night.

Beyond the sea such girls as she

It was whom Titian loved to paint,

With calm Madonna eyes, and hair

Rich auburn; robed in gold and vair,

Fair as the vision of a saint.

THE SUMMER SEA

Over the summer sea,

When the white-eyed stars look pale,

And the moonbeams make a trail

Of gold through the waves for me,

I turn my ghostly sail

Away, away,

And follow the form I see

Over the summer sea.

Over the misty sea,

Ere the cliff which highest soars

From the billow-beaten shores

Reddens all rosily,

Where the witch-white water roars,

Far on, far on.

Through the foam she beckons me

Over the summer sea.

Over the haunted sea,

When the great, gold moon low lies

On the rim of the western skies,

’Twixt the moon, she comes, and me,

And gazes in my eyes;

Low down, low down,

’Twixt the orbéd moon and me,

Over the summer sea.

Deep in the bitter sea,

Wilt thou drag me down, O sweet?

Down, down! from hair to feet

Filled with thee utterly?

Against thy heart’s wild beat?—

At last! at last!

Wilt drag me down with thee,

Deep in the summer sea?

FINALE

So let it be. Thou dare not say ’t was I!—

Here in life’s temple, where thy soul can see,

Look where the beauty of our love doth lie,

Shattered in shards, a dead divinity!—

Approach: kneel down: yea, render up one sigh!

This is the end. What need to tell it thee!

So let it be.

So let it be. Care, who hath stood with him,

And sorrow, who sat by him deified,—

For whom his face made comfort,—lo! how dim

They heap his altar which they can not hide,

While memory’s lamp swings o’er it, burning slim.—

This is the end. What shall be said beside?

So let it be.

So let it be. Did we not drain the wine,

Red, of love’s sacramental chalice, when

He laid sweet sanction on thy lips and mine?

Dash it aside! Lo, who will fill again

Now it is empty of the god divine!—

This is the end. Yea, let us say Amen.

So let it be.

CONCLUSION

The songs Love sang to us are dead:

Yet shall he sing to us again,

When the dull days are wrapped in lead,

And the red woodland drips with rain.

The lily of our love is gone,

That graced our spring with golden scent:

Now in the garden low upon

The wind-stripped way its stalk is bent.

Our rose of dreams is passed away,

That lit our summer with sweet fire:

The storm beats bare each thorny spray,

And its dead leaves are trod in mire.

The songs Love sang to us are dead:

Yet shall he sing to us again,

When the dull days are wrapped in lead,

And the red woodland drips with rain.

The marigold of memory

Shall fill our autumn then with glow:

Haply its bitterness will be

Sweeter for love of long-ago.

The cypress of forgetfulness

Shall haunt our winter with its hue:

Its apathy to us not less

Dear for the dreams love’s summer knew.

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Table of Contents

THE POEMS OF M A D I S O N C A W E I N

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW WORLD IDYLLS

ONE DAY AND ANOTHER A Lyrical Eclogue

PART I LATE SPRING

PART II EARLY SUMMER

PART III LATE SUMMER

PART IV LATE AUTUMN

PART V WINTER

RED LEAVES AND ROSES

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

WILD THORN AND LILY

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

THE IDYLL OF THE STANDING-STONE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

SOME SUMMER DAYS

I

II

III

IV

V

AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK

I

II

III

IV

A NIELLO

I

II

III

DEEP IN THE FOREST

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

WRECKAGE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

SIREN SANDS

I

II

III

IV

WAR-TIME SILHOUETTES.

I

II

III

IV

V WOUNDED

VI

VII

MOSBY AT HAMILTON

THE FEUD

LYNCHERS

DEAD MAN’S RUN

THE RAID

I

II

THE BROTHERS

EPILOGUE

POEMS OF LOVE

GERTRUDE

LOVE

HEART OF MY HEART

I

II

STROLLERS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

THE BURDEN OF DESIRE

I

II

THE TRYST

GYPSYING

UNCERTAINTY “‘He cometh not,’ she said.”—Mariana.

LOST LOVE

OVERSEAS Non numero horas nisi serenas.

AT THE STILE

FERN-SEED “We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible.”—Henry IV.

PORPHYROGENITA

I

II

III

IV

V

THE CASTLE OF LOVE He speaks

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

CONSECRATION She speaks.

ROMANTIC LOVE

I

II

III

IV

PASTORAL LOVE

ANDALIA AND THE SPRINGTIME

I

II

III

OLIVIA IN THE AUTUMN

SYLVIA OF THE WOODLAND

I

II

III

WITNESSES

I

II

III

A PUPIL OF PAN

LORA OF THE VALES

PLEDGES

I

II

III

ORIENTAL ROMANCE

I

II

III

IV

THE TOLLMAN’S DAUGHTER

CREOLE SERENADE

Sings:

IDEAL DIVINATION

APOCALYPSE

CAN I FORGET?

MY ROSE

RESTRAINT

IN JUNE

I

II

WILL O’ THE WISPS

IN A GARDEN

“IF I WERE HER LOVER”

I

II

III

NOËRA

AMONG THE ACRES OF THE WOOD

I

II

III

WORDS

THE SIRENS

WHY?

NOCTURNE

METAMORPHOSIS

AT TWENTY-ONE

KINSHIP

“SHE IS SO MUCH”

HER EYES

MESSENGERS

APART

I

II

III

THE BLIND GOD

CARA MIA

I

II

III

MARGERY

I

II

III

CONSTANCE

LYDIA

HELEN

MIGNON

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

I

II

LOVE AND A DAY

I

II

III

LOVE IN A GARDEN

I

II

III

FLORIDIAN

I

II

WHEN SHIPS PUT OUT TO SEA

I

II

III

IV

A CHRISTMAS CATCH

A SONG FOR YULE

I

II

III

CHORDS

I

II

III

AT HER GRAVE

I

II

III

IV

A CONFESSION

LAST DAYS

AT TWILIGHT

DAY AND NIGHT

THREE BIRDS

UNREQUITED

THE HEART’S DESIRE

OUT OF THE DEPTHS

I

II

III

“THIS IS THE FACE OF HER”

INDIFFERENCE

GHOST WEATHER

THE FOREST POOL

AT SUNSET

DEAD AND GONE

ONE NIGHT

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

THE PARTING

THE DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW

THE SPIRIT OF THE STAR (Love Spiritual)

THE SPIRIT OF THE VAN (Love Ideal)

THE CAVERNS OF KAF (Love Sensual)

THE SALAMANDER (Love Dæmonic)

LYANNA.

THE SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS

THE WATER WITCH

THE SUCCUBA

MASKS Cucullus non facit monachum

CARMEN

AT NINEVEH

SENORITA

SINCE THEN

AFTER DEATH

THE OLD MAN DREAMS

MEMORIES

MARCH AND MAY

IN AUTUMN

I

II

“WHEN SHE DRAWS NEAR”

I

II

REED CALL FOR APRIL

I

II

III

HER VIOLIN

I

II

III

MEETING IN SUMMER

HER VIVIEN EYES

REASONS

I

II

III

HER VESPER SONG

THE GLORY AND THE DREAM

SNOW AND FIRE

IN MAY

I

II

III

“WERE I AN ARTIST”

THE RIDE

AT PARTING

IN THE GARDEN OF GIRLS

“COME TO THE HILLS”

EVASION

I

II

III

WILL YOU FORGET?

CONTRASTS

CARISSIMA MEA

AN AUTUMN NIGHT

A DAUGHTER OF THE STATES

THE QUARREL

MIRIAM

THE SUMMER SEA

FINALE

CONCLUSION

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