The pink rose drops its petals onThe moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn;The moon, like some wide rose of white,Drops down the summer night.No rose there isAs sweet as this—Thy mouth, that greets me with a kiss.
The lattice of thy casement twinesWith jasmine vines, with jasmine vines;The stars, like jasmine blossoms, lieAbout the glimmering sky.No jasmine tressCan so caressLike thy white arms' soft loveliness.
About thy door magnolia bloomsMake sweet the glooms, make sweet the glooms;A moon-magnolia is the duskClosed in a dewy husk.However much,No bloom gives suchSoft 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, dawnWill soon make gray and wan.Still, still above,The flower ofTrue love shall live forever, Love.
When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock,And the brown bee drones i' the rose;And the west is a red-streaked four-o'clock,And summer is near its close—It's oh, for the gate and the locust lane,And dusk and dew and home again!
When the katydid sings and the cricket cries,And ghosts of the mists ascend;And the evening star is a lamp i' the skies,And summer is near its end—It's oh, for the fence and the leafy lane,And the twilight peace and the tryst again!
When the owlet hoots in the dogwood tree,That leans to the rippling Run;And the wind is a wildwood melody,And summer is almost done—It's oh, for the bridge and the bramble lane,And the fragrant hush and her hands again!
When fields smell sweet with the dewy hay,And woods are cool and wan,And a path for dreams is the Milky Way,And summer is nearly gone—It's oh, for the rock and the woodland lane,And the silence and stars and her lips again!
When the weight of the apples breaks down the boughs,And muskmelons split with sweet;And the moon is a light in Heaven's house,And summer has spent its heat—It's oh, for the lane, the trysting lane,The deep-mooned night and her love again!
Among the fields the camomileSeems blown mist in the lightning's glare:Cool, rainy odors drench the air;Night speaks above; the angry smileOf storm within her stare.
The way that I shall take to-nightIs through the wood whose branches fillThe road with double darkness, till,Between the boughs, a window's lightShines out upon the hill.
The fence; and then the path that goesAround a trailer-tangled rock,Through puckered pink and hollyhock,Unto a latch-gate's unkempt rose,And door whereat I knock.
Bright on the oldtime flower placeThe lamp streams through the foggy pane;The door is opened to the rain:And in the door—her happy faceAnd outstretched arms again.
Above her, pearl and rose the heavens lay:Around her, flowers flattered earth with gold,Or down the path in insolence held sway—Like cavaliers who ride the king's highway—Scarlet and buff, within a garden old.
Beyond the hills, faint-heard through belts of wood,Bells, Sabbath-sweet, swooned from some far-off town:Gamboge and gold, broad sunset colors strewedThe purple west as if, with God imbued,Her mighty palette Nature there laid down.
Amid such flowers, underneath such skies,Embodying all life knows of sweet and fair,She stood; love's dreams in girlhood's face and eyes,Fair as a star that comes to emphasizeThe mingled beauty of the earth and air.
Behind her, seen through vines and orchard trees,Gray with its twinkling windows—like the faceOf calm old age that sits and dreams at ease—Porched with old roses, haunts of honeybees,The homestead loomed within a lilied space.
For whom she waited in the afterglow,Star-eyed and golden 'mid the poppy and rose,I do not know; I do not care to know,—It is enough I keep her picture so,Hung up, like poetry, in my life's dull prose.
A fragrant picture, where I still may findHer face untouched of sorrow or regret,Unspoiled of contact; ever young and kind;The spiritual sweetheart of my soul and mind,She had not been, perhaps, if we had met.
When by the wall the tiger-flower swingsA head of sultry slumber and aroma;And by the path, whereon the blown rose flingsIts obsolete beauty, the long lilies foam aWhite place of perfume, like a beautiful breast—Between the pansy fire of the west,And poppy mist of moonrise in the east,This heartache will have ceased.
The witchcraft of soft music and sweet sleep—Let it beguile the burthen from my spirit,And white dreams reap me as strong reapers reapThe ripened grain and full blown blossom near it;Let me behold how gladness gives the wholeThe transformed countenance of my own soul—Between the sunset and the risen moonLet sorrow vanish soon.
And these things then shall keep me company:The elfins of the dew; the spirit of laughterWho haunts the wind; the god of melodyWho sings within the stream, that reaches after
The flow'rs that rock themselves to his caress:These of themselves shall shape my happiness,Whose visible presence I shall lean upon,Feeling that care is gone.
Forgetting how the cankered flower must die;The worm-pierced fruit fall, sicklied to its syrup;How joy, begotten 'twixt a sigh and sigh,Waits with one foot forever in the stirrup,—Remembering how within the hollow luteSoft music sleeps when music's voice is mute;And in the heart, when all seems black despair,Hope sits, awaiting there.
Let us go far from here!Here there is sadness in the early year:Here sorrow waits where joy went laughing late:The sicklied face of heaven hangs like hateAbove the woodland and the meadowland;And Spring hath taken fire in her handOf frost and made a dead bloom of her face,Which was a flower of marvel once and grace,And sweet serenity and stainless glow.Delay not. Let us go.
Let us go far awayInto the sunrise of a fairer May:Where all the nights resign them to the moon,And drug their souls with odor and soft tune,And tell their dreams in starlight: where the hoursTeach immortality with fadeless flowers;And all the day the bee weights down the bloom,And all the night the moth shakes strange perfume,Like music, from the flower-bells' affluence.Let us go far from hence.
Why should we sit and weep,And yearn with heavy eyelids still to sleep?Forever hiding from our hearts the hate,—Death within death,—life doth accumulate,Like winter snows along the barren leasAnd sterile hills, whereon no lover seesThe crocus limn the beautiful in flame;Or hyacinth and jonquil write the nameOf Love in fire, for each passer-by.Why should we sit and sigh?
We will not stay and long,Here where our souls are wasting for a song;Where no bird sings; and, dim beneath the stars,No silvery water strikes melodious bars;And in the rocks and forest-covered hillsNo quick-tongued echo from her grotto fillsWith eery syllables the solitude—The vocal image of the voice that wooed—She, of wild sounds the airy looking-glass.Our souls are tired, alas!
What should we say to her?—To Spring, who in our hearts makes no sweet stir:Who looks not on us nor gives thought unto:Too busy with the birth of flowers and dew,And vague gold wings within the chrysalis;Or Love, who will not miss us; had no kissTo give your soul or the sad soul of me,Who bound our hearts to her in poesy,Long since, and wear her badge of service still.—Have we not served our fill?
We will go far away.Song will not care, who slays our souls each dayWith the dark daggers of denying eyes,And lips of silence! … Had she sighed us lies,Not passionate, yet falsely tremulous,And lent her mouth to ours in mockery; thusSmiled from calm eyes as if appreciative;Then, then our love had taught itself to liveFeeding itself on hope, and recompense.But no!—So let us hence.
So be the Bible shutOf all her Beauty, and her wisdom butA clasp for memory! We will not seekThe light that came not when the soul was weakWith longing, and the darkness gave no signOf star-born comfort. Nay! why kneel and whineSad psalms of patience and hosannas ofOld hope and dreary canticles of love?—Let us depart, since, as we long supposed,For us God's book was closed.
It's—Oh, for the hills, where the wind's some oneWith a vagabond foot that follows!And a cheer-up hand that he claps uponYour arm with the hearty words, "Come on!We'll soon be out of the hollows,My heart!We'll soon be out of the hollows."
It's—Oh, for the songs, where the hope's some oneWith a renegade foot that doubles!And a jolly lilt that he flings to the sunAs he turns with the friendly laugh, "Come on!We'll soon be out of the troubles,My heart!We'll soon be out of the troubles!"
This was her home; one mossy gable thrustAbove the cedars and the locust trees:This was her home, whose beauty now is dust,A lonely memory for melodiesThe wild birds sing, the wild birds and the bees.
Here every evening is a prayer: no boastOr ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth;Here, through the twilight, like a pale flower's ghost,A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth;And dusk spreads darkness like a dewy cloth.
In vagabond velvet, on the placid day,A stain of crimson, lolls the butterfly;The south wind sows with ripple and with rayThe pleasant waters; and the gentle skyLooks on the homestead like a quiet eye.
Their melancholy quaver, lone and low,When day is done, the gray tree-toads repeat:The whippoorwills, far in the afterglow,Complain to silence: and the lightnings beat,In one still cloud, glimmers of golden heat.
He comes not yet: not till the dusk is dead,And all the western glow is far withdrawn;Not till,—a sleepy mouth love's kiss makes red,—The baby bud opes in a rosy yawn,Breathing sweet guesses at the dreamed-of dawn.
When in the shadows, like a rain of gold,The fireflies stream steadily; and brightAlong the moss the glowworm, as of old,A crawling sparkle—like a crooked lightIn smoldering vellum—scrawls a square of night,—
Then will he come; and she will lean to him,—She,—the sweet phantom,—memory of that place,—Between the starlight and his eyes; so dimWith suave control and soul-compelling grace,He cannot help but speak her, face to face.
The hills are full of propheciesAnd ancient voices of the dead;Of hidden shapes that no man sees,Pale, visionary presences,That speak the things no tongue hath said,No mind hath thought, no eye hath read.
The streams are full of oracles,And momentary whisperings;An immaterial beauty swellsIts breezy silver o'er the shellsWith wordless speech that sings and singsThe message of diviner things.
No indeterminable thought is theirs,The stars', the sunsets' and the flowers';Whose inexpressible speech declaresTh' immortal Beautiful, who sharesThis mortal riddle which is ours,Beyond the forward-flying hours.
It holds and beckons in the streams;It lures and touches us in allThe flowers of the golden fall—The mystic essence of our dreams:A nymph blows bubbling music whereFaint water ripples down the rocks;A faun goes dancing hoiden locks,And piping a Pandean air,Through trees the instant wind shakes bare.
Our dreams are never otherwiseThan real when they hold us so;We in some future life shall knowThem parts of it and recognizeThem as ideal substance, whenceThe actual is—(as flowers and trees,From color sources no one sees,Draw dyes, the substance of a sense)—Material with intelligence.
What intimations made them wise,The mournful pine, the pleasant beech?What strange and esoteric speech?—(Communicated from the skiesIn runic whispers)—that invokesThe boles that sleep within the seeds,And out of narrow darkness leadsThe vast assemblies of the oaks.
Within his knowledge, what one readsThe poems written by the flowers?The sermons, past all speech of ours,Preached by the gospel of the weeds?—O eloquence of coloring!O thoughts of syllabled perfume!O beauty uttered into bloom!Teach me your language! let me sing!
Along my mind flies suddenlyA wildwood thought that will not die;That makes me brother to the bee,And cousin to the butterfly:A thought, such as gives perfume toThe blushes of the bramble-rose,And, fixed in quivering crystal, glowsA captive in the prismed dew.
It leads the feet no certain way;No frequent path of human feet:Its wild eyes follow me all day;All day I hear its wild heart beat:And in the night it sings and sighsThe songs the winds and waters love;Its wild heart lying tranced above,And tranced the wildness of its eyes.
Oh, joy, to walk the way that goesThrough woods of sweet-gum and of beech!Where, like a ruby left in reach,The berry of the dogwood glows:Or where the bristling hillsides mass,'Twixt belts of tawny sassafras,Brown shocks of corn in wigwam rows!
Where, in the hazy morning, runsThe stony branch that pools and drips,The red-haws and the wild-rose hipsAre strewn like pebbles; and the sun'sOwn gold seems captured by the weeds;To see, through scintillating seeds,The hunters steal with glimmering guns!
Oh, joy, to go the path which liesThrough woodlands where the trees are tall!Beneath the misty moon of fall,Whose ghostly girdle prophesiesA morn wind-swept and gray with rain;When, o'er the lonely, leaf-blown lane,The night-hawk like a dead leaf flies!
To stand within the dewy ringWhere pale death smites the boneset blooms,And everlasting's flowers, and plumesOf mint, with aromatic wing!And hear the creek,—whose sobbing seemsA wild-man murmuring in his dreams,—And insect violins that sing.
Or where the dim persimmon treeRains on the path its frosty fruit,And in the oak the owl doth hoot,Beneath the moon and mist, to seeThe outcast Year go,—Hagar-wise,—With far-off, melancholy eyes,And lips that sigh for sympathy.
Towards evening, where the sweet-gum flungIts thorny balls among the weeds,And where the milkweed's sleepy seeds,—A faery Feast of Lanterns,—swung;The cricket tuned a plaintive lyre,And o'er the hills the sunset hungA purple parchment scrawled with fire.
From silver-blue to amethystThe shadows deepened in the vale;And belt by belt the pearly-paleAladdin fabric of the mistBuilt up its exhalation far;A jewel on an Afrit's wrist,One star gemmed sunset's cinnabar.
Then night drew near, as when, alone,The heart and soul grow intimate;And on the hills the twilight sateWith shadows, whose wild robes were sownWith dreams and whispers;—dreams, that ledThe heart once with love's monotone,And memories of the living-dead.
All night the rain-gusts shook the leavesAround my window; and the blastRumbled the flickering flue, and fastThe storm streamed from the dripping eaves.As if—'neath skies gone mad with fear—The witches' Sabboth galloped past,The forests leapt like startled deer.
All night I heard the sweeping sleet;And when the morning came, as slowAs wan affliction, with the woeOf all the world dragged at her feet,No spear of purple shattered throughThe dark gray of the east; no bowOf gold shot arrows swift and blue.
But rain, that whipped the windows; filledThe spouts with rushings; and aroundThe garden stamped, and sowed the groundWith limbs and leaves; the wood-pool filledWith overgurgling.—Bleak and coldThe fields looked, where the footpath woundThrough teasel and bur-marigold.
Yet there's a kindness in such daysOf gloom, that doth console regretWith sympathy of tears, which wetOld eyes that watch the back-log blaze.—A kindness, alien to the deepGlad blue of sunny days that letNo thought in of the lives that weep.
This dawn, through which the Autumn glowers,—As might a face within our sleep,With stone-gray eyes that weep and weep,And wet brows bound with sodden flowers,—Is sunset to some sister land;A land of ruins and of palms;Rich sunset, crimson with long calms,—Whose burning belt low mountains bar,—That sees some brown Rebecca standBeside a well the camel-bandWinds down to 'neath the evening star.
O sunset, sister to this dawn!O dawn, whose face is turned away!Who gazest not upon this day,But back upon the day that's gone!Enamored so of loveliness,The retrospect of what thou wast,Oh, to thyself the present trust!And as thy past be beautifulWith hues, that never can grow less!Waiting thy pleasure to expressNew beauty lest the world grow dull.
Down in the woods a sorcerer,Out of rank rain and death, distills,—Through chill alembics of the air,—Aromas that brood everywhereAmong the whisper-haunted hills:The bitter myrrh of dead leaves fillsWet valleys (where the gaunt weeds bleach)With rainy scents of wood-decay;—As if a spirit all the daySat breathing softly 'neath the beech.
With other eyes I see her flit,The wood-witch of the wild perfumes,Among her elfin owls,—that sit,A drowsy white, in crescent-litDim glens of opalescent glooms:—Where, for her magic, buds and bloomsMysterious perfumes, while she stands,A thornlike shadow, summoningThe sleepy odors, that take wingLike bubbles from her dewy hands.
Among the woods they call to me—The lights that haunt the wood and stream;Voices of such white ecstasyAs moves with hushed lips through a dream:They stand in auraed radiances,Or flash with nimbused limbs acrossTheir golden shadows on the moss,Or slip in silver through the trees.
What love can give the heart in meMore hope and exaltation thanThe hand of light that tips the treeAnd beckons far from marts of man?That reaches foamy fingers throughThe broken ripple, and repliesWith sparkling speech of lips and eyesTo souls who seek and still pursue.
Give me the streams, that counterfeitThe twilight of autumnal skies;The shadowy, silent waters, litWith fire like a woman's eyes!Slow waters that, in autumn, glassThe scarlet-strewn and golden grass,And drink the sunset's tawny dyes.
Give me the pools, that lie amongThe centuried forests! give me those,Deep, dim, and sad as darkness hungBeneath the sunset's somber rose:Still pools, in whose vague mirrors look—Like ragged gypsies round a bookOf magic—trees in wild repose.
No quiet thing, or innocent,Of water, earth, or air shall pleaseMy soul now: but the violentBetween the sunset and the trees:The fierce, the splendid, and intense,That love matures in innocence,Like mighty music, give me these!
When thorn-tree copses still were bareAnd black along the turbid brook;When catkined willows blurred and shookGreat tawny tangles in the air;In bottomlands, the first thaw makesAn oozy bog, beneath the trees,Prophetic of the spring that wakes,Sang the sonorous hylodes.
Now that wild winds have stripped the thorn,And clogged with leaves the forest-creek;Now that the woods look blown and bleak,And webs are frosty white at morn;At night beneath the spectral sky,A far foreboding cry I hear—The wild fowl calling as they fly?Or wild voice of the dying Year?
And still my soul holds phantom tryst,When chestnuts hiss among the coals,Upon the Evening of All Souls,When all the night is moon and mist,And all the world is mystery;I kiss dear lips that death hath kissed,And gaze in eyes no man may see,Filled with a love long lost to me.
I hear the night-wind's ghostly gloveFlutter the window: then the knobOf some dark door turn, with a sobAs when love comes to gaze on loveWho lies pale-coffined in a room:And then the iron gallop ofThe storm, who rides outside; his plumeSweeping the night with dread and gloom.
So fancy takes the mind, and paintsThe darkness with eidolon light,And writes the dead's romance in nightOn the dim Evening of All Saints:Unheard the hissing nuts; the clinkAnd fall of coals, whose shadow faintsAround the hearts that sit and think,Borne far beyond the actual's brink.
I heard the wind, before the mornStretched gaunt, gray fingers 'thwart my pane,Drive clouds down, a dark dragon-train;Its iron visor closed, a hornOf steel from out the north it wound.—No morn like yesterday's! whose mouth,A cool carnation, from the southBreathed through a golden reed the soundOf days that drop clear gold uponCerulean silver floors of dawn.
And all of yesterday is lostAnd swallowed in to-day's wild light—The birth deformed of day and night,The illegitimate, who costIts mother secret tears and sighs;Unlovely since unloved; and chilledWith sorrows and the shame that filledIts parents' love; which was not wiseIn passion as the day and nightThat married yestermorn with light.
Down through the dark, indignant trees,On indistinguishable wingsOf storm, the wind of evening swings;Before its insane anger fleesDistracted leaf and shattered bough:There is a rushing as when seasOf thunder beat an iron prowOn reefs of wrath and roaring wreck:'Mid stormy leaves, a hurrying speckOf flickering blackness, driven by,A mad bat whirls along the sky.
Like some sad shadow, in the eve'sDeep melancholy—visibleAs by some strange and twilight spell—A gaunt girl stands among the leaves,The night-wind in her dolorous dress:Symbolic of the life that grieves,Of toil that patience makes not less,Her load of fagots fallen there.—A wilder shadow sweeps the air,And she is gone…. Was it the dumbEidolon of the month to come?
The song birds—are they flown away?The song birds of the summer time,That sang their souls into the day,And set the laughing hours to rhyme.No catbird scatters through the bushThe sparkling crystals of its song;Within the woods no hermit-thrushThridding with vocal gold the hush.
All day the crows fly cawing past:The acorns drop: the forests scowl:At night I hear the bitter blastHoot with the hooting of the owl.The wild creeks freeze: the ways are strewnWith leaves that clog: beneath the treeThe bird, that set its toil to tune,And made a home for melody,Lies dead beneath the snow-white moon.
Far off a wind blew, and I heardWild echoes of the woods reply—The herald of some royal word,With bannered trumpet, blown on high,Meseemed then passed me by:
Who summoned marvels there to meet,With pomp, upon a cloth of gold;Where berries of the bittersweet,That, splitting, showed the coals they hold,Sowed garnets through the wold:
Where, under tents of maples, seedsOf smooth carnelian, oval red,The spice-bush spangled: where, like beads,The dogwood's rounded rubies—fedWith fire—blazed and bled.
And there I saw amid the routOf months, in richness cavalier,A minnesinger—lips apout;A gypsy face; straight as a spear;A rose stuck in his ear:
Eyes, sparkling like old German wine,All mirth and moonlight; naught to spareOf slender beard, that lent a lineTo his short lip; October there,With chestnut curling hair.
His brown baretta swept its plumeRed through the leaves; his purple hose,Puffed at the thighs, made gleam of gloom;His tawny doublet, slashed with rose,And laced with crimson bows,
Outshone the wahoo's scarlet pride,The haw, in rich vermilion dressed:A dagger dangling at his side,A slim lute, banded to his breast,Whereon his hands were pressed.
I saw him come…. And, lo, to hearThe lilt of his approaching lute,No wonder that the regnant YearBent down her beauty, blushing mute,Her heart beneath his foot.
Down through the woods, along the wayThat fords the stream; by rock and tree,Where in the bramble-bell the beeSwings; and through twilights green and grayThe redbird flashes suddenly,My thoughts went wandering to-day.
I found the fields where, row on row,The blackberries hang dark with fruit;Where, nesting at the elder's root,The partridge whistles soft and low;The fields, that billow to the footOf those old hills we used to know.
There lay the pond, all willow-bound,On whose bright face, when noons were hot,We marked the bubbles rise; some plotTo lure us in; while all aroundOur heads,—like faery fancies,—shotThe dragonflies without a sound.
The pond, above which evening bentTo gaze upon her gypsy face;Wherein the twinkling night would traceA vague, inverted firmament;In which the green frogs tuned their bass,And firefly sparkles came and went.
The oldtime place we often ranged,When we were playmates, you and I;The oldtime fields, with boyhood's skyStill blue above them!—Naught was changed:Nothing.—Alas! then, tell me whyShould we be? whom the years estranged.
With eyes hand-arched he looks intoThe morning's face; then turns awayWith truant feet, all wet with dew,Out for a holiday.
The hill brook sings; incessant stars,Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast;And where he wades its water-barsIts song is happiest.
A comrade of the chinquapin,He looks into its knotty eyesAnd sees its heart; and, deep within,Its soul that makes him wise.
The wood-thrush knows and follows him,Who whistles up the birds and bees;And round him all the perfumes swimOf woodland loam and trees.
Where'er he pass the silvery springs'Foam-people sing the flowers awake;And sappy lips of bark-clad thingsLaugh ripe each berried brake.
His touch is a companionship;His word an old authority:He comes, a lyric on his lip,The woodboy—Poesy.
O heart,—that beat the bird's blithe blood,The blithe bird's strain, and understoodThe song it sang to leaf and bud,—What dost thou in the wood?
O soul,—that kept the brook's glad flow,The glad brook's word to sun and moon,—What dost thou here where song lies low,And dead the dreams of June?
Where once was heard a voice of song,The hautboys of the mad winds sing;Where once a music flowed along,The rain's wild bugle's ring.
The weedy water frets and ails,And moans in many a sunless fall;And, o'er the melancholy, trailsThe black crow's eldritch call.
Unhappy brook! O withered wood!O days, whom Death makes comrades of!Where are the birds that thrilled the bloodWhen Life struck hands with Love?
A song, one soared against the blue;A song, one silvered in the leaves;A song, one blew where orchards grewGold-appled to the eaves.
The birds are flown; the flowers, dead;And sky and earth are bleak and gray:Where Joy once went, all light of tread,Grief haunts the leaf-wild way.
The days that clothed white limbs with heat,And rocked the red rose on their breast,Have passed with amber-sandaled feetInto the ruby-gated west.
These were the days that filled the heartWith overflowing riches ofLife, in whose soul no dream shall startBut hath its origin in love.
Now come the days gray-huddled inThe haze; whose foggy footsteps drip;Who pin beneath a gypsy chinThe frosty marigold and hip.
The days, whose forms fall shadowyAthwart the heart: whose misty breathShapes saddest sweets of memoryOut of the bitterness of death.
Ah me! too soon the autumn comesAmong these purple-plaintive hills!Too soon among the forest gumsPremonitory flame she spills,Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.
Her white fogs veil the morn, that rimsWith wet the moonflower's elfin moons;And, like exhausted starlight, dimsThe last slim lily-disk; and swoonsWith scents of hazy afternoons.
Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,And build the west's cadaverous fires,Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,And hands that wake an ancient lyre,Beside the ghost of dead Desire.
Secluded, solitary on some underbough,Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light,Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching howThe slow toadstool comes bulging, moony white,Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,The glowworm gathers silver to endowThe darkness with; or how the dew conspiresTo hang, at dusk, with lamps of chilly firesEach blade that shrivels now.
O vague confederate of the whippoorwill,Of owl and cricket and the katydid!Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrillVibrating note and send'st it where, half hidIn cedars, twilight sleeps—each azure lidDrooping a line of golden eyeball still.—Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voiceWithin the Garden of the Hours apoiseOn dusk's deep daffodil.
Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noonShows her tanned face among the thirsting cloverAnd parching meadows, thy tenebrious tuneWakes with the dew or when the rain is over.Thou troubadour of wetness and damp loverOf all cool things! admitted comrade boonOf twilight's hush, and little intimateOf eve's first fluttering star and delicateRound rim of rainy moon!
Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy hornInform the gnomes and goblins of the hourWhen they may gambol under haw and thorn,Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall towerThe liriodendron is? from whence is borneThe elfin music of thy bell's deep bass,To summon Faeries to their starlit maze,To summon them or warn.
He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence,Or on the fallen tree,—brown as a leafFall stripes with russet,—gambols down the denseGreen twilight of the woods. We see not whenceHe comes, nor whither (in a time so brief)He vanishes—swift carrier of some Fay,Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief—A goblin glimpse upon some wildwood way.
What harlequin mood of nature qualifiedHim so with happiness? and limbed him withSuch young activity as winds, that rideThe ripples, have, dancing on every side?As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pithThrough hearts of trees? yet made him to delight,Gnome-like, in darkness,—like a moonlight myth,—Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.
Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a holeLeads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps;Lulled by near noises of the laboring moleTunneling its mine—like some ungainly Troll—Or by the tireless cricket there that keepsPicking its rusty and monotonous lute;Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps,And trees unrolling mighty root on root.
Such is the music of his sleeping hours.Day hath another—'tis a melodyHe trips to, made by the assembled flowers,And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers,And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze(The silent music of Earth's ecstasy)The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days.
That day we wandered 'mid the hills,—so loneClouds are not lonelier, the forest layIn emerald darkness round us. Many a stoneAnd gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:And many a bird the glimmering light alongShowered the golden bubbles of its song.
Then in the valley, where the brook went by,Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,—An isolated slip of fallen sky,Epitomizing heaven in its sum,—An iris bloomed—blue, as if, flower-disguised,The gaze of Spring had there materialized.
I have forgotten many things since then—Much beauty and much happiness and grief;And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men,Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief."'Tis winter now," so says each barren bough;And face and hair proclaim 'tis winter now.
I would forget the gladness of that spring!I would forget that day when she and I,Between the bird-song and the blossoming,Went hand in hand beneath the soft May sky!—Much is forgotten, yea—and yet, and yet,The things we would we never can forget.
Nor I how May then minted treasuriesOf crowfoot gold; and molded out of lightThe sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalicesOf limpid spar were streaked with rosy white:Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort,And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt.
But most of all, yea, it were well for me,Me and my heart, that I forget that flower,The blue wild iris, azure fleur-de-lis,That she and I together found that hour.Its recollection can but emphasizeThe pain of loss, remindful of her eyes.
The hot sunflowers by the glaring pikeLift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops,Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spikeAgainst the furious sunlight. Field and copseAre sick with summer: now, with breathless stops,The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beatTheir castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,—Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,—An empty wagon rattles through the heat.
Where now the blue wild iris? flowers whose mouthsAre moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint,That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South'sWild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hintAt coming showers that the rainbows tint?Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows?The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves;The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves;The freckled touch-me-not and forest rose.
Dead! dead! all dead beside the drouth-burnt brook,Shrouded in moss or in the shriveled grass.Where waved their bells, from which the wild-bee shookThe dewdrop once,—gaunt, in a nightmare mass,The rank weeds crowd; through which the cattle pass,Thirsty and lean, seeking some meager spring,Closed in with thorns, on which stray bits of woolThe panting sheep have left, that sought the cool,From morn till evening wearily wandering.
No bird is heard; no throat to whistle awakeThe sleepy hush; to let its music leakFresh, bubble-like, through bloom-roofs of the brake:Only the green-gray heron, famine-weak,—Searching the stale pools of the minnowless creek,—Utters its call; and then the rain-crow, too,False prophet now, croaks to the stagnant air;While overhead,—still as if painted there,—A buzzard hangs, black on the burning blue.
Around, the stillness deepened; then the grainWent wild with wind; and every briery laneWas swept with dust; and then, tempestuous black,Hillward the tempest heaved a monster back,That on the thunder leaned as on a cane;And on huge shoulders bore a cloudy pack,That gullied gold from many a lightning-crack:One big drop splashed and wrinkled down the pane,And then field, hill, and wood were lost in rain.
At last, through clouds,—as from a cavern hewn.Into night's heart,—the sun burst angry roon;And every cedar, with its weight of wet,Against the sunset's fiery splendor set,Frightened to beauty, seemed with rubies strewn:Then in drenched gardens, like sweet phantoms met,Dim odors rose of pink and mignonette;And in the east a confidence, that soonGrew to the calm assurance of the moon.
Into the sunset's turquoise margeThe moon dips, like a pearly bargeEnchantment sails through magic seasTo faeryland 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 handsOver the hills and away.
Above the wood's black caldron bendsThe witch-faced Night and, muttering, blendsThe dew and heat, whose bubbles makeThe mist and musk that haunt the brakeOver the hills and away.
Oh, come with me, and let us goBeyond the sunset lying low;Beyond the twilight and the night,Into Love's kingdom of long light,Over the hills and away.
Small twilight singerOf dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer wingerOf dusk's dim glimmer,How chill thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmerVibrate, soft-sighing,Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying.I stand and listen,And at thy song the garden-beds, that glistenWith rose and lily,Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly,Breathing around its cold and colorless breath,Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death.
I see thee quaintlyBeneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly—(As thin as spangleOf cobwebbed rain)—held up at airy angle;I hear thy tinkleWith faery notes the silvery stillness sprinkle;
Investing whollyThe moonlight with divinest melancholy:Until, in seeming,I see the Spirit of Summer sadly dreamingAmid her ripened orchards, russet-strewn,Her great, grave eyes fixed on the harvest-moon.
As dewdrops beady;As mist minute, thy notes ring low and reedy:The vaguest vaporOf melody, now near; now, like some taperOf sound, far-fading—Thou will-o'-wisp of music aye evading.Among the bowers,The fog-washed stalks of Autumn's weeds and flowers,By hill and hollow,I hear thy murmur and in vain I follow—Thou jack-o'-lantern voice, thou pixy cry,Thou dirge, that tellest Beauty she must die.
And when the franticWild winds of Autumn with the dead leaves antic;And walnuts scatterThe mire of lanes; and dropping acorns patterIn grove and forest,Like some frail grief with the rude blast thou warrest,Sending thy slenderFar cry against the gale, that, rough, untender,Untouched of sorrow,Sweeps thee aside, where, haply, I to-morrowShall find thee lying—tiny, cold and crushed,Thy weak wings folded and thy music hushed.
The Winter Wind, the wind of death,Who knocked upon my door,Now through the keyhole entereth,Invisible and hoar:He breathes around his icy breathAnd treads the flickering floor.
I heard him, wandering in the night,Tap at my windowpane;With ghostly fingers, snowy white,I heard him tug in vain,Until the shuddering candlelightDid cringe with fear and strain.
The fire, awakened by his voice,Leapt up with frantic arms,Like some wild babe that greets with noiseIts father home who storms,With rosy gestures that rejoice,And crimson kiss that warms.
Now in the hearth he sits and, drownedAmong the ashes, blows;Or through the room goes stealing roundOn cautious-creeping toes,Deep-mantled in the drowsy soundOf night that sleets and snows.
And oft, like some thin faery-thing,The stormy hush amid,I hear his captive trebles singBeneath the kettle's lid;Or now a harp of elfland stringIn some dark cranny hid.
Again I hear him, implike, whine,Cramped in the gusty flue;Or knotted in the resinous pineRaise goblin cry and hue,While through the smoke his eyeballs shine,A sooty red and blue.
At last I hear him, nearing dawn,Take up his roaring broom,And sweep wild leaves from wood and lawn,And from the heavens the gloom,To show the gaunt world lying wan,And morn's cold rose a-bloom.
When dusk is drowned in drowsy dreams,And slow the hues of sunset die;When firefly and moth go by,And in still streams the new moon seemsAnother moon and sky:Then from the hills there comes a cry,The owlet's cry:A shivering voice that sobs and screams,With terror screams:—
"Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?Who rides through the dusk and dew,With a pair of horns,As thin as thorns,And face a bubble-blue?—Who, who, who!Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?"
When night has dulled the lily's white,And opened wide the moonflower's eyes;When pale mists rise and veil the skies,And round the height in whispering flightThe night-wind sounds and sighs:Then in the wood again it cries,The owlet cries:A shivering voice that calls in fright,In maundering fright:—
"Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?Who walks with a shuffling shoe'Mid the gusty trees,With a face none sees,And a form as ghostly, too?—Who, who, who!Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?"
When midnight leans a listening earAnd tinkles on her insect lutes;When 'mid the roots the cricket flutes,And marsh and mere, now far, now near,A jack-o'-lantern foots:Then o'er the pool again it hoots,The owlet hoots:A voice that shivers as with fear,That cries with fear:—
"Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?Who creeps with his glowworm crewAbove the mireWith a corpse-light fire,As only dead men do?—Who, who, who!Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?"
From out the hills where twilight stands,Above the shadowy pasture lands,With strained and strident cry,Beneath pale skies that sunset bands,The bull-bats fly.
A cloud hangs over, strange of shape,And, colored like the half-ripe grape,Seems some uneven stainOn heaven's azure; thin as crape,And blue as rain.
By ways, that sunset's sardonyxO'erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks,Through which the cattle came,The mullein-stalks seem giant wicksOf downy flame.
From woods no glimmer enters in,Above the streams that, wandering, winTo where the wood pool bids,Those haunters of the dusk begin,—The katydids.
Adown the dark the firefly marksIts flight in gold and emerald sparks;And, loosened from his chain,The shaggy mastiff bounds and barks,And barks again.
Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay;And now an owlet, far away,Cries twice or thrice, "T-o-o-w-h-o-o";And cool dim moths of mottled grayFlit through the dew.
The silence sounds its frog-bassoon,Where, on the woodland creek's lagoon,—Pale as a ghostly girlLost 'mid the trees,—looks down the moonWith face of pearl.
Within the shed where logs, late hewed,Smell forest-sweet, and chips of woodMake blurs of white and brown,The brood-hen cuddles her warm broodOf teetering down.
The clattering guineas in the treeDin for a time; and quietlyThe henhouse, near the fence,Sleeps, save for some brief rivalryOf cocks and hens.
A cowbell tinkles by the rails,Where, streaming white in foaming pails,Milk makes an uddery sound;While overhead the black bat trailsAround and round.
The night is still. The slow cows chewA drowsy cud. The bird that flewAnd sang is in its nest.It is the time of falling dew,Of dreams and rest.
The beehives sleep; and round the walk,The garden path, from stalk to stalkThe bungling beetle booms,Where two soft shadows stand and talkAmong the blooms.
The stars are thick: the light is deadThat dyed the west: and Drowsyhead,Tuning his cricket-pipe,Nods, and some apple, round and red,Drops over-ripe.
Now down the road, that shambles by,A window, shining like an eyeThrough climbing rose and gourd,Shows Age and young RusticitySeated at board.
Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reedlike breast,Makest meridian music, long and loud,Accentuating summer!—Dost thy bestTo make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowdWith lonesomeness the long, close afternoon—When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady-browed,Upon his sultry scythe—thou tangible tuneOf heat, whose waves incessantly ariseQuivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies.
Thou singest, and upon his haggard hillsDrouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes;Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fillsThe land with death as sullenly he takesDownward his dusty way. 'Midst woods and fieldsAt every pool his burning thirst he slakes:No grove so deep, no bank so high it shieldsA spring from him; no creek evades his eye:He needs but look and they are withered dry.
Thou singest, and thy song is as a spellOf somnolence to charm the land with sleep;A thorn of sound that pierces dale and dell,Diffusing slumber over vale and steep.Sleepy the forest, nodding sleepy boughs;Sleepy the pastures with their sleepy sheep:Sleepy the creek where sleepily the cowsStand knee-deep; and the very heaven seemsSleepy and lost in undetermined dreams.
Art thou a rattle that Monotony,Summer's dull nurse, old sister of slow Time,Shakes for Day's peevish pleasure, who in gleeTakes its discordant music for sweet rhyme?Or oboe that the Summer Noontide plays,Sitting with Ripeness 'neath the orchard tree,Trying repeatedly the same shrill phrase,Until the musky peach with wearinessDrops, and the hum of murmuring bees grows less?
The west builds high a sepulcherOf cloudy granite and of gold,Where twilight's priestly hours interThe Day like some great king of old.
A censer, rimmed with silver fire,The new moon swings above his tomb;While, organ-stops of God's own choir,Star after star throbs in the gloom.
And Night draws near, the sadly sweet—A nun whose face is calm and fair—And kneeling at the dead Day's feetHer soul goes up in mists like prayer.
In prayer, we feel through dewy gleamAnd flowery fragrance, and—aboveAll earth—the ecstasy and dreamThat haunt the mystic heart of love.
Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise,Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skiesPilot great clouds like towering argosies,And hawk and buzzard breast the azure breeze.With many a foaming fall and glimmering reachOf placid murmur, under elm and beech,The creek goes twinkling through long gleams and gloomsOf woodland quiet, summered with perfumes:The creek, in whose clear shallows minnow-schoolsGlitter or dart; and by whose deeper poolsThe blue kingfishers and the herons haunt;That, often startled from the freckled flauntOf blackberry-lilies—where they feed or hide—Trail a lank flight along the forestsideWith eery clangor. Here a sycamoreSmooth, wave-uprooted, builds from shore to shoreA headlong bridge; and there, a storm-hurled oakLays a long dam, where sand and gravel chokeThe water's lazy way. Here mistflower blursIts bit of heaven; there the ox-eye stirsIts gloaming hues of pearl and gold; and here,A gray, cool stain, like dawn's own atmosphere,The dim wild carrot lifts its crumpled crest:And over all, at slender flight or rest,The dragonflies, like coruscating raysOf lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase,Drowsily sparkle through the summer days:And, dewlap-deep, here from the noontide heatThe bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat;And through the willows girdling the hill,Now far, now near, borne as the soft winds will,Comes the low rushing of the water-mill.
Ah, lovely to me from a little child,How changed the place! wherein once, undefiled,The glad communion of the sky and streamWent with me like a presence and a dream.Where once the brambled meads and orchardlands,Poured ripe abundance down with mellow handsOf summer; and the birds of field and woodCalled to me in a tongue I understood;And in the tangles of the old rail-fenceEven the insect tumult had some sense,And every sound a happy eloquence:And more to me than wisest books can teachThe wind and water said; whose words did reachMy soul, addressing their magnificent speech,—Raucous and rushing,—from the old mill-wheel,That made the rolling mill-cogs snore and reel,Like some old ogre in a faerytaleNodding above his meat and mug of ale.
How memory takes me back the ways that lead—As when a boy—through woodland and through mead!To orchards fruited; or to fields in bloom;Or briery fallows, like a mighty room,Through which the winds swing censers of perfume,And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit;—A wildwood feast, that stayed the plowboy's footWhen to the tasseling acres of the cornHe drove his team, fresh in the primrose morn;And from the liberal banquet, nature lent,Plucked dewy handfuls as he whistling went.—
A boy once more, I stand with sunburnt feetAnd watch the harvester sweep down the wheat;Or laze with warm limbs in the unstacked strawNear by the thresher, whose insatiate mawDevours the sheaves, hot-drawling out its hum—Like some great sleepy bee, above a bloom,Made drunk with honey—while, grown big with grain,The bulging sacks receive the golden rain.Again I tread the valley, sweet with hay,And hear the bobwhite calling far away,Or wood-dove cooing in the elder-brake;Or see the sassafras bushes madly shakeAs swift, a rufous instant, in the glenThe red fox leaps and gallops to his den:Or, standing in the violet-colored gloam,Hear roadways sound with holiday riding homeFrom church or fair, or country barbecue,Which half the county to some village drew.
How spilled with berries were its summer hills,And strewn with walnuts all its autumn rills!—And chestnuts too! burred from the spring's long flowers;June's, when their tree-tops streamed delirious showersOf blossoming silver, cool, crepuscular,And like a nebulous radiance shone afar.—And maples! how their sappy hearts would pourRude troughs of syrup, when the winter hoarSteamed with the sugar-kettle, day and night,And, red, the snow was streaked with firelight.Then it was glorious! the mill-dam's edgeOne slope of frosty crystal, laid a ledgeOf pearl across; above which, sleeted treesTossed arms of ice, that, clashing in the breeze,Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles,Thin as the peal of far-off elfin bells:A sound that in my city dreams I hear,That brings before me, under skies that clear,The old mill in its winter garb of snow,Its frozen wheel like a hoar beard below,And its west windows, two deep eyes aglow.
Ah, ancient mill, still do I picture o'erThy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor;Thy door,—like some brown, honest hand of toil,And honorable with service of the soil,—Forever open; to which, on his backThe prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack,And while the miller measures out his toll,Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,—That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,—The harmless gossip of the passing day:Good country talk, that says how so-and-soLived, died, or wedded: how curculioAnd codling-moth play havoc with the fruit,Smut ruins the corn and blight the grapes to boot:Or what is news from town: next county fair:How well the crops are looking everywhere:—Now this, now that, on which their interests fix,Prospects for rain or frost, and politics.While, all around, the sweet smell of the mealFilters, warm-pouring from the rolling wheelInto the bin; beside which, mealy white,The miller looms, dim in the dusty light.
Again I see the miller's home betweenThe crinkling creek and hills of beechen green:Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown,Who oft o'erawed my boyhood with his frownAnd gray-browed mien: again he tries to reachMy youthful soul with fervid scriptural speech.—For he, of all the countryside confessed,The most religious was and goodliest;A Methodist, who at all meetings led;Prayed with his family ere they went to bed.No books except the Bible had he read—At least so seemed it to my younger head.—All things of Heaven and Earth he'd prove by this,Be it a fact or mere hypothesis:For to his simple wisdom, reverent,"The Bible says"was all of argument.—God keep his soul! his bones were long since laidAmong the sunken gravestones in the shadeOf those dark-lichened rocks, that wall aroundThe family burying-ground with cedars crowned:Where bristling teasel and the brier combineWith clambering wood-rose and the wildgrape-vineTo hide the stone whereon his name and datesNeglect, with mossy hand, obliterates.