Whether it be that we in letters traceThe pure exactness of a wood bird's strain,And name it song; or with the brush attainThe high perfection of a wildflower's face;Or mold in difficult marble all the graceWe know as man; or from the wind and rainCatch elemental rapture of refrainAnd mark in music to due time and place:The aim of Art is Nature; to unfoldHer truth and beauty to the souls of menIn close suggestions; in whose forms is castNothing so new but 'tis long eons old;Nothing so old but 'tis as young as whenThe mind conceived it in the ages past.
This is the tomboy month of all the year,March, who comes shouting o'er the winter hills,Waking the world with laughter, as she wills,Or wild halloos, a windflower in her ear.She stops a moment by the half-thawed mereAnd whistles to the wind, and straightway shrillsThe hyla's song, and hoods of daffodilsCrowd golden round her, leaning their heads to hear.Then through the woods, that drip with all their eaves,Her mad hair blown about her, loud she goesSinging and calling to the naked trees;And straight the oilets of the little leavesOpen their eyes in wonder, rows on rows,And the first bluebird bugles to the breeze.
Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold,And 'mid their sheaves,—where, like a daisy-bloomLeft by the reapers to the gathering gloom,The star of twilight glows,—as Ruth, 'tis told,Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old,The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfumeFrom Bible slopes of heaven, that illumeHer pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled.Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hillAre still, save for the brooklet, sleepilyStumbling the stone with one foam-fluttering foot:Save for the note of one far whippoorwill,And in my hearthername,—like some sweet beeWithin a rose,—blowing a faery flute.
Those hewers of the clouds, the Winds,—that lairAt the four compass-points,—are out to-night;I hear their sandals trample on the height,I hear their voices trumpet through the air:Builders of storm, God's workmen, now they bear,Up the steep stair of sky, on backs of might,Huge tempest bulks, while,—sweat that blinds heir sight,—The rain is shaken from tumultuous hair:Now, sweepers of the firmament, they broom,Like gathered dust, the rolling mists alongHeaven's floors of sapphire; all the beautiful blueOf skyey corridor and celestial roomPreparing, with large laughter and loud song,For the white moon and stars to wander through.
Where, through the myriad leaves of forest trees,The daylight falls, beryl and chrysoprase,The glamour and the glimmer of its raysSeem visible music, tangible melodies:Light that is music; music that one sees—Wagnerian music—where forever swaysThe spirit of romance, and gods and faysTake form, clad on with dreams and mysteries.And now the wind's transmuting necromanceTouches the light and makes it fall and rise,Vocal, a harp of multitudinous wavesThat speaks as ocean speaks—an utteranceOf far-off whispers, mermaid-murmuring sighs—Pelagian, vast, deep down in coral caves.
The deep seclusion of this forest path,—O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy;Along which bluet and anemoneSpread dim a carpet; where the Twilight hathHer cool abode; and, sweet as aftermath,Wood-fragrance roams,—has so enchanted me,That yonder blossoming bramble seems to beA Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath:Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams,That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows,And every bird that flutters wings of tan,Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seemsA Naiad dancing to a Faun who blowsWild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.
The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms,And on its mossy porch the lizard lies;Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies,And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms.Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumesHaunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr triesEach gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighsWith ghostly lips among the attic glooms.And now a heron, now a kingfisher,Flits in the willows where the riffle seemsAt each faint fall to hesitate to leap,Fluttering the silence with a little stir.Here Summer seems a placid face asleep,And the near world a figment of her dreams.
There is a place hung o'er of summer boughsAnd dreamy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps;Where water flows, within whose lazy deeps,Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drowse,The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cowsTinkle the stillness; and the bobwhite keepsCalling from meadows where the reaper reaps,And children's laughter haunts an oldtime house:A place where life wears ever an honest smellOf hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom,—Like some sweet, simple girl,—within her hair;Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwellFar from the city's strife, whose cares consume.—Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.
Bleak, in dark rags of clouds, the day begins,That passed so splendidly but yesterday,Wrapped in magnificence of gold and gray,And poppy and rose. Now, burdened as with sins,Their wildness clad in fogs, like coats of skins,Tattered and streaked with rain; gaunt, clogged with clay,The mendicant Hours take their somber wayWestward o'er Earth, to which no sunray wins.Their splashing sandals ooze; their foosteps drip,Puddle and brim with moisture; their sad hairIs tagged with haggard drops, that with their eyes'Slow streams are blent; each sullen fingertipRivers; while round them, in the grief-drenched airWearies the wind of their perpetual sighs.
Pods the poppies, and slim spires of podsThe hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredesOf rose-stained snow are little sacs of seedsCollapsing at a touch: the lote, that sodsThe pond with green, has changed its flowers to rodsAnd discs of vesicles; and all the weeds,Around the sleepy water and its reeds,Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods.Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead!The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre,Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire:While from the east, as from a garden bed,Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like someGreat golden melon—saying, "Fall has come."
The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs,Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still;Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chillAutumnal touch makes hectic-red the rimsOf all the oak leaves; desolating, dimsThe ageratum's blue that banks the rill;And splits the milkweed's pod upon the hill,And shakes it free of the last seed that swims.Down goes the day despondent to its close:And now the sunset's hands of copper buildA tower of brass, behind whose burning barsThe day, in fierce, barbarian repose,Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled,Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.
There is a booming in the forest boughs;Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees:The storm is at his wildman revelries,And earth and heaven echo his carouse.Night reels with tumult; and, from out her houseOf cloud, the moon looks,—like a face one seesIn nightmare,—hurrying, with pale eyes that freezeStooping above with white, malignant brows.The isolated oak upon the hill,That seemed, at sunset, in terrific landsA Titan head black in a sea of blood,Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrillTo the vast fingering of innumerable hands—Spirits of tempest and of solitude.
So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed hallsA lute lies broken and a flower falls;Love's house stands empty and his hearth lies cold.Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told,In walks grown desolate, by ruined wallsBeauty decays; and on their pedestalsDreams crumble and th' immortal gods are mold.Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone,One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghostHaunts all the echoing chambers of the Past—The voice of Memory, that stills to stoneThe soul that hears; the mind, that, utterly lost,Before its beautiful presence stands aghast.
How long ago it is since we went Maying!Since she and I went Maying long ago!—The years have left my forehead lined, I know,Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.Ah, time will change us: yea, I hear it saying—"She too grows old: the face of rose and snowHas lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glowSome strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled,Has lost the litheness of its loveliness:And all the gladness that her blue eyes heldTears and the world have hardened with distress."—"True! true!" I answer, "O ye years that part!These things are chaned—but is her heart, her heart?"
As one, who, journeying westward with the sun,Beholds at length from the up-towering hills,Far-off, a land unspeakable beauty fills,Circean peaks and vales of Avalon:And, sinking weary, watches, one by one,The big seas beat between; and knows it skillsNo more to try; that now, as Heaven wills,This is the helpless end, that all is done:So 'tis with him, whom long a vision ledIn quest of Beauty; and who finds at lastShe lies beyond his effort; all the wavesOf all the world between them: while the dead,The myriad dead, who people all the pastWith failure, hail him from forgotten graves.