RED LEAVES AND ROSES 
 
 poems 
 
 MADISON CAWEIN 
 
 AUTHOR OF " LYRICS AND IDYLS," k ' DAYS AND DREAMS, 
 " MOODS AND MEMORIES," ETC. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NBW YORK LONDON 
 
 27 West Twenty-third St. 24 Bedford Street, Strand 
 
 Ube TRmcFicrbocfecr press 
 1893
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893 
 
 BY 
 MADISON CAWEIN 
 
 Printed and Bound by 
 
 "Cbe Rmcherbocfeer press, "Wew 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
 
 FS 
 
 12.77 
 
 1U-H 
 
 oc 
 cc. 
 
 GQ 
 
 in 
 
 CM 
 
 O 
 O 
 
 X 
 
 a 
 o 
 
 ca 
 
 01 
 
 TO 
 
 MY MOTHER
 
 PROEM. 
 
 fjH, shall I sing of joy I only 
 Remember as departed joy? 
 Of life once glad that now is lonely ? 
 
 Of love a treasure, no^v a toy ? 
 Of grief, regret but makes the keener, 
 
 Of longing disappointment mars ? 
 These -will I sing, and sit serener 
 
 Than song among the stars. 
 
 Or shall I sing of faith once spoken ? 
 
 Of vows heart-happy once with tears ? 
 Of promised faith and vows long broken 
 
 One hath remembered many years ? 
 Of truth, the false bttt leaves the truer, 
 
 Of trztst, the doubt makes doubly sure ? 
 These will I sing, the noble doer 
 
 Whose dauntless heart is pure. 
 
 I will not sing of time made hateful, 
 
 Of hope that only clings to hate ; 
 Of charity now grown ungrateful, 
 
 And ptide that cannot stand and waif. 
 Of httmbleness care hath imparted, 
 
 Of resignation born of ills, 
 These will I sing, and stand high-hearted 
 
 As hope upon the hills. 
 
 Once on a throne of gold and scarlet 
 
 I touched a chord and felt it break ; 
 I dreamed I was a king a varlet 
 
 A king's amusement left to wake. 
 Now on a star my longing lingers, 
 
 While on a tomb I lean and read, 
 And write with eager soul and fingers 
 
 That life may give me heed.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Red Leaves and Roses 
 
 . . i 
 
 Wild-Thorn and Lily 
 
 
 The Idyl of the Standing-Stone 
 
 . . . . 38 
 
 Some Summer Days 
 
 . 47 
 
 An Epic of South-Fork 
 
 55 
 
 A Niello 
 
 . 66 
 
 Wreckage 
 
 . 70 
 
 Hieroglyphs 
 
 . 78 
 
 Siren Sands 
 
 . . . . 87 
 
 At the Lane's End . 
 
 93 
 
 Deep in the Forest . 
 
 . IOI 
 
 One Night 
 
 . 115 
 
 The Elixir of Love . . . . 
 
 . 119 
 
 The Spell 
 
 . "3 
 
 The Return 
 
 . 125 
 
 The Letter 
 
 127 
 
 Wounded 
 
 . 129 
 
 The Parting 
 
 . 131 
 
 The Daughter of the Snow 
 
 . 133 
 
 Hildegard 
 
 136 
 
 Urganda 
 
 139 
 
 The Son of Evrawc . . . , 
 
 
 Torquemada 
 
 . 157 
 
 An Episode .... 
 
 . . . . . 163 
 
 The Mameluke .... 
 
 166 
 
 The Slave 
 
 168 
 
 V 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FACE 
 
 The Seven Devils of Mahomet 170 
 
 John Davis, Boucanier 172 
 
 Thamus 176 
 
 Adventurers 179 
 
 Voyagers 180 
 
 America . 182 
 
 The Ocklawaha 184 
 
 The Minorcan 187 
 
 The Spring in Florida 189 
 
 Strategy 191 
 
 The Whippoorwill 193 
 
 Satan 195 
 
 Sic Vos Non Vobis ........ 196 
 
 Once 198 
 
 Resignation 200 
 
 After Rain 202 
 
 Peace 205
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 A ND he had lived such loveless years 
 
 That suffering had made him wise ; 
 And she had known no truer tears 
 Than those of girlhood's eyes. 
 
 And he, perhaps, had loved before 
 One who had wed? one who had died? 
 
 So life for him had been but poor 
 In love for which he sighed. 
 
 In years and love she was so young 
 Youth paused and beckoned at the gate, 
 
 And bade her list love's birds that sung ; 
 She said that love should wait. 
 
 One understood. One only knew 
 
 The fields were faded, skies were gray, 
 
 Nor saw the sad rose autumn blew 
 There in her heedless way.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 II. 
 
 If he had come to her when May 
 Danced down the wildwood, every way 
 Marked with white flowers, as if her gown 
 
 Had torn and fallen, it might be 
 She had not met him with a frown, 
 
 Nor used such 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 soul had found some sunny notes 
 
 In hers to cheer the cloudy South. 
 
 He came when Fall made mad the sky, 
 
 And on the hills leapt like a cry 
 
 Of battle ; when the leaves were dead ; 
 
 To find a dreamy blonde in white, 
 Thrust in whose hair one rose, blood-red, 
 
 Glowed like the Summer's heart of light. 
 
 He might have known, since leaves were blown, 
 And in the woods great weeds were grown ; 
 Since nearing Winter wrecked the world, 
 
 How love like his would seem absurd 
 To her whose sinless lip had curled, 
 
 Yet heard him to his latest word.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 Still he was humble, and denied 
 
 His tongue that instant's flush of pride, 
 
 For he remembered how the gray 
 
 Held heaven and earth, alas ! and knew 
 She wore the colors of the May, 
 
 And to the May her heart was true. 
 
 And so he left her : and the bud 
 In her deep hair one drop of blood 
 Out of his life to weaken him : 
 
 Again (the poison of his pain), 
 Poppy, for her to crush and brim 
 
 A goblet with, that he must drain. 
 
 ill. 
 
 " Such days as these," one said, and bent 
 
 Among the marigolds, all dew, 
 And dripping zinnia stems, " are sent 
 
 Out of the days our childhood knew ; 
 And it is these endearing those, 
 
 So dearer now they are grown old ; 
 Days, once imperfect with the rose, 
 
 Sufficient with the marigold." 
 
 " Such days as these," one said, and gazed 
 Long with unlifted eyes that held 
 
 Sad autumn nights, " our hopes have raised 
 In futures that are mist-enspelled.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 And so it is the fog blows in 
 
 Days dearer through the death they paint 
 One hard surrendering of sin 
 
 One long ability to saint." 
 
 IV. 
 
 Gold deeds of hearts that have not kept 
 
 Rare riches as a miser, when 
 Pale lips have writhed and eyes have wept 
 
 Among the toiling tribes of men, 
 Each summer day gave man sweet alms 
 
 Of silver in white lilies, while 
 Each night, with healing, outstretched palms 
 
 Stood Christlike with its starry smile. 
 
 Will she remember this when dull 
 
 Months drag their sadder hours by, 
 With feet that crush the beautiful 
 
 And leave the beautiful to die ? 
 Or never see ? nor sit with lost 
 
 Dreams withered 'mid the empty husks, 
 And wait, neglectful of the frost, 
 
 In dead delusions of the dusks ? 
 
 He is as one who, treading salty scurf 
 Of lonely sea-sands, hears the roaring rocks
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 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 
 
 Looms, 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 gray garden of the stern stone grange, 
 And feels no sorrow for the frost-maimed stalks 
 Since though the wailing Autumn by her walks 
 
 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
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 Of hickory on the hearth will baulk 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 on 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."
 
 RED LEA VES AND ROSES. 
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 '"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 agonies of gold aurora-born 
 Sierras of the storm. Vibrating on, 
 Low rumblings of the thunder far away ; 
 The opening welkin shone one livid sheet, 
 And all the firmament hung hewn with fire ; 
 Then leapt the thunder ; and it seemed that hosts 
 Of Heaven rushed to war with blazing shields 
 And swords of splendor. Through the driven trees 
 The large drops fell around us as we rode 
 Along the locust avenue. And she 
 Was it the lightning that made weariness 
 Of her dim countenance ? or memory 
 With the regret, that, now the thing was done, 
 A yearning fell upon her to be free, 
 Because she loved him better than she knew, 
 And must look backward on a barrier 
 That intervening months had built between 
 The possible and impossible ? God knows ! . . .
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 Yet, I had won her honestly with words 
 Love only uttered out of its soul's truth, 
 Her, when engaged to Julien. What else 
 Had led us to elopement ? Well ; 't was done, 
 The whole, mad, lovely, miserable affair. 
 Who would avoid the consequence ? Not I ! 
 " Since she is only woman, I am man, 
 Strong with the fixed determination to 
 Bear all the blame and burthen willingly." 
 
 Scarce had we entered when high Heaven oped 
 Vast gates of gold and doors of booming brass 
 That dammed a deluge, and the deluge poured. 
 I thought of him then ; for I felt that she 
 Was thinking hard of Julien and his moods ; 
 My school friend Julien, whom she once had won 
 To so believe she loved, and Well ! 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 tenderness and that is much 
 I did not dream his easy temperament 
 Were so effected of a wrong or right ; 
 His character, intensely sensitive, 
 Would fall into extremes of morbidness, 
 And egoism. Far different my own, 
 Whose vigorous iron should not bend, but break
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 At one decisive blow : his should have sprung 
 Elastic as fine-tempered steel that bends 
 And so resumes its usual usefulness . . . 
 A wan 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 
 Gain in her eyes, as their approval grew 
 From half-severe rebukes that were well meant. 
 She had done well, and we were soon forgiven. 
 
 But I resumed his letter when alone ; 
 His letter written her three months before. 
 She had not read, and never should behold. 
 I would not let the dead scrawl mar and soil 
 My late-won joy, my testament of love. 
 No ! I should read it, and I would 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.
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 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 once 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 will associate 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 '11 turn my heart into a ray, 
 And wait a day.
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 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 '11 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 '11 sing my thought into a song, 
 And wait how long? 
 
 " 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 each new note led to diviner song. 
 
 And waiting by the gate, that reached the lane, 
 
 For you who gave sweet eloquence to all, 
 
 The sunset and the lilacs and the spring, 
 
 My heart was singing and it sang of you :
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 Two glowworms 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 of the portico, 
 For all the stars are in her gaze, 
 The night and stars I know. 
 
 A clinging dream of haze 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 lilac 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 sweet essences is she, 
 The fragrance that I know. 
 
 Life, love, and faith are in her face, 
 And in her presence sleep's soft grace ; 
 Her speech is my religion, word 
 Of God I hear ; no mocking-bird,
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 13 
 
 When Gwendolyn is by, may float 
 One bubble from the portico, 
 For all the birds nest in her throat, 
 The song-birds 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 hills, 
 With dark-blue eyes that muse upon the flowers, 
 Where we strolled anxious as the April hills : 
 
 The 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 seemed to run 
 A melody, the sunrays tell, 
 
 That never yet was done. 
 
 The moonray, on the rocks that lay 
 
 Where silence dallies, 
 Where Echo haunts the wilder way 
 
 Among the valleys, 
 The livelong night upon the rocks 
 Hung, hid among girl Echo's locks,
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 To steal her voice, the moonbeams say, 
 That mocks and only mocks. 
 
 The shadow, lain where shadows meet 
 
 Beneath the roses 
 And thorns the bitter and the sweet 
 
 That life discloses, 
 Hugged with the rose-balm and the dew 
 The crimson thorns that pierced it through ; 
 The mad unrest, the shades repeat, 
 
 That now is false, now true. 
 
 A fairy found the beam of gold, 
 
 And ray of glitter ; 
 The shadow whose dark bosom's fold 
 
 Held sweet and bitter ; 
 And made a bird beneath the thorn, 
 Dark gray to haunt the night and morn, 
 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.
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 15 
 
 And I stood listening like a hind, who hears 
 A wood-nymph breathing in a forest flute 
 Among gray beeches 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 : 
 
 Fly out with flirt and fluting 
 
 As flies a falling star 
 From flaming star-beds shooting, 
 
 From where the roses are. 
 
 Wing past, and sing me seven 
 
 Songs of faint fragrances 
 White sylphs have breathed in heaven, 
 
 Or what such sweetness is. 
 
 Sing on ! each burning feather 
 Thrill, throbbing at thy throat ; 
 
 A song of glowworm weather, 
 And of a firefly boat : 
 
 Of red morns and a princess 
 
 Who, changed to a perfume, 
 Hid where yon lily winces, 
 
 Or where yon roses bloom. 
 
 No bird calls half so airy, 
 
 No bird of dusk or dawn, 
 O masking King of Fairy, 
 
 O red-crowned Oberon !
 
 16 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Alas ! the nightingale I never heard. 
 
 Yet I, remembering how your voice would thrill 
 
 Me with exalted expectation, felt 
 
 The placid-throated nightingale would win 
 
 Into my soul in some soft way like this : 
 
 Presentiments of nights that match the flowers 
 
 With the prompt stars and wed them with a 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 summer-haunted lea, 
 
 Where every breeze that blows is 
 
 Another melody ; 
 
 Where every bud that pineth, 
 
 Except the rose, divineth 
 
 Each star is but a bee, 
 
 Or golden moth that shineth. 
 
 The star and rose are wiser 
 Than all but love beneath the skies, 
 For they are what the skies are 
 And love hath made them wise : 
 No bee may hum and rifle, 
 No moon-moth come and stifle, 
 The love that never dies, 
 The love that will not trifle.
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY, 17 
 
 There is a bird that carries 
 
 Song messages ; and comes and goes 
 
 'Tween every star that tarries 
 
 And every rose that blows : 
 
 A bird that will not tire, 
 
 Whose throat 's a throbbing lyre 
 
 To sing each star a rose, 
 
 And every rose a fire. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " O Maytime woods ! O Maytime lanes and hours ! 
 
 How should she know ? But often of a night 
 
 Beside the path where woodbine odors blew 
 
 Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk, 
 
 When, like a swarm of pearly moths, the moon 
 
 Hung silvering long windows of her room, 
 
 I stood among the shrubs. The dark house slept. 
 
 I looked and listened, for I know not what . . . 
 
 Some tremor of her gown : a velvet leaf's 
 
 Unfolding to caresses of the spring ; 
 
 A rustle of her footstep ; like the dew 
 
 That rolls avowal from a tulip's lips 
 
 That burn with scarlet ; or the whispered word 
 
 Of something lovelier than new leaf or dew 
 
 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
 
 i8 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 In slippered caution to admit a prince, 
 Who her black eunuchs and her lord defies. 
 
 I dream that dreams besiege her, while 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 through the rainy trees. 
 
 Along the path the buckeye trees begin 
 
 To heap their hills of blossoms. Oh, that they 
 
 Grew Romeo ladders where her windows win 
 The moonlight and the odor that must pray 
 
 About her soul so I might enter in ! 
 
 A dream, to see the balsam scent erase 
 Its dim intrusion ; and the starry night 
 
 Conclude majestic pomp ; the virgin grace 
 Of every bud abashed before the white, 
 
 Pure passion-flower of her innocent face ! 
 
 " And once, in early May, a brush-bird 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 ;
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. ig 
 
 The brush-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 her lips, 
 The lute-haunted lips of my princess : 
 O girl in the rain and the bloom, 
 Sing again in the pelting perfume, 
 Sweetheart, under my room ! 
 
 Rain, rain and the dripping of drops 
 From the cups of the blossoms they load, or 
 Leave laughing, on tipsiest tops ; 
 And eyes of the sunbeam 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 that I would bring and sing 
 
 If such amused you. But, among your hills, 
 
 Majestic sunsets and the serious stars 
 
 Made discord of its words, that seemed as stale 
 
 As musty parlors where the village moped.
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 Look, lovely eyes, and let me know 
 
 The timid flower, her love hath cherished, 
 Fades not before the fruit shall show, 
 Seen in the pure truth of your glow 
 Whence all distrust hath perished. 
 
 Lift, winsome lips, and let me take 
 
 The sacred whisper of her spirit 
 To mine in kisses, that shall make 
 Mute marriage of our souls, and wake 
 High faith that shall inherit. 
 
 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 twilight of poppy and gold, 
 Red as a heart with desire, 
 
 Rich with a secret untold. 
 
 Deep where the shadow is doubled, 
 Deep where the blossoms are long,
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 Listen ! deep love in the bubbled 
 Breath of a mocking-bird's song. 
 
 Dearest, to know you are dearer, 
 Drawing the skies from afar ! . . 
 
 Stars and the heavens the nearer 
 By but one maiden my star. 
 
 "Confronted with the certainty that I 
 Had no approval but my prompting hope's, 
 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 like the hands of 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 with all the look of Truth, 
 Her soul might see how mine would win 
 
 Her, without sin, 
 In all her lovely youth. 
 
 If I might kiss her mouth, and lead 
 The kiss up to her eyes and hair,
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 There is no prayer that so could plead, 
 
 And find sure heed, 
 My love's divine despair. 
 
 " And uninstructed smiled and wrote ' despair.' 
 Severe, yet eager of the shade that should 
 Some day come stealing through my silent door 
 To sit unbidden through the lonely hours. 
 But now 't was summer, and all living things, 
 The lowly flowers and the common bees, 
 Became divine interpreters for me : 
 
 Say that he cannot tell her how he loves her, 
 Words of much adoration often fail, 
 
 When but a lock that loosens, glove that gloves her, 
 Clothe her coy femininity in mail. 
 
 So many humble wisdoms to express what 
 The language of devotion is denied ; 
 
 Ambassadors to make the woman guess what 
 Her heart's surrendered fortress hath defied. 
 
 A bird to bruit his bashfulness perpend him ! 
 
 A bee to lisp the secret that is she ; 
 His pure appeal the blossom to defend him . . . 
 
 Resistless pleaders, bird and bloom and bee.
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 23 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " So was my love acknowledged. For I thought 
 
 You loved me as love led me to believe : 
 
 And then, no matter where I walked or went 
 
 Among the hills, the woods, or quiet fields, 
 
 All had a poetry so intimate, 
 
 So happy and so ready that for me 
 
 'T was 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 : 
 
 What wild flower shows perfection 
 As perfect as thy features are, 
 
 I leave to the election 
 Of each deciding star : 
 
 Wild morning-glory or (who knows ?) 
 
 Wild phlox, wild snowdrop or wild rose ? 
 
 What cascade hath suspicion 
 
 Of sparkle such as eyes like these, 
 
 I leave to the decision 
 
 Of each proclaiming breeze : 
 
 The wind that kisses buds awake, 
 
 And rolls the ripple on the lake. 
 
 What bird shall sing the naming 
 Of all the music that thou art,
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 I leave to the proclaiming 
 
 Of my electing heart : 
 My heart, whose love is as thy soul 
 An infinite, adoring whole. 
 
 What witch then hast thou met, 
 
 Who wrought this amulet ? 
 
 The charm that makes each look, love, 
 
 A bud that blows ; 
 Thy face an open book, love, 
 
 Whose language is the rose, 
 Than wisdom wiser yet. 
 
 What fairy of the wood, 
 
 To whom thou once wast good, 
 
 Gave thee this gift ? Thy words, love, 
 
 Should be pure gold ; 
 Thy voice as singing birds, love, 
 
 Out of the Mays of old, 
 Whom love hath still pursued. 
 
 What goblin of the glade 
 This white enchantment made, 
 That haunts thy maiden presence 
 
 As might the moon ; 
 Thy throat's, thy hand's white essence 
 
 Of starlight soft with June 
 Upon a cool cascade?
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 25 
 
 What wizard of the cave 
 Hath made my soul thy slave? 
 To dream of thee when sleeping, 
 
 And when awake 
 My anxious spirit keeping 
 
 'Neath spells that will not break, 
 Until thy love shall save ! 
 
 Dear, (though given conclusion to), 
 Songs, no memory surrenders, 
 Still their music breathe in you ; 
 Silence meditation renders 
 Audible with notes it knew. 
 
 Heart, when all the flowers are dead, 
 Perfumes, that the soul remembers 
 Were included in their red, 
 Making June of long December, 
 From your hand and face are 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.
 
 a6 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 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 doth not know ?) 
 
 Reveal no music but is thine. 
 Thou singest, and the waters flow, 
 
 The breezes blow, the sunbeams shine, 
 
 And all the sad earth is divine. 
 
 Low laughter ; and I look away ; 
 
 The day may drowse, the night may dream, 
 
 I walk beneath sweet skies of May 
 
 On ways where play the bud and beam, 
 And hear a bird and forest stream. 
 
 A thought and then it seems to me 
 
 Lost lifetimes 'mid the stars arise, 
 Rain memories of the Heaven on thee ; 
 
 And it may be from Paradise 
 
 Hast felt an angel lover's eyes. 
 
 xv. 
 
 ' ' But is it well to tell you what I thought 
 When I beheld no change beyond the moods
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 That gloomed and 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 graceless day go past, 
 And let the night be full of song. 
 When life and life are one at last, 
 
 And love no more shall long, 
 'T is sweet midsummer of the dream, 
 
 And all the dreams thou hast 
 Are nearer than they seem. 
 
 Once thou didst dream in autumn of 
 Death with cadaverous eyes that gazed 
 Deep in a shadow. . . It was love 
 
 \Vhose beaming eyes were raised 
 From the crowned sorrow that unrolled 
 
 Strange splendor ; and amazed, 
 Love didst thou then behold. 
 
 And we should know now, it is said, 
 The dead are nearer than we know. 
 And when they tell thee I am dead 
 
 Thine eyes shall see it so ; 
 But I shall feel in every beat, 
 
 And soul-song of thy woe 
 My love live more complete.
 
 28 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " One evening I would have you talk with me. 
 Impatience hurt me in your short replies. 
 And I who had refused, because we dread 
 Approaching horror of our lives made maimed, 
 The inevitable, could not help but see 
 Some secret change was here. 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 
 To pierce the silence that was packed with death 
 And pale presentiment. And so I went, 
 A white flame beckoning before my face, 
 And in mine ears sounds of primordial seas 
 That boasted preadamic gods and men : 
 A flame before and far 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,
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 29 
 
 And I the clouds again, 
 Would rain and ray 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 thou shouldst know no night, 
 Would all thy daylight tarry ? 
 Or night and morning marry ? 
 
 If God should give me winter, love, 
 
 And give thy life the spring, 
 And icicles should splinter, love, 
 
 While all the wild birds sing, 
 Would thine walk by and glitter, 
 Forgetful mine is bitter ? 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " So on the anguish of a dying hope 
 A baby 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, 
 And love build up a sepulchre for hope. 
 
 And could you learn forgetfulness, 
 
 And teach my heart how to forget ; 
 And I unlearn all fretfulness,
 
 30 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 And teach your soul that still will fret ; 
 The mornings of the world would burn 
 Before us and we should not turn, 
 
 For we should not regret. 
 
 Could you but know why sorrow treads 
 
 Upon the heels of joy alway ; 
 And I how each to-morrow treads 
 
 With shadowy steps upon to-day ; 
 No change or time would then surprise 
 Our lives with what our lives were wise, 
 
 But one should see and say. 
 
 If you could stand exterior with 
 Your dreams that still exalt desire ; 
 
 And I could live superior with 
 
 The soul that makes my thoughts aspire ; 
 
 Long stairways would the stars unroll 
 
 To lift our love up, soul by soul, 
 To some celestial fire. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 ' ' There fell no words of comfort from your lips. 
 Not that I asked for pity ; that had been 
 As fire to the scalded or dry bread 
 Unto the famished fallen 'mid the sands ! 
 But all your actions said that I was wrong, 
 And how, I know not and have ceased to care ; 
 Still standing like one stricken blind at noon,
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 31 
 
 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 my hands and eyes, 
 Think of the sweetness of the song 
 
 That now has only sighs ! 
 Think of the trust that had been strong ! 
 
 The hope that had been wise ! 
 
 ' If thou hadst bade my heart be more 
 Than life, because thy life was sad, 
 Thou hadst had all till I were poor 
 
 To make thy sorrow glad. 
 Thou cam'st a beggar to my door, 
 
 And had more than I had. 
 
 ' If thou hadst showed me how to love, 
 Nor played with love as children play, 
 The dove had still remained the dove, 
 
 And never flown away. 
 My love is, and shall be, above 
 
 The love that lasts a day ! '
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " And 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 ; but I had felt in me 
 
 The rich fulfilment 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 ?
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 33 
 
 XX. 
 
 " What else but, laboring for some good, to lift 
 Ourselves above the despotism of self, 
 All egoism strangling strength and hope ! 
 Art, our intensest and our truest love, 
 Immaculateness that has never sped 
 Beyond her lover with his love all soul. 
 I followed beauty, and my ardor prayed 
 Your features would be blotted from my brain, 
 Nor mar the gratitude I owed to God. 
 vl prayed ; and see ! the influence of your eyes ! 
 
 I have no song to tell thee 
 The love that I would sing ; 
 
 The song that should en spell thee, 
 
 The words that should so quell thee 
 That all thy life would cling 
 
 Around my heart 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 
 3
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 To wing to thee, my lover, 
 Where all the nights discover 
 
 No darkness like thine eyes ; 
 When life and hope lie dreaming 
 On thee who art but seeming ! 
 
 " 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 to behold the sun, 
 And 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 
 
 Beryls of greenest glare ; 
 Wet rifts of skies that scatter 
 Sapphires the Sylphides shake, 
 When their loose fillets break, 
 
 Out of their radiant hair. 
 
 Oh, for some song and lute ! 
 Wings that should pinion 
 Song for Love's swift pursuit
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 35 
 
 In Youth's dominion ! 
 Searching in all serenest 
 
 Hours and buds and eyes, 
 Saying, ' O thou who queenest 
 Hearts, from thy lovely land 
 Reach me no hidden hand 
 
 Over the worldly wise ! ' 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " Thus would I scatter grain around my life 
 To lure cloud-colored doves into my soul, 
 And find them turn black ravens while they flew. 
 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 Earth's rich arts : that marvelled how it came 
 Such puny folly should usurp love's high 
 Proud pedestal of life that held your form 
 In sculptured Parian lying strewn in shards. 
 And oft I shook myself, for nightmares weighed 
 Each sense, and seemed to wake ; yet evermore 
 Beheld a death's-head grinning at my lips. 
 
 So when the opening of the door doth thrill 
 My soul with sudden knowledge he is come, 
 
 I shall remember and forget them still, 
 The rough ways of the coarser world, until 
 
 His lips bend to me and my lips are dumb.
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 Then I shall not remember : but shall leave 
 
 All recollection to the worldly race 
 My fact hath so accomplished. Let them grieve 
 
 The pale bereavements that do not bereave, 
 And in new epochs take my higher place. . . . 
 
 Who knocks ? The night scouts every hill and 
 
 heath ; 
 
 And round my door are minions of the night ; 
 And like a falchion, riven from its sheath, 
 
 The wind swings, and the tempest grinds black 
 
 teeth 
 Around me and my wild, hand-hollowed light. 
 
 Who knocks ? the door is open ! And I see 
 The midnight groping with distorted fists 
 
 To throttle courage hurled upon her knee ; 
 Hold high my candle, for it so may be 
 
 Love is bewildered in the rainy mists. 
 
 No wandering wisp, to haunt the gusty rain 
 With brimstone flicker, fading as it flies ! 
 
 The door is open ; will he knock again ? 
 The door is open ; shall it be in vain ? 
 
 And ceremony still delay the wise ? 
 
 Who knocks in darkness waits till tempests pass. 
 The door is closed : but morning lights shall thrust
 
 WILD-THORN AND LILY. 
 
 It open : and the sun shall shine and mass 
 
 White splendor where once stained a colored glass, 
 And toil and time motes in a little dust." 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 And I had read, read to the bitter close ; 
 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 bullet in his heart.
 
 3 8 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 THE IDYL OF THE STANDING-STONE. 
 
 C HE knows its windings and its crooks. 
 
 The wild flowers of its lovely woods, 
 
 The trumpet-vine's Red-Riding-Hoods, 
 
 The lily's story books ; 
 
 The iris, whose blue bonnets let 
 Mab faces laugh from many a net 
 
 Along the fairy brooks. 
 
 He knows its shallows and its pools, 
 The rugged stairs of rock that go 
 Climbing through water-fall and flow, 
 
 Where haunt the minnow schools ; 
 
 The grass and sedge where haunts the snipe, 
 The bob-white where the berry 's ripe, 
 
 And whom the echo fools. 
 
 She seeks the bleeding-heart and phlox, 
 The touch-me-not whose 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 blossom-blue ; a beam 
 
 Gleams on her light-brown locks.
 
 THE IDYL OF THE STANDING-STONE. 39 
 
 He comes with fishing bait and line 
 
 To angle in the darker deeps, 
 
 Where all the sounding forest sleeps 
 Of sycamore and pine ; 
 
 And now and then a shadow swoops 
 
 Around him of a hawk or groups 
 Of pearl-gray clouds that shine. 
 
 And will he see, if they should meet, 
 How she is fairer than each flower 
 Her apron fills ? and in that hour 
 
 Feel life is incomplete ? 
 
 He stops below ; she walks above 
 The brook one blossom, white as love, 
 
 Floats fragrant to his feet. 
 
 And she should she behold the tan 
 
 Of manly face and honest eyes, 
 
 Would her heart know nobilities 
 To make him more than man ? 
 
 She drops one blossom has she heard 
 
 Soft whistling of a man or bird, 
 Whose dreamy quavers ran ? 
 
 They knew ; but then they did not meet ; 
 Yet some divulging influence 
 Had touched them with the starry lens 
 
 God holds to make hearts beat ;
 
 40 THE IDYL OF THE STANDING-STONE. 
 
 That made her heart one haunting wish, 
 And his forgetful of the fish, 
 One flower at his feet. . . . 
 
 n. 
 
 The sassafras twigs had just lit up 
 
 The yellow stars of their fragrant candles, 
 And the dog-wood brimmed each brown-stained cup 
 
 With April the brown bough dandles ; 
 When down the orchard, whose apple blooms 
 
 Say, Ho, the hum o' the humble bee ! 
 Were woven of morn on the elfland looms, 
 A sense of Spring in the sprinkled glooms, 
 
 A glimpse of the Spring 't was she. 
 
 The maple as red as the delicate flush 
 
 Of an afterglow where the west was crimson ; 
 And the red-haw tree in the wing-whipped hush 
 
 With its milk-white blossoms and greening limbs 
 
 on ; 
 And up in the wood where the oak-tree strung, 
 
 Say, Heigh, the rap o' the sapsucker ! 
 Gray buds in bunches, as if they hung 
 The fairies' belfries with bells that swung, 
 
 Was he with a heart for her. 
 
 Ay ! white 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,
 
 THE IDYL OF THE STANDING-STONE. 41 
 
 And a flower the color of sherry ; 
 And he saw her in the orchard drift, 
 
 And, ho ! the dew from the web that slips ! 
 And she saw him in the woodland rift ; 
 And he had given his life to lift 
 
 Her pure face to his lips. 
 
 And the plantain there as odorous as 
 
 The heliotrope in his mother's garden ; 
 When the beam from the hollow did seem to pass, 
 
 And the ray on the hills to harden ; 
 For she had smiled, and the sun fell flat, 
 
 And, heigh, the wasp i' the pawpaw bell ! 
 And she had beckoned and more in that 
 To him than Spring on her hills who sat, 
 
 Or the wide white world could tell. 
 
 III. 
 
 The teasel and the horsemint spread 
 The hillsides with pink sunset thrown 
 On earth around The Standing-Stone 
 
 That ripples in its rocky bed : 
 There are no treasuries that hold 
 Gold richer than the daisies' gold 
 
 That crowd its mouth and head. 
 
 Deep harvest, and a mower stands 
 Among the morning wheat and whets
 
 43 THE IDYL OF THE STANDING-STONE. 
 
 His scythe, and for a space forgets 
 The labor of the ripened lands ; 
 
 Then bends, and through the dewy grain 
 
 His cradle 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, 
 
 A simple bramble-rose. 
 
 She hears him whistling as he leans 
 To circling sweeps the rabbits fly, 
 And sighs and smiles and knows not why, 
 
 Nor what her heart's sweet secret means : 
 He rests upon his scythe and sees 
 Her smiling 'mid the hives of bees 
 
 Beneath the flowering-beans. 
 
 The peacock-purple lizard creeps 
 Along the fence-rail ; and the drone 
 Of insects makes the country lone 
 
 With dreaming where the water sleeps : 
 She hears him singing as he swings 
 His scythe ; he thinks of other things 
 
 Than toil and, singing, reaps.
 
 THE IDYL OF THE STANDING-STONE. 43 
 IV. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Into the woods they went again 
 
 Over the fields of oats ; 
 A reaper he and the binders twain , 
 Out of the acres of golden grain 
 
 In where the lily throats 
 Were brimmed with the summer rain. 
 
 Hung on a bough a reaper's hook, 
 
 Over the fields of oats ; 
 And a maiden here with a merry look, 
 And a laugh that rippled out of the brook, 
 
 Out of the wild birds' throats, 
 For the kiss that the reaper took. 
 
 Out of the woods the reaper went 
 
 Over the fields of wheat, 
 A nd a binder by with a face that blent 
 All of life that is innocent, 
 
 All of love that is sweet, 
 Writ in her soul's young testament. 
 
 Who the maiden to keep the tryst, 
 
 Over the fields of wheat ? 
 She, his folly had only kissed ? 
 She, he had given, to kiss whose wrist, 
 
 His whole strong life made sweet ? 
 She who had seen and wist?
 
 44 THE IDYL OF THE STANDING-STONE. 
 
 V. 
 
 Her only pearls are beads of hail, 
 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 June-ripe wheat she '11 stop, 
 And from one daisy-loaded arm 
 One yellow daisy drop. 
 
 She meets his brown eyes, glad and grave, 
 With blue eyes where the dreams are sweet 
 He is her lover and her slave, 
 And mows among the wheat. 
 
 When buds broke on the apple trees 
 She wore an apple-blossom dress, 
 And walked with him on clover leas, 
 And made him guess and guess. 
 
 When goose-plums ripened in the rain 
 Plum-colored was her gown of red ;
 
 THE IDYL OF THE STANDING-STONE. 45 
 
 They strolled along the creek-road lane 
 He had her heart she said. 
 
 When apples thumped the droughty land 
 A russet color was her gown. 
 A hunter came, and wooed her hand, 
 A stranger from the town. 
 
 When grapes hung purple in the hot, 
 They missed her dark-blue hood and dress ; 
 And one tanned vintager forgot 
 The purple of the press. 
 
 When snow made grave-stones of each sheaf 
 Her gown was whiter than the snow, 
 Her rubies redder than the leaf 
 The autumn forests know. 
 
 What wounds her splendid shame conceals 
 Men will but kiss her if she sigh 
 And never ask. And she ? she feels 
 How all her life 's a lie. . . . 
 
 VI. 
 
 In spring the hairy-vetchling strewed 
 Blue morning blots on moss and leaf, 
 The little Esau of the wood 
 Whose soul sat smiling in its grief :
 
 46 THE IDYL OF THE STANDING-STONE. 
 
 In spring he looked along the earth 
 No month, he thought, holds so much grace, 
 No month of spring, such grace and mirth, 
 As the true April of her face. 
 
 In fall the frail gerardia 
 
 Hung signs of sunset and of dawn 
 
 On root and rock, as if to draw 
 
 Eyes ere the careless feet pass on. 
 
 And will you blame her in pursuit 
 
 Of butterflies, who does not dream 
 
 A flower loosened by her foot 
 
 Drifts helpless with her down the stream ?
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 SOME SUMMER DAYS. 
 
 IF you should find her standing there 
 
 Among the tiger-lily blooms, 
 That lose rich jewels everywhere 
 Among the woodland gleams and glooms, 
 You would confess her over-fair, 
 A cousin of the wood's perfumes. 
 
 The afternoon is dead with heat ; 
 
 And all the drowsy shadow sleeps 
 
 Like toil arm-pillowed in the wheat 
 
 Beside the scythe with which he reaps : 
 
 A blazing knight whose arms defeat 
 
 The shades, the day rides down the deeps. 
 
 There is no sound more distant than 
 The bell that haunts the hazy hill ; 
 No nearer than the locust's span 
 Of sound that makes the silence shrill ; 
 And now there comes a sun-brown man 
 Through tiger-lilies of the rill. 
 
 And they will go ; and in the end 
 The west will glow, the east will pale, 
 And then the glow and pallor blend
 
 48 SOME SUMMER DAYS. 
 
 Like moonlight on a shifting sail ; 
 And in the woods he '11 speak and bend 
 His tan-dark face that laughs a tale. 
 
 The dusk will flash and fade away 
 Through heavy orange, rose, and red, 
 And leave the heavens violet gray 
 Above a gipsy-lily bed ; 
 And they will go, and he will say 
 No words to her but love hath said. 
 
 Ten million stars the night will win 
 Above them, and one firefly 
 Pulse like a tangled starbeam in 
 The cedar dark against the sky ; 
 And he will lift her bashful chin 
 And speak, and she will 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 hill and wildest height, 
 Together they will cross the brook 
 And reach the gate and kiss good-night. 
 
 II. 
 
 And oft he wipes his hand along 
 
 The beaded fire of his brow 
 
 Hard toil has heated ; and the strong
 
 SOME SUMMER DAYS. 
 
 Face flushes fuller health as now 
 He fills his hay-fork with a song, 
 And, tossing it, again doth bow. 
 
 And now he stops to look 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 hills of hay, 
 The fields of maize, the fields of weeds. 
 
 He sees wild walls of 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-makings, and the scent 
 
 Is good within his nostrils' breath ; 
 
 The mighty trees are bowed, that leant 
 
 For none yet, as when Power saith 
 
 " Bow down ! " and stalwart slaves are bent. 
 
 He laughs, long-gazing as he goes 
 Along the elder-sweetened lane : 
 He feels the storm wind as it blows 
 4
 
 SOME SUMMER DA YS. 
 
 Across the sheaves of golden grain, 
 And stops to pull one bramble-rose, 
 And watch the silver slanting rain. 
 
 And there among low trees the farm 
 Dreams in a martin-haunted place ; 
 He marks the far-off streaks of storm 
 That with the driven thunders race ; 
 He sees his baby on her arm, 
 And in the door her smiling face. 
 
 III. 
 
 Below the sunset's range of rose, 
 Below the heaven's bending blue, 
 Down woodways where the balsam grows, 
 And milk-weed tufts are gray with dew, 
 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 
 
 Where the root-hidden cricket ticks ; 
 
 Among the iron-weeds 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 ;
 
 SOME SUMMER DA VS. 
 
 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 sumachs now ; a tossing horn 
 Some clashing bell of copper rung ; 
 Long shadows lean upon the corn, 
 And all the day dies insect-stung, 
 Where clouds float crimson skeins of yarn. 
 
 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 where glad glories drown 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, 
 While in the west one golden streak 
 Burns as if God gazed through a glass. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The skies are amber blue and green 
 Before the coming of the sun ; 
 And all the deep hills sleep serene
 
 SOME SUMMER DAYS. 
 
 As pale enchantment, never done ; 
 The morning mists drag down or lean 
 On woods in which vague whispers run. 
 
 Birds wake ; and on the vine-grown knob, 
 Above the brook, a twittering 
 Confuses songs day cannot rob 
 The building birds of where they swing ; 
 And now a sudden throat will throb 
 Wild music, and the thrush will 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 white 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, that bask 
 Dew-beaded grapes, half-ripened now, 
 In sun-shot shafts the shadows mask ; 
 He feels the morning like a vow 
 Of faith that helps him with his task. 
 
 Before him, soaring through the mist, 
 The wild hawk drifts gray wings and screams 
 Its dewy back gleams, sunbeam-kissed, 
 Above the wood that drips and dreams ;
 
 SOME SUMMER} DAYS. 53 
 
 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 ; 
 They drop black ripeness on the grass 
 Where fallen trumpet-flowers fade. 
 
 White on the left the fence and trees 
 That mark the garden ; and the smoke 
 Uncurling in the early breeze ; 
 The roof beneath the acorn oak ; 
 He turns his team, and turning sees 
 The damp, dark soil his coulter broke. 
 
 Bees buzz ; and o'er the berries poise 
 Lean-bodied wasps ; loud blackbirds turn 
 Across the corn ; there is a noise 
 Of eager wings and winds that burn ; 
 And now he seems to hear her 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,)
 
 SOME SUMMER DAYS. 
 
 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 mounting hill and meadow mark 
 With broad, blurred lines of solitudes : 
 Far off a fox-hound bays and barks 
 Impatient of the calm that broods. 
 
 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 ; 
 
 And now the insect sounds that fill 
 
 The hush ; 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 
 
 Are odorous, as if the keen 
 
 Scents day poured in hot leaves and seeds 
 
 Night's dews distil from out the green. 
 
 Their infant sleeps. They feel the peace 
 Of something done that God has blessed, 
 Soft as the pulse that will not cease 
 There in the cloud that haunts the west ; 
 The peace that love shall still increase 
 While soul in soul still finds its rest.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 55 
 
 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 
 
 T^HE wild brook gleams on the sand and ripples 
 
 Over the rocks of the riffle ; brimming 
 Under the elms like a nymph whose nipples 
 
 Lift and vanish and shine in swimming ; 
 Under the linns and the ash-trees lodging, 
 
 Loops of the limpid waters lie, 
 Shaken of schools of the minnows, dodging 
 
 The sudden wings of the butterfly. 
 
 Lower, the loops are lips of laughter 
 
 Over the stones and the crystal gravel ; 
 Lower, the lips are a look seen after 
 
 Song and laughter that lips unravel : 
 Lengths of the shadowy water, shaken 
 
 Of the dropping bark of the sycamore, 
 Where the water-snake, that the noises waken, 
 
 Slides like a crooked root from shore. 
 
 Peace of the forest ; the peace made 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
 
 5 6 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 
 
 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 her love are 
 
 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 name him worse that the long Elysian 
 
 Prize he wins where I discover 
 Only the hell of the luckless chooser? 
 
 Shall I name him better or hold him more 
 Since he is winner and I am loser, 
 
 His life 's made rich and mine made poor ? " 
 
 11 1 tell you now as I oft and ever 
 
 Have told," she answered, the laughter dying 
 Down in her eyes, " that his words have never 
 
 Held me so but you think me lying,
 
 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 57 
 
 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 limbs 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 cautious foot, 
 Straighten, and tear from her breast the 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 blisters ; an endless massing 
 
 Of wounds and bruises of deathless yearning. 
 Butterflies sucked in the moist sand-alleys ; 
 
 A fairy fleet of Ionian sails 
 Were their wings ; or the sails 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 ?
 
 58 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 
 
 She never looked back : and he saw her vanish 
 In swirls of the startled butterflies, 
 
 Like a storm of flowers, and could not banish 
 The look of love from his face and eyes. 
 
 II. 
 
 He heard the cocks crow out the lonely hours. 
 
 How long the night and very far the dawn ! 
 It seemed long months since he had seen the 
 flowers, 
 
 The leaves, the sunlight, and the beehived lawn ; 
 Had heard the thrush flute in the tangled showers. 
 
 His burning eyes ached, staring at the black 
 Stolidity of midnight. Would it send 
 
 No cool reprieve unto his mind, a rack 
 Of inquisition, tortures to unbend, 
 
 That stretched him forward and now strained him 
 back? 
 
 Invisible and sad and undivulged, 
 
 The thought that made him think of summer 
 
 walks 
 Through woods on which the sudden perfumes 
 
 bulged, 
 
 The bird-songs and the brilliant-blossomed stalks ; 
 And that young freedom which their talk indulged.
 
 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 59 
 
 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 dreadful dungeons, and delight 
 Herself on mountains of the violet ray, 
 
 Clad in white maidenhood and maiden white ! 
 
 A melancholy coast, plunged deep in dream 
 
 And death and silence, stretched the drizzling 
 dark, 
 
 Wherein he heard a round-eyed screech-owl scream 
 In lamentation, and a watch-dog bark, 
 
 A voiced oblivion, at night's hollow stream. 
 
 And then hope moved him to divide the blinds 
 To see if those bright sparkles were a star's 
 
 Or only his hot eyeballs', which the mind's 
 Commotion weighed. No slightest ravel mars 
 
 With glimmer heaven's swart tapestry he finds. 
 
 Yet he remained refreshed, until the first 
 Exploring crevices of Aztec morn,
 
 60 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 
 
 Dim cracks of treasure, Eldorados burst : 
 
 Then could he face his cowardice and scorn 
 This weakness which his manhood had immersed. 
 
 It knew no barriers now. And where it went 
 Each twisting path was musical with birds ; 
 
 Each weed was richer with diviner 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 in the feathering fog 
 
 Over the hillside that 's lying, 
 There by the butternut log 
 
 Where night heard the screech-owl crying ? 
 
 Who is it hunts in the brush 
 
 Under the linns and the beeches, 
 Here where the Fork is a blush 
 
 In the rocks that the noon never reaches ? 
 Here where the bank is a 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
 
 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 61 
 
 Where he listens, his rifle half rested, 
 Half leaned on the crumbling stone-wall, 
 And his face, it rarely has jested. 
 
 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 ? 
 
 As something breaks strong through the weeds 
 Where the buck-bushes toss and the higher 
 
 Snakeroot with its spiring seeds, 
 Wild carrots, are trammelling wire 
 
 Round the path to the creek-road that leads . . . 
 Shall he know, shall he see ere he fire ? 
 
 From the leaves of the wind-shaken wood 
 Thick drops of the night-dew are 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 
 Down the face of the man that is crawling ? 
 
 Red blood or a smudge of the dawn ? 
 
 And he lies with his gray eyes wide staring 
 Stiff, still at the sun : he has drawn
 
 62 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 
 
 His limbs in a heap : and the faring 
 Bee-martins light near and are gone : 
 
 But the tomtit and wren, they are daring. 
 
 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 ; 
 
 The wild hawk sails on as asleep, 
 
 And the bob-white is whistling from cover. 
 
 It is dusk ; and the wild flowers wilt 
 
 With the sadness of crime in their faces ; 
 
 The blue wild petunias tilt 
 
 To the larkspur in death-darkened places ; 
 
 On the wild sweet-williams are spilt 
 The sunset or guiltier traces ? ' 
 
 It is night ; and the hoot-owlet mocks 
 
 The dove of the day with weird weeping : 
 
 The creek is a groan 'mid the rocks 
 
 Where the 'coon through the briers is creeping 
 
 Through the woods snaps the bark of the fox 
 But the dead, they are deaf in their sleeping. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Night flies and day is here, 
 
 God's fairer ultimate 
 Of causes never clear
 
 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 63 
 
 To lives that will not wait ; 
 Day dies and night is near, 
 And love is over-late. 
 
 A storm has rent great limbs, 
 
 And bent the wooded ridge ; 
 Each swollen shallow swims 
 
 Head-deep below the bridge ; 
 The drift, that breaks and brims, 
 
 Floats lighter than the midge. 
 
 Dusk dies and night is gray 
 
 With shadows and with rain ; 
 The forests sound and sway 
 
 Like monsters wrenched with pain ; 
 Night deepens on the way 
 
 And shall she wait in vain? 
 
 The Fork is whirling wreck 
 
 Of field and hill and wood ; 
 And many a moon-wan fleck 
 
 Floats where the rock-fence stood ; 
 A current rolls break-neck 
 
 Above the washed-out blood. 
 
 Night deepens : and she waits 
 
 Expectant in despair : 
 The Fork has reached the gates,
 
 64 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 
 
 The wood's wreck everywhere. 
 Night deepens ; and she hates 
 The man that will not dare. 
 
 She sees the lightning rush 
 Blaze-boiling hells above ; 
 
 She hears the thunder crush 
 Heaven as if devils clove 
 
 Bowed in the lightning's flush 
 
 Through wind and rain comes love. 
 
 He comes she feels, and stands 
 The rushing waters o'er 
 
 Her feet, and on her hands 
 And hair the rains that pour, 
 
 And sees the instant lands 
 Light-looming from her door. 
 
 Night deepens ; but she knows 
 Love will not fail to send 
 
 Reprieve to her young woes, 
 And one day's errors mend. 
 
 The wild stream foams and flows 
 In booming fall and bend. 
 
 Again the lightnings light 
 
 The night like some wild torch ; 
 The waters foam and fight ;
 
 AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK. 
 
 And one uprooted larch 
 Drives 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 ! 
 5
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 A NIELLO. 
 
 T T is not early spring and yet 
 
 Of lamb's-tongue banks above 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 to blush 
 In tune with cheeks of maidenhood, 
 I find full Junetide in bare brush 
 And empty wood ? 
 
 Why will I think how young she died ! 
 Straight, barren death stalks down the trees. 
 The hard-eyed hours by his side 
 That kill and freeze. 
 
 When orchards are in bloom again 
 
 My heart will bound, my blood will beat,
 
 A NIELLO. 67 
 
 To hear the red-bird so repeat 
 
 On apple boughs his strain ; 
 His blithe, loud song, heard through the rain 
 In summer, now among the bloom, 
 Where all the bees and hornets boom, 
 
 Inviting to remain. 
 
 When orchards are in bloom once more, 
 Evasions of dear dreams will draw 
 My feet, like some persistent law, 
 
 Through blossoms to her door : 
 And I shall ask her, as before, 
 " To let me help her at the well " ; 
 And fill her pail ; and long to tell 
 
 My secret, o'er and o'er. 
 
 I shall not speak until we quit 
 The farm-gate, buried in its stain 
 Of orchards all in bloom again, 
 
 And see the wood-dove sit 
 And call ; and through the blossoms flit 
 The cat-bird crying while he flies ; 
 Then bashfully I '11 praise her eyes, 
 
 And cheeks with gladness lit. 
 
 And it may be that she will place 
 Her trust in me as once before, 
 When orchards are in bloom once more, 
 With all her sweet girl grace :
 
 68 A NIELLO. 
 
 And we shall tarry till a trace 
 Of sunset dyes the heaven, and then 
 To tell her all ; and bend again 
 To kiss her quiet face ! 
 
 And homeward, humming, I shall go 
 Along the cricket-chirring ways, 
 When all the west, one crimson blaze, 
 
 Blooms as if orchards blow 
 Piled petals in it. I shall know 
 Glad youth once more and have her here, 
 Who has been dead this many a year, 
 
 To make my old heart glow. 
 
 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 glad for death the wind and rain ; 
 
 Too heedless for earth's wildest woe 
 The young hypocrisy of pain 
 
 That will not let you 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 water slips :
 
 A NIELLO. 69 
 
 Too rich were earth for my poor needs 
 
 In egotism of loveliness ; 
 The apathy that never heeds 
 
 If grief be more or less. 
 
 But I would die when Autumn goes, 
 
 The wild 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 
 
 To fall asleep in the sad days, 
 With patience and with faith that nears 
 
 The mist that God shall raise.
 
 7 o RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 WRECKAGE. 
 
 C UCH love has drifted out of dreams 
 
 Under the moon of a P'lorida night, 
 Over the beach with its silver seams, 
 White as a sail is white ; 
 
 Such days have entered into some lives 
 
 Out of the love that the nights have borne, 
 Over the waves where the vapor drives, 
 Mists that the stars have torn ; 
 
 Such songs have welded two hearts and hands 
 
 Out of the sea and the summer moon, 
 Out of the stars and the mists and sands, 
 Setting two lives in tune ; 
 
 Days of love and the love will keep 
 
 Truth and hope and the faith as one 
 Care will sing and the hate will weep 
 Loss that the love begun.
 
 WRECK A GE. 71 
 
 Parting he said to her : " We are not true to them, 
 
 Gifts of the seasons : the night and the morning, 
 Love and the loss of all love, that 's a clew to 
 them, 
 
 Trust that is hope, and a faith never scorning. 
 Have you considered the life that regretfully 
 
 Foldeth weak arms to the fate it could master ? 
 Slave of all circumstance, sadly and fretfully 
 
 Whines for the comfort that cometh no faster?" 
 
 They had come down to the ocean that, bellowing, 
 
 Boiled on the sand and the shells that were 
 
 broken ; 
 All of the season was faded and yellowing ; 
 
 All of their misery of love had been spoken. 
 It had befallen the heavens were 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
 
 72 WRECK A GE. 
 
 Toss of the spray. "Let our cares vanish under 
 
 us ; 
 Doing, be hope of us now, and not dying ! " 
 
 Yet, if it came to the part he has said to her 
 
 "Strive with and master?" What grief could 
 
 have striven, 
 
 Weaker than all that is woman, he dead to her, 
 There in the weeds and the waves that are 
 
 driven ! 
 Where, in the morning, farewells they have taken, 
 
 now 
 
 Must be repeated with tears, though the sailor 
 Sailed with a laugh, that her kiss will not waken 
 
 now, 
 Sealed with the salt on the lips that are paler. 
 
 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, 
 
 I heard her calling me. 
 
 At dusk the gull clanged, drifting 
 
 Above the boiling brine ; 
 And, through the wan west sifting,
 
 WRECKAGE. 73 
 
 Streamed one wan sunset line ; 
 And, to my gray eyes lifting, 
 Her sad eyes gazed in mine. 
 
 All night the wind wailed, sighing 
 Along the wreck-strewn coast ; 
 
 All night the surf, defying, 
 Rolled thunder in and boast ; 
 
 All night I heard her crying, 
 A ghost that called a ghost 
 
 The balm of the night and the glory, 
 
 The music and scent of the sea, 
 Are a part of our lives, and the story 
 
 Of thee and of me. 
 The stars of the night, and the whiteness 
 
 Of foam on the stretch of the sand, 
 The foam that is flung, and the lightness 
 Of hand within hand. 
 
 No sail on the ocean ; no sailor 
 
 On shore, and the winds all asleep ; 
 And thy face in the starlight far paler 
 
 Than women who weep. 
 A mist on the deep that was ghostly ; 
 
 A moon in the deep of the skies ; 
 The mist and the moon, they were mostly 
 In thee and thine eyes.
 
 74 WRECK A GE. 
 
 No sea-gull to vanish with gleaming 
 
 Of wings, but the swing of the spray 
 And a sense of unutterable dreaming 
 
 That bore me away. 
 No wind and no wing, but their essence, 
 
 And all that is grayest and dim, 
 In the mermaiden grace of thy presence, 
 In look and in limb. 
 
 That night of strange cries ! and to perish 
 
 So out of our lives that were bare, 
 Yet ached with the yearning to cherish 
 
 With patience and prayer ! 
 For thou wast a sea-mist made woman, 
 
 And I was a sound of the sea 
 Made man but nothing was human 
 In thee and in me. 
 
 And one had sought the deep that glasses 
 
 The face of God and His majesty ; 
 And one still sought the gulf that passes 
 
 Life and its mystery. 
 Time and tears and the days that ever 
 Burden the back of the days to be ; 
 Strife and grief and the seas that sever 
 Love in a ship at sea.
 
 WRECK A GE. 75 
 
 One had come where the reef rolled broken 
 Foam of the baulked waves everywhere ; 
 Waves that tangle the weeds and oaken 
 
 Wreck and a dead man's hair. 
 One had come where the sand laid livid 
 
 Paths of ease which the sea-gulls share ; 
 The wing of the gull in the light less vivid 
 Light than the gladness there. 
 
 Winds that gallop with strength and splendor 
 
 Steeds of the surf with their streaming manes 
 Surf that batters the coast's defender, 
 
 Surf that the rock disdains : 
 Storm that hunts in his sounding sandals, 
 
 Hounds of thunder he holds with chains, 
 Light that leaps like the spear he handles, 
 Storm and the rush of rains. 
 
 Wrenching the wreck of the world asunder, 
 
 Black rebellion of hell and night ; 
 Wrath and roar of the rocks and thunder, 
 
 Might and the curse of might. 
 Beating the drift and the hush together, 
 
 Waves and wind that the morn makes white ; 
 Calm and peace of the dove-dyed weather, 
 Light and the grace of light. 
 
 Clouds blow by and the storm 's forgotten. 
 Savage coasts where the sea-cow feeds.
 
 76 WRECK A GE. 
 
 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 
 
 Flint in the shaft he speeds. 
 
 Clouds blow up and the sea-gulls gather ; 
 Clouds blow up and the evening falls ; 
 The lightning leaps and the sad sands lather, 
 
 Rolling the waves in walls : 
 Who shall tell her, sweetheart or sister, 
 
 Her who sings as the tempest calls ? 
 
 Suns that beat on his face and blister ? 
 
 Wind or the wave that crawls ? 
 
 This was his hope : that, by the ocean sitting, 
 
 Dawn would compel her grave eyes to behold, 
 Between the foam ridge and the sea-gull's flitting, 
 His body rolled. 
 
 All was not as it was before they parted ; 
 
 She said she would remember, and forgot ; 
 He said he would forget her, angry-hearted, 
 And yet could not.
 
 WRECK A GE. 77 
 
 She never knew : and, 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 . 
 
 Between the seaweed and the rocks the slanted 
 
 Hulk of a wreck : beyond the sand and wave, 
 Worn with the wind and with the cactus planted, 
 His nameless grave.
 
 78 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 HIEROGLYPHS. 
 
 l\yi Y dreams are older than the trees, 
 
 Being but newer forms of change ; 
 
 Some savage dreamed mine ; and 't was these 
 
 De Leon sought where seas were strange. 
 
 My thoughts are older than the earth 
 
 Being of beauty ages wrought ; 
 Old when creation gave them birth, 
 
 When Homer sang them, Shakespeare thought. 
 
 2. 
 
 If souls could travel with their thought 
 Beyond the farthest arcs that span 
 Worlds of imaginative man, 
 
 Where thought is lightning fraught ; 
 One would explore the stars, and one 
 The science of each moon and sun 
 Long evolutions wrought. 
 
 And one would seek out Hell ; and, wise 
 In tortures of the damned, return 
 To tell us how they freeze or burn, 
 And where God's red Hell lies;
 
 HIEROGL YPHS. 79 
 
 And one would look on Heaven ; and, mute 
 With memories of harp and lute, 
 Sit silent as the skies. 
 
 But I on condor wings would sweep 
 Back to cosmogony, and sit 
 In firmaments volcano-lit, 
 
 And see creation heap 
 The awful Andes, vague and vast, 
 Around the Inca-peopled past, 
 
 While deep roared out to deep. 
 
 Out of it all but this remains : 
 
 I was with one who passed wide chains 
 
 Of the Cordilleras, whose peaks 
 
 Lock in the wilds of Yucatan, 
 
 Chiapas and Honduras. Weeks 
 
 And then a city that no man 
 
 Had ever seen ; so dim and old, 
 
 No chronicle has ever told 
 
 The history of men who piled 
 
 Its temples and huge teocallis 
 
 Among mimosa-blooming valleys ; 
 
 Or how its altars were defiled 
 
 With human blood ; whose idols there 
 
 With stony eyes still stand and stare.
 
 8o HIEROGL YPHS. 
 
 So old the moon can only know 
 
 How old, since ancient forests grow 
 
 On mighty wall and pyramid. 
 
 Huge ceibas, whose trunks were scarred 
 
 With ages, and dense yuccas, hid 
 
 Fanes, and the cacti, scarlet-starred. 
 
 I looked upon its paven ways, 
 
 And saw it in its pride and praise, 
 
 When from the lordly palace one, 
 
 A victim, walked with prince and priest, 
 
 Who turned brown faces to the east 
 
 In worship of the rising sun : 
 
 At night ten thousand temple spires 
 
 On gold burnt everlasting fires. 
 
 Uxmal? Palenque? or Copan? 
 
 I know not. Only how no man 
 
 Had ever seen ; and still my soul 
 
 Believes it vaster than the three. 
 
 Volcanic rock walled in the whole, 
 
 Lost in the woods as in some sea. 
 
 / only read its hieroglyphs, 
 
 Perused its monster monoliths 
 
 Of death, gigantic heads ; and read 
 
 The pictured codex of its fate, 
 
 The perished Toltec ; while in hate 
 
 Mad monkeys cursed me, as if dead 
 
 Priests of its past had taken form 
 
 To guard their ruined shrines from harm.
 
 HIEROGL YPHS. 81 
 
 And then it was as if I talked 
 
 Of flowers and beauty, like a God ; 
 
 Mid Montezuma's priests who walked 
 Obedient to my nod. 
 
 From Mexic levels breezes blew 
 O'er green magueys, cacao fields ; 
 
 I stood among caciques, a crew 
 With plumes and golden shields. 
 
 In raiment made of humming-birds 
 
 Brown slave-girls danced. All Anahuac 
 
 Stood, grim with strange obsidian swords, 
 Around the idol's rock. 
 
 And up the temple's winding stair 
 
 Of pyramid we wound and went. 
 The bloomed vanilla drenched the air 
 
 With all its tropic scent. 
 
 Volcanoes walled us in ; and I 
 
 Walked crowned with flaming cactus-flowers, 
 Beneath the golden, Aztec sky, 
 
 Lord of the living hours. 
 
 When, lo ! five priests who led me to 
 
 A jasper stone of sacrifice ! 
 Then deep within my soul I knew 
 
 My pride's ignoble price. 
 6
 
 82 HIEROGL YPHS. 
 
 A sixth priest, robed in cochineal, 
 Received me at the altar's stone ; 
 
 I saw the flint-blade, sharp as steel, 
 That in his high hand shone. 
 
 God ! to dream that they would bind 
 With pomp and pageant of their love 
 
 Me to the rock, and never blind 
 Mine eyes to that above ! 
 
 1 felt the flint hack through my breast, 
 And in my agony did raise 
 
 Wild eyes, a little while to rest 
 Upon their idol's face. 
 
 Just God ! the priest tore out my heart 
 To hold it beating to the sun 
 
 And pain beheld Love's scarlet part 
 In life that was undone. 
 
 Torn out, I felt my heart still beat 
 " How sweet to die if thou wert mine ! 
 
 My heart, cast at the idol's feet 
 Knew that the face was thine ! 
 
 5- 
 
 She was a maiden like a dream. 
 She led me where volcanic dust
 
 HIEROGL YPHS. 83 
 
 Rained in a scoriae mountain stream. 
 The Andes rose in snow, or thrust 
 Black craters belching stones and steam. 
 
 She was an Inca princess when 
 
 I was a cavalier of Spain, 
 Who frowned among Pizarro's men 
 
 And watched the New World rent with pain 
 No grace of God could save me then ! 
 
 And it was she who led me far 
 
 To gaze on caves of Inca gold ; 
 Until we came where, warrior 
 
 On warrior, an army rolled 
 In savage panoply of war. 
 
 Fierce faces chiselled out of stone 
 
 Were not so stern. Down underneath 
 
 I heard the sullen earthquake groan ; 
 Above me, red eruptions seeth ; 
 
 And set my teeth and stood alone. 
 
 And then she pled and was denied. 
 They laid me where the lava crawled 
 
 Red rivers down the mountain side. 
 I felt the slow, slow hell-heat scald ; 
 
 And as it closed, she leapt and died.
 
 84 HIEROGL YPHS. 
 
 6. 
 
 In farther planets there are men who talk 
 
 With beaming eyes and brows that burn witi| 
 
 thought ; 
 
 Pure souls whose sentiments need but be born 
 To be expressed. Where speech of mouth and 
 
 tongue 
 
 Were barbarous discord. Where no voice impart* 
 Thought, but divulging eye and sensitive brow. 
 Superior planets far beyond our sphere, 
 And nearer God than ages shall combine 
 To lift our world up with its wrangling woes. 
 Worlds that are strange to sickness and disease j 
 Of mind or body ; perfect mentally, 
 Past what we name perfection here on Earth, 
 And physically. Morally divine 
 As creeds have taught us God's high Heaven is. 1 
 Worlds where Love makes no playmate of vile 
 
 Lust ; 
 
 Where Hope makes no companion of Despair ; ] 
 Where Power can not trample with fierce feet ; j 
 And, impotent, the iron hand of Might 
 Surrenders its red weapon unto Mind ; 
 Where Truth and Thought are wedded, in one rule 1 
 Of far progressions, whose white child is Love. \ 
 
 So have I thought, and longed to leave sad Earth 
 To live anew on some sublimer sphere ; 
 A world so higher, lovelier than is this,
 
 HIEROGL YPHS. 85 
 
 So spiritually perfected and refined, 
 
 Should one behold, behold ! one would fall prone 
 
 In worship and astonishment ; and all 
 
 The exaltation of celestial peace 
 
 Declare within his soul, " Yea, this is Heaven ! 
 
 How long, O sinner, hast thou dwelt in Hell ! " 
 
 An iron despotism the day's : 
 A brutal anarchy the night's : 
 What hope for hope when day betrays 
 To night's ignoble spites ! 
 
 For once I prayed for gulfs of gold, 
 And eve spread pools of sombre blood ; 
 Clean skies of stars, and skies behold 
 Malignant with the scud. 
 
 And so I marvel not that he, 
 Gray-haired and palsied, hugs his stove 
 While I my youth, which once was she, 
 Have buried with my love. 
 
 8. 
 
 All thoughts of Nature are its forms : 
 Life, love and death : these God began : 
 Sun-systems that are still in storms, 
 Evolving worlds to perfect man.
 
 86 HIEROGL YPHS. 
 
 Thoughts are the forms of Mind : and plumb 
 Effects to causes : Calculate 
 From intellect the mighty sum 
 Of truth as spirit ultimate.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 87 
 
 SIREN SANDS. 
 
 ""THE rhododendrons sleep and take 
 
 The dew-drops they would weep away, 
 
 Among palmettoes of 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.
 
 88 SIREN SANDS. 
 
 Night ; and the heavens stained and strewn 
 With stars dark waters realized, 
 Until their light the brightening moon 
 Epitomized. 
 
 Night but the pine-wood balms will wake ; 
 Buds laugh the dew-drop from each face ; 
 The bay will burn and on the lake 
 The ripple race. 
 
 Far coasts detach deep purple from 
 The blue horizon, and the day 
 Behold the sunburnt sailor come 
 To sail away. 
 
 The bird that dreamed at dusk, at dawn 
 Will sing again. And who shall pine? 
 Not I ! for thou, when night is gone, 
 Wilt still be mine. 
 
 2. 
 
 Through halls of columned scarlet 
 Like some dim queen, the Dusk 
 Trails stately skirts of musk, 
 
 Hung in each ear a starlet, 
 Weird jewels of the Jinn ; 
 
 And golden 'neath her chin 
 The moon, a gem-like tusk.
 
 SIREN SANDS. 89 
 
 There lies a ghostly glory 
 Along the sea and sand, 
 That, like a knightly band 
 
 From lands of sacred story, 
 Kneels on the ray-red spray ; 
 
 A crusade stopped to pray 
 
 Beneath God's shielding hand. 
 
 Up flaming mountains millions 
 
 In burning pentecosts ; 
 
 Love's beauty-blinding hosts, 
 And radiance-raised pavilions 
 
 Among celestial flowers 
 Earth's sense of angel hours, 
 
 The after ghosts of ghosts. 
 
 Music that melts in moonlight, 
 Out of the summer breeze ; 
 
 Fireflies, moonlight, and foaming 
 Susurrus of the seas. 
 
 Music that drifts from perfume, 
 Soft as the touch of a hand ; 
 
 Dreams and stars and the ocean, 
 And two on the fluted sand. 
 
 Glimmers of vague reflections, 
 And the white flame of the foam
 
 SIREN SANDS. 
 
 Pale on the purple a vessel, 
 And a song to sing it home. 
 
 And I dream the dream of the music, 
 And the firefly spark that floats, 
 
 For the music is glittering magic, 
 And the flies are its golden notes. 
 
 And again you are singing the story 
 Of the brown old coast and sea, 
 
 Of the lives that lived for passion, 
 In an old-world melody : 
 
 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.
 
 SIREN SANDS. 91 
 
 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 or the wild winds whistle 
 Over the rocks where the sea-gulls rave 
 
 My heart is bleak as the wind-worn thistle 
 Dead on her sea-side grave." . . . 
 
 And I hear the harsh reef's hunger 
 
 For a noble ship at sea, 
 And the voices of mermaids singing 
 
 The sea's old tragedy ; 
 
 Till I am the doomed ship's pilot, 
 
 And you are the mermaiden, 
 Who lures him on to the wrecking 
 
 And into her arms again. 
 
 4- 
 
 Sad as sad eyes that ache with tears 
 The stars of night shine through the leaves ; 
 And barren as the nunlike years, 
 The shades that darkness weaves. 
 
 The summer sunset marched long hosts 
 Of gold adown one golden peak,
 
 92 SIREN SANDS. 
 
 That flamed and fell ; and now gray ghosts 
 Watch where the moon is weak. 
 
 Appealing years and eyes that weep ; 
 Moon-mists that beckon or conceal ; 
 Wan thoughts naught-medicines to sleep ; 
 Wan wounds that will not heal. 
 
 And heaven now hoarse with storm, that slips 
 Wild angles of the jagged light ; 
 I kiss the wild rain from her lips, 
 And shield her from the night. 
 
 A moaning tremor in the trees ; 
 And all the stars packed with black death ; 
 I hold her by the neck and knees 
 And kiss away her breath. 
 
 Hell and hag Night drive on the rain ; 
 I hold her by the hair and plead : 
 She beats my face with blows again, 
 With hands that burn and bleed. 
 
 The thunder plants deep cohorts on 
 The volleying heights I should have known 
 How long it is that she is gone, 
 And I how long alone !
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 93 
 
 AT THE LANE'S END. 
 
 |V| O more to strip the roses from 
 
 The rose-boughs of her porch's place ! 
 I dreamed last night that I was home 
 Beside a rose her face. 
 
 I must have smiled asleep who knows ? 
 
 The rose aroma filled the lane ; 
 I saw her white hand's lifted rose 
 
 That called me home again. 
 
 And yet when I awoke so wan, 
 
 An old face wet with icy tears ! 
 Somehow, it seems, sleep had misdrawn 
 
 A love gone thirty years. 
 
 2. 
 
 The clouds roll up and the clouds roll down 
 
 Over the roofs of the little town ; 
 
 Out in the hills, where the pike winds by 
 
 Fields of clover and bottoms of rye, 
 
 You will hear no sound but the barking cough 
 
 Of the striped chipmunk where the lane leads off ;
 
 A T THE LANE'S END. 
 
 You will hear no bird but the sapsucker 
 Far off in the forest, that seems to purr, 
 As the warm wind fondles its tops, grown hot 
 Like the docile back of an ocelot ; 
 You will see no thing but the shine and shade 
 Of briers that climb and of weeds that wade 
 The glittering creeks of the sun, that fills 
 The dusty road and the red-keel hills : 
 And all day long in the pennyroy'l 
 The grasshoppers at their anvils toil ; 
 Thick click of their tireless hammers thrum, 
 And the wheezy belts of their bellows hum ; 
 Tinkers who solder the silence and heat 
 To make the loneliness more complete. 
 
 Around old rails where the blackberries 
 
 Are reddening ripe, and the bumble bees 
 
 Are a drowsy rustle of Summer's skirts, 
 
 And the bobwhite's wing is the fan she flirts, 
 
 Under the hill, through the iron-weeds, 
 
 And blue mist-flowers and milk-weeds, leads 
 
 The path forgotten of all but one 
 
 Where elder bushes are sick with sun 
 
 And wild raspberries branch big blue veins 
 
 On the face of the rock, where the old spring rains 
 
 Its sparkling splinters of molten spar 
 
 On the gravel bed where the tadpoles are, 
 
 You will find the pales of the fallen fence, 
 
 And the tangled orchard and vineyard, dense
 
 AT THE LANE'S END. 95 
 
 With the weedy neglect of thirty years ; 
 
 The garden there, where the soft sky clears 
 
 Like an old, sweet face that has dried its tears; 
 
 The garden plot where the cabbage grew 
 
 And the pompous pumpkin ; and beans that blew 
 
 Balloons of white by the melon patch ; 
 
 Maize ; and tomatoes that seemed to catch 
 
 Oblong amber and agate balls 
 
 Thrown from the sun in the frosty Falls ; 
 
 The rows of currents and gooseberries, 
 
 And the balsam-gourd with its honey-bees ; 
 
 And here was a nook for the princess-plumes, 
 
 And the snap-dragons and the poppy blooms, 
 
 Mother's sweet-williams and pansy flowers, 
 
 And the morning-glory's bewildered bowers 
 
 Tipping their cornucopias up 
 
 For the humming-birds that came to sup ; 
 
 And over it all was the Sabbath peace 
 
 Of the land whose lap was the love of these ; 
 
 And the old log-house where my innocence died, 
 
 With my boyhood buried side by side. 
 
 Shall a man with a face as withered and gray 
 As the wasp-nest stowed in a loft away, 
 Where the hornets haunt and the mortar drops 
 From the loosened logs of the clapboard tops ; 
 That vice has aged, as the rotting rooms 
 The rain where memories haunt the glooms ; 
 A hitch in his joints like the rheum that gnars
 
 g6 AT THE LANE'S END. 
 
 In the rasping hinge of the door that jars ; 
 A harsh, cracked throat like the old stone flue 
 Where the swallows build the summer through ; 
 Shall a man, I say, with the spider sins 
 That the coarse years spin, in the outs and ins 
 Of his soul, returning to see once more 
 His boyhood's home, where his life was poor 
 With toil and tears and their fretfulness, 
 But rich with health and the hopes that bless 
 The unsoiled wealth of a vigorous youth ; 
 Shall he not take comfort and know the truth 
 In its threadbare raiment of falsehood ? Yea ! 
 In his crumbled past he shall kneel and pray, 
 Like a pilgrim come to the shrine again 
 Of the homely saints that shall soothe his pain, 
 And arise and depart made clean from stain ! 
 
 3- 
 
 Years of care cannot erase 
 Visions of the hills and trees 
 
 Closing in the dam and race ; 
 Nor the mile-long memories 
 
 Of the mill-stream's lovely place. 
 
 How the sunsets used to stain 
 
 Mirror of the water lying 
 Under eaves made dark with rain ! 
 
 Where the red-bird, nestward-flying, 
 Lit to try one bar again.
 
 A T THE LANE'S END. 97 
 
 Dingles, hills, and woods and springs, 
 Where we came in calm and storm, 
 
 Swinging in the grape-vine swings, 
 Wading where the rocks were warm, 
 
 With our fishing nets and strings. 
 
 Here the road plunged down the hill, 
 
 Under ash and chinquapin, 
 Where the grasshoppers would drill 
 
 Ears of silence with their din, 
 To the willow-girdled mill. 
 
 There the path beyond the ford 
 
 Takes the woodside, just below 
 Shallows that the lilies sword, 
 
 Where the scarlet blossoms blow 
 Of the trumpet-vine and gourd. 
 
 Summer winds that sink with heat, 
 
 On the pelted waters winnow 
 Moony petals, that repeat 
 
 Crescents, where the startled minnow 
 Beats a glittering retreat. 
 
 Summer winds, that bear the scent 
 
 Of the iron-weed and mint, 
 Weary with sweet freight and spent, 
 
 On the deeper pools imprint 
 Stumbling steps the ripples dent.
 
 A T THE LANE'S END. 
 
 Summer winds that split the husk 
 Of the peach and nectarine, 
 
 Blow beyond the crimson dusk 
 Hazy skirts, but faintly seen, 
 
 Spilling balms of dew and musk. 
 
 Where with balls of bursting juice 
 Summer sees the red wild-plum 
 
 Strew the gravel ; ripened loose, 
 Autumn hears the pawpaw drum 
 
 Plumpness on the rocks that bruise : 
 
 Here we found the water-beech, 
 Some forgotten August noon, 
 
 With its hornet-nest in reach, 
 Like a Fairyland balloon. 
 
 Full of bustling fairy speech. 
 
 Some invasion sure it was : 
 
 For we heard the captains scold ; 
 
 Waspish cavalry a-buzz, 
 Troopers uniformed in gold 
 
 Sable-slashed, to charge on us. 
 
 Could I find the sedgy angle, 
 
 Where the dragon-flies would turn 
 
 Slender Sittings into spangle 
 On the sunlight? or would burn 
 
 Where the berries made a tangle,
 
 A T THE LANE'S END. 99 
 
 Sparkling green and brazen blue ? 
 
 Rendezvoused about the stream 
 Turbaned gay banditti, who, 
 
 Brigands of the bloom and beam, 
 Drunken were with honey-dew. 
 
 Could I find the pond that lay 
 
 Where vermilion blossoms showered 
 
 Fragrance down the daisied way ? 
 And the sassafras embowered 
 
 Sap and spice of early May ? 
 
 In the twilight might I seek 
 The old mill ! Its weather-beaten 
 
 Wheel and gable by the creek ; 
 And its warping roof ; worm-eaten, 
 
 Dusty rafters worn and weak. 
 
 Where old shadows haunt old places, 
 Loft and hopper, stair and bin ; 
 
 Ghostly with the dust that laces 
 Webs that usher phantoms in, 
 
 Wistful with remembered faces. 
 
 While the frogs' grave litanies 
 
 Drowse irr far-off antiphone, 
 Supplicating, till the eyes 
 
 Of dead friendships, long alone 
 In the dingy corners, rise.
 
 AT THE LANE'S END. 
 
 Moonrays or the splintered slip 
 Of a star. In twinkling darkle 
 
 Of the night the fire-flies dip 
 As if Night betrayed the sparkle 
 
 Of rich jewels through a rip. 
 
 And once more my boyhood crosses, 
 With a corn-sack for the meal, 
 
 Through the sprinkled ferns and mosses, 
 To the gray mill's lichened wheel, 
 
 Where the water drips and tosses.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 A COIGNE. 
 
 '"THE hills hang woods around, and green below 
 
 Dark, breezy boughs of beeches mats the moss, 
 Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year's nuts ; 
 The water hums one bar there ; and a glow 
 Of gold lies steady where the trailers toss 
 Red, toppling bugles and a rock abuts ; 
 In spots the wild-phlox and oxalis blow 
 Where beech roots bulge the loam, and welt across 
 The whole dense hillside in protruding ruts. 
 
 And where the sumach brakes grow dusk and 
 
 dense, 
 
 Among the briers, yellow violets, 
 Lamb's-tongues and wind-flowers bloom ; the 
 
 agaric 
 
 In dampness crowds ; a fungus, made intense 
 With gold and crimson and wax-white, that sets 
 The May-apples along the terraced creek 
 At gay defiance. Where the old rail-fence 
 Divides the hollow, there the bee-bird whets 
 His bill, and there the elder hedge is thick.
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 No one can miss it ; for two cat-birds nest, 
 Calling all morning, in the trumpet-vine ; 
 And there at noon the pewee sits and floats 
 A woodland welcome ; and his very best 
 At eve the blue-jay sings, as if to sign 
 The record of its loveliness with notes : 
 At night the moon stoops over it to rest, 
 And unreluctant stars ; where waters shine 
 There runs a whisper as of wind-swept oats. 
 
 II. 
 EVASION. 
 
 And shall I seek upon the hills 
 For hints the orchards follow ? 
 
 Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills 
 And apple-trees the hollow, 
 Beneath the soaring swallow ? 
 
 In red-bud brakes and flowery 
 Acclivities of berry ; 
 
 In dog-wood dingles showery 
 With dew the sun makes merry, 
 And drifts of swarming cherry ? 
 
 In valleys of wild strawberries, 
 And of the white May-apple ; 
 
 Or cloud-like trees of hawberries, 
 With which the south-winds grapple. 
 And all the broad brook dapple ?
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 103 
 
 Whose eyes are dark forgetfulness, 
 To see the forest's daughter, 
 
 Whose feet are bee-like fretfulness, 
 Strive like a running water 
 In boughs that kissed and caught her. 
 
 To see you, yet to find you not, 
 
 To seek you and continue ; 
 With hurrying hands that bind you not, 
 
 Since one may never win you 
 
 With striving soul and sinew. 
 
 In pearly, peach-blush distances 
 Light limbs that have evaded 
 
 The eager heart's persistences, 
 
 The rock-paved brook that waded, 
 With chestnut branches shaded. 
 
 O presence, like the primrose's, 
 
 Still hold me in your power ! 
 With rainy scents of dim roses, 
 
 That led me for an hour 
 
 To find this one frail flower. 
 
 in. 
 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.
 
 io 4 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 The heaven hath stars ; 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, dull shadow lies 
 
 Like iron in its breast. 
 
 I mark the shocks of shadow, 
 
 I mark the unmown corn, 
 The white, weird moonlight overhead 
 
 Would God I 'd ne'er been born ! 
 
 I sit alone and listen ; 
 
 The far leaves sound and sigh ; 
 The dew drips from the bearded grain, 
 
 The mist slips from the sky. 
 
 I hear her whisper whispers, 
 And breathe in yon gray place ; 
 
 Her feet are easier than the dew, 
 And than the mist her face. 
 
 She will not hear me, never ! 
 
 This spirit made for song, 
 Who dwelleth in the young, young oak, 
 
 The old, old oaks among.
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 105 
 
 Her limbs are molded moonlight ; 
 
 Her breasts are silver moons ; 
 She glimmers and she glitters where 
 
 The purple shadow swoons. 
 
 And now she knows I love her, 
 
 She says that I have died, 
 And laughs and dances in the mist 
 
 That haunts the forestside. 
 
 When winds run mad in woodlands 
 
 And mad the black rain sings, 
 I see her mad hair blow and blow 
 
 Dark as a raven's wings. 
 
 When winds are tamed and tethered, 
 
 And meadows bright as frost, 
 I will not walk within the wood 
 
 For fear my soul be lost. 
 
 I seek her and she flees me ; 
 
 I follow through the mist 
 The mist ! the mist will freeze me dead 
 
 Ere her shy lips be kissed ! 
 
 IV. 
 OWL ROOST. 
 
 The slope is a mass of vines : 
 
 If you walk in the daylight there,
 
 io6 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 A glimmering twilight shines 
 
 'Neath vines that are everywhere 
 
 Each trunk, that a creeper twines, 
 Lifts strong and brown and fair 
 
 A column ; and all is grave 
 
 As a cathedral nave. 
 
 No grass to carpet the feet : 
 And the fox-grape tendrils 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, 
 
 And jets of the sunlight burn. 
 
 A white-backed spider weaves 
 Gray webs between the trees 
 
 Witches who watch their sieves ; 
 The honey and bumble-bees 
 
 Drop droning among the leaves 
 Fairies whose masks are these ; 
 
 At dusk the screech-owls croon 
 
 Hobgoblins of the moon. 
 
 At dark I will not go 
 
 Under its canopy 
 No glittering starbeams know ; 
 
 No new-moon hanging high,
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 Like an Indian warrior's bow, 
 With a star that seems to fly 
 The arrow of gold it shot : 
 At dark I will not, will not ! 
 
 At dawn, if my mood be dim, 
 And the day be a cloudless one, 
 
 Under its leaf and limb 
 
 I '11 walk, though my heart doth shun 
 
 Its shade, and I feel the grim 
 Horror of something done 
 
 Here in the years long past, 
 
 That God makes known at last. 
 
 v. 
 
 MOSS AND FERN. 
 
 Where bank the brakes of bramble there 
 
 Wrapped with the trailing rose, 
 Through canes where waters ramble there, 
 And where the wild pink grows 
 
 Who knows? 
 
 Beyond the reach of maid or man, 
 Here 's Pan. 
 
 Where, by the creek, whose pebbles make 
 
 A foothold for the mint 
 The gray-blue flags like rebels make
 
 io8 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 A fallen rebel tint 
 A hint, 
 
 Since from the Old- World woods he ran, 
 Of Pan. 
 
 Deep in the hollow of the hills 
 Ferns deeper than the knees ; 
 Long clouds drift down, that love the hills. 
 And bring the gradual breeze 
 
 To please, 
 
 Since Syrinx fled beyond his scan, 
 God Pan. 
 
 In woods whose beeches break upon 
 
 The peace like some wise word ; 
 Where sun-shot shadows shake upon 
 Our dream or flits a bird, 
 
 You 've heard 
 
 The flute whose Grecian notes began 
 With Pan. 
 
 Far in, where mosses lay for us 
 Still carpets of green plush ; 
 Where bloom and bee and ray for us 
 Burn on the budded flush, 
 
 A hush 
 
 May sound the satyr hoof a span 
 Of Pan.
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 109 
 
 In woods whose thrushes sing to us, 
 
 And brooks dance sparkling heels ; 
 Whose wild aromas cling to us, 
 
 While woodland worship kneels, 
 
 Who steals 
 
 Beside us, haunch and face of tan, 
 But Pan ! 
 
 VI. 
 WOODLAND WATERS. 
 
 Through leaves of the nodding trees, 
 Where creepers swing in the breeze 
 Red 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 solomon's-seal it slips, 
 Cohosh and the grass that drips
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 The laugh of an Undine's lips, 
 The sound of its falls that stammer. 
 
 I doze in the woods : and the scent 
 Of the honeysuckle is blent 
 With the spice of a Sultan's tent, 
 
 And my dream with the East's enmeshed- 
 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 mosaicked 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.
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 VII. 
 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 peo 
 ple know, 
 
 With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of 
 golden glow, 
 
 Whom the boyish south-wind seeks for and the girl 
 ish-stepping rain, 
 
 W 7 hom 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 Maytime brings it clusters of a rainy fra 
 grant white, 
 
 Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of 
 lifted light.
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 And all day the silence whispers to the sunray 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, 
 Just to stoop and kiss the pathos of an elflock of 
 
 his beard, 
 In the mockery of parting and mock pity of his 
 
 weird : 
 How her magic had forgotten that " who bends to 
 
 give a kiss 
 Will but bring 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.
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 113 
 
 VIII. 
 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 dusks that stand 
 Below the star-communing glooms, 
 Her eyes and hair that shed perfumes. 
 
 I saw the silver sandals on 
 
 Her pearl-white feet that seemed too chaste 
 To tread true gold : her face like dawn 
 
 On splendid peaks that lord a waste 
 
 Of solitude lost gods have graced ; 
 White arms and hands ; firm, faultless hips 
 
 Bound with the girdling silver, chased 
 With acorn cup and crown- and tips 
 Of oak-leaves whence the chiton slips. 
 
 Limbs that the gods call loveliness ! 
 
 The grace and glory of all Greece 
 Wrought in one marble shape were less 
 
 Than the perfection that were these.
 
 DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
 
 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.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 115 
 
 ONE NIGHT. 
 
 A NIGHT of rain. The wind is out. 
 
 And I had wished it otherwise 
 A wind to sweep the scudding skies 
 
 And burn big stars above the rout ; 
 
 Stars ; and my eyes should meet her eyes ; 
 Confront the siren of her sighs ; 
 
 The dimples of her cheeks that pout ; 
 Should see her calmness all surmise 
 When I have said I love her lies 
 And for that very love she dies. 
 
 II. 
 
 What breasts this wind has ! As it runs 
 
 Around each unprotected tree 
 
 Its foggy eyes I seem to see, 
 Inhuman, yet a woman's ones ; 
 
 They blaze nor wink, as lionly 
 
 As some bayed beast that will not flee 
 The pine knots and derides the guns. 
 
 Or is it but the crime that 's she ! 
 
 Who makes such treachery of me, 
 
 Dread substance of my phantasy ?
 
 n6 ONE NIGHT. 
 
 III. 
 
 And now the boughs and whipping rain 
 Confuse them . . . Ah ! her gaze is tense 
 As song with lovely influence 
 
 And it would pain to see her pain . . . 
 Yet she must die with every sense 
 Strung to beholding knowledge, whence 
 
 My awful wound be whole again. 
 The rain is dark ; the night is dense. 
 Not with more silence Innocence 
 Appeals to God than my defence. 
 
 And when she leaves (no one perceives !) 
 The old gray manor where the eight 
 Old locusts, gnarly shadows, freight 
 
 With mossy dreariness its eaves, 
 One moment at the iron gate 
 She '11 tarry. Then, with breath abate, 
 
 Come rustling through the autumn leaves. 
 And I shall take both hands and sate 
 My mouth on her'sand say, " You 're late 
 She '11 laugh to hear I had to wait . . . 
 
 O passion of lost vows, revive 
 Imagination, and renew 
 The ardor of love's language you
 
 ONE NIGHT. 
 
 For love's rose-altar kept alive ! 
 
 Your priestly oaths that rang with dew 
 And starlight ! Think that she is true 
 
 As beautiful. But thought must thrive 
 Here on her falseness, and pursue 
 Deed with determined strength to do 
 The dastardy she drags me to ... 
 
 VI. 
 
 And we shall walk before the wind ; 
 The shuffling leaves about wet feet ; 
 Our ruin as the wood's complete 
 
 Because one creature so has sinned 
 And has not suffered. She shall meet 
 No murder in my eyes ; no heat 
 
 Of fate in holding hand that 's pinned 
 To her's. To make her trust to beat, 
 I '11 kiss her hair, deep as deep wheat, 
 Like affluent Summer's saying " Sweet. 
 
 VII. 
 
 And should I bungle in this thing, 
 
 This purpose that must leave her dead, 
 And cure this fever in my head ? 
 
 There is no wisdom that may bring 
 Soul satisfaction, when is shed 
 No redder blood than intent's red : 
 
 The baulked intention still will ring
 
 u8 ONE NIGHT. 
 
 Fiend noises ; voices that have led 
 
 Desire onward to be fed 
 
 With failure when success seemed said. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 When we have reached the precipice 
 That mocks the battling of the sea, 
 And wallows out black rocks, that knee 
 
 The giant surf and 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. 
 
 O let me see no anguish there, 
 
 No pain ! but terror and the frown 
 Of crime's apprisal and renown 
 
 Of my life's injury, that bare 
 
 This horror with its bloody crown ! 
 No pity, Lord ! 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.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LOVE. 
 
 " [ HOLD it possible that he 
 
 Who idolizes one that *s dead, 
 And dreams of her incessantly 
 
 With visions toil has fed, 
 May cease and say, ' 'T is mine at last 
 To live and love the love that 's past : 
 The joy without the grief and pain. 
 The dead shall live and love again.' " 
 
 And he had loved her till for him 
 
 His love had grown an ideal part ; 
 He saw her standing fair and dim, 
 
 Nor saw her withered heart : 
 And labored on ; for, truth to say, 
 His pleasure was not in the way 
 Of love accomplished, but love's thought 
 That justified the time he wrought. 
 
 And kept such trysts as phantoms keep, 
 Pale distances about his soul ; 
 
 And moved like one who walks asleep, 
 Attaining no sure goal : 
 
 And blither than a lighter heart
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LOVE. 
 
 At crucible and glass retort 
 He labored ; for his love was prism 
 To irisate toil's egoism. 
 
 He drained wan draughts from out a cup, 
 
 A globe of vague and naming gold, 
 Held from the darkness, brimming up, 
 
 By something white and cold, 
 That touched faint lips against its brim, 
 Like flakes of foam ; and soft and slim, 
 Stooped out of fiery-bound abysses 
 To print his brow with icy kisses. 
 
 At last within his trembling hand 
 
 An ancient flask burnt starry rose ; 
 The starlight of a lonely land, 
 
 Whose mountains no one knows : 
 And in the liquid, like a flower, 
 A star-like face bloomed for an hour, 
 To slowly fade into a skull 
 That mocked all that was beautiful. 
 
 Though all his life had been so strange, 
 
 Yet stranger than his life was she 
 Who led him from his room to range 
 
 'Mid graves and mystery. 
 Who led him to her own sad tomb, 
 Where he could read within the gloom 
 The name of her who lay within 
 With all of silence, naught of sin.
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LOVE. 
 
 Untainted, as it seemed, or made 
 
 By skeleton kisses yet more fair ; 
 And thus he found her and so laid 
 
 Her darkness depths of hair 
 Upon his shoulder ; and the pearls, 
 Around her neck and in her curls, 
 Not paler than the kingly calm 
 On brows and breasts without a qualm. 
 
 And through the night, beneath the moon, 
 Across the windy hill, the gloom 
 
 Of forests where the leaves lay strewn, 
 He brought her to his room : 
 
 And in the awfulness of death, 
 
 That filled her wide eyes with its breath, 
 
 He set her in a carven chair 
 
 Where the still moon could kiss her hair. 
 
 One moment stood as if to think ; 
 
 Then to her lips, grown strangely red, 
 His fierce elixir pressed, and " Drink ! 
 
 Drink life and love ! " he said. 
 And if it drank he did not know, 
 Absorbed upon the brow's wild woe ; 
 Or if it rose dispassionate, 
 With eyes of stone and lips of hate. 
 
 Still as Fall-frozen ice its face ; 
 And thin its voice as drizzled rain ;
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LOVE. 
 
 And, coil on coil, on silk and lace 
 
 Its quiet locks remain. 
 Nor breathed its bosom while it spake, 
 Like one whose mind is half awake, 
 Or lapsing to enchanted sleep 
 A century long in some old keep. 
 
 And stooping o'er it whispered low 
 
 A sound as soft as any lyre, 
 Or moonbeams beating on the snow 
 
 An unavailing fire : 
 ' ' What is this life you give ? Your toil ? 
 What is your love ? a thing to soil 
 Life with its unfulfilled desire ? 
 There is no demon half so dire ! " 
 
 And where before was quietness, 
 
 Was violence and scorn and evil, 
 Yet all the form was passionless, 
 
 A corpse that held a devil. . . . 
 And who shall say what hands were its 
 That made around his throat these pits, 
 That left him strangled ! or the one 
 Who placed by him this skeleton ! 
 
 1886.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 123 
 
 THE SPELL. 
 
 AND we have met but twice or thrice, 
 
 Three times enough to make me love !- 
 I praised your hair once and your glove, 
 Your foot, your gown you were like ice ; 
 And yet this might suffice, my love, 
 And yet this might suffice. 
 
 Saint John hath told me what to do : 
 If I can find the ferns that grow, 
 The fernseed that the fairies know, 
 To sprinkle fernseed in my shoe, 
 
 And haunt the steps of you, my dear, 
 
 And haunt the steps of you. 
 
 You 'd see the poppy -pods dip here, 
 The blow-puff of the thistle slip, 
 And no wind breathing but my lip 
 Next to your anxious cheek and ear ; 
 
 And you would know me near, my love, 
 And you would know me near. 
 
 On wood-paths I would tread your gown ; 
 You 'd know it was no brier ; then 
 I 'd whisper vows of love again,
 
 THE SPELL. 
 
 And see your quick face flush and frown, 
 And then to kiss it down, my dear, 
 And then to kiss it down. 
 
 You 'd muse at home, or read, or knit, 
 And know it was my hands that blotted 
 The page, or all your needles knotted, 
 And in your anger cry a bit ; 
 
 And I would laugh at it, my love, 
 
 And I would laugh at it. 
 
 The secrets you should say in prayer, 
 Should I not know ? or, should you sing, 
 The one you think of? or the thing 
 That makes you stare at empty air, 
 
 And feel that I am there, my dear, 
 
 And feel that I am there ? 
 
 But when the whole sweet truth is said, 
 It is my soul that follows you ; 
 It needs no fernseed in the shoe, 
 Unless the heart's red love be dead, 
 
 To win you and to wed, my love, 
 
 To win you and to wed.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 125 
 
 THE RETURN. 
 
 A BROWN wing beat the apple leaves and shook 
 One blossom on her hair. Then seemed to float 
 Deliberate bubbles. In her shaded book 
 She found romantic interest. No look 
 Betrayed the tumult in her trembling throat. 
 
 The bird sang on. A dreamy wind came down 
 From one white cloud of afternoon and fanned 
 The leaking petals on her book and gown 
 And touched her hair : she curved a quiet frown, 
 And smoothed it with a single-jewelled hand. 
 
 The ribbon of her hair dipped on her brow 
 And then she knew he watched her : 'T was his 
 
 breath 
 
 That moved the blossom on the apple bough ; 
 His eyes that made the wood-thrush cease. 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
 
 126 THE RETURN. 
 
 Fright's startle ; and rich laughter did confess 
 His presence there, like some long-lost caress 
 Of noble manhood, where the thick trees bloomed. 
 
 Quickly she rose and all her gladness sent 
 Sweet welcome to him. Her his unhurt arm 
 Drew unresisted ; and the soldier lent 
 Fond lips to hers. She wept. And so they went 
 Deep in the orchard toward the old brick farm.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 THE LETTER. 
 
 T ONG shadows towards the east ; and in the west 
 
 A garnet conflagration, wherein rolled 
 One cloud like some great gnarly log of gold ; 
 Each gabled casement of the farm seemed dressed 
 In ghostly roses love made manifest. 
 
 And she had brought his letter here to read, 
 Upon the porch, that faced the locust glade ; 
 To watch the summer twilight burn and fade, 
 And breathe the dewy scent of wood and weed, 
 Forget all care and her sick soul to 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.
 
 i 2 8 THE LETTER. 
 
 And all around her drowsed the hushful hum 
 Of evening insects. And his letter spoke 
 Youthful caresses to her, nor awoke 
 One echo of the bugle or the drum, 
 But their whole 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 some unknown fear 
 Press tight'ning at her heart-strings ; and a tear 
 Her eyelids scalded ; 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 unasked questions from the stars' still eyes : 
 " Where Peace delays and where her soldier lies ? " 
 
 They could have answered. One was far away 
 Beyond the field that belched black batteries 
 All the red day : 'mong picket silences, 
 On woodland mosses, in a suit of gray, 
 Shot through the heart, one by his rifle lay.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 129 
 
 WOUNDED. 
 
 T T 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 that did abuse 
 The youth whose strength their village had 
 amazed. 
 
 An ailing spectre of the happy 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 wept for that which was no longer his. 
 
 They brought him on a litter ; and the day 
 Was glad 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 ;
 
 WOUNDED. 
 
 Sleet, and the stormy drift of frantic leaves ; 
 Harsh frost and misery, that one perceives 
 
 Has bit the hazel of her hair ; again 
 
 Has carved grave care around her mouth that 
 grieves. 
 
 Theirs a mute meeting of the eyes ; she stooped 
 
 And kissed him once : one long dark side-lock 
 drooped 
 
 Its braid against the bandage of his breast ; 
 
 With feeble hands he stroked 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 
 The heart with sterner madness. Ah, well ! Peace 
 Must blot it out with patience, whose surcease 
 
 Is never hasty. Yet, as God hath willed ! 
 
 With war or peace Who shapes wise ends at ease. 
 
 What else for them but, where their mortal lot 
 Of weak existence dragged rent ends, to knot 
 The frail unravel up ! Love (still afraid 
 Days will increase the burthen on it laid), 
 Seeks consolation that consoleth not, 
 And side by side with Sorrow waits the Shade.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 131 
 
 THE PARTING. 
 
 CHE passed the thorn-trees, whose gaunt shadows 
 
 ^ tossed 
 
 Their sprawling spiders 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 their sycamore. 
 Lone 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 their pity and could only sigh. 
 
 His skiff had ground upon the river rocks. 
 
 Whistling he came into the shadow made 
 
 By that dead branch, from which the sea-gull 
 
 mocks 
 
 The flood. And strong his boyish hands were laid 
 In hers. And she no weakness had betrayed. 
 
 Her speech was quiet while his greeting kiss 
 Stung through her hair. She did not dare to lift
 
 13* THE PARTING. 
 
 The knowledge of her anguished eyes to his, 
 When tears smote crystal in her throat. One rift 
 Of heartache 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 hard 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. 

 
 RED LEA VES AND ROSES. 133 
 
 THE DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW. 
 
 HTHOUGH 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 starving 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, 
 
 Mantle, of the frost's weird knitting, 
 Wrapping face and hair complete ; 
 Fingers gloved with sparkle ; feet 
 Moccasined with beaded sleet. 
 
 'Though he knew she made a haunt 
 Of the dell, it did not daunt : 
 Where the hoar-frost carved each tree 
 Out of virgin alabaster,
 
 THE DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW. 
 
 And spun hairy bud and bee 
 
 On each autumn-withered aster ; 
 By the frozen waterfall 
 He could hear the cold quail call 
 O'er the spangled chaparral. 
 
 Where the beech-tree and the larch 
 Built a shining triumph arch 
 For the morning marching down 
 
 Hosts of silver-armored leaders ; 
 Where each hemlock had a crown, 
 
 And huge diadems the cedars ; 
 Where the long icicle shone, 
 There he found her standing lone 
 Like a mist-wraith changed to stone. 
 
 And she led him many a mile 
 With her hand-wave and her smile, 
 And the printless swiftness of 
 
 Feet of fog, and frosty 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,
 
 THE DA UGHTER OF THE SNOW. 135 
 
 With his quiver and his bow, 
 Where the cascade runs a rafter 
 
 Made of crystal and of snow ; 
 Where he listened to her laughter, 
 
 Promises, that were as far 
 
 As the secrets of a star, 
 
 Leading on the warrior. 
 
 And her countenance is this 
 Haunting his ; and this the kiss 
 On faint mouth and fainter eyes 
 
 Of her lip's divine December ; 
 This her triumph that defies 
 
 Love the winter stars remember 
 Sought her, met her ; and 't is she 
 Clinging to him, neck and knee, 
 Where his limbs sank wearily.
 
 I 3 6 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 HILDEGARD. 
 
 IT was Hildegard who came 
 
 From the forest of the mountain 
 She whose hair is like the flame 
 
 Of a sunset-fevered fountain : 
 You may know her by her eyes, 
 
 Dauntless eyes of bitter beryl, 
 Where the anguish never dies, 
 
 And the suffering soul sits sterile 
 In such haze as ever lies 
 
 On the unsailed seas of peril. 
 
 II. 
 
 It was Hildegard. I knew 
 
 By no sound or sight she trembled 
 Near me, lighter than the dew 
 
 In the sessions of assembled 
 Flowers. Hers some influence 
 
 Of soft, serpent magnetism, 
 Vanquishing my every sense 
 
 With essential mesmerism ; 
 Holding me beneath the lens 
 
 Of her will's compelling prism.
 
 HILDEGARD. 137 
 
 III. 
 
 I cannot escape. She treads 
 
 Noiseless as the forest flowers 
 Walked on by the wind ; their heads 
 
 Pavements for the mottled hours : 
 She is brilliant as the trees 
 
 Where young blossoms are unsheathing ; 
 She is lissome as the ease 
 
 Of the woodland water's wreathing ; 
 She is subtle as the breeze 
 
 Through the Summer's tresses breathing. 
 
 IV. 
 
 If she sings who is it hears 
 
 But my spirit, that forever 
 Her strange singing moves to tears 
 
 And to happy laughter never ? 
 Babylonian necromance, 
 
 Oldest witcheries that arrow 
 Strains ensorcelling, and glance 
 
 Through the life's bewildered marrow, 
 While the soul lies lost in trance, 
 
 Helpless if such heal or harrow. 
 
 v. 
 
 She has bound me with her gaze, 
 
 While her white hands weigh my shoulders 
 And my weak will swings and sways
 
 138 HILDEGARD. 
 
 To her gaze that burns and smolders. 
 She has led me far away 
 
 Under boughs where Summer dallies : 
 Over peaks of purple day, 
 
 Far away through Eden alleys : 
 Though the way be one long May 
 
 It will end in Winter valleys. 
 
 Brazen earthquake treads the peaks ; 
 
 Iron skies are crusts that sunder, 
 Where the lightning's lava leaks 
 
 Vomiting the hosts of thunder. 
 Still she kisses me. Dark red 
 
 With my heart's blood are her kisses : 
 Then her arms fall cold and dead, 
 
 And my mouth her kisses misses 
 She is gone ; and in her stead 
 
 Flies a milk-white snake that hisses.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 139 
 
 URGANDA. 
 
 IT is Sir Elid of the Sword, 
 
 Of whom King Lisuarte hath heard 
 These three long years no wished-for word. 
 
 His armor dofft, he comes in fur 
 
 And velvet, all the warrior, 
 
 And takes her hand and kisses her. 
 
 " Thrice have I heard the Summer sigh 
 For drowsy poppies that must die, 
 Seen sadder Autumn, fading, lie," 
 
 So said Helis and said with tears ; 
 
 ' ' Thrice welcome, Elid, though long years 
 
 Of silence fed my love with fears ! " 
 
 He said to her : " My own, my best, 
 
 To thee alone . . . Witch ! wilt thou 
 wrest 
 
 This hour from me? . . . shall be con 
 fessed 
 
 The thing that will not let me rest.
 
 URGANDA. 
 
 " It was at Hallowmas I spurred 
 
 Through woods wherein no wild thing 
 
 stirred, 
 No sound of brook, no song of bird. 
 
 "When softly down a tangled way 
 A dim fair woman, white as day, 
 Rode on a palfry misty gray. 
 
 " Upon her brow a circlet burned 
 Of jewels, and the fire inurned 
 Changed with her thoughts, and turned and 
 turned. 
 
 " I stared like him, who, wild and pale, 
 Spurs, hag-led, through the night and hail. 
 When, lo ! adown a forest vale 
 An angel with the Holy Grail ! 
 
 " It vanishes ; but, once beheld, 
 The longing heart is never quelled, 
 Its loveliness hath so enspelled. 
 
 " She vanished. And I rode alone 
 Behind a voice that did intone, 
 ' Urganda is she, the Unknown. 
 
 " ' And never shalt thou clasp the form 
 Of her who leads thee by a charm 
 To follow on through sun and storm.'
 
 URGANDA. 141 
 
 " I can not stay for weal or woe. 
 E'en now her magic bids me go, 
 Soft-summoning through wind and snow.". . . 
 
 Helis with sweetest songs beguiles 
 
 His hollow face until it smiles, 
 
 And with her lute shapes sweeter wiles : 
 
 Till kingly figures, woven in 
 The windy arras, seem to win 
 Strange, ghostly life, and slay and sin. 
 
 Until her deep hair's golden glow 
 Sweeps his dark curls as, praying low, 
 She kneels a marble-sculptured Woe. 
 
 'T were well to leave him here to rest, 
 
 Aweary with his haggard quest, 
 
 All in gray fur and velvet dressed. . . . 
 
 At midnight through the vaulted roof 
 She heard armed steps of ringing proof ; 
 She heard a charger's iron hoof. 
 
 The leaded lattice banked one glare 
 Of moonlight in the frosty air ; 
 Hag shapes delayed her everywhere.
 
 URGANDA. 
 
 Sir Elid in the moonlight's beam, 
 Stiff, staring as if still a-dream, 
 Rode downward to the rushing stream. 
 
 In casque and corselet was he dressed, 
 And sang like one in goodly jest, 
 " I ride upon my love's last quest." 
 
 Straight onward by some mighty will 
 
 Into the river that should kill 
 
 He rode and sang, and so was still. 
 
 Not wider than its eyes are his 
 That stare, where icy eddies kiss 
 His lips, where all the horror is. 
 
 Strong through the reeds the snow seems 
 
 blown. 
 
 What leans above him still as stone, 
 And laughs as when the night- winds moan ? 
 
 If thou shouldst find him, O beware 
 Thy kiss ! for where the death 's most fair, 
 Helis, Helis, she kissed him there ! 
 1885.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 143 
 
 THE SON OF EVRAWC. 
 
 DEYOND the walls, past wood and twilight field, 
 The Usk slipped onward under wharf and wall 
 Of old Caerlleon, rolling in, it seemed, 
 The heathen blood of all of Arthur's wars. 
 So she had left him, and he leaned alone 
 Within the carven casement, where a ray 
 Of sunset laid a bleeding spear athwart 
 The dark oak hall and made the arras drip. 
 And now life's bitterness took Peredur 
 By all his heart's strings, smiting. He would go, 
 Equipped for quest, through all the savagery 
 Of mountain and of forest. And this girl 
 Forget her ! and her game of shuttlecock ; 
 This Angharad ; this child the Court had spoiled ! 
 And he remembered how he once had rode, 
 Spurring his piebald stallion down the square 
 Upon the King's quest, and a girl had laughed 
 From some bedragoned balcony of walls 
 That faced the gateway ; and in passing he 
 Had glimpsed her beauty ; it was she. Befell 
 That snow had fallen and the winter wood 
 Lay carpeted with silence. And he rode 
 Into a vista where a raven lay 
 
 Slain of a hawk ; some blood-drops dyed the snow : 
 He lost himself in quaint comparisons,
 
 THE SON OF EVRA WC. 
 
 Of how the sifted drift was as her skin ; 
 The raven's feathers as her heavy hair ; 
 And in her cheeks the health of maidenhood 
 Red as the blood-drops : so he sat and dreamed : 
 When one rode up in angry steel and spoke 
 Thrice to no answer, and in anger dashed 
 A gauntlet in his face and made at him : 
 And how he slew him and rode over him 
 Fiercer than fire : how he had returned 
 To find her fairer than their Gwenddolen, 
 Crowned beauty of the beautiful at Court, 
 With Gwenhwyvar, and fair among the fair. 
 
 And while he mused he thought he heard her voice 
 
 Or was it fancy teasing him to hear 
 
 Her lute below the creepered walls, whose leaves 
 
 Bathed with continual sunset all the court, 
 
 Beside the ceaseless whisper of the foam 
 
 Of many fountains. Sweeter mockery 
 
 Had never held him : and he heard her sing : 
 
 ' ' Ask me not now to sing to thee 
 Songs I have loved to sing before ! 
 
 I love thee not ; it can not be ; 
 
 The dream is done ; the song is o'er. 
 
 " Yet hold my hands ; look deep into 
 The heartbreak of my eyes that bore 
 
 Glad welcome erst and now adieu, 
 Adieu in eyes thou dost adore.
 
 THE SON OF EVRA WC. 145 
 
 " And thou shalt kiss my mouth and brow ; 
 
 Smooth through my hair hands as of yore 
 When once 't was love and I and thou 
 
 Forevermore, forevermore. 
 
 " Thou shalt not weep; I will not weep ; 
 
 I love thee not ; should I regret ? 
 Nay ! let me sing my songs and sleep, 
 
 Sleep and forget, sleep and forget." 
 
 "O bird of spring," he said, "when flowers are 
 
 gone 
 
 Thy song will winter underneath the pine : 
 God give thou find no winter in thy heart 
 Whenas dost find the frost invades thy voice ! 
 Ah, lovelier than thy song, one sings of thee 
 Long ballads in each heartbeat, but in vain : 
 Thou dost not heed, thou wilt not hear his songs. 
 Or if thou dost 'tis very wantonness 
 Whose interest apes indifference ; or words, 
 A moiety, of mockery ; and this 
 To one who 'd love thee over all belief, 
 Above all women and against all men." 
 
 She thrummed her lute. He listened and then 
 
 laughed, 
 
 " Love's life ! Our Dagonet might teach me sense, 
 The folly that I am ! What ! have I slept 
 A sennight in the taking of the moon,
 
 146 THE SON OF EVRA WC. 
 
 Or danced sleep-footed with the forest fays ! 
 
 One would imagine . . . No! . . . O silken skirts 
 
 Of wantonness ! whose devil's influence 
 
 Parades Caerlleon corridors with lies 
 
 And vanity, coquet the faithless court 
 
 Into a harlot ! Ho ! a page, a page ! 
 
 God's wounds ! my horse, my arms ; I will away ! " 
 
 And many knights he passed, nor saw ; who asked 
 What quest he rode. Inscrutable deeds behind 
 His visor, and along his sullen spear 
 Adventure bitter as a burning ray, 
 Into the night he galloped with the stars. . . 
 
 And one lone night two years thereafter. Lost 
 Within a forest wilder than wild Dean, 
 With neither wind nor water through its leaves, 
 That hung as turned to stone above the moss 
 And grass, that wrapped the scaly rocks, death- 
 dry, 
 
 And barren torrents ; where he had not found 
 Or man or hut, or slot of boar or deer 
 Through miles and miles of lamentable trees 
 And twisted thorns ; beneath the autumn moon, 
 Pale as a nun's face seen in cloistered walks, 
 Above dead tree-tops, like the rugged rock 
 Of melancholy cliffs, he saw wild walls 
 Of some vague castle thrust weird battlements 
 And hoary towers like a wizard's dream.
 
 THE SON OF EVRA WC. 
 
 Great greedy weeds and burs and briers packed 
 
 Its moat and roadway ; at the very gate 
 
 Weeds deeper than a man ; their ancient stalks 
 
 Devoured with the dust and spider webs, 
 
 Or smothered with the slime where croaked the 
 
 toad. 
 
 And Peredur against the portal rode, 
 And with his spear-point beat upon its bolts 
 A sounding minute. But no wolf-hound barked, 
 Only dull echoes of interior walls 
 And hollow rock that arched the empty halls. 
 And once again his truncheon shook the gate 
 And roused a round-eyed owl that screamed and 
 
 blinked, 
 
 Like some fierce gargoyle, on the bartizan ; 
 And from a crevice, like an omen, hurled 
 A frantic bat. And then he heard a grate, 
 Concealed within the gloomy battlements, 
 Slid slowly, and a lean, gaunt, red-haired youth, 
 Lit with a link, addressed him. And he saw 
 That famine had sunk hollows in his cheeks, 
 And fixed gaunt misery in mouth and eyes. 
 This one retired to return again ; 
 Undid harsh chains and shot back stubborn 
 
 bolts ; 
 
 And stiff with rust the snarling hinges swung. 
 And Peredur beheld neglected courts 
 Pathetic with dead leaves ; and mournful walls 
 Round which huge oaks thrust mistletoe and 
 
 boughs
 
 148 THE SON OF EVRA WC. 
 
 Of livid leaves, that seemed hooked, headlong 
 
 hands 
 
 Of murder, or distorted faces come 
 Out of the goblin wood to scoff at him. 
 
 And he dismounted. And in clanking mail 
 Strode down the hall ; and in the hall beheld 
 Youths, lean and auburn-haired around the hearth ; 
 Some eighteen of an equal height, and clad 
 Alike in dingy garments that looked worn 
 And old. And these were like to him who first 
 Had bade him welcome. And they greeted him, 
 And disarrayed, and bade him to a seat. 
 And now an inner door flung wide ; and, lo, 
 Five maidens, like five forest flowers, came, 
 Dark-eyed, dark-haired. Behold, the queen of 
 
 these 
 
 Was Angharad. Clad in a ragged robe 
 Of faded satin, that had once been rich. 
 
 She looked at Peredur. And he beheld 
 The hair again far blacker than the bird 
 That flies athwart the milk-white moon ; the 
 
 skin 
 
 Inviolably white as wind-flowers blown 
 Among the mighty gospels of the trees ; 
 And in her cheeks, the rose of maidenhood 
 Red as round berries winter bushes spot 
 The dimpled drift with underloaded boughs.
 
 THE SON OF EVRA WC. 149 
 
 She knew him or forgot to ask his name, 
 
 But blushed, and welcomed. And they sat and 
 
 talked 
 
 Until the night waxed late. And as they talked 
 He marked long fasting in each face, and longed 
 To ask but asked not. So the night waxed late. 
 And then two nuns came ; sandalled silence in 
 Frail footsteps, and pale caution on pale lips. 
 One brought a jar of wine, and one brought 
 
 bread, 
 
 Six loaves of wheaten flour. And these said, 
 " God bear us witness, Lady, this is all ! 
 No\v is our Convent barren as thy board ; " 
 And so departed. And they sat and ate. . . . 
 
 The wind upon the forest and the rain 
 
 Upon the turrets. Had he heard a sigh 
 
 Or was it but the echo of his own, 
 
 Born of great weariness, that broke his rest ? 
 
 A dream, a dream. The elfin storm is on, 
 
 And sows the woods with witchcraft, and the 
 
 leaves 
 
 Are chased by imps of darkness through the hail 
 And hurling rain ; the wind is wild with leaves. 
 Again he slept. 
 
 The rain among the trees, 
 
 The wind upon the turrets. Had he moaned 
 Now that he lay awake and heard the wind
 
 i S o THE SON OF EVRA WC. 
 
 Hoot on the towers like a green-eyed owl ? 
 
 The rain and wind ; the night is black with rain. 
 
 Upon the forest like a voice the wind ; 
 
 And on the turrets, like swift feet, the rain. 
 
 Now was he sure 't was weeping ; and arose 
 
 And found her at his door ; and took her hand, 
 
 That like a soft persuasion lay in his. 
 
 He felt long sobbings shake her and so asked : 
 
 " Tell me, my sister, wherefore dost thou weep ?" 
 
 And Angharad, "Yea; I will tell thee, lord. 
 
 My name is Angharad. My father held 
 
 An Earldom under Arthur, yea, the first 
 
 In all his Kingdom : and this palace too 
 
 Was his with cantrevs to the west and east. 
 
 When I was but a girl Earl Addanc met 
 
 And loved me. Once, when hunting, he came here 
 
 And sought my father and demanded me. 
 
 He said he loved me, and would have but me 
 
 To grace his bed and board, this Earl. But I 
 
 I did not love him, being but a child, 
 
 My father's only child, I could not love. 
 
 And so my father said this might not be. 
 
 The Earl was wrath. I heard his furious stride 
 
 Beneath my casement ; double demons pinched 
 
 His evil eyes and twenty gnarled his face. 
 
 He cursed us ere he rode beyond our walls. 
 
 Then I was sent to Camelot and there
 
 THE SON OF EVRA WC. 
 
 Became a woman of young Gwenhwyvar, 
 
 Until my father's death two years agone, 
 
 When I returned, a Countess, to find war 
 
 With Addanc here around beleagured walls. 
 
 So hath he stripped me of my appanage 
 
 Save this one keep, whose strength hath held him 
 
 long, 
 
 Brave with my foster brothers : thou hast seen 
 The eighteen youths whose valor will not yield. 
 But what avails their valor and their will 
 Against hard hunger now our larder lacks, 
 And lacks the Convent too whereon we leaned ! 
 And Addanc comes to-morrow morn, the truce 
 For our one day's deliberation done. 
 If he prevail the thought is like hot hands 
 Here on my brain his oath is ' that the night 
 Shall see me given over to his grooms.' " 
 
 She wept with tremblings. Then said Peredur : 
 
 " Thou shall not weep, my sister. And this Earl 
 
 If he be early call me not too late. 
 
 Fear not. I will not go until my sword 
 
 Hath crossed the sword of so much wickedness, 
 
 And proved this base ambition. Go and sleep." . . . 
 
 A morning gray with mist that gathered drops 
 Of drizzle on uncomfortable leaves. 
 And now the mist divided : ghostly mail, 
 Spears and limp pennons, and the shadowy steeds
 
 THE SON OF EVRAWC. 
 
 Of shadowy knights and chieftains. And it seemed 
 
 A phantom army come to lay dim siege 
 
 To phantom walls whose warriors were ghosts. 
 
 Afar a bugle flourished in the fog, 
 
 Disconsolate, no echo of the wood 
 
 To bear its music burden. To the moat 
 
 Advanced a herald. And within the wall 
 
 The grate was opened, and the gaunt-eyed youth 
 
 Held parley with him, " How the Earl would make 
 
 End of the long dispute to-day, and leave, 
 
 Twixt three a single combat to decide." 
 
 So Peredur bade arm him, and prepare 
 His horse for battle ; and bade give their Earl 
 His answer for the Castle, " That one knight 
 Would try the hauberks of the banded three. " 
 
 And he rode forth : and one rode up and scoffed, 
 A knight in russet armor with loud words, 
 "Small means to large results, forsooth! Thou 
 
 boast ! 
 
 A vicious palate hath thy appetite, 
 That feasted long with hunger and must now 
 Conclude the banquet with three deaths ! Sir 
 
 Death, 
 
 Here is thy death ! " and hacked at Peredur 
 A weighty stroke that gashed his chain camail. 
 But, rising in stiff stirrups, ere he passed 
 Two-handed swung the sword of Peredur,
 
 THE SON OF EVRAWC. 153 
 
 And helm and head of him who fell were twain, 
 Split like an apple. And the walls were glad. 
 
 Then came another clad in silver mail 
 
 As he were Galahad, and in the mist 
 
 Glimmered like moonlight. And with levelled 
 
 spear 
 Demanded: "Whence and what art thou ? This 
 
 stroke 
 
 Was never fathered by long fasting." Then 
 Quoth Peredur, " I am of Arthur's Court. "- 
 " A goodly service truly that of his ! 
 Know, all his knights that I have met have died." 
 Quoth Peredur : " Thy falsehood choke thee dead ! 
 Between thy teeth, liar, I nail thy lie ! " 
 And at his gorget hurled his ponderous spear 
 Ere that one met him spurring at full speed 
 Disdainful. And the desperate stroke of him 
 Who had worked wonders with the Table Round, 
 Glanced shattering from the sloping shield, while he, 
 Bent o'er his stallion's crupper, rolled ; his tongue 
 Cleft at the root. And all the walls were glad. 
 
 Now came a third : a black knight and a black 
 Enormous steed. No words he wasted. But, 
 The fierce spears splintered, from the baldrics 
 
 burned 
 
 Swift blades ; and Battle held his breath awhile 
 To watch the great shields rock beneath great blows,
 
 iS4 THE SON OF EVRAWC. 
 
 Oppose, deploy, as hilt to hilt they hewed 
 
 At heaume and gorget. And the battle bright 
 
 Upon the splintered greaves from many wounds. 
 
 Then Peredur, his whole strength wrenching at 
 
 Unyielding effort of his foeman's shield, 
 
 Beat down his guard and smote And Addanc lay 
 
 Beneath the son of Evrawc whose swift hands 
 
 Razed off his casque and laid a blind blade bare 
 
 Across hot eyes, and set a heel of steel 
 
 Upon his throat and said : " Thou coward curse ! 
 
 What woman wilt thou war with now ? 'T is well 
 
 Thy features are thus evil and might breed 
 
 Nightmares among the scullions, or thou 
 
 Hadst been one span the shorter ! Villainy, 
 
 Out of thy ugly head speak ! " . . . Cursing he, 
 
 A stricken bulk, growled, " Let me live " ; and so 
 
 The sword slid from fierce eyes and from his neck 
 
 The heel. And he arose to make in full 
 
 Due restitution of her lands to her 
 
 He had harassed and robbed. And so in time 
 
 This was fulfilled. 
 
 But Peredur remained, 
 For, to be near her and to do for her 
 Was almost happiness, until the land 
 Acknowledged her with all obedience. 
 Her rights established, what more now remained 
 To lend excuse unto his long delay ? 
 And so he went to her and sought her from
 
 THE SON OF EVRAWC. 155 
 
 Among her maidens, and bespoke her how 
 " He would ride hence and would but say fare 
 well." 
 
 " Dost thou then so desire ? " she. And he 
 
 Ground iron strides along the lofty hall 
 
 And so returned with iron strides and said : 
 
 " Ay, by my God ! Who knows I have not fought 
 
 For thee but still against thee. 'T is my curse. 
 
 I came not here to woo. Thou wouldst but 
 
 laugh. 
 
 Haply thou hast forgotten yea, thou hast 
 A son of Evrawc, Evrawc of the North, 
 Who loved thee once . . . hast memory of him 
 
 yet? . . . 
 Look in his eyes once more and say farewell." 
 
 " This shall not be, my soul." He heard her low 
 Voice pleading softly, and new life leapt up : 
 He heard her as men hear the voice of hope 
 Upon despair's black brink, and see one star 
 Bloom, like a lily with a heart of fire 
 Throbbing within it, slowly out of night. 
 And each word was as welcome as a rose 
 Dropped from the rosy lips of laughing Spring : 
 " I have remembered ; think'st thou I have not ? 
 O son of Evrawc, thou who couldst not read, 
 'Neath bells of folly and a merry mask, 
 A girl's dear secret through her tinsel acts.
 
 i 5 6 THE SON OF EVRAWC. 
 
 Or, was not thine but fancy ? Ah, too true, 
 
 I heard the vapid ending of a tale 
 
 Coquetry had begun for different end. 
 
 But, if thou wilt, we can read on ; mayhap 
 
 It ends in wedlock. Both were wrong. The one : 
 
 Because his love was blind, impetuous, 
 
 Nor saw the love that would have proved 't was 
 
 love, 
 
 Not lust, before surrender. Th' other : that 
 She sought for wisdom in the frivolous, 
 And so made falsehood of her heart's high truth, 
 Deceived more than deceiving. Wilt thou go ? " 
 
 He had no rhetoric to make reply ; 
 
 Only his arms around her, and his eyes 
 
 Upon her eyes, and kisses on her mouth. 
 
 Long time they stood. Outside the sunset flung 
 
 Barbaric glory on the autumn wood. 
 
 And lifting up her face he said to her : 
 
 " Thou hast thy lute? Come, let me sing to thee. 
 
 Then shalt thou sing thy song, and if it please 
 
 No better than two years agone, why, love, 
 
 We will ride forth together to the Queen : 
 
 And Gwenhwyvar shall kiss thee and confess 
 
 Thou art her fairest flower of loveliness, 
 
 And give thee to me who will wear thee here."
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 TORQUEMADA. 
 
 \ \J HAT doth the Archbishop, his chapter, of 
 Toledo? Do they doze and yawn above 
 Some dull dry bull Pope Sextus sent to rot ? 
 I cry, Awake ! O prelates militant ! 
 Spain's king is less than king as I am less 
 Than Paul ! (And what a distance !) Look 
 
 around ; 
 
 Observe and dare ! I write above my seal, 
 A grave Dominican, to postulate 
 Pacheco, Marquis de Villena, croaks 
 Wise truth into your excellencies' ears : 
 King Henry's heir is illegitimate ! 
 Blanche of Navarre cast off, his Impotence 
 Gave us a wanton out of Portugal 
 For queen ; Joanna, who bore him this heir 
 The cuckold king parades, a bastard, now. 
 Look ! all the Court laughs secretly ; but masks 
 Are but for slaves ; the people's smile is free 
 Of all concealment ; and the word still wags 
 About this son, who is his favorite's, 
 Bertrand la Cueva's ; whom the king himself 
 Made warm familiar with Joanna's bed. 
 Sweet infamy ! Absolve one at the stake !
 
 IS8 TORQUEMADA. 
 
 Confess the other with the axe that hews 
 The neck of state asunder ! Is it well, 
 Prelates and ministers ? 
 
 Be merciful ! 
 
 Lest the disease of this delicious fruit, 
 Our Kingdom of Castile, corrode the core, 
 Why not pare off all rottenness and leave 
 The healthy pulp ! The throne, the populace, 
 The Church, and God demand the overthrow, 
 Deponement or the abnegation of 
 This Henry, named the Fourth, the impotent ! 
 Alphonso lives. (It is my guarded hope 
 That brothers of such kings have no long life.) 
 Am I impatient? 't is the tonsure helps. 
 My native town, Valladolid, did sow 
 The priestly germ, ambition : there it had 
 Poor soil indeed, and blew to Cordova, 
 And sunned its torpor in a woman's smile, 
 And grew a tenderness too insecure 
 When frosts were out. Required hardiness, 
 And found it there at Zaragossa ; (where 
 Fat father Lope's, bluff Dominican, 
 My youth confuted with wise nonsense, and 
 Astonished Spain with disputation in 
 The public controversies of the monks.) 
 Transplanted to the Court, O splendid speed ! 
 Sure hath its growth been. Now a Cardinal's 
 
 red 
 Is promised by the bud that tops its stem.
 
 TORQUEMADA. 159 
 
 My Isabella, daughter and dear child ; 
 
 The incarnation of my dear ideal ; 
 
 Pure crucifix of my religious love ; 
 
 Sweet cross which my ambition guards and holds ; 
 
 How have I through the saintly medium 
 
 Of the confessional impressed thy ear ! 
 
 Ploughed up the early meadows of thy soul 
 
 For fruitful increase ! In thy maiden heart 
 
 Insinuated subtleties of seed 
 
 Shall ripen to a queen crowned with a crown 
 
 From welded gold of Arragon and Castile ! 
 
 How I this son of John, the Second named, 
 
 Prince Ferdinand of swarthy Arragon, 
 
 (Grant absolution, holy mother mine ! 
 
 Thus thy advancement and thy mastery 
 
 Would I obtain !) have on her fancy limned 
 
 In morning colors of proud chivalry ! 
 
 Till he a sceptred paladin of love 
 
 And beaming manhood stands ! She dreams, she 
 
 dreams 
 
 What Heaven knows ! 'T is, haply, of a star 
 She saw when but a babe and in the arms 
 Of some sad nurse. A star that laughed above 
 A space of Moorish balcony that hung 
 Above a water full of upset stars, 
 Reflected glimmers of old palace fetes ; 
 A star she reached for, cried for, claimed and 
 
 claimed 
 
 But never got ; that blew young promises, 
 Court promises, centupled from the tips
 
 i6o TORQUE MA DA . 
 
 Of golden fingers at her infant eyes. 
 Well ! when this girl is grown to be a queen 
 What if one, Torquemada, clothe her star 
 In palpable approach and give it her ! 
 
 When she is queen, three steadfast purposes 
 
 Have grown their causes to divine results. 
 
 No young imagination did I train 
 
 With such endeavor and for no reward. 
 
 How oft I told her of the gifts of kings 
 
 And queens, while pensively she sat and heard 
 
 Absorbed upon my face ! her missal, crushed 
 
 'Neath one propped elbow, its bent careless leaves 
 
 Rich with illuminated capitals 
 
 Of gold and purple, open on her lap. 
 
 Felicity discoursed of who adhere 
 
 To God's true Vicar and our Holy Church : 
 
 Beatitude and all the ceaseless bliss, 
 
 Celestial, of eternal Paradise, 
 
 As everlasting as the hearts that have 
 
 Protected Heaven and its only Faith : 
 
 " Walk not on ways that lead but to despair, 
 
 The easy ways of Satan ; rather thorns 
 
 For naked feet that will not falter if 
 
 Retentive of the arm of our true Church, 
 
 Who urges weariness with comfortings 
 
 Low whispered in the tuneless ear of Care." 
 
 " Do some digress ? " " Oh, many, many, yea ! 
 
 And there 's necessity ! we should annul, 
 
 Pluck out the canker that contaminates,
 
 TORQUEMADA. 161 
 
 Destroys the milk-white beauty of our rose. 
 
 God's persecution ! they confront our faith 
 
 With brows of stigmatizing error writ 
 
 In Hell's red handwriting. Shall such persist? 
 
 No ! Heaven demands an end to all this shame ! "- 
 
 Her pledge she gave me then : " When queen, for 
 
 Spain 
 
 The Inquisition ! Let the saints record ! 
 A mattock of deracination to 
 Extirpate Heresy." And I ? Oh, I 
 But Torquemada a Dominican ! . . . 
 
 Blind Spain hastes blindly onward, happy for 
 
 Her hellward plunge. Our need is absolute. 
 
 Conclusion to these monster heresies 
 
 Or their most imminent consequence ! The throne, 
 
 Which is derived directly from high God, 
 
 Meseems should champion God in any cause ; 
 
 And if it will not, we will teach it to. 
 
 O Spain, Spain, Spain ! awake ! start up and crush 
 
 These multiplying madnesses that mouth 
 
 Their paradoxes at the Cross and shriek 
 
 Black blasphemies e'en in the face of Christ ! 
 
 O miserable Religion, is thy pride 
 
 So fallen here ! thy tenement of strength 
 
 So powerless ! Then where 's security, 
 
 When steadfast principle is insecure, 
 
 And God's own pillars rock and none resists ? 
 
 But I have tempered, at a certain heat, 
 
 A heart of womanhood ; and have so wrought
 
 TORQUEMADA. 
 
 The metal of a mind within the forge 
 Of holy discourse, that Toledo's steel 
 Springs not so true as my reforming sword, 
 Which carves out worship to a perfect whole. 
 Imperial Isabella ! patroness ! 
 Protectress of pure faith ! sweet Catholic ! 
 Our Church's dear concern ! its bell ! its book ! 
 Tribunal and its godly Act of Faith ! . . . 
 
 This need is first : to make her sceptred queen 
 Of wide Castile. To make, (the second need), 
 Him, whom Ximenes, my friend Cordelier 
 Shall serve as minister, King Ferdinand, 
 Her wedded consort. And the third great need, 
 The last, which still is first, to scour from Spain 
 These Moors, who make a brimstone-odious lait 
 Of that rich region of Granada, which 
 Like some vile sore of scaly leprosy 
 Scabs Spain's fair face. 
 
 Delay not. Let the Church 
 Divide attention then 'twixt heretics 
 And unclean Jews. So wash her garments clean ! 
 King Henry falls. God and St. Dominick 
 Aid my endeavor ! and the Holy See 
 Build firm foundations ! Let the corner-stone 
 Of our most holy Inquisition here 
 Be mortared with the blood of heretics 
 That its strong structure may endure ! (And I ? 
 Made Grand Inquisitor and Cardinal !)
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 163 
 
 AN EPISODE. 
 
 C AINT DOMINICK, Pope Innocent, 
 Thou holy host, Lyons once bent 
 
 On Languedoc, may God the Father 
 Plunge you in everlasting Hell ! 
 And may the blood of those who fell 
 
 At Beziers together gather 
 In torrents of eternal pain, 
 And on your souls beat boiling rain ! 
 
 n. 
 
 And Mountfort ! It was given me, 
 For I had prayed incessantly, 
 
 To be the David to this giant. 
 An Albigensian warrior 
 My husband was. He, in the war, 
 
 The Pope had thundered on defiant 
 Thoulouse and outlawed Languedoc, 
 Stood with Earl Raymond like a rock. 
 
 III. 
 
 The walls of Beziers cried loud 
 
 And Carcassonne's, red in their cloud
 
 1 64 AN EPISODE. 
 
 Of blood, disease, and conflagration, 
 For vengeance ! When he left me here, 
 With my two babes, I felt no fear. 
 
 The crusade's excommunication 
 Poured down its holy Catholics 
 To crush and burn us heretics. 
 
 At Carcassonne he fell. And there 
 My babes died famished. And despair 
 
 And torture mine within their prison ! 
 Till Mother of our God portrayed 
 This Mountfort's death. On me were laid 
 
 Blessed hands of power in a vision. 
 The saints' own cause could I refuse, 
 That led me to besieged Thoulouse ? 
 
 v. 
 
 No arrow mine, no arbalist ; 
 
 A sling, a stone, a woman's wrist 
 
 God and his virgin Mother aided. 
 Their engines rocked our walls. I felt 
 The time had come and, praying, knelt ; 
 
 Then from the sling my hair had braided 
 Launched at De Mountfort's bassinet 
 The rock where eyebrow eyebrow met.
 
 AN EPISODE. 165 
 
 VI. 
 
 Not mine his death. Of Carcassonne 
 Our Lady's hand had aimed the stone, 
 
 That slew this monster that was master ! 
 Saint Dominick and Innocent, 
 A woman was the instrument, 
 
 Our Holy Lady's the disaster ! 
 Two armies saw her whirl the sling, 
 And afterward no human thing.
 
 166 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 THE MAMELUKE. 
 
 CHE was a queen. 'Midst mutes and slaves, 
 
 A mameluke, I loved her. Waves 
 Dashed not more hopelessly the paves 
 
 Of her high marble palace-stair 
 
 Than lashed my love my heart's despair. 
 As souls in Hell dream Paradise, 
 
 I suffered, yet forgot me there 
 Beneath Rommaneh's houri eyes. 
 
 II. 
 
 A slave who ate his own mad heart 
 And served her beauty, but might dart 
 No amorous glance at any part. 
 
 I found her on a low divan, 
 
 Tai'fi leather's perfumed tan, 
 Beneath her, cushions stuffed with down ; 
 
 A slave-girl with an ostrich fan 
 Sat by her in a golden gown. 
 
 III. 
 
 " O boy, thy lute ! " Fair lutanist, 
 She loved my voice. Beside her wrist,
 
 THE MAMELUKE. 167 
 
 Hooped with a blaze of amethyst, 
 Her balass-ruby-crusted lute : 
 Gold-welted stuff, like some rich fruit, 
 
 Her raiment, diamond-showered, rolled 
 Folds pigeon-purple, whence one foot 
 
 Drooped in an anklet-twist of gold. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I sat and sang with all the fire 
 That boiled within my blood's desire, 
 That made me more than slave and higher : 
 And at the end my passion durst 
 Quench with one burning kiss its thirst. 
 O eunuchs ! had her face a scorn 
 
 When through this heart your daggers burst ? 
 And dare ye say I died forlorn ?
 
 168 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 LJ 
 
 THE SLAVE. 
 
 E waited till within her tower 
 
 Her taper signalled him the hour. 
 
 He was a prince both fair and brave. 
 What hope for him to love her slave ! 
 
 He of the Persian dynasty ; 
 And she the Queen of Araby ! 
 
 No Peri singing to a star 
 Upon the sea were lovelier. 
 
 I helped her drop the silken rope. 
 He clomb aflame with love and hope. 
 
 I drew the dagger from my gown 
 And cut the ladder, leaning down. 
 
 Oh, wild the face, and wild the fall ; 
 Her cry was wilder than them all. 
 
 I heard her cry, I heard him groan, 
 And stood as merciless as stone.
 
 THE SLAVE. 169 
 
 The eunuchs came ; fierce scimitars 
 Stirred in the torch-lit corridors. 
 
 She spoke like one who prays in sleep, 
 And bade me strike or she would leap. 
 
 I bade her leap, the time was short ; 
 And kept the dagger for my heart. 
 
 She leapt. I put their blades aside 
 And smiling in their faces died.
 
 1 70 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 THE SEVEN DEVILS OF MAHOMET. 
 
 "THERE is a legend, lost in some old dusty 
 
 Tome of the East, and who shall ques 
 tion it ? 
 
 Concluding ancient wisdom, rather musty, 
 Wherein much war and wickedness and wit 
 Insult and wrath and love and shame are writ. 
 
 Wherein is written that, when Mahomet 
 
 Fled out of Mecca from the people's wrath, 
 He met a shadow standing in his path, 
 
 A naked horror blacker than hewn jet. 
 
 It in one hand held out a flaming jewel, 
 
 Wherein fierce colors burnt and blent like eyes 
 Of seven fires as a single fuel : 
 
 The horror said, "God cursed them for their 
 lies. 
 
 These are the seven devils of the wise 
 And I am Satan !" And the Prophet saw 
 
 The purposes of Allah, and replied, 
 
 " God, set them free ! And what shall be denied 
 To these except life's hope ? " His word was law. 
 
 Since then the seven devils have descended 
 From nation unto nation past the ken
 
 THE SEVEN DEVILS OF MAHOMET. 171 
 
 Of Mahomet, who left us undefended 
 
 Of any amulet of sword or pen 
 
 'Gainst demons boring at the brains of men : 
 So many maggots that will spend their spite 
 
 In sadness, fear and scorn, despair and rage, 
 
 Envy and jealousy, on fool and sage, 
 The seven devils with us day and night.
 
 1 7 a RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 JOHN DAVIS, BOUCANIER. 
 
 LJIGH time, high time, good gentlemen, to sail 
 
 the Spanish Main ! 
 
 Three months we 've watched for galleons and treas 
 ure bound for Spain ; 
 Three months ! and not a vessel, neither barque nor 
 
 brigantine ! 
 No Cartagena plate-ship or De Dios have we 
 
 seen ! 
 Our sails sleep idle as the wind, our ships as gulls 
 
 or waves ; 
 And shall inaction rot us like a gang of shackled 
 
 slaves ! 
 Up, Boucaniers ! the land is wide and wider far the 
 
 sea 
 Somewhere between the dusk and dawn and dusk 
 
 some hope must be ; 
 Some ship somewhere or city there beneath the 
 
 Indian sky, 
 What matter whether east or west or if men live or 
 
 die, 
 Or fight or yield on ship or field ! The main for 
 
 me and mine ! 
 To cram our ports against their ports and see the 
 
 battle-line
 
 JOHN DAVIS, BOUCANIER. 173 
 
 Pour on their decks with naked necks the dirks be 
 tween our teeth ; 
 
 And sail or sink our flag is there, we Boucaniers 
 beneath ! 
 
 And what availed your patron saints, lago or Saint 
 
 Marc, 
 
 Lanceros, Adelantados, against Ravenau's barque ! 
 O butchers of good Jean Ribault, well might your 
 
 cheeks turn pale 
 When Montebaro's brigantine shook to the breeze 
 
 her sail ! 
 Around the coasts where New Spain boasts the 
 
 haughtiness of Old, 
 
 Her tyranny and bigotry and sordid greed for gold, 
 From east to west and north to south among the 
 
 Carib Isles, 
 Swift as revenge the Frenchman swept across the 
 
 foaming miles. 
 The spirit of Pierre-le-Grand and of his gallant 
 
 crew, 
 Who took a galleon with a boat, be with me and 
 
 with you ! 
 
 Prime arquebus and sharpen blade, and let the guns 
 
 look brave 
 As burnish of the sunlight's beam upon the sun-lit
 
 JOHN DAVIS, BOUCANIER. 
 
 And all be glad as when we had Granada in our 
 
 hold, 
 And stabbed the city's sentinels and took the city's 
 
 gold : 
 New Spain's good homes and churches, aye, will 
 
 not forget too soon 
 The Boucanier, John Davis, he who taught their 
 
 Dons a tune, 
 Dutch serenades to frighten maids beneath the 
 
 yellow moon. 
 What helped the Latin of their monks to curse 
 
 what Satan blessed ! 
 Bright pieces, broad, -of-eight and plate we counted 
 
 in our chest. 
 And now that we may double or may treble every 
 
 piece, 
 Pipe up the anchor, boatswain ! and before the 
 
 hawser cease, 
 Let every sail salute the gale and every rope be 
 
 taunt, 
 The Devil take all care and us, if jaundiced colors 
 
 daunt ! 
 
 The sea-gulls dip and dive and float, and swim and 
 
 soar again, 
 Be merry, merry gentlemen, and drink " the Ships 
 
 of Spain ! " 
 High-hearted as the sea-gulls soar, and as the case 
 
 may go,
 
 JOHN DAI' IS, BOUCANIEK. 
 
 A round Dutch oath for wealth and health and to 
 
 Spain's overthrow. 
 Doff caps and follow ; though the prize be overfat 
 
 or lean, 
 Kneel down and give her thanks who leads, Dame 
 
 Fortune who is queen ! 
 Upon our prow she guides us now against San 
 
 Augustine.
 
 176 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 THAMUS. 
 
 A ND it is said that Thamus sailed 
 
 Off islands of ^Egean seas 
 No seamen yet had ever hailed, 
 
 No merchant yet had sailed to these, 
 Phoenician or the Chersonese. 
 
 And lying all becalmed, 't is told, 
 
 How wonderful with peace that night 
 
 Rolled out of dusk and dreamy gold 
 
 One star, whose splendor seemed to write 
 Laws that were mightier than might. 
 
 Like shadows on a shadow-ship 
 
 The dark-haired, dark-eyed sailors lay, 
 
 When from the island seemed to slip, 
 Borne overhead and far away, 
 A voice that " Thamus ! " seemed to say. 
 
 Then silence ; and the languid Greek, 
 The lounging Cretan, watched the sky, 
 
 Or in carousal ceased to speak 
 
 And sing. Again came rolling by 
 The voice, and " Thamus ! " in its cry.
 
 THAMUS. 177 
 
 All were awake : tall, swarthy men 
 With bated breath stood listening, 
 
 Or gravely scanned the shore. And then, 
 Although they saw no living thing, 
 Again they heard the summons ring. 
 
 And " Thamus ! " sounded shore and sea ; 
 
 And at the third call leaned the Greek 
 Full facing toward the isle ; and he 
 
 Cried to the voice and bade it speak 
 
 The mission, message it would seek. 
 
 " Thou shalt sail on to such a place 
 
 Among the pagan seas," it said, 
 " To such a land ; and thou shalt face 
 
 Against it when the east is red, 
 
 And cry aloud ' Great Pan is dead !'"... 
 
 As fearful of unholy word 
 
 Their souls stood stricken with strange fear. . . . 
 
 Then Thamus said, " Yea, I have heard. 
 Yet 't is my purpose still to steer 
 Straight on. That land shall never hear ! " 
 
 And so they sailed that night ; and came 
 Into an unknown sea ; and there 
 
 The east burnt like a sword of flame 
 A Cyclops forges ; straight the air 
 Lay sick with calm ; the morn was fair.
 
 178 THAMUS. 
 
 Then double dread was theirs ; and dread 
 Was Thamus' ; and he raised his hand 
 
 And shouted, " Pan ! great Pan is dead ! " 
 And all the twilight-haunted land 
 Cried, " Pan is dead !" from peak to strand. 
 
 They saw pale shrines and temples nod 
 Among the shaken trees ; and pale 
 
 Wild forms of goddess and of god 
 
 Crawl forth with crumbling limbs and trail 
 Woe, till the dim land grew one wail. 
 
 What tripods groaned ? Serapis first 
 Within Canopus' temples heard 
 
 The word, and his brute granite burst 
 A monster bulk. Dodona stirred 
 And bowed huge oaks before the word, 
 
 That left them thunder-riven. Fell 
 On Aphaca where, marble-hewn, 
 
 The marble Venus had a well 
 
 That burnt white fire like a moon 
 And, lo ! her loveliness lay strewn. 
 
 Then o'er Cilicia passed, and bent 
 Sarpedon's oracle with scorn, 
 
 Apollo Yea ! the god lay rent, 
 
 And Delphos dumb. And, lo ! the morn 
 O'er Bethlehem where Christ lay born.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 ADVENTURERS. 
 
 C EEMINGLY over the hill-tops, 
 
 Possibly under the hills, 
 
 A tireless wing that never drops, 
 
 And a song that never stills. 
 
 Epics heard on the star's lips ? 
 
 Lyrics read in the dew ? 
 To be the song at our finger tips, 
 
 And live the world anew ! 
 
 Cavaliers of the Cortes kind, 
 Bold and stern and strong, 
 
 And, oh, for a fine and muscular mind 
 To sing a new world's song ! 
 
 Sailing seas of the silver morn, 
 Winds of the balm and spice, 
 
 To put the old-world art to scorn 
 At the price of any price ! 
 
 Danger, death, but the hope high ! 
 
 God's, if the purpose fail ! 
 Into the deeds of a vaster sky 
 
 Sailing a dauntless sail.
 
 i8o RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 VOYAGERS. 
 
 AX/HO will tell me where the pale 
 
 Blossoms of our childhood blow ? 
 Levels under hills that trail 
 
 Morning summits in the glow, 
 Crimson, o'er a crimson sail ? 
 
 Whence our manhood entered on 
 
 The unknowable, unseen ; 
 Cavaliers who still have gone 
 
 Sailing a frail brigantine 
 On from voyaging dawn to dawn. 
 
 Leons seeking lands of song, 
 Fabled fountains spouting spray 
 
 Where their anchors drop among 
 Corals of some blooming bay, 
 
 And the swarthy natives throng. 
 
 " Shoulder axe and arquebuse ! " 
 Rolls the region past yon range 
 
 Of sierras, vaporous, 
 
 Rich with gold and wild and strange, 
 
 Still evading them and us.
 
 VOYAGERS. 181 
 
 Who may find it ? Though your zeal 
 Darien summits doth subdue, 
 
 Your Balboa eyes reveal 
 But a vaster sea come to ; 
 
 New endeavor for your keel. 
 
 Yet ! who sails with face set hard 
 Westward, while reward still flies 
 
 Eastward, where the starbeams sward 
 Meadows of the graveless skies, 
 
 He may find it afterward.
 
 182 RED LEA VES AND ROSES. 
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 '"THESE are the days when Strength sits wisdom- 
 lipped, 
 With eagle thoughts that soar above the storm 
 
 Convulsing ledges of the rocks of Wrong. 
 O Liberty, thy tongue is thunder-tipped ; 
 
 Thy words are senates that can slay or charm ; 
 Thy voice is battle in a freedom song. 
 
 America, what hates may touch thy hands ! 
 Disdains insult thy majesty of brow ! 
 
 Oppressions brave the mercy of thine eyes ! 
 Behind thee dies the darkness from the lands ! 
 Before thee mounts the glory of the Now ! 
 Around thee sit the sessions of the skies ! 
 
 These are the days when Progress leans to heed 
 The lessons of the heavens and of God, 
 
 The golden texts of morning and of night : 
 The science of the suns hath taught her speed ! 
 No precedent of kingdoms makes her nod ! 
 Brow-bound with bolts, her feet are shod with 
 light!
 
 AMERICA. 183 
 
 America, beneath thy awful heel 
 
 What iron tyrannies, that crushed the poor, 
 Writhe scorpion lengths abolished with their 
 
 ire ! 
 
 Around thine arms, that are not wrapped in steel, 
 What old-world injuries have failed to moor 
 Barques thou hast beacon'd like a pillar'd fire ! 
 
 Dark Monarchies, the darker days divide, 
 And swords of Superstition and of Lust 
 
 Fall shattered from the necks of Truth and 
 
 Mind. 
 
 One onward principle, achieving pride ; 
 One starward purpose over empires' dust 
 
 Strewn with the fetters that no more shall bind. 
 
 Humanity, thy human gyves are rent ; 
 The Christian actual looks up again 
 
 Through God-progressions of eternity : 
 Behold ! the pagan, Violence, is spent ! 
 His idol, Ignorance, lies burst in twain 
 Before the splendor of the Christ to be !
 
 184 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 THE OCKLAWAHA. 
 
 D IVER, winding from the west, 
 Winding to the River May, 
 Often hath the Indian pressed 
 Through your black-gums and your mosses, 
 Where the alligator crosses 
 Still some lily-paven bay, 
 Basking there in lazy rest. 
 
 Still the spider-lily loops 
 
 Sprawling flowers, peels of pearl, 
 Where the green magnolia stoops 
 Buds to yellow-lily bonnets ; 
 Where, the morning dew upon its 
 
 Golden funnels, curl on curl 
 The festooning jasmine droops. 
 
 Who may paint the beauty of 
 Orchids blooming late in June, 
 
 Bristling on the boughs above ! 
 
 Cypress-trees where many a flower 
 
 Long lianas' tendrils shower 
 On the deer that come at noon 
 
 Muzzles in cool depths to shove.
 
 THE OCKLAWAHA. 185 
 
 Lilied inlets where the teal 
 
 Dabble 'mid the water-grasses, 
 That some treasure seem to seal 
 With white blooms that star the river : 
 Bays the swift kingfishers shiver 
 
 Into circles as each passes 
 O'er their mirrors that reveal. 
 
 Bends, reflecting root and moss, 
 
 Where the tall palmettoes throng, 
 Over live-oaks tower and toss 
 Panther necks whose heads are heavy : 
 Hamaks where the perfumes levy 
 Tribute from the birds in song, 
 From the mocking-birds that cross. 
 
 Logs the turtles haunt ; and deeps 
 Of lagoons the searching crane 
 
 Wades ; and where the heron sleeps ; 
 
 Where the screaming limpkins listen, 
 
 And the leaping mullet glisten ; 
 Bream and bass dart by again, 
 
 And the dark didapper sweeps. 
 
 Coacoochee, Coacoochee, 
 
 Still the huge magnolias bloom 
 And the tangled Cherokee, 
 Where the blazing-star spreads splendor
 
 i86 THE OCKLAWAHA. 
 
 Through the forest, and the tender 
 
 Discs of the hibiscus loom, 
 Trailing over bush and tree. 
 
 Osceola, Osceola, 
 
 Phantoms of your vanquished race 
 From the starlight seem to draw 
 Stern invasion. Mossy regions 
 Swarm the Seminole's lost legions, 
 
 Threatening war-paint on each face. 
 Dead, long dead for Florida !
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 187 
 
 THE MINORCAN. 
 
 'THE mocking-bird may sing 
 
 Loud welcomes in the spring ; 
 The farewell of our nightingales 
 
 Prevails, prevails ! 
 No grief may hush their song : 
 In sleep they sing the clearer 
 It 's " home, home, home," the whole night 
 
 long 
 
 What wonder that we feel our wrong 
 The nearer ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Hibiscus blooms surprise 
 The swamp with rosy eyes ; 
 The Balearic girl but knows 
 
 Our rose, our rose ! 
 No slavery may undo 
 Her dream it makes the purer, 
 With " love, love, love," the long night 
 
 through, 
 
 To make the day's long heartbreak too 
 The surer.
 
 i88 THE MINORCA N. 
 
 The wind from out the west 
 Would teach our souls unrest ; 
 We will not hear until hath ceased 
 
 The East, the East ! 
 No sorrow wakes to weep 
 But th' olive's whisper hushes ; 
 It 's " rest, rest, rest," while night doth 
 
 keep 
 
 The weight of memory asleep 
 That crushes. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Deep ocean brings us shells ; 
 Adieus and dead farewells, 
 Surf-couriers of its swiftest foam 
 From home, from home ! 
 But when the .stars are high, 
 Its slumberous voices cherish 
 The heart with " hope," that will deny 
 Despair until we wake to sigh 
 Or perish.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 189 
 
 THE SPRING IN FLORIDA. 
 
 /^RAB-APPLES make the western belt 
 ^^ Of hamak one gay holiday of pink, 
 And through palmetto depths, on breaths like felt, 
 The jasmine odors sink. 
 
 There blows a blur of peach and pea:l 
 
 Around the villa by the river's side ; 
 The guava blossoms and the orange-trees whirl 
 
 Aroma far and wide. 
 
 " He courts her ! " sings the mocking-bird, 
 
 " He courts her, and she misses 
 This word or that she might have heard, 
 Had he not drawn a sweeter word 
 From her sweet lips with kisses. 
 He courts her ! " 
 
 Chameleons bask bright bodies there, 
 
 Where lemons powder stars above the way ; 
 
 The fragrance holds its heart out and the air 
 Embalms it in a ray. 
 
 Strange lilies laugh mute mouths of musk 
 And stun the zephyr, where the loaded light
 
 i go THE SPRING IN FLORIDA. 
 
 Shines with japonicas. And tusk on tusk 
 Magnolias bud in sight. 
 
 The red-bird's song is, " Haste, haste, haste ! 
 
 Nor wait till morn to marry 
 Mayhap you '11 find hath gone to waste 
 The poppy that the stalk once graced : 
 
 The moments may not tarry, 
 So marry ! " 
 
 There the verandah, spilled and spun 
 
 With deep bignonia, bulging one full frame 
 
 Of scarlet foam, seems pouring for the sun 
 A cataract of flame. 
 
 The oleander hedges soak 
 
 The dusk with sweetness ; and the gray moss 
 
 heaps 
 Ghost raiment round the aloe and live-oak 
 
 Where the bronze fountain leaps. 
 
 " Oh, love, love, love ! " the wood-dove coos, 
 
 " Oh, love, love, love forever ! 
 
 They, who the crimson rose refuse, 
 
 The lily's whiteness too may lose 
 
 So choose thou now or never ! 
 
 Oh, love, love, love ! "
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. igi 
 
 STRATEGY. 
 
 A ND is it madness still to hope 
 
 For ways made blue with vetchlings' eyes, 
 Beyond the creek-road and the slope 
 Far as the gray hawk flie~, ? 
 
 A bird may beat a crippled wing 
 To lure me from its brush-built nest ; 
 A sudden throat may sit and sing 
 Its wildwood happiest. 
 
 Beyond the orchard hills be hills 
 Of knee-deep huckleberries, green 
 With little bell-blooms, summer fills 
 To plumpness of the bean. 
 
 O season of the sassafras ! 
 O animal, the rathe months hold, 
 Kick happy heels in deeps of grass 
 And roll in deeper gold ! 
 
 Confusing strategy ! for frost 
 With ice seams every flower-bed ! 
 Where once each stalk an Edgar tossed, 
 Tom shakes a shivering head.
 
 1 92 STRA TEGY. 
 
 Where once the gladiola shook 
 A wand of folly in the sun, 
 That humped stock hath a grizzly look- 
 The poor, pale Fool is done. 
 
 A sorry beard my rose-bush hath, 
 An old king's, where the sleet 's a tear 
 For this dead lily in my path 
 Cordelia and Lear.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 193 
 
 THE WHIPPOORWILL. 
 
 I. 
 
 A BOVE long woodland ways that led 
 ** To dells the stealthy twilights tread 
 The west was hot geranium-red ; 
 
 And still, and still, 
 Along old lanes, the locusts sow 
 With clustered pearls the Maytimes know, 
 Out of the crimson afterglow, 
 We heard the homeward cattle low, 
 And then the far-off, far-off woe 
 
 Of " whippoorwill ! " of " whippoonvill ! 
 
 n. 
 
 Beneath the idle beechen boughs 
 W T e heard the cow-bells of the cows 
 Come slowly jangling towards the house ; 
 
 And still, and still, 
 Beyond the light that would not die 
 Out of the scarlet-haunted sky, 
 Beyond the evening-star's white eye 
 Of glittering chalcedony, 
 Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry 
 
 Of " whippoorwill ! " of "whippoorwill ! 
 '3
 
 194 THE WHIPPOORWILL. 
 
 What is there in the moon, that swims 
 A naked bosom o'er the limbs, 
 That all the wood with magic dims ? 
 
 While still, while still, 
 Among the trees whose shadows grope 
 'Mid ferns and flow'rs the dew-drops ope, 
 Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope 
 Above the clover-sweetened slope, 
 Retreats, despairing past all hope, 
 
 The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 195 
 
 SATAN. 
 
 C TILL shall I stand the everlasting hate 
 
 Colossal Chaos builded 'neath thine eyes, 
 The symbol of all evil, that defies 
 
 Thy victory, and vanquished still can wait. 
 
 Scar me again with such vast force as late 
 Hurled abrupt thunder and archangel cries 
 'Mid fiery whirlwinds of the terrible skies 
 
 Down the deep's roar against Hell's monster gate ! 
 
 Thy wrath cannot abolish or make less 
 Me, an eternal wile opposed to wrath : 
 No purpose shalt thou have and I no plan ! 
 
 Behold thy Eden's vanished loveliness ! 
 Why hast thou set a sword within its path, 
 And cursed and exiled thine own image, Man ?
 
 196 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 SIC VOS NON VOBIS. 
 
 TF on the thorns thy feet be bruised to-morrow, 
 
 And far the fierce sands glare, 
 Unbind thy temples ! thank life for its sorrow, 
 Its longing and despair ! 
 
 With love within, what heart shall fail and wither, 
 
 Athirst for rivered hills ? 
 
 Moaning, " Mine ! mine ! what hate hath led me 
 hither 
 
 Unto a sky that kills ! " 
 
 Unworthy thou ! if faith should sink and falter ; 
 
 Blind hand and blinder eye 
 Bind the blind hope upon thy doubt's old altar 
 
 And stab it till it die. 
 
 Think not hast hugged no happiness and never 
 
 Communed with lovely sleep ; 
 Had night before thine eyeballs night forever 
 
 To lead thee to the deep. 
 
 Ay ! wouldst thou have thy self-love for a burden, 
 A fardle bound with tears,
 
 6/C VOS NON VOBIS. 197 
 
 To sweat beneath and gain at last as guerdon 
 From hands of wasted years ! 
 
 Coaxing lewd stars to light thee, feebler, thinner 
 
 Than phantoms in the moon ; 
 Dead stars and all the darkness of the inner 
 
 Self's deader plenilune : 
 
 To see at last, beneath Death's sterner learning, 
 
 Through sockets sealed with frost, 
 The awful sunsets of red heavens burning 
 
 God's baffling pentecost.
 
 198 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 ONCE. 
 
 /^\NCE when the morning on the curling breakers, 
 
 Along the foaming sand, 
 Flashed expectation, by the ocean's acres 
 
 Love took command. 
 
 And so we sailed, ./Eolian music melting 
 
 Around our silken sails ; 
 The bubbled foam our prow of sandal pelting 
 
 With rainbow gales. 
 
 We watched the beach, with sprawling cactus hate 
 ful 
 
 And gnarled palmetto, pass 
 Beyond our vision where Life once walked fateful 
 
 With Time's slow glass. 
 
 And yet, and yet, who might forget the beauty 
 
 Of dim and fragile shells, 
 That strewed sad shores of Patience and of Duty 
 
 Like asphodels ! 
 
 Harsh rocks of Care where Faith's meek flow'r 
 
 suffices 
 To lead Love up and on,
 
 ONCE. 199 
 
 To levels, that the Bible's lily spices, 
 Divine with dawn ! 
 
 Still, still we went, Love laughing at to-morrow, 
 
 Past sunny isle and cape ; 
 
 Three were we now : my Soul and Love and 
 Sorrow, 
 
 A tall, grave shape. 
 
 And still we went, Love at the golden rudder, 
 
 Till all the day lay late, 
 When, lo ! beside him, like an icy shudder, 
 
 Stood pallid Hate. 
 
 And still we went, Love seeing me no other : 
 None crowned with bleeding thorn, 
 
 None armed with violence, and now another 
 Unyielding Scorn. 
 
 Beholding then, Love, who had once commanded 
 
 Alone, now summoned Pride ; 
 The darker three, against the bright two banded, 
 
 Stood side by side. 
 
 On through the night our boat went drifting, drift 
 ing I 
 
 My stricken soul alone, 
 A white face cold as moonlit marble lifting 
 
 To moan and moan.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 
 
 RESIGNATION. 
 
 T F Grief must fill my heart with tears, and Time 
 
 Abate no hour 
 Of tyranny with any laughing rhyme, 
 
 Be Grief my dower. 
 
 If days must sing to my attentive soul 
 
 Joy's cradle-song, 
 Nor lift one grave note in the lovely whole, 
 
 O Joy, be long. 
 
 Bring me pale flowers of the handselled hills, 
 
 To braid and lay 
 On coffined brows, sad separation fills 
 
 With death's dismay. 
 
 Dreams, dreams to drug my soul's life-cup with pure 
 
 Ideal love ; 
 Glad lips and eyes whose beauties still allure 
 
 The world above. 
 
 A harp to hold between lax knees and smite 
 
 With prayers and tears 
 For night bereaved by day, and day by night, 
 
 Through bitter years.
 
 RESIGNA TION. 
 
 A lute to hug unto the heart, and make 
 
 Youth's tripping tune 
 Of Maytime's lily that but fades to wake 
 
 The rose of June. 
 
 Up bars of stars, the golden notes of skies, 
 
 On night's black page 
 Let the moon's music of pale pathos rise 
 
 To teach young age. 
 
 Upon the mountains of the morning lands, 
 
 An unsealed book 
 Let Love's nude childhood lift in happy hands 
 
 And old age look. 
 
 Apportion, O my God, the hope or fear, 
 
 The grief or glee ! 
 Thine be the purpose of each smile, each tear 
 
 Eternally.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES, 
 
 AFTER RAIN. 
 
 '"TO see the blossom-bosomed Day again, 
 
 With all the star- white Hours in her train, 
 Laugh out of pearl-lights in the golden ray, 
 That, leaning on the woodland wildness, blends 
 A sprinkled amber with the showers that lay 
 Their oblong emeralds on the leafy ends ! 
 To see her bend with maiden-braided brows 
 Above the wildflower sidewise with its strain 
 Of dewy happiness, to kiss again 
 Each drop to death ! Or, under rainy boughs, 
 With fingers fragrant as the woodland rain, 
 Gather the sparkles from the sycamore, 
 
 To set within each core 
 Of crimson roses girdling her hips 
 
 Where each bud dreams and drips ! 
 
 Smoothing her blue-black hair, where many a tusk 
 
 Of iris flashes fairy falchions, sheen 
 
 Around blue banners of the Fairy Queen, 
 
 Is it a Naiad singing in the dusk, 
 
 That haunts the spring, where all the moss is musk 
 
 With footsteps of the flowers on the banks ? 
 
 Or but a wild-bird voluble with thanks ?
 
 AFTER RAIN, 203 
 
 Balm for each blade of grass : the hours prepare 
 A festival each weed 's invited to : 
 Each bee is drunken with the honied air : 
 And all the heaven is eloquent with blue : 
 The wet hay glitters, and the harvester 
 Tinkles his scythe, as twinkling as the dew 
 
 That shall not spare 
 Blossom or brier in its sweeping path ; 
 
 And, ere it cut one swath, 
 Rings them they die and tells them to prepare. 
 
 What is the spice that haunts each glen and glade ? 
 
 A Dryad's lips, who slumbers in the shade ? 
 
 A Faun, who lets the heavy ivy-wreath 
 
 Slip to his thigh as, reaching up, he pulls 
 
 The chestnut-blossoms in whole bosomfuls ? 
 
 A sylvan Spirit, whose sweet mouth will breathe 
 
 Her viewless presence near us, while we wade 
 
 The brook, whose wisdom knows no other song 
 
 Than that the bird sings where it builds beneath 
 
 The wild-rose and sits singing all day long? 
 
 Oh, let me sit with silence for a space ! 
 A little while forgetting that fierce part 
 Of man that struggles in the toiling mart : 
 Where God can look into my heart's own heart 
 From unsoiled heights made amiable with grace : 
 And where the sermons that the old oaks keep
 
 AFTER RAIN. 
 
 Can steal into me. And what better then 
 Than turning to the moss a quiet face 
 To fall asleep ? a little while to sleep 
 And dream of wiser worlds and wiser men. 
 
 1886.
 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES. 205 
 
 PEACE. 
 
 "\X7HEN rose-leaves 'neath the rose-bush lie, 
 
 And lilies bloom and lilacs die, 
 When days fall sadder than a sigh, 
 
 Lay me asleep 
 Where breezes blow the rose-leaves by, 
 
 Lay me asleep. 
 
 II. 
 
 When to the dusty, dreary day 
 
 The lonely clouds bring cooling gray, 
 
 And languidly the tree-tops sway 
 
 And flowers there, 
 The silence and the shade will pray, 
 
 And flowers there. 
 
 in. 
 
 And shouldst thou stop, O shed no tear 
 To flaw the pallid peace that 's here ! 
 The woodland whisper far and near 
 
 That 's weary grown ; 
 Nor bring the world to jar the ear 
 
 That 's weary grown.
 
 This book is DUE on the last 
 date stamped below 
 
 3m-10,'48(B1040)470
 
 DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 PS 
 1277 
 
 R24