THE VALE OF TEMPE POEMS BY MADISON CAWEIN NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 1911 Copyrighted 1905 BY MADISON J. CAWEIX Published, hmg Oi- . Tie . ma. tile E:cna Merril G if ne acerns -ncauiei ji 273454 TO GERTRUDE You are weary of reading: I am weary of song: The one is misleading; The other, oer long: All Art s over long. Ah, would it were ours To leave them, and then, Mid the fields and the flowers, Be children again, Just children again. CONTENTS THE VALE OF TEMPE PAGE I WIND AND CLOUD ! x IN SOLITARY PLACES 28 WHIPPOORWILL TIME 59 MYSTERIES ...... 53 THE SOLITARY 66 A YELLOW ROSE 6 7 THE OLD HOME 69 THE OLD HERB-MAN 72 THE MAN HUNT .... 74 THE VALE OF TEMPE 77 MARIANA 8 4 THE FOREST OF SHADOWS .... 92 THE AWAKENING ...... 97 Music AND MOONLIGHT .... IQI BERTRAND DE BORN IO - THE TROUBADOUR, PONS DE CAPDEUIL . .no THE BALLAD OF THE ROSE . . . .115 vii vii: CONTEXTS MflB Low-LiE-DowN ... .119 ROSE LEAVES WHEN THE ROSE Is DEAD . . 122 TBB LAMP AT THE WINDOW .... 126 THE MIRACLE OF THE DAWN . . . 130 PENETRALIA .... . 133 THB HEAVES-BORN* . .136 EARTH S COMMONPLACES THE WORLD OF FAERY ..... 141 THERE ARE FAIRIES 146 THE LITTLE PEOPLE . . . . .15 Ox MIDSUMMER NIGHT . . 134 THE WILLOW WATER ... 159 ELUSION . . . . 163 THE LOST GARDEN . . . . 166 GLAMOUR . .170 LATE OCTOBER WOODS ..... 172 IN THE BEECH WOODS 174 TBE WORD IN THE WOOD . . . . 177 THE WOOD WATER 180 THE EGRET HUNTER . . 182 THE NIGHT-WIND ... . 185 GOD S GREEN BOOK 188 A WET DAY 190 AFTER STORM 192 CONTEXTS & SUNSET ON THE RIVER P JJ THE RUE- ANEMONE I9 6 TABERNACLES .... log REVEALMENT . . . 2OO THE CAT-BIRD ..... 202 VAGABONDS . . . . . 205 NOCTURNE 2Og LUTE SONG 2ll DAYS COME AND Go 2I3 THE WANING YEAR 2I5 GRAY NOVEMBER 2I7 HALLOWMAS ..... 2I o A SONG OF THE SNOW .... 221 WHAT OF IT THEN ..... 22 e WOMANHOOD 22 g THE BURDEN OF DESIRE .... 230 THE ROSE S SECRET 232 WOMAN S LOVE 234 AUBADE 2 . 6 THE HUSHED HOUSE .... 238 THE HEART S DESIRE ..... 240 ACHIEVEMENT 242 AT MOONRISE 244 UNFORGOTTEN ...... 248 UNSUCCESS . HI .- :?.-: : VAJ.TI?. I. JANUARY - *54 EL FEBRUARY 255 : = f LATB NOVEMBER: : = - H. Noos :- TIT- EVENING ..... - = ? IV. NIGHT . 260 261 . 262 OH THE HILLTOP ... - 263 AUTUMN STORM . 264 :-_: 5:, ":HN - 265 TMEMl^ . 266 IN AGES PAST 267 UNTO WHAT BSD . ... . 268 7" -V. 7 ... TS . 271 Z?ZL:C-UI: . . 273 THE VALE OF TEMPE THE VALE OF TEMPE THE HYLAS 1 HEARD the hylas in the bottomlands Piping a reed-note in the praise of Spring: The South-wind brought the music on its wing, As t were a hundred strands Of guttural gold smitten of elfin hands; Or of sonorous silver, struck by bands, Anviled within the earth, Of laboring gnomes shaping some gem of worth. Sounds that seemed to bid The wildflowers wake; 2 THE HYLAS Unclose each dewy lid, And starrily shake Sleep from their airy eyes Beneath the loam, And, robed in daedal dyes, Frail as the fluttering foam, In countless myriads rise. And in my city home I, too, who heard Their reedy word, Awoke, and, with my soul, went forth to roam. II And under glimpses of the cloud-white sky My soul and I Beheld her seated, Spring among the woods With bright attendants, Two radiant maidens, The Wind and Sun : one robed in cadence, And one in white resplendence, THE HYLAS Working wild wonders with the solitudes. And thus it was, So it seemed to me, Where she sat apart Fondling a bee, By some strange art, As in a glass, Down in her heart My eyes could see What would come to pass: How in each tree, Each blade of grass, Dead though it seemed, Still lived and dreamed Life and perfume, Color and bloom, Housed from the North Like golden mirth, That she with jubilation would bring forth, Astonishing Earth. 4 THE HYLAS III And thus it was I knew That though the trees were barren of all buds, And all the woods Of blossoms now, still, still their hoods And heads of blue and gold, ^And pink and pearl lay hidden in the mould; And in a day or two, When Spring s fair feet came twinkling through The trees, their gold and blue, And pearl and pink in countless bands would rise, Invading all these ways With loveliness; and to the skies, In radiant rapture raise The fragile sweetness of a thousand eyes. When every foot of soil would boast An ambuscade Of blossoms; each green rood parade Its flowery host; THE HYLAS And every acre of the woods, With little bird-like beaks of leaves and buds, Brag of its beauty; making bankrupts of Our hearts of praise, and beggar us of love. IV Here, when the snow was flying, And barren boughs were sighing, In icy January, I stood, like some gray tree, lonely and solitary. Now every spine and splinter Of wood, washed clean of winter, By hill and canyon Makes of itself an intimate companion, A confidant, who whispers me the dreams That haunt its heart, and clothe it as with gleams. And lonely now no more I walk the mossy floor Of woodlands where each bourgeoning leaf is matched, THE HYLAS Mated with music; triumphed o er Of building love and nestling song just hatched. Washed of the early rains, And rosed with ruddy stains, The boughs and branches now make ready for Their raiment green of leaves and musk and myrrh. As if to greet her pomp, The heralds of her state, As t were with many a silvery trump, The birds are singing, singing, And all the world s elate, As o er the hills, as t were from Heaven s gate, With garments, dewy-clinging, Comes Spring, around whose way the budded woods are ringing With redbird and with bluebird and with thrush ; While, overhead, on happy wings is swinging THE HYLAS 7 The swallow through the heaven s azure hush: And wren and sparrow, vireo and crow Are busy with their nests, or high or low, In every tree, it seems, and every bush. The loamy odor of the turfy heat, Breathed warm from every field and wood- retreat, Is as if spirits passed on flowery feet: That indescribable Aroma of the woods one knows so well, Reminding one of sylvan presences, Clad on with lichen and with moss, That haunt and trail across The woods dim dales and dells; their airy essences Of racy nard and musk Rapping at gummy husk And honeyed sheath of every leaf and flower, That open to their knock, each at the appointed hour: 8 THE HYLAS And, lo! Where er they go, Behold a miracle Too beautiful to tell! Where late the woods were bare The red-bud shakes its hair Of flowering flame; the dogwood and the haw Dazzle with pearl the shaw; And the broad maple crimsons, sunset-red, Through firmaments of forest overhead : And of its boughs the wild-crab makes a lair, A rosy cloud of blossoms, for the bees, Bewildered there, To revel in; lulling itself with these. And in the whispering woods The wildflower multitudes Rise, star, and bell, and bugle, all amort To everything save their own loveliness And the soft wind s caress, The wind that tip-toes through them : liverwort, THE HYLAS 9 Spring-beauty, windflower and the bleedingheart, And bloodroot, holding low Its cups of stainless snow; Sorrel and trillium and the twin-leaf, too, Twinkling, like stars, through dew: And patches, as it were, of saffron skies, Ranunculus; and golden eyes Of adder s-tongue; and mines, It seems, of grottoed gold, the poppy-celandines; And, sapphire-spilled, Bluets and violets, Dark pansy-violets and columbines, With rainy radiance filled ; And many more whose names my mind forgets, But not my heart: The Nations of the Flowers, making gay In every place and part, With pomp and pageantry Of absolute Beauty, all the worlds of woods, In congregated multitudes, 10 THE HYLAS Assembled where Unearthly colors all the oaks put on, Velvet and silk and vair, Vermeil and mauve and fawn, Dim and auroral as the hues of dawn. WIND AND CLOUD A March Voluntary I WINDS that cavern heaven and the clouds And canyon with cerulean blue, Great rifts down which the stormy sunlight crowds Like some bright seraph, who, Mailed in intensity of silver mail, Flashes his splendor over hill and vale, Now tramp, tremendous, the loud forest through : Or now, like mighty runners in a race, That swing, long pace to pace, Sweep round the hills, fresh as, at dawn s first start, ii 12 WIND AND CLOUD They swept, dew-dripping, from The crystal-crimson ruby of her heart, Shouting the dim world dumb. And with their passage the gray and green Of the earth s washed clean; And the cleansing breath of their might is wings And warm aroma we know as Spring s, And sap and strength to her bourgeonings. II My brow I bare To the cool, clean air, That blows from the crests of the clouds that roll, Pearl-piled and berged as floes of Northern Seas, Banked gray and thunder-low Big in the heaven s peace; Clouds, borne from nowhere that we know, With nowhere for their goal ; With here and there a silvery glow WIND AND CLOUD 13 Of sunlight chasming deeps of sombre snow, Great gulfs that overflow With sky, a sapphire-blue, Or opal, sapphire-kissed, Wide-welled and deep and swiftly rifting through Stratas of streaming mist; Each opening like a pool, Serene, cerule, Set round with crag-like clouds mid which its eye gleams cool. Ill What blue is bluer than the bluebird s blue! T is as if heaven itself sat on its wings; As if the sky in miniature it bore The fields and forests through, Bringing the very heaven to our door; The daybreak of its back soft-wedded to The sunset-auburn of its throat that sings. The dithyrambics of the wind and rain 14 WIND AND CLOUD Strive to, but cannot, drown its strain: Again, and yet again I hear it where the maples tassel red, And blossoms of the crab round out o erhead, And catkins make the willow-brake A gossamer blur around the lake That lately was a stream, A little stream locked in its icy dream. IV Invisible crystals of aerial ring, Against the wind I hear the bluebird fling Its notes; and where the oak s mauve leaves un curl I catch the skyey glitter of its wing; Its wing that lures me, like some magic charm, Far in the woods And shadowy solitudes: And where the purple hills stretch under purple and pearl WIND AND CLOUD 15 Of clouds that sweep and swirl, Its music seems to take material form; A form that beckons with cerulean arm And bids me see and follow, Where, in the violet hollow, There at the wood s far turn, On starry moss and fern, She shimmers, glimmering like a rainbowed shower, The Spirit of Spring, Diaphanous-limbed, who stands With honeysuckle hands Sowing the earth with many a firstling flower, Footed with fragrance of their blossoming, And clad in heaven as is the bluebird s wing. The tumult and the booming of the trees, Shaken with shoutings of the winds of March No mightier music have I heard than these, l6 WIND AND CLOUD The rocking and the rushing of the trees, The organ-thunder of the forest s arch. And in the wind their columned trunks become, Each one, a mighty pendulum, Swayed to and fro as if in time To some vast song, some roaring rhyme, Wind-shouted from sonorous hill to hill. The woods are never still: The dead leaves frenzy by, Innumerable and frantic as the dance That whirled its madness once beneath the sky In ancient Greece, like withered Corybants: And I am caught and carried with their rush, Their countless panic borne away, A brother to the wind, through the deep gray Of the old beech-wood, where the wild March- day Sits dreaming, filling all the boisterous hush With murmurous laughter and swift smiles of sun; WIND AND CLOUD 17 Conspiring in its heart and plotting how To load with leaves and blossoms every bough, And whispering to itself, "Now Spring s begun! And soon her flowers shall golden through these leaves! Away, ye sightless things and sere ! Make room for that which shall appear! The glory and the gladness of the year; The loveliness my eye alone perceives, Still hidden there beneath the covering leaves, My song shall waken! flowers, that this floor Of whispering woodland soon shall carpet o er For my sweet sisters feet to tread upon, Months kinder than myself, the stern and strong, Tempestuous-loving one, Whose soul is full of wild, tumultuous song; And whose rough hand now thrusts itself among The dead leaves; groping for the flowers that lie Huddled beneath, each like a sleep-closed eye: Gold adder s-tongue and pink 1 8 WIND AND CLOUD Oxalis; snow-pale bloodroot blooms; May-apple hoods, that parasol the brink, Screening their moons, of the slim woodland- stream: And the wild iris; trillium, white as stars, And bluebells, dream on dream: With harsh hand groping in the glooms, I grasp their slenderness and shake Their lovely eyes awake, Dispelling from their souls the sleep that mars; With heart-disturbing jars Clasping their forms, and with rude finger-tips, Through the dark rain that drips Lifting them shrinking to my stormy lips. VI " Already spicewood and the sassafras, Like fragrant flames, begin To tuft their boughs with topaz, ere they spin Their beryl canopies a glimmering mass, WIND AND CLOUD 19 Mist-blurred, above the deepening grass. Already where the old beech stands Clutching the lean soil as it were with hands Taloned and twisted, on its trunk a knot, A huge excrescence, a great fungous clot, Like some enormous and distorting wart, My eyes can see how, blot on beautiful blot Of blue, the violets blur through The musky and the loamy rot Of leaf-pierced leaves; and, heaven in their hue, A sunbeam at each blossom s heart, The little bluets, crew on azure crew, Prepare their myriads for invasion too. - VII " And in my soul I see how, soon, shall rise, Still hidden to men s eyes, Dim as the wind that round them treads, Hosts of spring-beauties, streaked with rosy reds, And pale anemones, whose airy heads, 20 WIND AND CLOUD As to some fairy rhyme, All day shall nod in delicate time: And now, even now, white peal on peal Of pearly bells, that in bare boughs conceal Themselves, like snowy music, chime on chime, The huckleberries to my gaze reveal Clusters, that soon shall toss Above this green-starred moss, That, like an emerald fire, gleams across This forest-side, and from its moist deeps lifts Slim, wire-like stems of seed; Or, lichen-colored, glows with many a bead Of cup-like blossoms: carpets where, I read, When through the night s dark rifts The moonlight s glimpsing splendor sifts, The immaterial forms With moonbeam-beckoning arms, Of Fable and Romance, Myths that are born of whispers of the wind WIND AND CLOUD 21 And foam of falling waters, music-twinned, Shall lead the legendary dance; The dance that never stops, Of Earth s wild beauty on the green hill-tops." VIII The youth, the beauty and disdain Of birth, death does not know, Compel my heart with longing like to pain When the spring breezes blow. The fragrance and the heat Of their soft breath, whose musk makes sweet Each woodland way, each wild retreat, Seem saying in my ear, " Hark, and behold! Before a week be gone This barren woodside and this leafless wold A million flowers shall invade With argent and azure, pearl and gold, Like rainbow fragments scattered of the dawn, Here making bright, here wan 22 WIND AND CLOUD Each foot of earth, each glen and glimmering glade, Each rood of windy wood, Where late gaunt Winter stood, Shaggy with snow and howling at the sky; Where even now the Springtime seems afraid To whisper of the beauty she designs, The flowery campaign that she now outlines Within her soul; her heart s conspiracy To take the world with loveliness ; defy And then o erwhelm the Death that Winter throned Amid the trees, with love that she hath owned Since God informed her of His very breath, Giving her right triumphant over Death. And, irresistible, Her heart s deep ecstasy shall swell, Taking the form of flower, leaf, and blade, Invading every dell, And sweeping, surge on surge, WIND AND CLOUD 23 Around the world, like some exultant raid, Even to the heaven s verge. Soon shall her legions storm Death s ramparts, planting Life s fair standard there, The banner which her beauty hath in care, Beauty, that shall eventuate With all the pomp and pageant and the state, That are a part of power, and that wait On majesty, to which it, too, is heir." IX Already purplish pink and green The bloodroot s buds and leaves are seen Clumped in dim cirques; one from the other Hardly distinguished in the shadowy smother Of last year s leaves blown brown between. And, piercing through the layers of dead leaves, The searching eye perceives The dog s-tooth violet, pointed needle-keen, 24 WIND AND CLOUD Lifting its beak of mottled green; While near it heaves The May-apple its umbrous spike, a ball, Like to a round, green bean, That folds its blossom, topping its tight-closed parasol : The clustered bluebell near Hollows its azure ear, Low-leaning to the earth as if to hear The sound of its own growing and perfume Flowing into its bloom : And softly there The twin-leaf s stems prepare Pale tapers of transparent white, As if to light The Spirit of Beauty through the wood s green night. X Why does Nature love the number five? Five-whorled leaves and five-tipped flowers? WIND AND CLOUD 2$ Haply the bee that sucks i the rose, Laboring aye to store its hive, And humming away the long noon hours, Haply it knows as it comes and goes: Or haply the butterfly, Or moth of pansy-dye, Flitting from bloom to bloom In the forest s violet gloom, It knows why: Or the irised fly, to whom Each bud, as it glitters near, Lends eager and ardent ear. And also tell Why Nature loves so well To prank her flowers in gold and blue. Haply the dew, That lies so close to them the whole night through, Hugged to each honeyed heart, Perhaps the dew the secret could impart: 26 WIND AND CLOUD Or haply now the bluebird there that bears, Glad, unawares, God s sapphire on its wings, The lapis-lazuli O the clean, clear sky, The heav n of which he sings, Haply he, too, could tell me why: Or the maple there that swings, To the wind s soft sigh, Its winglets, crystal red, A rainy ruby twinkling overhead: Or haply now the wind, that breathes of rain Amid the rosy boughs, it could explain: And even now, in words of mystery, That haunt the heart of me, Low-whispered, dim and bland, Tells ine, but tells in vain, And strives to make me see and understand, Delaying where The feldspar fire of the violet breaks, WIND AND CLOUD 2? And the starred myrtle aches With heavenly blue; and the frail wind flower shakes Its trembling tresses in the opal air. IN SOLITARY PLACES THE hurl and hurry of the winds of March, That tore the ash and bowed the pine and larch, Are past and done with: winds, that trampled through The forests with enormous, scythe-like sweep, And from the darkening deep, The battlements of heaven, thunder-blue, Rumbled the arch, The rocking arch of all the booming oaks, With stormy chariot-spokes; Chariots from which wild bugle-blasts they blew, Their warrior challenge. . . . Now the wind- flower sweet Misses the fury of their ruining feet, 28 IN SOLITARY PLACES 29 The trumpet-thunder of resistless flight, Crashing and vast, obliterating light; Sweeping the skeleton cohorts down Of last year s leaves; and, overhead, Hurrying the giant foliage of night, Gaunt clouds that streamed with tempest. Now each crown Of woods that stooped to clamor of their tread, The frenzy of their passage, stoops no more, Hearing no more their clarion-command, Their chariot-hurl and the wild whip in hand. No more, no more, The forests rock and roar And tumult with their shoutings. . . . Hushed and still Is the green-gleaming and the sunlit hill, Along whose sides, Flushing the dewy moss and rainy grass Beneath the topaz-tinted sassafras, As aromatic as some orient wine 30 IN SOLITARY PLACES The violet fire of the bluet glides, The amaranthine flame Glints of the bluebell; and the celandine, Line upon lovely line, Deliberate goldens into birth; And, ruby and rose, the moccasin-flower hides: Innumerable blooms, with which she writes her name, April, upon the page, The winter-withered parchment of old Earth, Her fragrant autograph that gives it worth And loveliness that takes away its age. II Here where the woods are wet, The blossoms of the dog s-tooth violet Seem meteors in a miniature firmament Of wildflowers, where, with rainy sound and scent Of breeze and blossom, soft the April went: IN SOLITARY PLACES 31 Their tongue-like leaves of umber-mottled green, So thickly seen, Seem dropping words of gold, The visible syllables of a magic old. Beside them, near the wahoo-bush and haw, Blooms the hepatica; Its slender flowers upon swaying stems Lifting pale, solitary blooms, Starry, and twilight-colored, like frail gems, That star the diadems Of sylvan spirits, piercing pale the glooms; Or like the wands, the torches of the fays, That light lone, woodland ways With slim, uncertain rays: (The faery people, whom no eye may see, Busy, so legend says, With budding bough and leafing tree, The blossom s heart o honey and honey-sack o the bee, And all dim thoughts and dreams, 3 2 IN SOLITARY PLACES That take the form of flowers, as it seems, And haunt the banks of greenwood streams, Showing in every line and curve, Commensurate with our love, and intimacy, A smiling confidence or sweet reserve.) There at that leafy turn Of trailered rocks, rise fronds of hart s-tongue fern : Fronds that my fancy names Uncoiling flames Of feathering emerald and gold, That, kindled in the musky mould, Now, stealthily as the morn, unfold Their cool green fires that burn Uneagerly, and spread around An elfin light above the ground, Like that green glow A spirit, lamped with crystal, makes below In dripping caves of labyrinthine moss. IN SOLITARY PLACES 33 And in the underwoods, around them, toss The white-hearts with their penciled leaves, That mid the shifting gleams and glooms, The interchanging shine and shade, Seem some vague garment made By unseen hands that weave, that none perceives ; Pale hands that work invisible looms, Now dropping shreds of light, Now shadow-shreds, that interbraid And form faint colors mixed with frail perfumes. Or, are they fragments left in flight, These flowers that scatter every glade With windy, beckoning white, And breezy blowing blue, Of her wild gown that shone upon my sight, A moment, in the woods I wandered through? April s, whom still I follow, Whom still my dreams pursue; Who leads me on by many a tangled clue Of loveliness, until, in some green hollow, 3 34 IN SOLITARY PLACES Born of her fragrance and her melody, But lovelier than herself and happier, too, Cradled in blossoms of the dogwood-tree, My soul shall see White as a sunbeam in the heart of day The infant, May. Ill Up, up, my Heart, and forth, where none per ceives! T was this that that sweet lay meant You heard in dreams. Come, let us take rich payment, For every care that grieves, From Nature s prodigal purse. T was this that May meant By sending forth that wind which round our eaves Whispered all night. Or was t the Spirit who weaves, IN SOLITARY PLACES 35 From gold and glaucous green of early leaves, Spring s radiant raiment? Up, up, my Heart, and forth, where none per ceives! Come, let us forth, my Heart, where none divines! Into far woodland places, Where we may meet the fair, assembled races, Beneath the guardian pines, Of God s first flowers: poppy-celandines, And wake-robins and bugled columbines, With which her hair, her heavenly hair she twines, And loops and laces. Come let us forth, my Heart, where none divines ! Forth, forth, my Heart, and let us find our dreams, There where they haunt each hollow ! 36 IN SOLITARY PLACES Dreams, luring us with Oread feet to follow, With flying feet of beams, Fleeter and lighter than the soaring swallow: Dreams, holding us with Dryad glooms and gleams ; With Naiad looks, far stiller than still streams, That have beheld and still reflect, it seems, The God Apollo. Forth, forth, my Heart, and let us find our dreams! Out, out my Heart! the world is white with spring. Long have our dreams been pleaders: Now Jet them be our firm but gentle leaders. Come, let us forth and sing Among the amber-emerald-tufted cedars, And balm-o -Gileads, cottonwoods, a-swing Like giant censers, that from leaf-cusps fling Balsams of gummy gold, bewildering IN SOLITARY PLACES 37 The winds their feeders. Out, out, my Heart! the world is white with spring. Up, up, my Heart, and all thy hope put on! Array thyself in splendor! Like some bright dragonfly, some May-fly slender, The irised lamels don Of thy new armor; and, where burns the centre, Refulgent, of the widening rose of dawn, Spread thy wild wings ! and, ere the hour be gone, Bright as a blast from some bold clarion, Thy Dream-world enter! Up, up, my heart, and all thy hope put on! IV And then I heard it singing, The wind that kissed my hair, A song of wild expression, 38 IN SOLITARY PLACES A song that called in session The wildflowers there up- springing, The wildflowers lightly flinging Their tresses to the air. And first the bloodroot-blooms of March In troops arose ; each with its torch Of hollow snow, within which, bright, The calyx grottoed golden light. Hepatica and bluet, And gold corydalis, Rose, swaying to the aria; While phlox and dim dentaria In rapture, ere they knew it, Oped, nodding lightly to it, Faint as a first star is. And then a music, to the ear Inaudible, I seemed to hear; IN SOLITARY PLACES 39 A symphony that seemed to rise And speak in colors to the eyes. I saw the Jacob s-Ladder Ring violet peal on peal Of perfume, azure-swinging; The bluebell slimly ringing Its purple chimes; and gladder, Green note on note, the madder Bells of the Solomon s-seal. Now far away; now near; now lost, I saw their fragrant music tossed, Mixed dimly with white interludes Of trilliums starring cool the woods. Then choral, solitary, I saw the celandine Smite bright its golden cymbals; The starwort shake its timbrels; The whiteheart s horns of Faery, 40 IN SOLITARY PLACES With many a flourish airy, Strike silvery into line. And straight my soul they seemed to draw, By chords of loveliness and awe, Into a Faery World afar, Where all man s dreams and longings are. Then the face of a spirit looked down at me Out of the deeps of the opal morn: Its eyes were blue as a sunlit sea, And young with the joy of a star that has just been born: And I seemed to hear, with my soul, the rose of its cool mouth say: Long I lay; long I lay, Low on the Hills of the Break-of-Day, Where ever the light is green and gray, IN SOLITARY PLACES 41 And the gleam of the moon is a silvery spray, And the stars are glimmering bubbles: Now from the Hills of the Break-of-Day I come, I come, on a rainbow ray, To laugh and sparkle, to leap and play, And blow from the face of the world away, Like mists, its cares and troubles." VI And now that the dawn is everywhere Let us take this road through this wild green place, Where the rattlesnake-weed shows its yellow face, And the lichens cover the rocks with lace: Where tannin-touched is the wild free air, Let us take this path through the oaks where thin The low leaves whisper, " The day is fair," And waters murmur, " Come in, come in! 42 IN SOLITARY PLACES Where the wind of our foam can play with your hair And blow away care." Berry blossoms that seem to flow As the winds blow; Blackberry blossoms swing and sway To and fro Along our way, Like ocean spray on a breezy day, Over the green of the grass as foam on the green of a bay When the world is white and green with the white and the green of May. And here the bluets blooming Make little eyes at you; O er which the bees go booming, Drunk with the honey-dew. O slender Quaker-ladies, O star-bright Quaker-ladies, IN SOLITARY PLACES 43 With eyes of heavenly blue, With eyes of azure hue, Who, where the mossy shade is, Hold quiet Quaker-meeting, Are these your serenaders? Your gold-hipped serenaders, Who, humming love-songs true, And to your eyes repeating Soft ballads, stop to woo? Then change to ambuscaders, To gold gallooned raiders, And rob the hearts of you, The golden hearts of you. And here the bells of the huckleberries toss, so it seems, in time, Delicate, tenderly white, clumped by the wild- wood way, Swinging, it seems, inaudible peals of a dew- clustered rhyme, 44 IN SOLITARY PLACES Visible music, dropped from the virginal lips of the May, Crystally dropped, so it seems, blossoming bar upon bar, Pendent, pensively pale, star upon hollowed star. VII The dewberries are blooming now; The days are long, the nights are short: Each dogwood and each black-haw bough Is bleached with bloom, and seems a part, Reflected palely on her brow, Of dreams that haunt the Year s young heart. But this will pass; and instantly The world forget the spring that was; And underneath the wild-plum tree, Mid hornet hum and wild-bee s buzz, Summer, in dreamy reverie, Will sit, all warm and amorous. IN SOLITARY PLACES 45 Summer, with drowsy eyes and hair, Who walks the orchard aisles between; Whose hot touch tans the freckled pear, And crimsons peach and nectarine ; And in the vineyard everywhere Bubbles with blue the grape s ripe green. Where now the briers blossoming are Soon will the berries darkly glow; Then summer pass: and, star on star, Where now the grass is strewn below With blossoms, soon, both near and far, Will lie th obliterating snow. The star-flower, now that discs with gold The woodland moss, the forest grass, Already in a day is old, Already doth its beauty pass ; Soon, undistinguished, with the mould T will mingle and will mix, alas! 46 IN SOLITARY PLACES The bluet, too, that spreads its skies, Diminutive heavens, at our feet; And crowfoot-bloom, that, with orbed eyes Of amber, now our eyes doth greet, Shall fade and pass, and none surmise How once they made the Maytime sweet. VIII But still the crowfoot trails its gold Along the edges of the oak wood old ; And still, where spreads the water, white are seen The lilies islanded between The pads round archipelagoes of green; The jade-dark pads that pave The water s wrinkled wave, In which the warbler and the sparrow lave Their fluttered breasts and wings; Preening their backs, with many twitterings, With necks the moisture streaks; Then dipping" deep their beaks, IN SOLITARY PLACES 47 To which some bead of liquid coolness clings, As bending back their mellow throats They let the freshness trickle into notes. And now you hear The red-capped woodpecker rap close and clear; And now that acrobat, The yellow-breasted chat, Chuckles his grotesque music from Some tree that he hath clomb. And now, and now, Upon a locust bough, Hark how the honey-throated thrush Scatters the forest s emerald hush With notes of golden harmony, Taking the woods with witchery Or is t some spirit none may see, Hid in the top of yonder tree, Who, in his house of leaves, of haunted green, Keeps trying, silver-sweet, his sunbeam flute serene? 48 IN SOLITARY PLACES IX Again the spirit looked down at me Out of the sunset s ruin of gold; Its eyes were dark as a moonless sea, And grave with the grief of a star that with sor row is old: And I seemed to hear, with my soul, the flame of its sad mouth sigh: " Now good-by! now good-by! Down to the Caves of the Night go I : Where a shadowy couch of the purple sky, That the moon- and the starlight curtain high, Is spread for my joy and sorrow: Down to the Caves of the Night go I, Where side by side in mystery With all the Yesterdays I 11 lie; And where, from my body, before I die, Will be born the young To-morrow." IN SOLITARY PLACES 49 And now that the dusk draws down you see, Tipped by the weight of a passing bee, The milkwort s spike of blue, Of lavender hue, Nod like a goblin night-cap, slim, sedate, That night shall tassel with the dew, Beneath its canopy of flowering rue. And now, as twilight s purple state Deepens the oaks dark vistas through, The owlet s cry of " Who, oh, who, Who walks so late? " Drifts like a challenge down to you. Or there on the twig of the oak-tree tall, The gray-green egg in the gray-green gall, You, too, might hear if you, too, would try, Might hear it open; all tinily Split, and the little round worm and white, That grows to a gnat in a summer night, 4 50 IN SOLITARY PLACES Uncurl in its nest as it dreams of flight: In the heart of the weed that grows near by, The little gray worm that becomes a fly, A green wood-fly, a rainbowed fly, You, too, might hear if you, too, would try, As a leaf-bud pushes from forth a tree, Minute of movement, steadily, As it feels a yearning for wings begin, Under the milk of its larval skin The silent pressure of wings within. The west grows ashen, the woods grow beryl- wan; The redbird lifts its plaintive vesper-song, Where faint a fox or rabbit steals along: And in some vine-roofed hollow, far withdrawn, The creek-frog sounds his deeply guttural gong, As dusk comes on: The water s gnarled dwarf or gnome, Seated upon his temple s oozy dome, IN SOLITARY PLACES 51 Calling the faithful unto prayer, Muezzin-like, the worshippers of the moon, The insect-folk of earth and air That join him in his twilight tune. Along the path where the lizard hides, An instant shadow, the spider glides, The hairy spider that haunts the way, Crouching black by its earth-bored hole, An insect-ogre, that lairs with the mole, Hungry, seeking its insect prey, Fast to follow and swift to slay. And over your hands and over your face The cobweb brushes its phantom lace : And now from many a stealthy place, Woolly-winged and gossamer-gray, The woodland moths come fluttering, Marked and mottled with lichen hues, Seal-soft umbers and downy blues, Dark as the bark to which they cling. 52 IN SOLITARY PLACES Now in the hollow of a hill, Like a glow-worm held in a giant hand, Under the sunset s last red band, And one star hued like a daffodil, The windowed lamp of a cabin glows, The charcoal-burner s, whose hut is poor, But ever open; beside whose door An oak grows gnarled and a pine stands slim. Clean of heart and of feature grim, Here he houses where no one knows, His only neighbors the cawing crows That make a roost of the pine s top limb; His only friend the fiddle he bows As he sits at his door in the eve s repose, Making it chuckle and sing and speak, Lovingly pressed to his swarthy cheek. And over many a root, through ferns and weeds, Past lonely places where the raccoon breeds, By many a rock and water lying dim, IN SOLITARY PLACES 53 Roofed with the brier and the bramble-rose, Under a star and the new-moon s rim, Downward the wood-way leads to him, Down where the lone lamp gleams and glows, A pencil slim Of marigold light under leaf and limb. XI Ere that small sisterhood of misty stars, The Pleiades, consents to grace the sky; While yet through sunset s tiger-tawny bars The evening-star shines downward like an eye, A torch, Enchantment, in her topaz tower Of twilight, kindles at the Day s last hour, Listen, and you may hear, now low, now high, A voice, a spirit, dreamier than a flower. There is a fellowship so still and sweet, A brotherhood, that speaks, unwordable, In every tree, in every flower you meet, 54 IN SOLITARY PLACES The soul is fain to sit beneath its spell. And heart-admitted to their presence there, Those intimacies of the earth and air, It shall hear words, too wonderful to tell, Too deep to interpret, of unspoken prayer. And you may see the things no eyes have seen, And hear the things no ears have ever heard; The Murmur of the Woods, in gray and green, Will lean to you, its soul a whispered word; Or by your side, in hushed and solemn wise, The Silence sit; and, clothed in glimmering dyes Of pearl and purple, herding bee and bird, The Dusk steal by you with her shadowy eyes. Then through the Ugliness that toils in night, Uncouth, obscure, that hates the glare of day, The things that pierce the earth and know no light, And hide themselves in clamminess and clay, IN SOLITARY PLACES 55 The dumb, ungainly things, that make a home Of mud and mire they hill and honeycomb, Through these, perhaps, in some mysterious way, Beauty may speak fairer than wind-blown foam. Not as it speaks, an eagle message, drawn From starry vastness of night s labyrinths: Not uttering itself from out the dawn In egret hues; nor from the cloud-built plinths Of sunset s splendor, speaking burningly Unto the spirit; nor all flowery From cygnet-colored cymes of hyacinths, But from the things that type humility. From things despised: even from the crawfish there, Hollowing its house of ooze a wet, vague sound Of sleepy slime; or from the mole, whose lair, Blind-tunnelled, corridores the earth around, Beauty may draw her truths, as draws its wings 56 IN SOLITARY PLACES The butterfly from the dull worm that clings, Cocoon and chrysalis; and from the ground Address the soul through even senseless things. For oft my soul hath heard the trees huge roots Fumble the darkness, clutching at the soil; Hath heard the green beaks of th imprisoned shoots Peck at the boughs from which the leaves uncoil ; Hath heard the buried germ soft split its pod, Groping its blind way up to light and God ; The mushroom, laboring with gnome-like toil, Heave slow its white orb through the encircling sod. The winds and waters, stars and streams and flowers, The earth and rocks, each moss-tuft and each fern, The very lichens speak. This world of ours IN SOLITARY PLACES 57 Is eloquent with things that bid us learn To pierce appearances, and so to mark, Within the stone and underneath the bark, Heard through some inward sense, the dreams that turn Outward to light and beauty from the dark. XII I stood alone in a mountain place, And it came to pass, as I gazed on space, That I met with Mystery, face to face. Within her eyes my wondering soul beheld The eons past, the eons yet to come, At cosmic labor; and the stars, that swelled, Fiery or nebulous, from the darkness dumb, In each appointed place and period, I saw were words, whose hieroglyphic sum Blazoned one word, the mystic name of God. 5 IN SOLITARY PLACES I walked alone mid the forest s maze, And it came to pass, as I went my ways, That I met with Beauty, face to face. Within her eyes my worshipping spirit saw The moments busy with the dreams whence spring Earth s loveliness: and all fair things that awe Man s soul with their perfection everything That buds and bourgeons, blossoming above, I saw were letters of enduring Law That bloomed one word, the beautiful name of Love. WHIPPOORWILL TIME LET down the bars; drive in the cows: The west is barred with burning rose. Unhitch the horses from the ploughs, And from the cart the ox that lows, And light the lamp within the house : The whippoorwill is calling, Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, Where the locust blooms are falling On the hill; The sunset s rose is dying, And the whippoorwill is crying, " Whippoorwill, whippoorwill " ; Soft, now shrill, The whippoorwill is crying, " Whippoorwill." 59 60 WHIPPOORWILL TIME Unloose the watch-dog from his chain: The first stars wink their drowsy eyes A sheep-bell tinkles in the lane, And where the shadow deepest lies A lamp makes bright the window-pane: The whippoorwill is calling, " Whippoorwill, whippoorwill," Where the berry-blooms are falling On the rill; The first faint stars are springing, And the whippoorwill is singing, " Whippoorwill, whippoorwill " ; Softly still The whippoorwill is singing, "Whippoorwill." The cows are milked ; the cattle fed ; The last far streaks of evening fade: The farm-hand whistles in the shed, And in the house the table s laid; WHIPPOORWILL TIME 6l Its lamp streams on the garden-bed: The whippoorwill is calling, " Whippoorwill, whippoorwill," Where the dogwood blooms are falling On the hill ; The afterglow is waning And the whippoorwill s complaining, " Whippoorwill, whippoorwill " ; Wild and shrill, The whippoorwill s complaining, " Whippoorwill." The moon blooms out, a great white rose; The stars wheel onward toward the west: The barnyard-cock wakes once and crows; The farm is wrapped in peaceful rest; The cricket chirs; the firefly glows: The whippoorwill is calling, "Whippoorwill, whippoorwill," Where the bramble-blooms are falling 62 WHIPPOORWILL TIME On the rill; The moon her watch is keeping And the whippoorwill is weeping, " Whippoorwill, whippoorwill "; Lonely still, The whippoorwill is weeping, " Whippoorwill." MYSTERIES SOFT and silken and silvery brown, In shoes of lichen and leafy gown, Little blue butterflies fluttering around her, Deep in the forest, afar from town, There where a stream came trickling down, I met with Silence, who wove a crown Of sleep whose mystery bound her. I gazed in her eyes, that were mossy green As the rain that pools in a hollow between The twisted roots of a tree that towers: And I saw the things that none has seen, That mean far more than facts may mean, The dreams, that are true, of an age that has been, That God has thought into flowers. 63 64 MYSTERIES I gazed on her lips, that were dewy gray As the mist that clings, at the close of day, To the wet hillside when the winds cease blowing; And I heard the things that none may say, That are holier far than the prayers we pray, The murmured music God breathes alway Through the hearts of all things growing. Soft and subtle and vapory white, In shoes of shadow and gown of light, Crimson poppies asleep around her, Far in the forest, beneath a height, I came on Slumber, who wove from night A wreath of silence, that, darkly bright, With its mystic beauty bound her. I looked in her face that was pale and still As the moon that rises above the hill Where the pines loom sombre as sorrow: MYSTERIES 65 And the things that all have known and will, I knew for a moment: the myths that fill And people the past of the soul and thrill Its hope with a far to-morrow. I heard her voice, that was strange with pain As a wind that whispers of wreck and rain To the leaves of the autumn rustling lonely: And I felt the things that are felt in vain By all the longings that haunt the brain Of man, that come and depart again And are part of his dreamings only. 5 THE SOLITARY UPON the mossed rock by the spring- She sits, forgetful of her pail, Lost in remote remembering Of that which may no more avail. Her thin, pale hair is dimly dressed Above a brow lined deep with care, The color of a leaf long pressed, A faded leaf that once was fair. You may not know her from the stone So still she sits who does not stir, Thinking of this one thing alone The love that never came to her. 66 A YELLOW ROSE THE old gate clicks, and down the walk, Between clove-pink and hollyhock, Still young of face though gray of lock, Among her garden s flowers she goes At evening s close, Deep in her hair a yellow rose. The old house shows one gable-peak Above its trees; and sage and leek Blend with the rose their scents: the creek, Leaf-hidden, past the garden flows, That on it snows Pale petals of the yellow rose. The crickets pipe in dewy damps; And everywhere the fireflies lamps 67 68 A YELLOW ROSE Flame like the lights of Faery camps; While, overhead, the soft sky shows One star that glows, As, in gray hair, a yellow rose. There is one spot she seeks for, where The roses make a fragrant lair, A spot where once he kissed her hair, And told his love, as each one knows, Each flower that blows, And pledged it with a yellow rose. The years have turned her dark hair gray Since that glad day: and still, they say, She keeps the tryst as on that day; And through the garden softly goes, At evening s close, Wearing for him that yellow rose. THE OLD HOME AN old lane, an old gate, an old house by a tree ; A wild wood, a wild brook they will not let me be: In boyhood I knew them, and still they call to me. Down deep in my heart s core I hear them and my eyes Through tear-mists behold them beneath the oldtime skies, Mid bee-boom and rose-bloom and orchard- lands arise. I hear them; and heartsick with longing is my soul, 69 70 THE OLD HOME To walk there, to dream there, beneath the sky s blue bowl; Around me, within me, the weary world made whole. To talk with the wild brook of all the long-ago; To whisper the wood-wind of things we used to know When we were old companions, before my heart knew woe. To walk with the morning and watch its rose unfold ; To drowse with the noontide lulled on its heart of gold; To lie with the night-time and dream the dreams of old. To tell to the old trees, and to each listening leaf, THE OLD HOME 71 The longing, the yearning, as in my boyhood brief, The old hope, the old love, would ease me of my grief. The old lane, the old gate, the old house by the tree, The wild wood, the wild brook they will not let me be: In boyhood I knew them, and still they call to me. THE OLD HERB-MAN ON the barren hillside lone he sat; On his head he wore a tattered hat; In his hand he bore a crooked staff; Never heard I laughter like his laugh, On the barren hillside, thistle-hoar. Cracked his laughter sounded, harsh as woe, As the croaking, thinned, of a crow: At his back hung, pinned, a wallet old, Bulged with roots and simples caked with mould On the barren hillside in the wind. Roots of twisted twin-leaf; sassafras; Bloodroot, tightly whipped round with grass; Adder s-tongue; and, tipped brown and black, 72 THE OLD HERB-MAN 73 Yellowroot and snakeroot filled his pack, On the barren hillside, winter-stripped. There is nothing sadder than old age ; Nothing saddens more than that stage When, forlornly poor, bent with toil, One must starve or wring life from the soil, From the barren hillside, wild and hoar. Down the barren hillside slow he went, Cursing at the cold, bowed and bent; With his bag of mould, herbs and roots, In his clay-stained garments, clay-caked boots, Down the barren hillside, poor and old. THE MAN HUNT THE woods stretch wild to the mountain-side, And the brush is deep where a man may hide. They have brought the bloodhounds up again To the roadside rock where they found the slain. They have brought the bloodhounds up, and they Have taken the trail to the mountain way. Three times they circled the trail and crossed, And thrice they found it and thrice they lost. Now straight through the trees and the under brush They follow the scent through the forest s hush. 74 THE MAN HUNT 75 And their deep-mouthed bay is a pulse of fear In the heart of the wood that the man must hear. The man who crouches among the trees From the stern-faced men who follow these. A huddle of rocks that the ooze has mossed And the trail of the hunted again is lost. An upturned pebble; a bit of ground A heel has trampled the trail is found. And the woods re-echo the bloodhounds bay As again they take to the mountain way. A rock; a ribbon of road; a ledge, With a pine-tree clutching its crumbling edge. A pine, that the lightning long since clave, Whose huge roots hollow a ragged cave. THE MAN HUNT A shout; a curse; and a face aghast, And the human quarry is laired at last. The human quarry with clay-clogged hair And eyes of terror who waits them there. That glares and crouches and rising then Hurls clods and curses at dogs and men. Until the blow of a gun-butt lays Him stunned and bleeding upon his face. A rope, a prayer, and an oak-tree near, And a score of hands to swing him clear. A grim, black thing for the setting sun And the moon and the stars to look upon. THE VALE OF TEMPE ALL night I lay upon the rocks : And now the dawn comes up this way, One great star trembling in her locks Of rosy ray. I can not tell the things I ve seen; The things I ve heard I dare not speak The dawn is breaking gold and green O er vale and peak. My soul hath kept its tryst again With her as once in ages past, In that lost life, I know not when, Which was my last. When she was Dryad, I was Faun, And lone we loved in Tempe s Vale, 77 78 THE VALE OF TEMPE Where once we saw Endymion Pass passion-pale: Where once we saw him clasp and meet Among the pines, with kiss on kiss, Moon-breasted and most heavenly sweet, White Artemis. Where often, Bacchus-borne, we heard The Maenad shout, wild-revelling; And filled with witchraft, past all word, The Limnad sing. Bloom-bodied mid the twilight trees We saw the Oread, who shone Fair as a form Praxiteles Carved out of stone. And oft, goat-footed, in a glade We marked the Satyrs dance: and great, THE VALE OF TEMPE 79 Man-muscled, like the oaks that shade Dodona s gate, Fierce Centaurs hoof the torrent s bank With wind-swept manes, or leap the crag, While swift, the arrow in its flank, Swept by the stag. And, minnow-white, the Naiad there We watched, foam-shouldered, in her stream Wringing the moisture from her hair Of emerald gleam. We saw the oak unclose and, brown, Sap-scented, from its door of bark The Hamadryad s form step down: Or, crouching dark Within the oak s deep heart, we felt Her eyes that pierced the fibrous gloom ; 8O THE VALE OF TEMPE Her breath, that was the nard we smelt, The wild perfume. There is no flower, that opens glad Soft eyes of dawn and sunset hue, As fair as the Limoniad We saw there too: That flow r-divinity, rose-born, Of sunlight and white dew, whose blood Is fragrance, and whose heart of morn A crimson bud. There is no star, that rises white To tip-toe down the deeps of dusk, Sweet as the moony Nymphs of Night With breasts of musk, We met among the mystery And hush of forests, where, afar, THE VALE OF TEMPE 8 1 We watched their hearts beat glimmeringly, Each heart a star. There is no beam, that rays the marge Of mist that trails from cape to cape, From panther-haunted gorge to gorge, Bright as the shape Of her, the one Auloniad, That, born of wind and grassy gleams, Silvered upon our sight, dim-clad In foam of streams. All, all of these I saw again, Or dreamed I saw, as there, ah me! Upon the cliffs, above the plain, In Thessaly, I lay, while Mount Olympus helmed Its brow with moon-effulgence deep, 6 82 THE VALE OF TEMPE And, far below, vague, overwhelmed With reedy sleep, Peneus flowed, and, murmuring, sighed, Meseemed, for its dead gods, whose ghosts Through its dark forests seemed to glide In shadowy hosts. Mid whose pale shapes again I spoke With her, my soul, as I divine, Dim neath some gnarled Olympian oak, Or Ossan pine, Till down the slopes of heaven came Those daughters of the dawn, the Hours, Clothed on with raiment blue of flame, And crowned with flowers; When she, with whom my soul once more Had trysted limbed of light and air THE VALE OF TEMPE 83 Whom to my breast, (as oft of yore In Tempe there, When she was Dryad, I was Faun,) I clasped and held, and pressed and kissed, Within my arms, as broke the dawn, Became a mist. MARIANA "There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana. 1 SHAKESPEARE. THE sunset-crimson poppies are departed, Mariana! The dusky-centred, sultry-smelling poppies, The drowsy-hearted, That burnt like flames along the garden coppice : All heavy-headed, The ruby-cupped and opium-brimming poppies, That slumber wedded, Mariana! The sunset-crimson poppies are departed. Oh, heavy, heavy are the hours that fall, The lonesome hours of the lonely days! No poppy strews oblivion by the wall, Where lone the last pod sways, 84 MARIANA 85 Oblivion that was hers of old that happier made her days. Oh, weary, weary is the sky o er all, The days that creep, the hours that crawl, And weary all the ways She leans her face against the old stone wall, The lichened wall, the mildewed wall, And dreams, the long, long days, Of one who will not come again whatever may befall. All night it blew. The rain streamed down And drowned the world in misty wet. At morning, round the sunflower s crown A row of glimmering drops was set; The candytuft, heat shrivelled brown, And beds of drought-dried mignonette, Were beat to earth: but wearier, oh, The rain was than the sun s fierce glow That in the garth had wrought such woe: 86 MARIANA That killed the moss-rose ere it bloomed, And scorched the double-hollyhocks; And bred great, poisonous weeds that doomed The snapdragon and standing-phlox; Mid which gaunt spiders wove and loomed Their dusty webs twixt rows of box; And rotted into sleepy ooze The lilied moat, that, lined with yews, Lay scummed with many sickly hues. How oft she longed and prayed for rain ! To blot the hateful landscape out! To heal her heart, so parched with pain, With sounds of coolth and broken drought; And cure with change her stagnant brain, And soothe to sleep all care and doubt. At last when many days had past And she had ceased to care at last The longed-for rain came, falling fast. MARIANA 87 At night, as late she lay awake, And thought of him who had not come, She heard the gray wind, moaning, shake Her lattice; then the steady drum Of storm upon the leads. . . . The ache Within her heart, so burdensome, Grew heavier with the moan of rain. The house was still, save, at her pane The wind cried; hushed, then cried again. All night she lay awake and wept: There was no other thing to do: At dawn she rose and, silent, crept Adown the stairs that led into The dripping garth, the storm had swept With ruin; where, of every hue, The flowers lay rotting, stained with mould; Where all was old, unkempt and old, And ragged as a marigold. MARIANA She sat her down, where oft she sat, Upon a bench of marble, where, In lines she oft would marvel at, A Love was carved. She did not dare Look on it then, remembering that Here in past time he kissed her hair, And murmured vows while, soft above, The full moon lit the form thereof, The slowly crumbling form of Love. She could but weep, remembering hours Like these. Then in the drizzling rain, That weighed with wet the dying flowers, She sought the old stone dial again ; The dial, among the moss-rose bowers, Where often she had read, in vain, Of time and change, and love and loss, Rude-lettered and o ergrown with moss, That slow the gnomon moved across. MARIANA 89 Remembering this she turned away, The rain and tears upon her face. There was no thing to do or say. She stood a while, a little space, And watched the rain bead, round and gray, Upon the cobweb s tattered lace, And tag the toadstool s spongy brim With points of mist; and, orbing, dim With fog the sunflower s ruined rim. With fog, through which the moon at night Would glimmer like a spectre sail; Or, sullenly, a blur of light, Like some huge glow-worm dimly trail; Neath which she d hear, wrapped deep in white, The far sea moaning on its shale: While in the garden, pacing slow, And listening to its surge and flow, She d seem to hear her own heart s woe. 90 MARIANA Now as the fog crept in from sea, A great, white darkness, like a pall, The yews and huddled shrubbery, That dripped along the weedy wall, Turned phantoms; and as shadowy She too seemed, wandering mid it all- A phantom, pale and sad and strange, And hopeless; doomed for aye to range About the melancholy grange. The pansies too are dead, the violet-varied, Mariana! The raven-dyed and fire-fretted pansies, To memory married; That from the grass, like forms in old romances, Raised fairy faces: All dead they lie, the violet-velvet pansies, In many places, Mariana! MARIANA 91 The pansies too are dead, the violet-varied. Oh, hateful, hateful are the hours that pass, The lonely hours of the lonesome nights! No pansy scatters heartsease through the grass, That autumn sorrow blights, The heartsease that was hers of old that happier made her nights. Oh, barren, barren is her life, alas! Its youth and beauty, all it has, And barren all delights- She lays her face against the withered grass, The sodden grass, the autumn grass, And thinks, the long, long nights, Of one who will not come again whatever comes to pass. THE FOREST OF SHADOWS DEEP in the hush of a mighty wood I came to a place of dread and dream, And forms of shadows, whose shapes elude The searching swords of the sun s dim gleam, Builders of silence and solitude. And there where a glimmering water crept From rock to rock with a slumberous sound, Tired to tears, on the mossy ground, Under a tree I lay and slept. Was it the heart of an olden oak? Was it the soul of a flower that died? Or was it the wildrose there that spoke, The wilding lily that palely sighed? For all on a sudden it seemed I awoke: 92 THE FOREST OF SHADOWS 93 And the leaves and the flowers were all intent On a visible something of light and bloom A presence, felt as a wild perfume Or beautiful music, that came and went. And all the grief, I had known, was gone; And all the anguish of heart and soul ; And the burden of care that had made me wan Lifted and left me strong and whole As once in the flush of my youth s dead dawn. And, lo! it was night. And the oval moon, A silvery silence, paced the wood: And there in its light like snow she stood, As starry still as a star aswoon. At first I thought that I looked into A shadowy water of violet, Where the faint reflection of one I knew, Long dead, gazed up from its mirror wet, Till she smiled in my face as the living do; 94 THE FOREST OF SHADOWS Till I felt her touch, and heard her say, In a voice as still as a rose unfolds, You have come at last; and now nothing holds; Give me your hand; let us wander away. "Let us wander away through the Shadow Wood, Through the Shadow Wood to the Shadow Land, Where the trees have speech and the blossoms brood Like visible music; and hand in hand The winds and the waters go rainbow-hued: Where ever the voice of beauty sighs; And ever the dance of dreams goes on ; Where nothing grows old; and the dead and gone, And the loved and lost, smile into your eyes. THE FOREST OF SHADOWS 95 " Let us wander away! let us wander away! Do you hear them calling, Come here and live ? Do you hear what the trees and the flowers say, Wonderful, wild, and imperative, Hushed as the hues of the dawn of day? They say, Your life, that was rose and rue In a world of shadows where all things die, Where beauty is dust and love, a lie, Is finished. Come here! we are waiting for you! And she took my hand : and the trees around Seemed whispering something I dared not hear: And the taciturn flowers, that strewed the ground, Seemed thinking something I felt with fear, A beautiful something that made no sound. And she led me on through the forest old, 96 THE FOREST OF SHADOWS Where the moon and the midnight stood on guard, Sentinel spirits that shimmered the sward, Silver and sable and glimmering gold. And then in an instant I knew. I knew What the trees had whispered, the winds had said; What the flowers had thought in their hearts of dew, And the stars had syllabled overhead, And she bent above me and smiled, " T is true! Heart of my heart, you have heard aright. Look in my eyes and draw me near! Look in my eyes and have no fear! Heart of my heart, you died to-night! " THE AWAKENING GOD made that night of pearl and ivory, Perfect and holy as a holy thought Born of perfection, dreams, and ecstasy, In love and silence wrought. And she, who lay where, through the casement falling, The moonlight clasped with arms of vapory gold Her Danae beauty, seemed to hear a calling Deep in the garden old. And then it seemed, through some strange sense, she heard The roses softly speaking in the night. Or was it but the nocturne of a bird Haunting the white moonlight? 97 98 THE AWAKENING It seemed a fragrant whisper vaguely roaming From rose to rose, a language sweet that blushed, Saying, "Who comes? Who is this swiftly coming, With face so dim and hushed? "And now, and now we hear a wild heart beating Whose heart is this that beats among our blooms? Whose every pulse in rapture keeps repeating Wild words like wild perfumes." And then it ceased: and then she heard a sigh, As if a lily syllabled sweet scent, Or was it but the wind that silverly Touched some stringed instrument? And then again a rumor she detected Among the roses, words of musk and myrrh, THE AWAKENING 99 Saying, " He comes! the one she hath expected, Who long hath sought for her. The one whose coming made her soul awaken ; Whose face is fragrance and whose feet are fire : The one by whom her being shall be shaken With dreams and deep desire." And then she rose ; and to the casement hastened, And flung it wide and, leaning outward, gazed; Above, the night hung, moon and starlight chastened; Below, with shadows mazed, The garden bloomed. Around her and o erhead All seemed at pause save one wild star that streamed, One rose that fell. And then she sighed and said, " I must have dreamed, have dreamed." And then again she seemed to hear it speak, A moth that murmured of a star attained, 100 THE AWAKENING Or was it but the fountain whispering weak, White where the moonbeams rained? And still it grew; and still the sound insisted, Louder and sweeter, burning into form, Until at last a presence, starlight-misted, It shone there rosy warm. Crying, " Come down! long have I watched and waited! Come down! draw near! or, like some splen did flower, Let down thy hair! so I may climb as fated Into thy heart s high tower. Lower! bend lower! so thy heart may hear me, Thy soul may clasp me! Beautiful above All beautiful things, behold me, yea, draw near me! Behold! for I am Love." MUSIC AND MOONLIGHT WHITE roses, like a mist Upon a terraced height, And mid the roses, opal, moonbeam-kissed, A fountain falling white. And as the full moon flows, Orbed fire, into a cloud, There is a fragrant sound as if a rose Had sighed its soul aloud. There is a whisper pale, As if a rose awoke, And, having heard in sleep the nightingale, Still dreaming of it spoke. 101 102 MUSIC AND MOONLIGHT Now, as from some vast shell A giant pearl rolls white, From the dividing cloud, that winds compel, The moon sweeps, big and bright. Moon-mists and pale perfumes, Wind-wafted through the dusk: There is a sound as if unfolding blooms Voiced their sweet thoughts in musk. A spirit is abroad Of music and of sleep : The moon and mists have made for it a road Adown the violet deep. It breathes a tale to me, A tale of ancient day; And like a dream again I seem to see Those towers old and gray. MUSIC AND MOONLIGHT 103 That castle by the foam, Where once our hearts made moan : And through the night again you seem to come Down statued stairs of stone. Again I feel your hair, Dark, fragrant, deep and cool : You lift your face up, pale with its despair, And wildly beautiful. Again your form I strain ; Again, unto my heart: Again your lips, again and yet again, I press and then we part. As centuries ago We did in Camelot; Where once we lived that life of bliss and woe, That you remember not. 104 MUSIC AND MOONLIGHT When you were Guinevere, And I was Launcelot . I have remembered many and many a year, And you you have forgot. BERTRAND DE BORN Knight and Troubadour, to his Lady the Beautiful Maenz of Martagnac THE burden of the sometime years, That once my soul did overweigh, Falls from me, with its griefs and fears, When gazing in thine eyes of gray; Wherein, behold, like some bright ray Of dawn, thy heart s fond love appears, To cheer my life upon its way. Thine eyes ! the daybreak of my heart ! That give me strength to do and dare; Whose beauty is a radiant part Of all my songs; the music there; The morning, that makes dim each care, 105 IO6 BERTRAND DE BORN And glorifies my mind s dull mart, And helps my soul to do and dare. God, when He made thy fresh fair face, And thy young body, took the morn And made thee like a rose, whose race Is not of Earth; without a thorn, And dewed thee with the joy that s born Of love, wherein hope hath its place Like to the star that heralds morn. I go my way through town and thorp: In court and hall and castle bower I tune my lute and strike my harp : And often from some twilight tower A lady drops to me a flower, That bids me scale the moat s steep scarp, And climb to love within her bower. I heed them not, but go my ways: What is their passion unto me ! BERTRAND DE BORN IO/ My songs are only in thy praise; Thy face alone it is I see, That fills my heart with melody My sweet aubade! that makes my days All music, singing here in me! One time a foul knight in his towers Sneered thus: " God s blood! why weary us With this one woman all our hours! Sing of our wenches! amorous Yolande and Ysoarde here! Not thus Shalt sing, but of our paramours! What is thy Lady unto us! " And then I flung my lute aside ; And from its baldric flew my sword ; And down the hall t was but a stride; And in his brute face and its word My gauntlet; and around the board IOS BERTRAND DE BORN The battle, till all wild-beast-eyed He lay and at his throat my sword. Thou dost remember in Provence The vile thing that I slew; and how With my good jongleurs and my lance Kept back his horde! The memory now Makes fierce my blood and hot my brow With rage. Ah, what a madman dance We led them, and escaped somehow! Oft times, when, in the tournament, I see thee sitting yet uncrowned; And bugles blow and spears are bent, And shields and falchions clash around, And steeds go crashing to the ground; And thou dost smile on me, though spent With war, again my soul is crowned: And I am fire to strike and slay; Before my face there comes a mist BERTRAND DE BORN ICX) Of blood; and like a flame I play Through the loud lists ; all who resist Go down like corn ; until thy wrist, Kneeling, I kiss; the wreath they lay Of beauty on thy head s gold mist. And then I seize my lute and sing Some chanson or some wild aubade Full of thy beauty and the swing Of swords and love which I have had Of thee, until, with music mad, The lists reel with thy name and ring The echoed words of my aubade. I am thy knight and troubadour, Bertrand de Born, whom naught shall part From thee: who art my life s high lure, And wild bird of my wilder heart And all its music: yea, who art My soul s sweet sickness and its cure, From which, God grant! it ne er shall part. THE TROUBADOUR, PONS DE CAPDEUIL In Provence, to his Lady, Azalis de Mercosur in Anjou THE gray dawn finds me thinking still Of thee who hadst my thoughts all night; Of thee, who art my lute s sweet skill, And of my soul the only light; My star of song to whom I turn My face and for whose love I yearn. Thou dost not know thy troubadour Lies sick to death; no longer sings: That this alone may work his cure To feel thy white hand, weighed with rings, Smoothed softly through his heavy hair, Or resting with the old love there, no PONS DE CAPDEUIL III To feel thy warm cheek laid to his; Thy bosom fluttering with love ; Then on his eyes and lips thy kiss Thy kiss alone were all enough To heal his heart, to cure his soul, And make his mind and body whole. The drought, these three months past, hath slain All green things in this weary land, As in my life thy high disdain Hath killed ambition : yea, my hand Forgets its cunning; and my heart, Sick to stagnation, all its art. Once to my castle there at Puy, In honor of thy beauty, came The Angevin nobility, To hear me sing of thee, whose fame Was high as Helen s. Azalis, Hast thou forgot? Forget st thou this? 12 PONS DE CAPDEUIL And in the lists how often there I broke a spear for thee? and placed The crown of beauty on thy hair, While thou sat st, like the fair moon faced, Amid the human firmament Of faces that toward thee bent. I take my hawk, my peregrine- No falconer or page beside And ride from morn till eve begin; I ride forgetting that I ride, And all save this: that thou no more Dost ride beside me as of yore. A heron sweeps above me: I Remember then how oft were cast Thy hawk and mine at such: and sigh Thinking of thee and days long past, When through the Anjou fields and bowers We used to hawk and hunt for hours. PONS DE CAPDEUIL 113 And when, unhappy, I return, And take my lute and seek again The terrace where, beside some urn, The castle gathers, while the stain Of sunset crimsons all the sea, And sing old songs once loved of thee : The soul within me overflows With longing; and I seem to hear Thy voice through fountains and the rose Calling afar, while, wildly near, The rossignol makes mute my tongue With memories of things long sung. Here in Provence I pine for thee; And there in Anjou dost forget! All beauty here is less to me Than is the ribbon lightly set At thy white throat; or, on thy foot, The shoe that I have loved to lute. 114 PONS DE CAPDEUIL Thy foot, that I have loved to kiss; To kiss and sing of! Song hath died In me since then, my Azalis; Since to my soul e en that s denied: Thy kiss, that now alone could cure The sick heart of thy Troubadour. THE BALLAD OF THE ROSE BOOTED and spurred he rode toward the west, A rose, from the woman who loved him best, Lay warm with her kisses there in his breast, And the battle beacons were burning. As over the draw he galloping went, She, from the gateway s battlement, With a wafted kiss and a warning bent " Beware of the ford at the turning! " An instant only he turned in his sell, And lightly fingered his petronel, Then settled his sword in its belt as well, And the horns to battle were sounding. She watched till he reached the beacon there, And saw its gleam on his helm and hair, Il6 THE BALLAD OF THE ROSE Then turned and murmured, " God keep thee, Clare! From that wolf of the hills and his hounding." And on he rode till he came to the hill, Where the road turned off by the ruined mill, Where the stream flowed shallow and broad and still, And the battle beacon was burning. Into the river with little heed, Down from the hill he galloped his steed The water whispered on rock and reed, Death hides by the ford at the turning ! And out of the night on the other side, Their helms and corselets dim descried, He saw ten bandit troopers ride, And the horns to battle were blaring. THE BALLAD OF THE ROSE 1 1/ Then he reined his steed in the middle ford, And glanced behind him and drew his sword, And laughed as he shouted his battle-word, " Clare! Clare! and my steel needs airing! " Then down from the hills at his back there came Ten troopers more. With a face of flame Red Hugh of the Hills led on the same, In the glare of the beacon s burning. Again the cavalier turned and gazed, Then quick to his lips the rose he raised, And kissed it, crying, " Now God be praised! And help her there when mourning! " Then he rose in his stirrups and loosened rein, And shouting his cry spurred on amain Into the troopers to slay and be slain, While the horns to battle were blowing. Il8 THE BALLAD OF THE ROSE With ten behind him and ten before, And the battle beacon to light the shore, Small doubt of the end in his mind he bore, With her rose in his bosom glowing. One trooper he slew with his petronel, And one with his sword when his good steed fell, And they haled him, fighting, from horse and sell In the light of the beacon s burning. Quoth Hugh of the Hills," To yonder tree Now hang him high where she may see; Then bear this rose and message from me The ravens feast at the turning. LOW-LIE-DOWN JOHN-A-DREAMS and Harum-Scarum Came a-riding into town: At the Sign o the Jug-and-Jorum There they met with Low-lie-down. Brave in shoes of Romany leather, Bodice blue and gipsy gown, And a cap of fur and feather, In the inn sat Low-lie-down. Harum-Scarum kissed her lightly, Smiled into her eyes of brown, Clasped her waist and held her tightly, Saying, "Love me, Low-lie-down." Then with many an oath and swagger, As a man of great renown, 119 120 LOW-LIE-DOWN On the board he clapped his dagger, Called for sack and sat him down. So a while they laughed together: Then he rose and with a frown Sighed, " While still t is pleasant weather I must leave thee, Low-lie-down." So away rode Harum-Scarum, With a song rode out of town; At the sign o the Jug-and-Jorum Weeping tarried Low-lie-down. Then this John-a-dreams, in tatters, In his pocket ne er a crown, Touched her saying, "Wench, what matters! Dry your eyes and, come, sit down. " Here s my hand: let s roam together, Far away from thorp and town. LOW- LIE-DOWN 121 Here s my heart for any weather, And my dreams, too, Low-lie-down. " Some men call me dreamer, poet; Some men call me fool and clown What I am but you shall know it! Come with me, sweet Low-lie-down." For a little while she pondered. Smiled and said, " Let care go drown! " Rose and kissed him. Forth they wandered, John-a-dreams and Low-lie-down. ROSE LEAVES WHEN THE ROSE IS DEAD SEE how the rose leaves fall The rose leaves fall and fade: And by the wall, in dusk funereal, How leaf on leaf is laid, Withered and soiled and frayed. How red the rose leaves fall And in the ancient trees, That stretch their twisted arms about the hall, Burdened with mysteries, How sadly sighs the breeze. How soft the rose leaves fall The rose leaves drift and lie: And over them dull slugs and beetles crawl, 122 ROSE LEAVES 123 And, palely glimmering by, The glow-worm trails its eye. How thick the rose leaves fall And strew the garden way, For snails to slime and spotted toads to sprawl, And, plodding past each day, Coarse feet to tread in clay. How fast they fall and fall- Where Beauty, carved in stone, With broken hands veils her dead eyes ; and, tall, White in the moonlight lone, Looms like a marble moan. How slow they drift and fall And strew the fountained pool, That, in the nymph-carved basin by the wall, Reflects in darkness cool Ruin made beautiful. 124 ROSE LEAVES How red the rose leaves fall Fall and like blood remain Upon the dial s disc, whose pedestal, Black-mossed and dark with stain, Crumbles in sun and rain. How wan they seem to fall Around one where she stands Dim in their midst, beyond the years recall, Reaching pale, passionate hands Into the past s vague lands. How still they fall and fall Around them where they meet As oft of old: she in her gem-pinned shawl Of white ; and he, complete In black from head to feet. How faint the rose leaves fall Around them where, it seems, ROSE LEAVES 125 He holds her clasped parting from her and all His heart s young hopes and dreams There in the moon s thin beams. Around them rose leaves fall And in the stress and urge Of winds that strew them lightly over all, With deep, autumnal surge, There seems to rise a dirge: * See how the rose leaves fall Upon thy dead, O soul! The rose leaves of the love that once in thrall Held thee beyond control, Making thy heart s world whole. " God help them still to fall Around thee, bowed above The face within thy heart, beneath the pall ! The perished face thereof, The beautiful face of Love." THE LAMP AT THE WINDOW LIKE some gaunt ghost the tempest wails Outside my door; its icy nails Beat on the pane: and Night and Storm Around the house, with furious flails Of wind, from which the slant sleet hails, Stalk up and down; or, arm in arm, Stand giant guard; the wild-beast lair Of their fierce bosoms black and bare. . . . My lamp is lit, I have no fear. Through night and storm my love draws near. Now through the forest how they go, With whirlwind hoofs and manes of snow, The beasts of tempest, Winter herds! That lift huge heads of mist and low 126 THE LAMP AT THE WINDOW 127 Like oxen; beasts of air that blow Ice from their nostrils; winged like birds, And bullock-breasted, onward hurled, That shake with tumult all the world. My lamp is set where love can see, Who through the tempest comes to me. I press my face against the pane, And seem to see, from wood and plain, In phantom thousands, stormy pale, The ghosts of forests, tempest-slain, Vast wraiths of woodlands, rise and strain And rock wild limbs against the gale; Or, borne in fragments overhead, Sow night with horror and with dread. . . . He comes! my light is as an arm To guide him onward through the storm. I hear the tempest from the sky Cry, eagle-like, its battle-cry; 128 THE LAMP AT THE WINDOW I hear the night, upon the peaks, Send back its condor-like reply; And then again come booming by The forest s challenge, hoarse as speaks Hate unto hate, or wrath to wrath, When each draws sword and sweeps the path. But let them rage! through darkness far My bright light leads him like a star. The cliffs, with all their plumes of pines, Bow down high heads: the battle-lines Of all the hills, that iron seams, Shudder through all their rocky spines: And under shields of matted vines The vales crouch down: and all the streams Are hushed and frozen as with fear As from the deeps the winds draw near. But let them come ! my lamp is lit ! Nor shall their fury flutter it. THE LAMP AT THE WINDOW 129 Now round and round, with stride on stride, In Boreal armor, darkness-dyed, I hear the thunder of their strokes The heavens are rocked on every side With all their clouds : and far and wide The earth roars back with all its oaks. Still at the pane burns bright my light To guide him onward through the night; To lead love through the night and storm Where my young heart shall make him warm. THE MIRACLE OF THE DAWN WHAT it would mean for you and me If dawn should come no more ! Think of its gold along the sea, Its rose above the shore! That rose of awful mystery, Our souls bow down before. What wonder that the Inca kneeled, The Aztec prayed and pled And sacrificed to it, and sealed, With rights that long are dead, The marvels that it once revealed To them it comforted. What wonder, yea! what awe, behold! What rapture and what tears 130 THE MIRACLE OF THE DAWN 131 Were ours, if wild its rivered gold, That now each day appears, Burst on the world, in darkness rolled, Once every thousand years! Think what it means to me and you To see it even as God Evolved it when the world was new! When Light rose, earthquake-shod, And slow its gradual splendor grew O er deeps the whirlwind trod. What shoutings then and cymballings Arose from depth and height! What worship-solemn trumpetings, And thunders, burning-white, Of winds and waves, and anthemings Of Earth received the Light. Think what it means to see the dawn! The dawn, that comes each day! 132 THE MIRACLE OF THE DAWN What if the East should ne er grow wan, Should nevermore grow gray ! That line of rose no more be drawn Above the ocean s spray! PENETRALIA I AM a part of all you see In Nature ; part of all you feel : I am the impact of the bee Upon the blossom ; in the tree I am the sap, that shall reveal The leaf, the bloom, that flows and flutes Up from the darkness through its roots. I am the vermeil of the rose, The perfume breathing in its veins; The gold within the mist that glows Along the west and overflows The heaven with light; the dew that rains Its freshness down and strings with spheres Of wet the webs and oaten ears. 134 PENETRALIA I am the egg that folds the bird, The song that beaks and breaks its shell; The laughter and the wandering word The water says; and, dimly heard, The music of the blossom s bell When soft winds swing it; and the sound Of grass slow-creeping o er the ground. I am the warmth, the honey-scent That throats with spice each lily-bud That opens, white with wonderment, Beneath the moon ; or, downward bent, Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood : I am the dream that haunts it too, That crystallizes into dew. I am the seed within its pod ; The worm within its closed cocoon : The wings within the circling clod, PENETRALIA 135 The germ that gropes through soil and sod To beauty, radiant in the noon : I am all these, behold! and more I am the love at the world-heart s core. THE HEAVEN-BORN NOT into these dark cities, These sordid marts and streets, That the sun in his rising pities, And the moon with sorrow greets, Does she, with her dreams and flowers, For whom our hearts are dumb, Does she of the golden hours, Earth s heaven-born Beauty, come. Afar mid the hills she tarries, Beyond the farthest streams, In a world where music marries With color that blooms and beams ; Where shadow and light are wedded, Whose children people the Earth, 136 THE HEAVEN-BORN 137 The fair, the fragrant-headed, The pure, the wild of birth. Where Morn with rosy kisses Wakes ever the eyes of Day; And, winds in her radiant tresses, Haunts every wildwood way: Where Eve, with her mouth s twin roses, Her kisses sweet with balm, The eyes of the glad Day closes, And, crowned with stars, sits calm. There, lost in contemplation Of things no mortal sees, She dwells, the incarnation Of idealities ; Of dreams, that long have tired Men s hearts with joy and pain, The far, the dear-desired, Whom no man shall attain. EARTH S COMMONPLACES 139 THE WORLD OF FAERY WHEN in the pansy-purpled stain Of sunset one far star is seen, Like some bright drop of rain, Out of the forest, deep and green, O er me a Spirit seems to lean, The fairest of her train. II The Spirit, dowered with fadeless youth, Of Lay and Legend, young as when, Close to her side, in sooth, She led me from the marts of men, A child, into her world, which then To me was true as truth. 141 142 THE WORLD OF FAERY III Her hair is like the silken husk That holds the corn, and glints and glows; Her brow is white as tusk; Her body like a wilding rose, And through her gossamer raiment shows Like starlight closed in musk. IV She smiles at me ; she nods at me ; And by her looks I am beguiled Into the mystery Of ways I knew when, as a child, She led me mid her blossoms wild Of faery fantasy. The blossoms that, when night is here, Become sweet mouths that sigh soft tales; Or, each, a jewelled ear THE WORLD OF FAERY 143 Leaned to the elfin dance that trails Down moonrayed cirques of haunted vales To cricket song and cheer. VI The blossoms that, shut fast all day, Primrose and poppy, darkness opes, Slowly, to free a fay, Who, silken-soft, leaps forth and ropes With rain each web that, starlit, slopes Between each grassy spray. VII The blossoms from which elves are born, Sweet wombs of mingled scent and snow, Whose deeps are cool as morn ; Wherein I oft have heard them blow Their pixy trumpets, silvery low As some bee s drowsy horn. 144 THE WORLD OF FAERY VIII So was it when my childhood roamed The woodland s dim enchanted ground, Where every mushroom domed Its disc for them to revel round; Each glow-worm forged its flame, green- drowned In hollow snow that foamed IX Of lilies, for their lantern light, To lamp their dance beneath the moon ; Each insect of the night, That rasped its thin, vibrating tune, And owl that raised its sleepy croon, Made music for their flight. X So is it still when twilight fills My soul with childhood s memories THE WORLD OF FAERY 145 That haunt the far-off hills, And people with dim things the trees, With faery forms that no man sees, And dreams that no man kills. XI Then all around me sway and swing The Puck-lights of their firefly train, Their elfin revelling; And in the bursting pods, that rain Their seeds around my steps, again I hear their footsteps ring; XII Their faery feet that fall once more Within my way; and then I see, As oft I saw before, Her Spirit rise, who shimmeringly Fills all my world with poetry, The Loveliness of Yore. THERE ARE FAIRIES THERE are fairies, bright of eye, Who the wildflowers warders are Ouphes that chase the firefly; Elves that ride the shooting star; Fays who in a cobweb lie, Swinging on a moonbeam-bar, Or who harness bumblebees, Grumbling on the clover leas, To a blossom or a breeze, That s their fairy car. If you care, you too may see There are fairies verily There are fairies. 146 THERE ARE FAIRIES 147 II There are fairies. I could swear I have seen them busy where Rose leaves loose their scented hair, In the moonlight weaving weaving Out of starshine and the dew Glinting gown and shimmering shoe; Or within a glow-worm lair From the dark earth slowly heaving Mushrooms whiter than the moon, On whose tops they sit and croon, With their grig-like mandolins, To fair fairy ladykins, Leaning from the window-sill Of a rose or daffodil, Listening to their serenade All of cricket music made. Follow me, oh, follow me! Ho! away to faery! 148 THERE ARE FAIRIES Where your eyes, like mine, may see There are fairies verily There are fairies. Ill There are fairies: elves that swing In a wild and rainbow ring Through the air, or mount the wing Of a bat to courier news To the fairy queen and king; Fays who stretch the gossamers On which twilight hangs the dews; Or who whisper in the ears Of the flowers words so sweet That their hearts are turned to musk And to honey, things that beat In their veins of gold and blue; Ouphes that shepherd moths of dusk- Soft of wing and gray of hue Forth to pasture on the dew. THERE ARE FAIRIES 149 There are fairies verily, Verily; For the old owl in the tree, Hollow tree, He who maketh melody For them tripping merrily, Told it rne. There are fairies verily There are fairies. THE LITTLE PEOPLE I WHEN the lily nods in slumber, And the roses all are sleeping; When the night hangs deep and umber, And the stars their watch are keeping; When the clematis uncloses Like a hand of snowy fire, And the golden-lipped primroses, To the tiger-moths desire, Each a mouth of musk unpuckers Silken pouts of scented sweetness, That they sip with honey-suckers; Shod with hush and winged with fleetness, You may see the Little People, Round and round the drowsy steeple 150 THE LITTLE PEOPLE 151 Of a belfried hollyhock, Clothed in phlox and four-o clock, Gay of gown and pantaloon, Dancing by the glimmering moon, Till the cock, the long-necked cock, Crows them they must vanish soon. II When the cobweb is a cradle For the dreaming dew to sleep in; And each blossom is a ladle That the perfumed rain lies deep in ; When the gleaming fireflies scribble Darkness as with lines flame-tragic, And the night seems some dim sibyl Speaking gold, or wording magic Silent-syllabled and golden; Capped with snapdragon and hooded With the sweet-pea, vague-beholden, You may see the Little People, 152 THE LITTLE PEOPLE Underneath the sleepy steeple Of a towering mullen-stock, Trip it over moss and rock To the owlet s elvish tune And the tree-toad s gnome bassoon, Till the cock, the barnyard cock, Crows them they must vanish soon. Ill When the wind upon the water Seems a boat of ray and ripple, That some fairy moonbeam daughter Steers with sails that drift and dripple; When the sound of grig and cricket, Ever singing, ever humming, Seems a goblin in the thicket On his elfin viol strumming; When the toadstool, coned and milky, Heaves a roof for snails to clamber; Thistledown- and milkweed-silky, THE LITTLE PEOPLE 153 With loose locks of jade and amber, You may see the Little People, Underneath the pixy steeple Of a dome"d mushroom, flock, Quaint in wildflower vest and frock, Whirling by the waning moon To the whippoorwill s weird tune, Till the cock, the far-off cock, Crows them they must vanish soon. ON MIDSUMMER NIGHT ALL the poppies in their beds Nodding crumpled crimson heads; And the larkspurs, in whose ears Twilight hangs, like twinkling tears, Sleepy jewels of the rain; All the violets, that strain Eyes of amethystine gleam; And the clover-blooms that dream With pink baby fists closed tight, They can hear upon this night, Noiseless as the moon s white light, Footsteps and the glimmering flight, Shimmering flight, Of the Fairies. i54 ON MIDSUMMER NIGHT 1 55 II Every sturdy four-o clock, In its variegated frock; Every slender sweet-pea, too, In its hood of pearly hue; Every primrose pale that dozes By the wall and slow uncloses A sweet mouth of dewy dawn In a little silken yawn, On this night of silvery sheen, They can see the Fairy Queen, On her palfrey white, I ween, Tread dim cirques of haunted green, Moonlit green, With her Fairies. Ill Never a foxglove bell, you see, That s a cradle for a bee; Never a lily, that s a house I $6 ON MIDSUMMER NIGHT Where the butterfly may drowse ; Never a rosebud or a blossom, That unfolds its honeyed bosom To the moth, that nestles deep And there sucks itself to sleep, But can hear and also see, On this night of witchery, All that world of Faery, All that world where airily, Merrily, Dance the Fairies. IV It was last Midsummer Night, In the moon s uncertain light, That I stood among the flowers, And in language unlike ours Heard them speaking of the Pixies, Trolls and Gnomes and Water-Nixies; How in this flow r s ear a Fay ON MIDSUMMER NIGHT 157 Hung a gem of rainy ray ; And round that flow r s throat had set Dim a dewdrop carcanet; Then among the mignonette Stretched a cobweb-hammock wet, Dewy wet, For the Fairies. Long I watched; but never a one, Ariel, Puck, or Oberon, Mab or Queen Titania Fairest of them all they say- Clad in morning-glory hues, Did I glimpse among the dews. Only once I thought the torch Of that elfin-rogue and arch, Robin Goodfellow, afar Flashed along a woodland bar 158 ON MIDSUMMER NIGHT Bright, a jack-o -lantern star, A green lamp of firefly spar, Glow-worm spar, Loved of Fairies. THE WILLOW WATER DEEP in the hollow wood he found a way Winding unto a water, dim and gray, Grayer and dimmer than the break of day ; By which a wildrose blossomed; flower on flower Leaning above its image hour on hour, Musing, it seemed, on its own loveliness, And longing with sweet longing to express Some thought to its reflection. Dropping now Bee-shaken pollen from th o erburdened bough, And now a petal, delicate as a blush, It seemed to sigh or whisper to the hush The dreams, the myths and marvels it had seen Tip-toeing dimly through the woodland green: l6o THE WILLOW WATER Faint shapes of fragrance; forms like flowers, that go Footing the moss; or, shouldered with moon beam glow, Through starlit waves oaring an arm of snow. He sat him down and gazed into the pool: And as he gazed, two petals, silken cool, Fell, soft as starbeams fall that arrow through The fern-hung trembling of a drop of dew ; And, pearly-placid, on the water lay, Two curves of languid ruby, where, rose-gray, The shadow of a willow dimmed the stream. And suddenly he saw or did he dream He saw? the rose-leaves change to rosy lips, A laughing crimson. And, with silvery hips, And eyes of luminous emerald, full of sleep And all the stillness of the under deep, The shadow of the tree become a girl, A shadowy girl, who shook from many a curl THE WILLOW WATER l6l Faint, tangled glimmerings of shell and pearl. A girl who called him, beckoned him to come, Waving a hand whiter than moonlit foam, And pointing, minnowy fingered, to her home A bubble, rainbow-built, beneath the wave, Dim-domed, and murmurous as the deep-sea cave, Columned of coral and of grottoed foam, Where the pale mermaids never cease to comb Their weed-green hair with fingers crystal-cold, Sighing forever round the Sea King old Throned on his throne of shell and ribbed gold. Laughing, she lured him, lipped like some wild- rose; Bidding him follow; come to her; repose Upon her bosom and forever dream Lulled by the wandering whisper of the stream. But him mortality weighed heavily on And earthly love: and, sorrowful and wan, l62 THE WILLOW WATER He shook his head, motioning, " I cannot rise " ; But still he felt the magic of her eyes Drawing him to her; felt her hands of foam Around his heart; her lips, that bade him come With smiling witchery, and with laughing looks Like those that lured us in the fairy books Our childhood dreamed on. ... Then, as suddenly, A wind, it seemed, from no where he could see, Wrinkled the water; ruffled its smooth glass; And there again, behold! when it did pass The rose-leaves lay and shadow, dimly seen; The willow s shadow, and no thing between. ELUSION MY soul goes out to her who says, Come follow me and cast off care ! Then tosses back her sunbright hair, And like a flower before me sways Between the green leaves and my gaze: This creature like a girl, who smiles Into my eyes and softly lays Her hand in mine and leads me miles, Long miles of haunted forest ways. II Sometimes she seems a faint perfume, A fragrance that a flower exhaled And God gave form to; now, unveiled, A sunbeam making gold the gloom 163 164 ELUSION Of vines that roof some woodland room Of boughs; and now the silvery sound Of streams her presence doth assume Music, from which, in dreaming drowned, A crystal shadow she seems to bloom. Ill Sometimes she seems the light that lies On foam of waters where the fern Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn Of woodland, bright against the skies, She seems the rainbowed mist that flies; And now the mossy fire that breaks Beneath the feet in azure eyes Of flowers; and now the wind that shakes Pale petals from the bough that sighs. IV Sometimes she lures me with a song; Sometimes she guides me with a laugh; ELUSION 165 Her white hand is a magic staff, Her look a spell to lead me long: Though she be weak and I be strong, She needs but shake her happy hair, But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong, My soul must follow anywhere She wills far from the world s loud throng. V Sometimes I think that she must be No part of earth, but merely this The fair, elusive thing we miss In Nature, that we dream we see Yet never see: that goldenly Beckons: that, limbed with rose and pearl, The Greek made a divinity: A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl, That haunts the forest s mystery. THE LOST GARDEN ROSES, brier on brier, Like a hedge of fire, Walled it from the world and rolled Crimson round it; manifold Blossoms, mid which once of old Walked my Heart s Desire. There the golden Hours Dwelt; and mid the bowers Beauty wandered like a maid ; And the Dreams that never fade Sat within its haunted shade Gazing at the flowers. There the winds that vary Melody and marry 166 THE LOST GARDEN 167 Perfume unto perfume, went, Whispering to the buds, that bent, Messages whose wonderment Made them sweet to carry. There the waters hoary Murmured many a story To the leaves that leaned above, Listening to their tales of love, While the happiness thereof Flushed their green with glory. There the sunset s shimmer Mid the bowers, dimmer Than the woods where Fable dwells, And Romance her legends tells, Wrought dim dreams and dimmer spells, Filled with golden glimmer. There at night the wonder Of the moon would sunder l68 THE LOST GARDEN Foliage deeps with breast of pearl, Wandering like a glimmering girl, Fair of form and bright of curl, Through the trees and under. There the stars would follow, Over hill and hollow, Spirit shapes that danced the dew From frail cups of sparry hue; Firefly forms that fleeter flew Than the fleetest swallow. There my heart made merry; There, mid bloom and berry, Dreamed the dreams that are no more, In that garden lost of yore, Set in seas, without a shore, That no man may ferry. Where perhaps her lyre, Wreathed with serest brier, THE LOST GARDEN 169 Sorrow strikes now; sad its gold Sighing where, mid roses old, Fair of face and dead and cold Lies my Heart s Desire. GLAMOUR WITH fall on fall, from wood to wood, The brook pours mossy music down Or is it, in the solitude, The murmur of a Faery town? A town of Elfland filled with bells And holiday of hurrying feet: Or traffic now, whose small sound swells, Now sinks from busy street to street. Whose Folk I often recognize In winged things that hover round, Who to men s eyes assume disguise When on some elfin errand bound. 170 GLAMOUR I7 1 The bee, that haunts the touchmenot, Big-bodied, making braggart din Is fairy brother to that sot, Jack Falstaff of the Boar s Head Inn. The dragonfly, whose wings of black Are mantle for his garb of green, Is Ancient to this other Jack, Another Pistol, long and lean. The butterfly, in royal tints, Is Hal, mad Hal, in cloth of gold, Who passes these, as once that Prince Passed his companions boon of old. LATE OCTOBER WOODS CLUMPED in the shadow of the beech, In whose brown top the crows are loud, Where, every side, great briers reach And cling like hands, the beechdrops crowd The mossy cirque with neutral tints Of gray; and deep, with berries bowed, The buckbush reddens mid the mints. O erhead the forest scarcely stirs: The wind is laid: the sky is blue: Bush-clover, with its links of burs, And some last blooms, few, pink of hue, Makes wild the way : and everywhere Slim, white-ribbed cones of fungi strew The grass that s like a wildman s hair. 172 LATE OCTOBER WOODS 173 The jewel-weeds, whose pods bombard The hush with fairy batteries Of seeds, grow dense here; pattering hard Their sacs explode, persuade the eyes To search the heaven for show rs. One seems To walk where old Enchantment plies Her shuttle of lost days and dreams. And, lo! yon rock of fern and flower, That heaves its height from bramble deeps, All on a sudden seems the tower Wherein the Sleeping Beauty sleeps: And that red vine, the fire-drake, The flaming dragon, seems, that keeps The world from her no man may wake. IN THE BEECH WOODS AMBER and emerald, cairngorm and chrysoprase, Stream through the autumn woods, scatter the beech-wood ways: Ways where the wahoo-bush brightens with scarlet ; And where the aster-stalk lifts its last starlet. Ways where the brier burns; poplars drop, one by one, Leaves that seem beaten gold, each like a splash of sun : Round which the beeches rise, tree upon golden tree, That, with each wind that blows, sound like a summer sea. i74 IN THE BEECH WOODS 175 Ways where the papaw leans, great-leaved and beryl-green, Like some grand forester one in Romance hath seen ; And like some Indian queen, sung of in story, Flaming the gum-tree stands, crowned with its glory. Ways where the bittersweet, cleaving its pods of gold, Brightens the brake with flame, torches the dingle old: And where the dogwood too crimsons with ruby seeds; Spicewood and buckbush bend ruddy with rosy beads. These are the woods of gold ; forests our child hood knew, Where the Enchanted dwelt, she with the eyes of blue; 176 IN THE BEECH WOODS She of the raven locks, and of the lovely looks, She who oft gazed at us out of the Story Books. And with that Prince again, striding his snow- white steed, To her deliverance through the gold wood we speed ; On through the wood of flame to the Dark Tower, Where like a light she gleams high in her bower. THE WORD IN THE WOOD I THE acorn-oak Sullens to sombre crimson all its leaves; And where it hugely heaves A giant head dark as congested blood, The gum-tree towers, against the sky a stroke Of purpling gold; and every blur of wood Is color on the pallet that she drops, The Autumn, dreaming on the hazed hilltops. II And as I went Through golden forests in a golden land, Where Magic waved her wand And dimmed the air with dreams my boyhood knew, 12 177 178 THE WORD IN THE WOOD Enchantment met me; and again she bent Her face to mine, and smiled with eyes of blue, And kissed me on the mouth and bade me heed Old tales again from books no man may read. Ill And at her word The wood became transfigured; and, behold! With hair of wavy gold A presence walked there; and its beauty was The beauty not of Earth: and then I heard Within my heart vague voices, murmurous And multitudinous as leaves that sow The firmament when winds of autumn blow. IV And I perceived The voices were but one voice made of sighs, That sorrowed in this wise: " I am the child-soul that grew up and died, THE WORD IN THE WOOD 179 The child-soul of the world that once believed, Believed in me, but long ago denied; The Faery Faith it needs no more to-day, The folk-lore Beauty long since passed away." THE WOOD WATER AN evil, stealthy water, dark as hate, Sunk from the light of day, Thwart which is hung a ruined water-gate, Creeps on its stagnant way. Moss and the spawny duckweed, dim as air, And green as copperas, Choke its dull current; and, like hideous hair, Tangles of twisted grass. Above it sinister trees, as crouched and gaunt As huddled Terror, lean; Guarding some secret in that nightmare haunt, Some horror they have seen. 1 80 THE WOOD WATER l8l Something the sunset points at from afar, Spearing the sullen wood And hag-gray water with a single bar Of flame as red as blood. Something the stars, conspiring with the moon, Shall look on, and remain Frozen with fear; staring as in a swoon, Striving to flee in vain. Something the wisp that, wandering in the night, Above the ghastly stream, Haply shall find; and, filled with frantic fright, Light with its ghostly gleam. Something that lies there, under weed and ooze, With wide and awful eyes And matted hair, and limbs the waters bruise, That strives, yet can not rise. THE EGRET HUNTER THROUGH woods the Spanish moss makes gray, With deeps the daylight never reaches, The water sluices slow its way, And chokes with weeds its beaches. T was here, lost in this lone bayou, Where poison brims each blossom s throat, Last night I followed a firefly glow, And oared a leaky boat. The way was dark; and overhead The wailing limpkin moaned and cried; The moss, like cerements of the dead, Waved wildly on each side. The way was black, albeit the trees Let here and there the moonlight through, 182 THE EGRET HUNTER 183 The shadows, mid the cypress-knees, Seemed ominous of hue. And then behold! a boat that oozed Slow slime and trailed rank water-weeds, Loomed on me: in which, interfused, Great glow-worms glowed like beads. And in its rotting hulk, upright, His eyeless eyes fixed far before, A dead man sat, and stared at night, Grasping a rotting oar. Slowly it passed; and fearfully The moccasin slid in its wake ; The owl shrunk shrieking in its tree; And in its hole the snake. But I, who met it face to face, I could not shrink or turn aside: 1 84 THE EGRET HUNTER Within that dark and demon place There was no place to hide. Slowly it passed; for me too slow! The grim Death, in the moon s faint shine, Whose story, haply, none may know Save th owl that haunts the pine. THE NIGHT-WIND I HAVE heard the wind on a winter s night, When the snow-cold moon looked icily through My window s flickering firelight, Where the frost his witchery drew: I have heard the wind on a winter s night, Wandering ways that were frozen white, Wail in my chimney-flue: And its voice was the voice, so it seemed to me, The voice of the world s vast misery. II I have heard the wind on a night of spring, When the leaves unclasped their girdles of gold, 185 1 86 THE NIGHT- WIND And the bird on the bough sang slumbering, In the lilac s fragrant fold: I have heard the wind on a night of spring, Shaking the musk from its dewy wing, Sigh in my garden old: And it seemed that it said, as it sighed above, " I am the voice of the Earth s great love." Ill I have heard the wind on a night of fall, When a devil s- dance was the rain s down pour, And the wild woods reeled to its demon call, And the carpet fluttered the floor: I have heard the wind on a night of fall, Heaping the leaves by the garden wall, Weep at my close-shut door: And its voice, so it seemed, as it sorrowed there, Was the old, old voice of the world s despair. THE NIGHT-WIND 1 87 IV I have heard the wind on a summer night, When the myriad stars stormed heaven with fire, And the moon-moth glimmered in phantom flight, And the crickets creaked in choir: I have heard the wind on a summer night, Rocking the red rose and the white, Murmur in bloom and brier: And its voice was the voice, so it seemed to me, Of Earth s primordial mystery. GOD S GREEN BOOK OUT, out in the open fields, Where the great, green book of God,- The book that its wisdom yields To each soul that is not a clod, Lies wide for the world to read, I would go; and in flower and weed, That letter the lines of the grass, Would read of a better creed Than that which the town-world has. II Too long in the city streets, The alleys of grime and sin, 188 GOD S GREEN BOOK 189 Have I heard the iron beats Of the heart of toil ; whose din And the throb of whose wild unrest Have stunned the song in my breast, Have marred its music and slain The bird that was once its guest, And my soul would find it again. Ill Out there where the great, green book, Whose leaves are the grass and trees, Lies open; where each may look, May muse and read as he please; The book, that is gilt with gleams, Whose pages are ribboned with streams; That says what our souls would say Of beauty that s wrought of dreams And buds and blossoms of May. A WET DAY DARK, drear, and drizzly, with vapor grizzly, The day goes dully unto its close; Its wet robe smutches each thing it touches, Its fingers sully and wreck the rose. Around the railing and garden-paling The dripping lily hangs low its head: A brood-mare whinnies; and hens and guineas Droop, damp and chilly, beneath the shed. In splashing mire about the byre The cattle huddle, the farmhand plods; While to some neighbor s a wagon labors Through pool and puddle and clay that clods. 190 A WET DAY 191 The day, unsplendid, at last is ended, Is dead and buried, and night is come; Night, blind and footless, and foul and fruitless, With weeping wearied and sorrow dumb. Ah, God! for thunder! for winds to sunder The clouds and o er us smite rushing bars! And through wild masses of storm, that passes, Roll calm the chorus of moon and stars. AFTER STORM GREAT clouds of sullen seal and gold Bar bleak the tawny west, From which all day the thunder rolled, And storm streamed, crest on crest. Now silvery in its deeps of bronze The new moon fills its sphere; And point by point the darkness dons Its pale stars there and here. But still behind the moon and stars, The peace of heaven, remains Suspicion of the wrath that wars, That Nature now restrains. 192 AFTER STORM 193 As, lined neath tiger eyelids, glare The wild-beast eyes that sleep, So smoulders in its sunset lair The rage that rent the deep. SUNSET ON THE RIVER A SEA of onyx are the skies, Cloud-islanded with fire ; Such nacre-colored flame as dyes A sea-shell s rosy spire; And at its edge one star sinks slow, Burning, into the overglow. II Save for the cricket in the grass, Or passing bird that twitters, The world is hushed. Like liquid glass The soundless river glitters Between the hills that hug and hold Its beauty like a hoop of gold. 194 SUNSET ON THE RIVER 195 III The glory deepens; and, meseems, A vasty canvas, painted With revelations of God s dreams And visions symbol-sainted, The west is, that each night-cowled hill Kneels down before in worship still. IV There is no thing to wake unrest; No sight or sound to jangle The peace that evening in the breast Brings, smoothing out the tangle Of gnarls and knots of care and strife That snarl the colored cord of life. THE RUE-ANEMONE UNDER an oak-tree in a woodland, where The dreaming Spring had dropped it from her hair, I found a flower, through which I seemed to gaze Beyond the world and see what no man dare Behold and live the myths of bygone days- Diana and Endymion, and the bare Slim beauty of the boy whom Echo wooed ; And Hyacinth us whom Apollo dewed With love and death: and Daphne, ever fair; And that reed-slender girl whom Pan pursued. I stood and gazed and through it seemed to see The Dryad dancing by the forest tree, Her hair wild blown : the Faun with listening ear, 196 THE RUE-ANEMONE 197 Deep in the boscage, kneeling on one knee, Watching the wandered Oread draw near, Her wild heart beating like a honey-bee Within a rose. All, all the myths of old, All, all the bright shapes of the Age of Gold, Peopling the wonder-worlds of Poetry, Through it 1 seemed in fancy to behold. What other flower, that, fashioned like a star, Draws its frail life from earth and braves the war Of all the heavens, can suggest the dreams That this suggests? in which no trace of mar Or soil exists: where stainless innocence seems Enshrined; and where, beyond our vision far, That inaccessible beauty, which the heart Worships as truth and holiness and art, Is symbolized; wherein embodied are The things that make the soul s immortal part. TABERNACLES THE little tents the wildflowers raise Are tabernacles where Love prays And Beauty preaches all the days. I walk the woodland through and through, And everywhere I see their blue And gold where I may worship too. All hearts unto their inmost shrine Of fragrance they invite ; and mine Enters and sees the All Divine. I hark ; and with some inward ear Soft words of praise and prayer I hear, And bow my head and have no fear. 198 TABERNACLES For God is present as I see In them; and gazes out at me Kneeling to His divinity. Oh, holiness that Nature knows, That dwells within each thing that grows, Vestured with dreams as is the rose With perfume! whereof all things preach The birds, the brooks, the leaves, that reach Our hearts and souls with loving speech ; That makes a tabernacle of The flowers; whose priests are Truth and Love, Who help our souls to rise above The Earth and that which we name sin Unto the knowledge that is kin To Heaven, to which at last we win. REVEALMENT A SENSE of sadness in the golden air, A pensiveness, that has no part in care, As if the Season, by some woodland pool, Braiding the early blossoms in her hair, Seeing her loveliness reflected there, Had sighed to find herself so beautiful. A breathlessness, a feeling as of fear, Holy and dim as of a mystery near, As if the World about us listening went, With lifted finger, and hand-hollowed ear, Hearkening a music that we cannot hear, Haunting the quickening earth and firmament. A prescience of the soul that has no name, Expectancy that is both wild and tame, 200 REVEALMENT 2OI As if the Earth, from out its azure ring Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame, As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came, The swift, divine revealment of the Spring. THE CAT-BIRD THE tufted gold of the sassafras, And the gold of the spicewood-bush, Bewilder the ways of the forest pass, And brighten the underbrush: The white-starred drifts of the wild-plum tree, And the haw with its pearly plumes, And the redbud, misted rosily, Dazzle the woodland glooms. II And I hear the song of the cat-bird wake I the boughs o the gnarled wild-crab, Or there where the snows of the dogwood shake That the silvery sunbeams stab : 202 THE CAT-BIRD 2O3 And it seems to me that a magic lies In the crystal sweet of its notes, That a myriad blossoms open their eyes As its strain above them floats. Ill I see the bluebell s blue unclose, And the trillium s stainless white; The bird-foot violet s purple and rose, And the poppy, golden-bright! And I see the eyes of the bluet wink, And the heads of the white-hearts nod ; And the baby mouths of the woodland pink And the sorrel salute the sod. IV And this, meseems, does the cat-bird say, As the blossoms crowd i the sun: " Up, up! and out! oh, out and away! Up, up! and out, each one! 204 THE CAT-BIRD Sweethearts! sweethearts! oh, sweet, sweet, sweet! Come listen and hark to me! The Spring, the Spring, with her fragrant feet, Is passing this way! Oh, hark to the beat Of her bee-like heart! Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet! Come! open your eyes and see! See, see, see! " VAGABONDS IT s ho, it s ho! when hawtrees blow Among the hills that Springtime thrills; When huckleberries, row on row, Hang out their blossom-bells of snow Around the rills that music fills: When hawtrees blow Among the hills, It s ho, it s ho! oh, let us go, My love and I, where fancy wills. II It s hey, it s hey! when daisies sway Among the meads where Summer speeds; When ripeness bends each fruited spray, And harvest wafts adown the day 205 206 VAGABONDS The feathered seeds of golden weeds: When daisies sway Among the meads, It s hey, it s hey! oh, let s away, My heart and I, where longing leads. Ill It s ay, it s ay! when red leaves fly, And strew the ways where Autumn strays; When round the beech and chestnut lie The sturdy burs, and creeks run dry, And frosts and haze turn golds to grays: When red leaves fly And strew the ways, It s ay, it s ay! oh, let us hie, My love and I, where dreaming says. IV Wassail! wassail! when snow and hail Make white the lands where Winter stands; VAGABONDS 2O/ When wild winds from the forests flail The last dead leaves, and, in the gale, The trees wring hands in ghostly bands: When snow and hail Make white the lands, Wassail, wassail! oh, let us trail, My heart and I, where love commands. NOCTURNE A DISC of violet blue, Rimmed with a thorn of fire, The new moon hangs in a sky of dew; And under the vines, where the sunset s hue Is blent with blossoms, first one, then two, Begins the cricket s choir. Bright blurs of golden white, And points of silvery glimmer, The first stars wink in the web of night; And through the flowers the moths take flight, In the honeysuckle-colored light, Where the shadowy shrubs grow dimmer. Soft through the dim and dying eve, Sweet through the dusk and dew, 208 NOCTURNE 209 Come, while the hours their witchcraft weave, Dim in the House of the Soul s-Sweet-Leave, Here in the pale and perfumed eve, Here where I wait for you. A great, dark, radiant rose, Dripping with starry glower, Is the night, whose bosom overflows With the balsam musk of the breeze that blows Into the heart, as each one knows, Of every nodding flower. A voice that sighs and sighs, Then whispers like a spirit, Is the wind that kisses the drowsy eyes Of the primrose open, and, rocking, lies In the lily s cradle, and soft unties The rosebud s crimson near it. Sweet through the deep and dreaming night, Soft through the dark and dew, 14 210 NOCTURNE Come, where the moments their magic write, Deep in the Book of the Heart s-Delight, Here in the hushed and haunted night, Here where I wait for you. LUTE SONG WHAT will you send her, What will you tell her, That shall unbend her, That shall compel her? Love, that shall fold her So naught can sever; Truth, that shall hold her Ever and ever. What will you do then So she 11 ne er grieve you? Knowing you true then Never will leave you? 211 212 LUTE SONG I 11 lay before her, There in her bower, Aye to adore her, My heart like a flower. DAYS COME AND GO LEAVES fall and flowers fade, Days come and go: Now is sweet Summer laid Low in her leafy glade, Low like a fragrant maid, Low, low, ah, low. Tears fall and eyelids ache, Hearts overflow: Here for our dead love s sake Let us our farewells make Will he again awake? Ah, no, no, no. Winds sigh and skies are gray, Days come and go: 213 214 DAYS COME AND GO Wild birds are flown away : Where are the blooms of May?- Dead, dead, this many a day, Under the snow. Lips sigh and cheeks are pale, Hearts overflow: Will not some song or tale, Kiss, or a flower frail, With our dead love avail? Ah, no, no, no. THE WANING YEAR A SENSE of something that is sad and strange; Of something that is felt as death is felt, As shadows, phantoms, in a haunted grange, Around me seems to melt. It rises, so it seems, from the decay Of the dim woods; from withered leaves and weeds, And dead flowers hanging by the woodland way Sad, hoary heads of seeds. And from the cricket s song, so feeble now T is like a sound heard in the heart, a call Dreamier than dreams; and from the shaken bough, From which the acorns fall. 215 2l6 THE WANING YEAR From scents and sounds it rises, sadly slow, This presence, that hath neither face nor form ; That in the woods sits like demented woe, Whispering of wreck and storm. A presence wrought of melancholy grief, And dreams that die; that, in the streaming night, I shall behold, like some fantastic leaf, Beat at my window s light. That I shall hear, outside my storm-lashed door, Moan like the wind in some rain-tortured tree ; Or round my roof and down my chimney roar All the wild night to me. GRAY NOVEMBER I DULL, dimly gleaming, The dawn looks downward Where, flowing townward, The river, steaming With mist, is hidden: Each bush, that huddles Beside the road, the rain has pooled with puddles, Seems, in the fog, a hag or thing hag-ridden. II Where leaves hang tattered In forest tangles, And woodway angles 217 2l8 GRAY NOVEMBER Are acorn-scattered, Coughing and yawning The woodsman slouches, Or stands as silent as the hound that crouches Beside him, ghostly in the mist-drenched dawn ing. Ill Through roses, rotting Within the garden, With blooms, that harden, Of mangolds, knotting, (Each one an ember Dull, dead and dripping,) Her brow, from which their faded wreath is slipping, Mantled in frost and fog, comes in November. HALLOWMAS ALL hushed of glee, The last chill bee Clings wearily To the dying aster. The leaves drop faster: And all around, red as disaster, The forest crimsons with tree on tree. A butterfly, The last to die, Wings heavily by, Weighed down with torpor. The air grows sharper; And the wind in the trees, like some sad harper, Sits and sorrows with sigh on sigh. 219 220 HALLOWMAS The far crows call; The acorns fall ; And over all The Autumn raises Dun mists and hazes, Through which her soul, it seemeth, gazes On ghosts and dreams in carnival. The end is near; The dying Year Leans low to hear Her own heart breaking, And Beauty taking Her flight, and all my dreams forsaking My soul, bowed down mid the sad and sere. A SONG OF THE SNOW I ROARING winds that rocked the crow, High in his eyrie, All night long, and to and fro Swung the cedar and drove the snow- Out of the North, have ceased to blow, And dawn breaks fiery Sing, Ho, a song of the winter dawn, When the air is still and the clouds are gone, And the snow lies deep on hill and lawn, And the old clock ticks, T is time ! V is time ! And the household rises with many a yawn Sing, Ho, a song of the winter dawn! Sing Ho! 221 222 A SONG OF THE SNOW II Deep in the East a ruddy glow Broadens and brightens, Glints through the icicles, row on row, Flames on the panes of the farmhouse low, And over the miles of drifted snow Silently whitens. Sing, Ho, a song of the winter sky, When the last star closes its icy eye, And deep in the road the snow-drifts lie, And the old clock ticks, T is late ! / is late ! And the flame on the hearth leaps red, leaps high- Sing, Ho, a song of the winter sky! Sing Ho! Ill Into the heav n the sun comes slow, All red and frowsy; A SONG OF THE SNOW 223 Out of the shed the muffled low Of the cattle comes; and the rooster s crow Sounds strangely distant beneath the snow And dull and drowsy. Sing, Ho, a song of the winter morn, When the snow makes ghostly the wayside thorn, And hills of pearl are the shocks of corn, And the old clock ticks, Tick-tock, tick-tock; And the goodman bustles about the barn- Sing, Ho, a song of the winter morn! Sing Ho! IV Now to their tasks the farmhands go, Cheerily, cheerily: The maid with her pail, her cheeks aglow ; And, blowing his fist, the man with his hoe To trample a path through the crunching snow, Merrily, merrily. 224 A SONG OF THE SNOW Sing, Ho, a song of the winter day, When ermine-capped are the stacks of hay, And the wood-smoke pillars the air with gray, And the old clock ticks, To work! to work! And the goodwife sings as she churns away Sing, Ho, a song of the winter day! Sing Ho! WHAT OF IT THEN WELL, what of it then, if your heart be weighed with the yoke Of the world s neglect? and the smoke Of doubt, blown into your eyes, make night of your road? And the sting of the goad, The merciless goad of scorn, And the rise and fall Of the whip of necessity gall, Till your heart, forlorn, Indignant, in rage would rebel? And your bosom fill, And sobbingly swell, With bitterness, yea, against God and gainst Fate, 226 WHAT OF IT THEN Fate, and the world of men, What of it then? . . . Let it be as it will, If you labor and wait, You, too, will arrive, and the end for you, too, will be well. What of it then, say I ! yea, what of it then ! II Well, what of it then? if the hate of the world and of men Make wreck of your dreams again? What of it then If contumely and sneer, And ignorant jibe and jeer, Be heaped upon all that you do and dream: And the irresistible stream Of events overwhelm and submerge All effort or so it may seem? Not all, not all shall be lost, WHAT OF IT THEN 22/ Not all, in the merciless gurge And pitiless surge! Though you see it tempestuously tost, Though you see it sink down or sweep by, Not in vain did you strive, not in vain ! The struggle, the longing and toil Of hand and of heart and of brain, Not in vain was it all, say I ! For out of the wild turmoil And seething and soil Of Time, some part of the whole will arise, Arise and remain, In spite of the wrath of the skies And the hate of men. What of it then, say I ! yea, what of it then ! WOMANHOOD \ I THE summer takes its hue From something opulent as fair in her, And the bright heav n is brighter than it was; Brighter and lovelier, Arching its beautiful blue, Serene and soft, as her sweet gaze, o er us. II The springtime takes its moods From something in her made of smiles and tears, And flowery earth is flowerier than before, And happier, it appears, Adding new multitudes To flowers, like thoughts, that haunt us ever more. 228 WOMANHOOD 22Q III Summer and spring are wed In her her nature; and the glamour of Their loveliness, their bounty, as it were, Of life, and joy, and love, Her being seems to shed, The magic aura of the heart of her. THE BURDEN OF DESIRE IN some glad way I know thereof: A garden glows down in my heart, Wherein I meet and often part With many an ancient tale of love A Romeo garden, banked with bloom, And trellised with the eglantine; In which a rose climbs to a room, A balcony one mass of vine, Dim, haunted of perfume A balcony, whereon she gleams, The soft Desire of all Dreams, And smiles and bends like Juliet, Year after year. While to her side, all dewy wet, 230 THE BURDEN OF DESIRE 231 A rose stuck in his ear, Love climbs to draw her near. II And in another way I know: Down in my soul a graveyard lies, Wherein I meet, in ghostly wise, With many an ancient tale of woe A graveyard of the Capulets, Deep-vaulted with ancestral gloom, Through whose dark yews the moonlight jets On many a wildly carven tomb, That mossy mildew frets A graveyard where the Soul s Desire Sleeps, pale-entombed; and, kneeling by her, Love, like that hapless Montague, Year after year, Weary and worn and wild of hue, Within her sepulchre, Falls bleeding on her bier. THE ROSE S SECRET WHEN down the west the new moon slipped, A curved canoe that dipped and tipped, When from the rose the dewdrop dripped, As if it shed its heart s blood slow; As softly silent as a star I climbed a lattice that I know, A window lattice, held ajar By one slim hand as white as snow : The hand of her who set me here, A rose, to bloom from year to year. I, who have heard the bird of June Sing all night long beneath the moon; I, who have heard the zephyr croon Soft music mid spring s avenues, 232 THE ROSE S SECRET 233 Heard then a sweeter sound than these, Among the shadows and the dews A heart that beat like any bee s, Sweet with a name and I know whose : Her heart that, leaning, pressed on me, A rose, she never looked to see. O star and moon ! O wind and bird ! Ye hearkened, too, but never heard The secret sweet, the whispered word I heard, when by her lips his name Was murmured. Then she saw me there! But that I heard was I to blame? Whom in the darkness of her hair She thrust since I had heard the same: Condemned within its deeps to lie, A rose, imprisoned till I die. WOMAN S LOVE SWEET lies! the sweetest ever heard, To her he said: Her heart remembers every word Now he is dead. I ask:" If thus his lies can make Your young heart grieve for his false sake, Had he been true what had you done For true love s sake? " " Upon his grave there in the sun, Avoided now of all but one, I d lay my heart with all its ache, And let it break, and let it break." And falsehood! fairer ne er was seen Than he put on: 234 WOMAN S LOVE 235 Her heart recalls each look and mien Now he is gone. I ask: " If thus his treachery Can hold your heart with lie on lie, What had you done for manly love, Love without lie? " " There in the grass that grows above His grave, where all could know thereof, I d lay me down without a sigh, And gladly die, and gladly die." AUBADE AWAKE! the Dawn is on the hills! Behold, at her cool throat a rose, Blue-eyed and beautiful she goes, Leaving her steps in daffodils. Awake ! arise ! and let me see Thine eyes, whose deeps epitomize All dawns that were or are to be, O love, all Heaven in thine eyes! Awake! arise! come down to me! Behold! the Dawn is up: behold! How all the birds around her float, Wild rills of music, note on note, Spilling the air with mellow gold. Arise! awake! and, drawing near, 236 AUBADE 237 Let me but hear thee and rejoice! Thou, who bear st captive, sweet and clear, All song, O love, within thy voice ! Arise! awake! and let me hear! See, where she comes, with limbs of day, The Dawn! with wildrose hands and feet, Within whose veins the sunbeams beat, And laughters meet of wind and ray. Arise ! come down ! and, heart to heart, Love, let me clasp in thee all these The sunbeam, of which thou art part, And all the rapture of the breeze! Arise! come down! loved that thou art. THE HUSHED HOUSE I, WHO went at nightfall, came again at dawn; On Love s door again I knocked. Love was gone. He who oft had bade me in, now would bid no more; Silence sat within his house; barred its door. When the slow door opened wide through it I could see How the emptiness within stared at me. Through the dreary chambers, long I sought and sighed, But no answering footstep came ; naught replied. 238 THE HUSHED HOUSE 239 Then at last I entered, dim, a darkened room : There a taper glimmered gray in the gloom. And I saw one lying crowned with helichrys; Never saw I face as fair as was his. Like a wintry lily was his brow in hue; And his cheeks were each a rose, wintry too. Then my soul remembered all that made us part, And what I had laughed at once broke my heart. THE HEART S DESIRE GOD made her body out of foam and flowers, And for her hair the dawn and darkness blent ; Then called two planets from their heavenly towers, And in her face, divinely eloquent, Gave them a firmament. God made her heart of rosy ice and fire, Of snow and flame, that freezes while it burns; And of a starbeam and a moth s desire He made her soul, to ards which my longing turns, And all my being yearns. So is my life a prisoner unto passion, Enslaved of her who gives nor sign nor word ; 240 THE HEART S DESIRE 241 So in the cage her loveliness doth fashion Is love endungeoned, like a golden bird That sings but is not heard. Could it but once convince her with beseeching! But once compel her as the sun the South ! Could it but once, fond arms around her reach ing, Upon the red carnation of her mouth Dew its eternal drouth ! Then might I rise victorious over sadness, O er fate and change, and, with but little care, Torched by the glory of that moment s gladness, Breast the black mountain of my life s despair, And die or do and dare. tti ACHIEVEMENT HE held himself splendidly forward Both early and late ; The aim of his purpose was starward, To master his fate : So he wrought and he toiled and he waited, Till he rose o er the hordes that he hated, And stood on the heights, as was fated, Made one of the great. Then lo! on the top of the mountain, With walls that were wide, A city ! from which, as a fountain, Rose voices that cried: " He comes! Let us forth now to meet him! Both mummer and priest let us greet him ! 242 ACHIEVEMENT 243 In the city he built let us seat him On the throne of his pride! " Then out of the city he builded, Of shadows it seems, From gates that his fancy had gilded With thought s brightest gleams, Strange mimes and chimeias came trooping, With moping and mowing and stooping And he saw, with a heart that was drooping, That these were his dreams. He entered; and, lo! as he entered They murmured his name; And led him where, burningly centred, An altar of flame Made lurid a temple, erected Of self, where a form he detected The love that his life had rejected And this was his fame. AT;;MOONRISE PALE faces looked up at me, up from the earth, like flowers; Pale hands reached down to me, out of the air, like stars, As over the hills, robed on with the twilight, the Hours, The Day s last Hours, departed, and Dusk put up her bars. Pale fingers beckoned me on ; pale fingers, like starlit mist; Dim voices called to me, dim as the wind s dim rune, As up from the night, like a nymph from the amethyst 244 AT MOONRISE 245 Of her waters, as silver as foam, rose the round, white breast of the moon. And I followed the pearly waving and beckon of hands, The luring glitter and dancing glimmer of feet, And the sibilant whisper of silence, that sum moned to lands Remoter than legend or faery, where Myth and Tradition meet. And I came to a place where the shadow of ancient Night Brooded o er ruins, far wilder than castles of dreams; Fantastic, a mansion of phantoms, where, wan dering white, I met with a shadowy presence whose voice I had followed, it seems. 246 AT MOONRISE And the ivy waved in the wind, and the moon light laid, Like a ghostly benediction, a finger wan On the face of the one from whose eyes the darkness rayed The face of the one I had known in the years long gone. And she looked in my face, and kissed me on brow and on cheek, Murmured my name, and wistfully smiled in my eyes, And the tears welled up in my heart, that was wild and weak, And my bosom seemed bursting with yearn ing, and my soul with sighs. And there mid the ruins we sat. . . . Oh, strange were the words that she said! AT MOONRISE 247 Distant and dim and strange; and hollow the looks that she gave: And I knew her then for a joy, a joy that was dead, A hope, a beautiful hope, that my youth had laid in its grave. UNFORGOTTEN How many things, that we would remember, Sweet or sad, or great or small, Do our minds forget! and how one thing only, One little thing endures o er all! For many things have I forgotten, But this one thing can never forget The scent of a primrose, woodland-wet, Long years ago I found in a far land ; A fragile flower that April set, Rainy pink, in her forehead s garland. II How many things by the heart are forgotten ! Sad or sweet, or little or great ! 248 UNFORGOTTEN 249 And how one thing that could mean nothing Stays knocking still at the heart s red gate! For many things has my heart forgotten, But this one thing can never forget The face of a girl, a moment met, Who smiled in my eyes; whom I passed in pity; A flower-like face, with weeping wet, Flung to the streets of a mighty city. UNSUCCESS A modern Poet addresses his Muse, to whom he has devoted the best Years of his Life I NOT here, O beloved! not here let us part, in the city, but there! Out there where the storm can enfold us, on the hills, where its breast is made bare: Its breast, that is rainy and cool as the fern that drips by the fall In the luminous night of the woodland where winds to the waters call. Not here, O beloved! not here! but there! out there in the storm! The rush and the reel of the heavens, the tem pest, whose rapturous arm 250 UNSUCCESS 251 Shall seize us and sweep us together, resistless as passions seize men, Through the rocking world of the woodland, with its multitude music, and then, With the rain on our lips, beloved! in the heart of the night s wild hell, One last, long kiss forever, and forever and ever farewell. II I am sick of the madness of men; of the boot less struggle and strife: Of the pain and the patience of waiting; the scoff and the scorning of life: I am sick of the shapes and the shadows; the sins and the sorrows that crowd The gateways of heart and of brain; of the laughter, the shout that is loud In the mouth of Success Success, that was never for me, ah me! UNSUCCESS And all the wrong and neglect that are heaped, beloved, on thee! I am sick of the whining of failure; the boast and the brag of Success; The vainness of effort and longing; the dreams and the days that oppress: I am sick of them all; but am sickest, am sickest in body and soul, Of the love that I bear thee, beloved ! and only thy death can make whole. Ill Imperfect, imperfect God made us, or the power that men call God. And I think that a Power so perfect, that made us with merely a nod, Could have fashioned us beings less faulty; more able to wear and to bear; Less open to mar and to fracture; less rilled with the stuff of despair: UNSUCCESS 253 Less damned with the unavailing; less empty of all good things The hopes and the dreams that mature not while the clay still to them clings: I am sick of it all, beloved! of the world and the ways of God; The thorns that have pierced thy bosom; the shards of the paths we have trod : I am sick of going and coming; and of love I am sickest of all : The striving, the praying, the dreaming; and the things that never befall. So there in the night, beloved! O fair, and O fugitive! Out there in the storm and the darkness, thou must die so I may live! THE FIRST QUARTER I JANUARY SHAGGY with skins of frost-furred gray and drab, Harsh, hoary hair framing a bitter face, He bends above the dead Year s fireplace Nursing the last few embers of its slab To sullen glow: from pinched lips, cold and crab, The starved flame shrinks; his breath, like a mend.ce, Shrieks in the flue, fluttering its sooty lace, Piercing the silence like an icy stab. From rheum-gnarled knees he rises, slow with cold, And to the frost-bound window, muttering, goes, With iron knuckles knocking on the pane; And, lo! outside, his minions manifold Answer the summons: wolf-like shapes of woes, Hunger and suffering, trooping to his train. 254 THE FIRST QUARTER 255 II FEBRUARY Gray-muffled to his eyes in rags of cloud, His whip of winds forever in his hand, Driving the herded storms along the land, That shake the wild sleet from wild hair and crowd Heaven with tumultuous bulks, he comes, low browed And heavy-eyed; the hail, like stinging sand, Whirls white behind, swept backward by his band Of wild-hoofed gales that o er the world ring loud. All day the tatters of his dark cloak stream Congealing moisture, till in solid ice The forests stand; and, clang on thunderous clang, All night is heard, as in the moon s cold gleam Tightens his grip of frost, his iron vise, The boom of bursting boughs that icicles fang. 256 THE FIRST QUARTER III MARCH This is the tomboy month of all the year, March, who comes shouting o er the winter hills, Waking the world with laughter, as she wills, Or wild halloos, a windflower in her ear. She stops a moment by the half-thawed mere And whistles to the wind, and straightway shrills The hyla s song, and hoods of daffodils Crowd golden round her, leaning their heads to hear. Then through the woods, that drip with all their eaves, Her mad hair blown about her, loud she goes Singing and calling to the naked trees, And straight the oilets of the little leaves Open their eyes in wonder, rows on rows, And the first bluebird bugles to the breeze. LATE NOVEMBER I MORNING DEEP in her broom-sedge, burs and iron-weeds, Her frost-slain asters and dead mallow-moons, Where gray the wilding clematis balloons The brake with puff-balls : where the slow stream leads Her sombre steps: decked with the scarlet beads Of hip and haw: through dolorous maroons And desolate golds, she goes : the wailing tunes Of all the winds about her like wild reeds. The red wrought-iron hues that flush the green Of blackberry briers, and the bronze that stains The oak s sere leaves, are in her cheeks: the gray Of forest pools, clocked thin with ice, is keen In her cold eyes: and in her hair the rain s Chill silver glimmers like a winter ray. 257 258 LATE NOVEMBER II NOON Lost in the sleepy grays and drowsy browns Of woodlands, smoky with the autumn haze, Where dull the last leafed maples, smoulder ing, blaze Like ghosts of wigwam fires, the Month un crowns Her frosty hair, and where the forest drowns The road in shadows, in the rutted ways, Filled full of freezing rain, her robe she lays Of tattered gold, and seats herself and frowns. And at her frown each wood and bushy hill Darkens with prescience of approaching storm, Her soul s familiar fiend, who, with wild broom Of wind and rain, works her resistless will, Sweeping the world, and driving with mad arm The clouds, like leaves, through the tumult uous gloom. LATE NOVEMBER 259 III EVENING The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs, Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still; Grief and decay sit with it, they, whose chill Autumnal touch makes hectic red the rims Of all the oak leaves; desolating dims The ageratum s blue that banks the rill, And splits the milkweed s pod upon the hill, And shakes it free of the last seed that swims. Down goes the day despondent to its close: And now the sunset s hands of copper build A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars The day, in fierce, barbarian repose, Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled, Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars. 260 LATE NOVEMBER IV NIGHT There is a booming in the forest boughs: Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees: The storm is at his wildman revelries, And earth and heaven echo his carouse. Night reels with tumult. And from out her house Of cloud the moon looks, like a face one sees In nightmare, hurrying with pale eyes that freeze, Stooping above with white, malignant brows. The isolated oak upon the hill, That seemed, at sunset, in terrific lands A Titan head black in a sea of blood, Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrill To the vast fingering of innumerable hands, The Spirits of Tempest and of Solitude. ZERO THE gate, on ice-hoarse hinges, stiff with frost, Croaks open ; and harsh wagon-wheels are heard Creaking through cold; the horses breath is furred Around their nostrils; and with snow deep- mossed The hut is barely seen, from which, uptossed, The wood-smoke pillars the icy air unstirred; And every sound, each axe-stroke and each word, Comes as through crystal, then again is lost. The sun strikes bitter on the frozen pane, And all around there is a tingling, tense As is a wire stretched upon a disc Vibrating without sound: It is the strain That Winter plays, to which each tree and fence, It seems, is strung, as t were of ringing bisque. 261 THE JONGLEUR LAST night I lay awake and heard the wind, That madman jongleur of the world of air, Making wild music: now he seemed to fare With harp and lute, so intimately twinned They were as one; now on a drum he dinned, Now on a tabor; now, with blow and blare Of sackbut and recorder, everywhere Shattered the night; then on a sudden thinned To bagpipe wailings as of maniac grief That whined itself to sleep. And then, me- seemed, Out in the darkness, mediaeval-dim, I saw him dancing, like an autumn leaf, In tattered tunic, while around him streamed His lute s wild ribbons thwart the moon s low rim. 262 ON THE HILLTOP THERE is no inspiration in the view. From where this acorn drops its thimbles brown The landscape stretches like a shaggy frown ; The wrinkled hills hang haggard and harsh of hue: Above them hollows the heaven s stony blue, Like a dull thought that haunts some sleep- dazed clown Plodding his homeward way; and, whispering down, The dead leaves dance, a sere and shelterless crew. Let the sick day stagger unto its close, Morose and mumbling, like a hoary crone Beneath her fagots huddled fogs that soon Shall flare the windy west with ashen glows, Like some deep, dying hearth ; and let the lone Night come at last night, and its withered moon. 263 AUTUMN STORM THE wind is rising and the leaves are swept Wildly before it, hundreds on hundreds fall Huddling beneath the trees. With brag and brawl Of storm the day is grown a tavern, kept Of madness, where, with mantles torn and ripped Of flying leaves that beat above it all, The wild winds fight; and, like some half-spent ball, The acorn stings the rout; and, silver-stripped, The milkweed-pod winks an exhausted lamp: Now, in his coat of tatters dark that streams, The ragged rain sweeps stormily this way, With all his clamorous followers clouds that camp Around the hearthstone of the west where gleams The last chill flame of the expiring day. 264 OLD SIR JOHN BALD, with old eyes a blood-shot blue, he comes Into the Boar s-Head Inn: the hot sweat streaks His fulvous face, and all his raiment reeks Of all the stews and all the Eastcheap slums. Upon the battered board again he drums And croaks for sack: then sits, his harsh- haired cheeks Sunk in his hands rough with the grime of weeks, While round the tap one great bluebottle hums. All, all are gone, the old companions they Who made his rogue s world merry: of them all Not one is left. Old, toothless now, and gray Alone he waits : the swagger of that day Gone from his bulk departed even as Doll, And he, his Hal, who broke his heart, they say. 265 THE MISER WITHERED and gray as winter; gnarled and old, With bony hands he crouches by the coals; His beggar s coat is patched and worn in holes; Rags are his shoes : clutched in his claw-like hold A chest he hugs wherein he hoards his gold. Far-heard a bell of midnight slowly tolls: The bleak blasts shake his hut like wailing souls, And door and window chatter with the cold. Nor sleet nor snow he heeds, nor storm nor night. Let the wind howl! and let the palsy twitch His rheum-racked limbs! here s that will make them glow And warm his heart! here s comfort joy and light! How the gold glistens! Rich he is; how rich Only the death that knocks outside shall know. 266 IN AGES PAST I STOOD upon a height and listened to The solemn psalmody of many pines, And with the sound I seemed to see long lines Of mountains rise, blue peak on cloudy blue, And hear the roar of torrents hurling through Riven ravines; or from the crags gaunt spines Pouring wild hair, where, as an eyeball shines, A mountain pool shone, clear and cold of hue. And then my soul remembered felt, how once, In ages past, t was here that I, a Faun, Startled an Oread at her morning bath, Who stood revealed; her beauty, like the sun s, Veiled in her hair, heavy with dews of dawn, Through which, like stars, burnt blue her eyes bright wrath. 267 UNTO WHAT END UNTO what end, I ask, unto what end Is all this effort, this unrest and toil? Work that avails not? strife and mad turmoil? Ambitions vain that rack our hearts and rend? Did labor but avail! did it defend The soul from its despair, who would recoil From sweet endeavor then? work that were oil To still the storms that in the heart contend ! But still to see all effort valueless! To toil in vain year after weary year At Song! beholding every other Art Considered more than Song s high holiness, The difficult, the beautiful and dear! Doth break my heart, ah God ! doth break my heart! 268 ELFIN I WHEN wildflower blue and wild flower white The wildflowers lay their heads together, And the moon-moth glimmers along the night, And the wandering firefly flares its light, And the full moon rises broad and bright, Then, then it is elfin weather. II And fern and flower on top of the hill Are a fairy wood where the fairies camp ; And there, to the pipe of the cricket shrill, And the owl s bassoon or the whippoorwill, They whirl their wildest and trip their fill By the light of the glowworm s lamp. 269 270 ELFIN III And the green tree-toad and the katydid Are the henchmen set to guard their dance; At whose cry they creep neath the dewy lid Of a violet s eye, or close lie hid In a bluebell s ear, if a mortal mid The moonlit woods should chance. IV And the forest-fly with its gossamer wings, And filmy body of rainbow dye, Is the ouphen steed each elfin brings, Whereon by the light of the stars he swings, When the dance is done and the barn-cock sings, And the dim dawn streaks the sky. AUTHORITIES THE unpretentious flowers of the woods, That rise in bright and banded brotherhoods, Waving us welcome, and with kisses sweet Laying their lives down underneath our feet, Lesson my soul more than the tomes of man, Packed with the lore of ages, ever can, In love and truth, hope and humility, And such unselfishness as to the bee, Lifting permissive petals dripping nard, Yields every sweet up, asking no reward. The many flowers of wood and field and stream, Filling our hearts with wonder and with dream, That know no ceremony, yet that are Attended of such reverence as that star That punctual point of flame, which, to our eyes, 271 272 AUTHORITIES Leads on the vast procession of the skies, Sidereal silver, glittering in the west Compels, assertive of heaven s loveliest. Where may one find suggestion simpler set Than in the radius of a violet ? Or more authentic loveliness than glows In the small compass of a single rose ? Or more of spiritual thought than perfumes from The absolute purity of a lily-bloom ? EPILOGUE We have ivorshipped two gods from our earliest youth, Soul of my soul and heart of me ! Young forever and true as truth The gods of Beauty and Poesy. Sweet to us are their tyrannies, Sweet their chains that have held us long, For God s own self is a part of these, Part of our gods of Beauty and Song. What to us if the world revile ! What to us if its heart rejects ! It may scorn our gods, or curse with a smile, The gods we worship, that it neglects : 273 2/4 EPILOGUE Nothing to us is its blessing or curse ; Less than nothing its hate and wrong : For Love smiles down through the universe, Smiles on our gods of Beauty and Song. We go our ways : and the dreams we dream People our path and cheer us on j And ever before is the golden gleam, The star we follow, the streak of dawn : Nothing to us is the word men say j For a wiser word still keeps us strong, God s word, that makes fine fire of clay, That shaped our gods of Beauty and Song. OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CAWEIN DAYS AND DREAMS RED LEAVES AND ROSES POEMS OF NATURE AND LOVE (Out of print) INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL MOODS AND MEMORIES (Out of print) MYTH AND ROMANCE UNDERTONES (Out of print) SHAPES AND SHADOWS (Out of print) ONE DAY AND ANOTHER (Out of print) IDYLLIC MONOLOGUES (Out of print) THE GARDEN OK DREAMS THE WHITE SNAKE Translations from the German Poets WEEDS BY THE WALL KENTUCKY POEMS With an Introduction by EDMUND GOSSE A VOICE ON THE WIND THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. -1 7 193 MAY c inyn 1 o wrAi n ,j iy/u ~/O REC D ID JUN 3 70 -3 PM 7 7, LD 21-95m-7, 37 Carein, j?5l& V8, :& Of 27345^ 953 G38 MAY 19. tt ... *lu n :^_ b \^jj A^**O v UCT 7 193 273454 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY