Chapter 3

March is but a blust'ring liar, April a sad love, May a milkmaid from the byre Flirting in the grove. June is rich in many blossoms, She's the one I'll woo; Health swells in her sunny bosoms, She's my sweetheart true.

THE JESSAMINE AND THE MORNING-GLORY.

I.

On a sheet of silver the morning-star lay Fresh, white as a baby child, And laughed and leaped in his lissome way, On my parterre of flowers smiled. For a morning-glory's spiral bud Of shell-coned tallness slim Stood ready to burst her delicate hood And bloom on the dawning dim: A princess royal in purple born To beauty and pride in the balmy morn.

II.

And she shook her locks at the morning-star And her raiment scattered wide; Low laughed at a hollyhock's scimetar, Its jewels of buds to deride. The pomegranate near, with fingers of flame, The hot-faced geraniums nigh, Their proud heads bowed to the queenly dame For they knew her state was high: The fuchsia like a bead of blood Bashfully blushed in her silvery hood.

III.

All wit that this child of the morning light Was queen of the morn and them, That the orient star in his beams of white Was her prince in a diadem; For lavish he showered those pearls that flash And cluster the front of her smock; From his lordly fingers of rays did dash Down zephyrs her crib to rock. But a jessamine pale 'neath the arbor grew, Meek, selfless, and sweet, and a virgin true.

IV.

But the morning-glory disdained her birth, Of her chastity made a scorn: "I marvel," she said, "if thy mother earth Was not sick when thou wast born! Thou art pale as an infant an hour dead-- Wan thing, dost weary our eye!" And she weakly laughed and stiffened her head And turned to her love i' the sky. But the jessamine turned to the rose beside With a heavy glance and but sadly sighed.

V.

And the orient grew to a wealth of bars 'Neath which foam-fires churned, And the princess proud saw her lord of stars In a torrid furnace burned; And the giant of life with his breath of flame Glared down with one red eye, And 'neath his breath this gorgeous dame In her diamonds did wilt and die; But the jessamine fragrant waxed purer with light; For my lady's bosom I culled it that night.

THE HEREMITE TOAD.

A human skull in a church-yard lay; For the church was a wreck, and the tombstones old On the graves of their dead were rotting away To the like of their long-watched mould.

And an heremite toad in this desolate seat Had made him an hermitage long agone, Where the ivy frail with its delicate feet Could creep o'er his cell of bone.

And the ground was dark, and the springing dawn, When it struck from the tottering stones of each grave A glimmering silver, the dawn drops wan This skull and its ivy would lave.

* * * * * * *

The night her crescent had thinly hung From a single star o'er the shattered wall, And its feeble light on the stone was flung Where I sat to hear him call.

And I heard this heremite toad as he sate In the gloom of his ghastly hermitage, To himself and the gloom all hollowly prate, Like a misanthropic sage:

"O, beauty is well and is wealth to all, But wealth without beauty _makes_ fair; And beauty with wealth brings wooers tall Whom she snares in her golden hair.

"Tho' beauty be well and be wealth to all, And wealth without beauty draw men, Beauty must come to the vaulted wall, And what is wealth to her then?...

"This skeleton face was beautiful erst; These sockets could mammonites sway; So she barter'd her beauty for gold accurs'd-- But both have vanished away.

"But beauty is well when the mind it reveals More beautiful is than the head; For beauty and wealth the tomb congeals, But the mind grows lovelier dead."

And he blinked at the moon from his grinning cell, And the darnels and burdocks around Bowed down in the night, and I murmured "Well!" For I deemed his judgment sound.

THE HEART OF SPRING.

I.

Whiten, O whiten, ye clouds of fleece! Whiten like lilies floating above, Blown wild about like a flock of white geese! But never, O never; so cease! so cease! Never as white as the throat of my love!

II.

Blue-black night on the mountain peaks, Blacker the locks of my maiden love! Silvery star 'mid the evening streaks Over the torrent that flashes and breaks, Brighter the eyes of my laughing love!

III.

Horn of a new moon golden 'mid gold, Broken, fluted in the tarn's close skies; Shattered and beaten, wave-like and cold, Crisper my love's locks fold on fold, Cooler and brighter where dreaming she lies!

IV.

Silvery star o'er the precipice snow, Mist in the vale where the rivulet sings, Dropping from ledge to ledge below, Where we stood in the roseate glow, Softer the voice of her whisperings!

V.

Sound o' May winds in the blossoming trees, Sweeter the breeze my love's breath brings! Song of wild birds on the morning breeze, Song o' wild birds and murmur o' wild bees, Sweeter my love's voice when she sings!

VI.

To the star of dawning bathed with dew, Blow, moony Sylph, your bugle of gold! Blow thro' the hyaline over the blue, Blow from the sunset the morning lands thro', Let the star of love of our love be told!

THE OLD HOUSE BY THE MERE.

Five rotten gables look upon Wan rotting roses and rank weeds, Old iron gates on posts of stone, Dim dingles where the vermin breeds. Five rotten gables black appear Above bleak yews and cedars sad, And thence they see the sleepy mere In lazy lilies clad.

At morn the slender dragon-fly, A burnished ray of light, darts past; The knightly bee comes charging by Winding a surly blast. At noon amid the fervid leaves The quarreling insects gossip hot, And thro' the grass the spider weaves A weft with silver shot.

At eve the hermit cricket rears His vesper song in shrillful shrieks; The bat a blund'ring voyage steers Beneath the sunset's streaks. The slimy worm gnaws at the bud, The Katydid talks dreamily; The sullen owl in monkish hood Chants in the old beech tree.

At night the blist'ring dew comes down And lies as white as autumn frost Upon the green, upon the brown, You'd deem each bush a ghost. The crescent moon with golden prow Plows thro' the frothy cloud and 's gone; A large blue star comes out to glow Above the house alone.

The oozy lilies lie asleep On glist'ring beds of welt'ring leaves; The starlight through the trees doth peep, And fairy garments weaves. And in the mere, all lily fair, A maiden's corpse floats evermore, Naked, and in her raven hair Wrapped o'er and o'er.

And when the clock of yon old town Peals midnight o'er the fenny heath, In haunted chambers up and down Marches the pomp of Death: And stiff, stiff silks make rustlings, Sweep sable satins murmuringly; And then a voice so sweetly sings An olden melody.

And foam-white creatures flit and dance Along the dusty galleries, With long, loose locks that strangely glance And demon-glaring eyes. But in one chamber, when the moon Casts her cold silver wreath on wreath, Holds there proud state on ghastly throne The skeleton Death.

SUBSTRATUM.

Hear you r o music in the creaks Made by the sallow grasshopper, Who in the hot weeds sharply breaks The mellow dryness with his cheer? Or did you by the hearthstones hear The cricket's kind, shrill strain when frost Worked mysteries of silver near Upon the casement's panes, and lost Without the gate-post seemed a sheeted ghost?

Or through the dank, dim Springtide's night Green minstrels of the marshlands tune Their hoarse lyres in the pale twilight, Hailing the sickle of the moon From flag-thronged pools that glassed her lune? Or in the Summer, dry and loud, The hard cicada whirr aboon His long lay in a poplar's cloud, When the thin heat rose wraith-like in a shroud?

The cloud that lids the naked moon, And smites the myriad leaves with night Of stormy lashes, livid strewn With veins of branched and splintered light; The fruitful glebe with blossoms white, The thistle's purple plume; the tears Pearling the matin buds' delight, Contain a something, it appears, 'Neath their real selves--a poetry that cheers.

Nor scoff at those who on the wold See fairies whirling in the shine Of prodigal moons, whose lavish gold Paves wood-ways, forests wild with vine, When all the wilderness with wine Of tipsy dew is dazed; nor say Our God's restricted to confine His wonders solely to the day, That yields the abstract tangible to clay.

Ponder the entrance of the Morn When from her rubric forehead far Shines one clean star, and the dead tarn, The wooded river's red as war: Where arid splinters of the scar Lock horns above a blue abyss, How roses prank each icy bar, While piled aloft the mountains press, Fling dawn below from many a hoary tress.

The jutting crags, all stubborn-veined With iron life, where eaglets scream In dizzy flocks, and cleave the stained Mist-rainbows of the mountain stream; Thus you will drink the thickest cream Of nature if you do not scan The bald external; and must deem A plan existent in a plan-- As life in thrifty trees or soul in man.

ALONG THE OHIO.

Athwart a sky of brass rich ribs of gold; A bullion bulk the wide Ohio lies; Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold, The purple hill-tops rise.

And lo! the crescent of a crystal moon, And great cloud-feathers flushed with crimson light Drifting above the pureness of her lune, Rent from the wings of night.

A crescent boat slips o'er the burnished stream; A silver wake, that broadens far behind, Follows in ripples, and the paddles gleam Against the evening wind.

So, in this solitude and evening hush, Again to me the Old Kentucky glooms Behold the red man lurking in yon bush In paint and eagle plumes.

And now the breaking of the brittle brush-- An altered forehead hirsute swells in view, And now comes stealing down the river's gush The dip of the canoe.

The wigwams glimmer in night's settling waves, And, wildly clad, around the camp-fire's glow Sit long-haired chieftains 'mid their wily braves, Each grasping his war-bow.

But now yon boat on fading waters fades; The ostrich-feathered clouds have lost their light, And from the West, like somber sachem shades, Gallop the shades of night.

The broad Ohio wavers 'neath the stars, And many murmurs whisper 'mid the woods-- Tumultuous mournings of dead warriors For their lost solitudes.

And like a silver curl th' Ohio lies Among the earth's luxuriance of hair; Majestic as she met the red man's eyes-- As beautiful and fair.

No marvel that the warrior's love waxed flame Fighting for thee, Kentucky, till he wound Inseparably 'round thee that old name Of dark and bloody ground!

But peace to those wild braves whose bones are thine! And peace to those rude pioneers whose moon Of glory rose, 'mid stars of lesser shine, In name of Daniel Boone!

"Peace! peace!" the lips of all thy forests roar; The rivers mutter peace unto thy strand: Thy past is dead, and let us name thee o'er, THE HOSPITABLE LAND!

THE OHIO FALLS.

Here on this jutting headland, where the trees Spread a dusk carpet for the sun to cast And count his golden guineas on, we'll stay; For hence is the best prospect of the Falls, Whose roar no more astounds the startled ear, As when we bent and marked it from the bridge Seething beneath and bounding like a steed-- A tameless steed with mane of flying spray-- Between the pillars rising sheer above. But mark how soft its clamor now is grown, Incessant rush like that of vernal groves When, like some sweet surprise, a wand'ring wind, Precursor of the coming rain, rides down From a gray cloud and sets their leafy tongues A-gabbing of the fresh, impending shower.

There runs the dam, and where its dark line cuts The river's sheen, already you may see The ripples glancing to the fervid sun, As if the waves had couched a hundred spears And tossed a hundred plumes of fleecy foam In answer to the challenge of the Falls, Blown on his bugle from the battlements Of his subaqueous city's rocky walls. And now you see their maddened coursers charge, Hear wavy hoof-strokes on the jagged stones, That pave the pathway of the current, beat, While billowing they ride to ringing lists, With shout and yell, and toss their hundred plumes, And shock their riply spears in tournament Upon the opposing billows' shining shields. Now sinks a pennon, but 'tis raised again; There falls or breaks a spear or sparkling sword; A shattered helmet flies in flakes of foam And on the frightened wind hisses away: And o'er it all you hear the sound, the roar Of waves that fall in onset or that strive.

On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop! On, on, along the sandy banks that fling Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay The riotous waves that ride and hurl along In casque and shield and wind their wat'ry horns.

And there where thousand oily eddies whirl, And turn and turn like busy wheels of steel, Is the Big Eddy, whose deep bottom none As yet have felt with sounding plummet-line. Like a huge giant, wily in its strength, The Eddy lies; and bending from the shore The spotted sycamores have looked and looked, Watching his motions as a school boy might A sleeping serpent coiled upon his path. So long they've watched that their old backs have grown Hump'd, gnarl'd, and crooked, nor seem they this to heed, But gaze and gaze, and from the glossy waves Their images stare back their wonderment. Mayhap they've seen the guardian Genius lie At its dark bottom in an oozy cave Of shattered rock, recumbent on his mace Of mineral; his locks of dripping green Circling a crown of ore; his fishy eyes Dull with the monotony of his aqueous realms.

But when the storm's abroad and smites the waves With stinging lashes of the myriad rain, Or scars with thunder some ancestral oak, Sire of a forest, then he wakes in wrath, And on the dark foundations of the stream Stands monarch of the flood in iron crown, And murmurs till the tempest fiends above Stand stark with awe, and all the eddy breaks To waves like those whose round and murky bulks. Ribbed white with foam, wallow like battened swine Along yon ridge of ragged rock o'erstrewn With petrifactions of Time's earliest dawn; Mollusks and trilobites and honey-combs Of coral white; and here and there a mass Of what seems writhing reptiles there convolved, And in one moment when the change did come, Which made and unmade continents and seas, That teemed and groaned with dire monstrosities, Had froze their glossy spines to sable stones.

There where uprises a dun knoll o'erstrewn With black and rotten stumps in the mid river, Erst rose an island green and beautiful With willows, beeches, dappled sycamores; Corn Island, on whose rich and fertile soil The early pioneers a colony Attempted once to found, ere ever this Fair "City of the Falls"--now echoing to The tingling bustle of its busy trade-- Was dreamed of. Here the woodman built His rude log cabin; here he sowed his maize; Here saw it tassel 'neath the Summer's smile, And glance like ranks of feathered Indians thro' The misty vistas of the broken woods; Here reaped and sheaved its wealth of ivory ears When Autumn came like a brown Indian maid Tripping from the pink sunset o'er the hills, That blushed for love and cast beneath her feet Untold of gold in leaves and yellow fruit. Here lived the pioneer and here he died, And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth Of that long isle which now disparted stands, And nothing save a bed of limestone rock,-- Where in the quarry you may see the blast Spout heavenward the dust and dirt and stone, And flap and pound its echoes 'round the hills Like giant strokes of some huge airy hammer,-- And that lone mound of stumpy earth to show That there once stood an isle as rich and fair As any isle that rises up to kiss The sun and dream in tropic seas of balm.

There lies the other half of what was once Corn Island; a broad channel flows between. And this low half, mantled with a dwarf growth Of what was once high brakes and forest land, Goose Island now is named. In the dim morn, Ere yet the East assumes her faintest blush. Here may you hear the melancholy snipe Piping, or see her paddling in the pools That splash the low bed of the rocky isle.

Once here the Indian stole in natural craft From brush to brush, his head plumes like a bird Flutt'ring and nodding 'mid the undergrowth; In his brown hand the pliant, polished bow, And at his back his gaudy quiver filled With tufted arrows headed with blue flint. And while the deep flamingo colored West Flamed on his ruddy cheek its airy fire, Strung his quick bow and thro' the gray wild goose, That rose with clamor from the rushy pool, Launched a fleet barb, crested with quills--perchance Plucked yestere'en from its dead mate's gray wing To decorate the painted shaft that should Dabble to-day their white in its mate's blood;-- It falling, gasping at its moccasined feet, Its wild life breathed away, while the glad brave Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills Answered his exultation with a whoop.

THE RUINED MILL.

There is the ruined water-mill With its rotten wheel, that stands as still As its image that sleeps in the glassy pool Where the water snake coils dim and cool In the flaky light of the setting sun Showering his gold in bullion. And the languid daisies nod and shine By the trickling fall in a starry line; The drowsy daisies with eyes of gold-- Large as the eyes of a queen of old Dreaming of revels by day and night-- Coyly o'erdropped with lashes white. The hawk sails high in the sleepy air, The buzzard on wings as strong and fair Circles and stoops 'neath the lazy cloud, And crows in the wood are cawing aloud.

Will ye enter with me this ruined mill When the shades of night its chambers fill, Stand and lurk in the heavy dark Like scowling fiends, each eye a spark, A spark of moonlight shot thro' gloom? While a moist, rank, stifling, dead perfume Of rotting timbers and rotting grain, And roofs all warped with the sun and rain Makes of the stagnant air a cell, In the haunted chambers broods like a spell? A spell that makes the awed mind run To the thoughts of a hidden skeleton, A skeleton ghastly and livid and lank 'Neath the mossy floors in a cellar dank, Grinning and glow'ring, moisture wet, In its hollow eyes a mad regret.

Or with me enter when the evening star In the saffron heaven is sparkling afar, In all its glory of light divine, Like a diamond bathed in kingly wine. Or when the heavens hang wild and gray, And the chilly clouds are hurrying away Like the driven leaves of an Autumn day; When the night-rain sounds on the sodden roof, And the spider lulls in his dusty woof; When the wet wind whines like a hound that's lashed, 'Round the crazy angles strongly dashed, Or wails in a cranny--'tis she who plays On her airy harp sad, olden lays, And sings and moans in a room above Of a vague despair and a blighted love. You will see her sit on the shattered sill, Her sable tresses dropped loose at will; And down in the West 'neath the storm's black bank A belt of wild green, cold, livid, and lank, And a crescent moon, like a demon's barque, Into the green dips a horn from the dark, While a lurid light of ghoulish gold On the eldrich creature falls strangely cold. Her insane eyes bulge mad with desire, And her face's beauty is darkly dire; For she sees in the pool, that solidly lies 'Neath the mill's great wheel and the stormy skies, Her murdered lover lie faint and white, A haunting horror, a loadstone's might Drawing and dragging her soul from its seat To the glimmering ice of his ghastly feet.

FROST.

White artist he, who, breezeless nights, From tingling stars jocosely whirls, A harlequin in spangled tights, His wand a pot of pounded pearls.

The field a hasty pallet; for, In thin or thick, with daub and streak, It stretches from the barn-gate's bar To the bleached ribbon of the creek.

A great geometer is he; For, on the creek's diaphanous silk, Sphere, cone, and star exquisitely He's drawn in crystal lines of milk.

Most delicate, his talent keen On casement panes he lavishes, In many a Lilliputian scene Of vague white hives and milky bees,

That sparkling in still swarms delight, Or bow the jeweled bells of flowers;-- Of dim, deep landscapes of the night, Hanging down limpid domes quaint showers

Of feathery stars and meteors Above an upland's glimmering ways, Where gambol 'neath the feverish stars The erl-king and the fleecy fays.

Or last, one arabesque of ferns, Chrysanthemums and mistletoe, And death-pale roses bunched in urns That with an innate glory glow.

In leafless woodlands saturnine, Where reckless winds, like goblins mad, Screech swinging in each barren vine, His wagship shapes a lesson sad:

When slyly touched by his white hand Of Midas-magic, forests old Dariuses of pomp then stand Barbaric-crowned with living gold....

Patrician state, plebeian blood Soon foster sybarites, and they, Squand'ring their riches, wood by wood, Die palsied wrecks debauched and gray.

INVOCATION.

I.

O Life! O Death! O God! Have I not striven? Have I not known thee, God, As thy stars know Heaven? Have I not held thee true, True as thy deepest, Sweet and immaculate blue, Of nights that feel thy dew? Have I not _known_ thee true, O God that keepest?

II.

O God, my father, God! Didst give me fire To rise above the clod, And soar, aspire! What tho' I strive and strive, And all my life says live, The sneerful scorn of men But beats it down again; And, O! sun-centered high, O God! grand poet! Beneath thy tender sky Each day new Keatses die, And thou dost know it!

III.