Chapter 3

1.

Now rests the season in forgetfulness, Careless in beauty of maturity; The ripened roses 'round brown temples, she Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess: Now Time grants night the more and day the less; The gray decides; and brown Dim golds and reds in dulling greens express Themselves and broaden as the year goes down. Sadder the croft where, thrusting gray and high Their balls of seeds, the hoary onions die, Where, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie: Deeper each wilderness; Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along The lonesome west; sadder the song Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow, Deeper and dreamier, aye! Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky Above lone orchards where the cider-press Drips and the russets mellow.

Nature grows liberal; under woodland leaves The beech-nuts' burs their little pockets poke, Plump with the copper of the nuts that choke; Above our bristling way the spider weaves A glittering web for which the Dawn designs Thrice twenty rows of sparkles. By the oak, That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines, The acorn thimble, smoothly broke, Shines by its saucer. On sonorous pines The far wind organs; but the forest here To no weak breeze hath woke; Far off the wind, but crumbling near and near,-- Each tingling twig expectant, and the gray Surmise of heaven pilots it the way, Rippling the leafy spines, Until the wildwood, one exultant sway, Booms, and the sunlight, arrowing through it, shines Visible applause you hear.

How glows the garden! though the white mists keep The vagabond in flowers reminded of Decay that comes to slay in open love, When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep, Unheeding such their cardinal colors leap Gay in the crescent of the blade of death; Spaced innocents in swaths he weeps to reap, Waiting his scythe a breath, To gravely lay them dead with one last sweep.-- Long, long admire Their splendors manifold:-- The scarlet salvia showered with spurts of fire; Cascading lattices, dark vines that creep, Nightshade and cypress; there the marigold Burning--a shred of orange sunset caught And elfed in petals that eve's goblins brought From elfland; there, predominant red, The dahlia lifts its head By the white balsams' red-bruised horns of honey, In humming spaces sunny. The crickets singing dirges noon and night For morn-born flowers, at dusk already dead, For dusk-dead flowers weep; While tired Summer white, Where yonder aster whispering odor rocks,-- The withered poppies knotted in her locks,-- Sighs, 'mong her sleepy hollyhocks asleep.

2.

The hips were reddening on the rose, The haws hung slips of fire; We went the woodland way that goes Up hills of branch and briar. The hooked thorn held her gown and seemed Imploring her be staying The sunlight of herself that beamed Beside it gently swaying.

Low bent the golden saxifrage; Its yellow bells like bangles The foxglove fluttered. Like a page-- From out the rail-fence angles-- With crimson plume the sumach, hosed In Lincoln green, attended My lady of the elder, posed In blue-black jewels splendid.

And as we mounted up the hill The rocky path that stumbled Spread smooth; and all the day was still And odorous with umbled Tops of wild-carrots drying gray; And there, soft-sunned before us, An orchard dwindling away With dappled boughs bent o'er us.

An orchard where the pippin fell Worm-bitten, bruised, and dusty; And hornet-stung, each like a bell, The Bartlett ripened rusty; The smell of tawny peach and plum, That offered luscious yellow; Of wasp and bee the hidden hum, Made all the warm air mellow.

And on we went where many-hued Hung wild the morning-glory, Their blue balloons in shadows, dewed With frost-white dew-drops hoary; In bush and burgrass far away Beneath us stretched the valley, Cleft by one creek that laughed with day And babbled musically.

The brown, the bronze, the gray, the red Of weed and briar ran riot Flush to dark woodland walls that led To nooks of whispering quiet. Long, feathering bursts of golden-rod Ran golden woolly patches-- Bloom-sunsets of the withered sod The dying summer catches.

Then o'er the hills, loose-tumbling rolled-- O'erleaping expectation-- The sunset, flaming marigold, A system's conflagration: And homeward turning, she and I Went as one self in being-- God met us in the earth and sky And Love had purged our seeing.

3.

Say, my dear, O my dear, These are the eves for speaking; There is no wight will work us spite Beneath the sunset's streaking.

Yes, my dear, O my dear, These are the eves for telling; To walk together in starry weather Ere springs o' the moon are welling.

O my dear, yes, my dear, These are the dusks for staying; When twilight dreams of night who seems Among long-purples praying.

"No, my dear!"--"Yes, my dear!" These are the nights to kiss it Times twice-a-twenty: they grow a-plenty On lips that will not miss it.

4.

To dream where silence sleeps A sorrow's sleep that sighs; Where all heaven's azure peeps Blue from one wildflower's eyes Where, in reflecting deeps,-- Of cloudier woods and skies,-- Another gray world lies.

Divining God from things Humble as weeds and bees; From songs the free bird sings Learn all are vain but these; In light-delighted springs, Wise, star-familiar trees, Seek love's philosophies.

5.

Here where the days are dimmest, Each old, big-hearted tree Gives bounteous sympathy; Here where dead nights sit grimmest In druid company; Here where the days are dimmest.

Leaves of my lone communion, Leaves; and the listening sigh Of silence wanders by; While on my soul the union Is--of the wood and sky-- Leaves of my lone communion.

And eyes with tears are aching, While life waits wistfully For love that may not be: In visions vain of waking Lives all it can not see.-- And eyes with tears are aching, And eyes with tears are aching.

6.

And here alone I sit and see it so. A vale of willows swelling into knobs, A bulwark eastward. Sloping low Westward the scooping waters flow Under a rocky culvert's arch that throbs With clanging wheels of transient trains that go Screaming to north and south. Here all the weary waters, stagnant stayed, Sleep at the culvert's mouth; The current's hungry hiccup still afraid, Haply, that I should never know The secret 'neath the striate scum o' the stream The devil and the dream, I, dropping gravels so the echo sob Mocking and thin as music of a shade In shades that wring from rocks a hollow woe, Complaining phantoms of faint whispers rob.

There, up the valley where the lank grass leaps Blades each a crooked kris, The currents strike or miss Dream melodies: No wide-belled mallow sleeps Monandrous flowers oval as a kiss; No mandrake curling convolutions up Loops heavy blossoms, each a conical cup That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent's hiss; No tiger-lily, where the crayfish play, Mirrors a savage face, a copper hue Streaked with a crimson dew; No dragon-fly in endless error keeps Sewing the pale-gold gown of day With tangled stitches of a burning blue,-- Whose brilliant body but a needle is, An azurn and incarnate ray:-- But here, where haunted with the shade, The dull stream stales and dies, Are beauties none or few, Such sinister and new; And one at widest noon-gaze shrinks afraid Beneath the timid skies; So, if you ask me why I answer this:--

You know not; only where the kildees wade There in the foamy scum, There where the wet rocks ail,-- Low rocks to which the water-reptiles come, Basking pied bodies in the brindled shade,-- Dim as a bubble's prism on the grail Below, an angled sparkle rayed, While lights and shadows aid From breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss, Deep down, a sense of wavy features quail The heart; with lips that writhe and fade And clench; tough, rooty limbs that twist and cross, And flabby hair of smoky moss.

A brimstone sunset. And at night The twinkling flies in will-o'-the-wisp dance wheel Through copse and open, all a gnomish green. I hear the water, and the wave is white There where the boulder plants a keel, And each taunt ripple 's sheen.-- Where instant insects dot The dark with spurts of sulphur--bright, Beneath the hazy height, No bitter-almond trees make wan the night, Building bloom ridges of a ghostly lustre, But white-tops tossing cluster over cluster: Huge-seen within that twilight spot-- As if a hill-born giant, half asleep, Had dropped his night-cap while he drove his sheep Foldward through fallow browns And foxy grays,--a something crowns The knoll--is it the odorous peak Of one June-savory timothy stack?

Now, one dead ash behind, A weak moon shows a withered cheek Of Quaker quiet, wasted o'er the vines' Appentice ruins roofing pillared pines: Beyond these, back and back, An oak-wood stretches black-- And here the whining were-wolves of the wind Snuff snarling: but their eyes are blind, Although their fangs are fierce; And though they never pierce Beyond the bad, bedevilled woodland streak, I hear them, yes, I hear A padding o' footsteps near, A prowling pant in ear And can not fly!--yes!--no!-- What horror holds me?--That uncoiling slow, Sure, mastering chimera there, Hooping firm unseen feelers 'round my neck A binding, bruising coil ... The waters burn and boil; The fire-flies the dappled darkness fleck With impish dabs of blazing wizard's oil ... Deep, deep into the black eye of the beck I stare, magnetic fixed, and little reck If all the writhing shadow slips, Dripping around me, to the eyes and hips, Where grinning murder leers with lupine lips.

7.

What can it mean for me? what have I done to her? I in our freedom of love as a sun to her; She to our liberty goddess and slumberless Moon of the stars shining silver and numberless: Who on my life, that was thorny and showery, Came--and made dewyness; smiled--and made flowery; Mine! the affinitized one of humanity: Mine! the elected of soul over vanity-- What have I done to her, what have I done!

What can it mean for me? what have I said to her? I, who have idolized, worshipped, and pled to her; Sung for her, laughed for her, sorrowed and sighed for her, Lived for her, hated and gladly had died for her! See; she has written me thus! she has written me-- Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me! Would they had shrivelled or ever they'd read of it! Eyes, that are wide to the bitterest dread of it-- What have I said to her, what have I said!

What shall I make of it, I, who am trembling Fearful of loss?--Oh, enamored, dissembling Flame!--of the candle that burning, but guttering, Flatters the moth that comes circling and fluttering Out of the summer night; trusting, importunate, Quitting cool flowers for this--O unfortunate!-- Such has she been to me making me such to her, Slaying me, saying I never was much to her-- What shall I make of it, what can I make!

Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless: I, with no thought but the heavens that lock us in, Set naked feet 'mid the cottonmouth, moccasin Under wild-roses, the Cherokee, eying me:-- In the sweet blue with the egrets that, flying me, Loosened like blooms from magnolias, rose slenderly White and pale pink; where the mocking-bird tenderly Sang, making vistas of mosses melodious, Wandered unheeding my steps in the odious Slime that was venom; I followed the fiery Violet curve of thy star falling wiry-- So was I lost in night, thus am undone!...

Have I not told to her--living alone for her-- Purposed unfoldments of love I had sown for her Here in the soil of my soul? their variety Endless; and ever she answered with piety.-- See! it has come to this ... all the tale's suavity At the ninth chapter grows stupid with gravity; Duller than death all our beautiful history-- Close it!--the _finis_ is more than a mystery.-- Yes, I will tell her this; yes, I will tell.

8.

I seem to hear her speak and see That blue-hung room. Her perfume comes From lavender folds vined dreamily-- A-blossom with brocaded blooms,-- A stuff of Orient looms.

Again I hear her speak and back, Where steals the showery sunlight, piles A whatnot dainty bric-a-brac Beside a tall clock; each glazed tile's Blue-patterned profile smiles.

I hear her say, "Ah, had we known, Could what has been have ever been?-- And now!"... How hurt the hard ache shone In eyes whose sadness seemed to lean On something far, unseen!

And as in sleep my own self seems Outside my suffering self: I flush In mists of undetermined dreams; Behold her musing in that hush Of lilac light and plush.

Smiling but tortured. Yes, I feel Despite that face, not seeming sad, In those calm temples thoughts like steel Remorseless bore. I had gone mad Had I once deemed her glad.

Unconsciously, with eyes that yearn To pierce beyond the present far, Searching some future hope, I turn;-- There in her garden one fierce star, Beyond the window's bar,--

Vermilion as a storm-sunk sun,-- A phyllocactus?--all the life Of torrid middays in but one Rich crimson bloom--flames red as strife; And near it, rankly rife--

Deep coreopsis?--heavy hues Of soft seal-bronze and satiny gold, Sway girandoles whose jets of dews Burn points of starlight diamond-cold, Warm-colored, manifold.

She dare not speak; I can not. Yet An intercourse 'twixt brain and brain Goes feverish on.--Crushed, smelling wet, Through silken curtains drift again Verbena-scents of rain.

I in the doorway turn and stay; Angry her cameo beauty mark Set in that smile--Oh! will she say No farewell? no regret? one spark Of hope to cheer the dark?

That sepia-sketch--conceive it so-- A roguish head with jaunty eyes Laughing beneath a rose-chapeau, Silk-masked, unmasking--it denies The full-faced flower surprise;

Hung o'er her davenport.... We read The true beneath the false; perceive The smile that hides the ache.--Indeed! _Whose_ soul unmasks?... not mine!--I grieve Here, here, but laugh and leave....

9.

Beyond the knotty apple-trees That fade about the old brick-barn, Its tattered arms and tattered knees A scare-crow tosses to the breeze Among the shocks of corn.

All things grow gray in earth and sky; The cold wind sounding drearily Makes all the rusty branches fly; The rustling leaves a-rotting lie; The year is waning wearily.

At night I hear the far wild geese Honk in frost-bitten heavens, under Arcturus. Though I seem to cease Outside myself and sleep in peace, I drowse awake and wonder.

I know torn thistles by the creek Hang hairy with the frost; the tented Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak And ghostly in the moonlight, weak In hollows bitter-scented.

Dream back the ways we strolled at morn Through woods of summer ever singing; Moon-trysts beneath the crooked thorn, The tasselled meads of cane and corn Their restless shadows swinging....

I stand and oar our boat among The dripping lilies of the river; I reach her hat the grape-vine long Struck in the stream; we sing a song, That song ... I wake and shiver.

And then my feverish mind reverts To our sad words and sadder parting In days long gone; and, oh! it hurts Within here, for the soul asserts Mine the fool fault from starting.

And I must lie awake and think Of her with such regrets as gladly No unrebuking conscience shrink; And hear the wild-fowls' clangor sink Through plaintive starlight sadly.

When all are overflown and deep The stoic night is left forsaken, For company I well would weep, Since all my spirit fears to sleep, Sleep of such visions shaken.

Grave visions of dead deeds that flaw Our waking hours, ever haunting; Else were we, lacking love and law, Rude scare-crow things of sticks and straw Undaunted and undaunting.

10.

The sun a splintered splendor was In sober trees that broke and blurred, That afternoon we went together In droning hum and whirling buzz, Where hard the dinning locust whirred, Through fields of golden-rod a-feather.

So sweet it was to look and lean To your young face and feel the light Of eyes that fondled mine unsaddened! The laugh that left lips more serene; The words that blossomed like the white Life-everlasting there and gladdened.

Maturing Summer, you were fraught With wiser beauties then than now Parades rich Autumn's red November; This stuns: there dreams no subtle thought As then on hinting bush and bough-- But now I am alone, remember.

11.

Through iron-weeds and roses And bronzing beech and oak, Old porches it discloses, Above the briars and roses Fall's feeble sunbeams soak.

Neglected walks that tangle The dodder-strangled grass; Its chimney shows one angle Heaped with dead leaves that spangle The paths that round it pass.

The early mists that bury And hide them in its rooms, From spider closets--very Dim with old webs--will hurry Out in the raining glooms.

They haunt each stair and basement; They stand on hearth and porch; Lean from each paneless casement, Or in the moonlight's lacement Fly with a phantom torch.

There is a sense of frost here; And gusts that sob away Of something that was lost here, Long, long ago was lost here, But what, they can not say.

There croons no owl to startle Despondency within; No raven o'er its portal To scare the daring mortal And guard its cellared sin.

The creaking road descries it This side the dusty toll; The farmer passing eyes it; None stops t' philosophize it, This symbol of a soul.

12.

Though the dog-tooth violet come With the shower, And the wild-bee haunt and hum Every flower, We shall never wend as when Love laughed leading us from men Over violet vale and glen, Where the red-bird sang an hour, And we heard the partridge drum.

Here October shadows pray, Till one stills Joyance, where for buried May Sob the rills: So love's vision has arisen Of the long ago: I listen-- Memory, tears in eyes that glisten Points but Indiana hills Fading dark-blue far away.