Part 2

And as the Day, her lover, leads her in, How bright his beauty glows! How red his lips, that ever try to win Her mouth's delicious rose! And from the beating of his heart Warm winds arise and sighing thence depart; And from his eyes and hair The light and dew Fall round her everywhere, And Heaven above her is an arch of blue.

III

Come to the forest, or the treeless meadows Deep with their hay or grain; Come where the hills lift high their thrones of shadows, Where tawny orchards reign. Come where the reapers whet the scythe; Where golden sheaves are heaped; where berriers blythe, With willow-basket and with pail, Swarm knoll and plain; Where flowers freckle every vale, And beauty goes with hands of berry-stain.

IV

Come where the dragon-flies, a brassy blue, Flit round the wildwood streams, And, sucking at some horn of honey-dew, The wild-bee hums and dreams. Come where the butterfly waves wings of sleep, Gold-disked and mottled over blossoms deep; Come where beneath the rustic bridge The green frog cries; Or in the shade the rainbowed midge, Above the emerald pools, with murmurings flies.

V

Come where the cattle browse within the brake, As red as oak and strong; Where far-off bells the echoes faintly wake, And milkmaids sing their song. Come where the vine-trailed rocks, with waters hoary, Tell to the sun some legend or some story; Or, where the sunset to the land Speaks words of gold; Where ripeness walks, a wheaten band Around her hair and blossoms manifold.

VI

Come where the woods lift up their stalwart arms Unto the star-sown skies; Knotted and gnarled, that to the winds and storms Fling mighty rhapsodies: Or to the moon repeat what they have seen, When Night upon their shoulders vast doth lean. Come where the dew's clear syllable Drips from the rose; And where the fireflies fill The night with golden music of their glows.

VII

Now while the dingles and the vine-roofed glens Whisper their flowery tale Unto the silence; and the lakes and fens Unto the moonlight pale Murmur their rapture, let us seek her out, Her of the honey throat, and peachy pout, Summer! and at her feet, The love of old Lay like a sheaf of wheat, And of our hearts the purest gold of gold.

TO SORROW

I

O dark-eyed goddess of the marble brow, Whose look is silence and whose touch is night, Who walkest lonely through the world, O thou, Who sittest lonely with Life's blown-out light; Who in the hollow hours of night's noon Criest like some lost child; Whose anguish-fevered eyeballs seek the moon To cool their pulses wild. Thou who dost bend to kiss Joy's sister cheek, Turning its rose to alabaster; yea, Thou who art terrible and mad and meek, Why in my heart art thou enshrined to-day? O Sorrow say, O say!

II

Now Spring is here and all the world is white, I will go forth, and where the forest robes Itself in green, and every hill and height Crowns its fair head with blossoms,--spirit globes Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with dew,-- I will forget my grief, And thee, O Sorrow, gazing on the blue, Beneath a last year's leaf, Of some brief violet the south wind woos, Or bluet, whence the west wind raked the snow; The baby eyes of love, the darling hues Of happiness, that thou canst never know, O child of pain and woe.

III

On some hoar upland, sweet with clustered thorns, Hard by a river's windy white of waves, I shall sit down with Spring,--whose eyes are morns Of light; whose cheeks the rose of health enslaves,-- And so forget thee braiding in her hair The snowdrop, tipped with green, The cool-eyed primrose and the trillium fair, And moony celandine. Contented so to lie within her arms, Forgetting all the sear and sad and wan, Remembering love alone, who o'er earth's storms, High on the mountains of perpetual dawn, Leads the glad hours on.

IV

Or in the peace that follows storm, when Even, Within the west, stands dreaming lone and far, Clad on with green and silver, and the Heaven Is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering star. I will lie down beside some mountain lake, 'Round which the tall pines sigh, And breathing musk of rain from boughs that shake Storm balsam from on high, Make friends of Dream and Contemplation high And Music, listening to the mocking-bird,-- Who through the hush sends its melodious cry,-- And so forget a while that other word, That all loved things must die.

NIGHT

Out of the East, as from an unknown shore, Thou comest with thy children in thine arms,-- Slumber and Dream,--whom mortals all adore, Their flowing raiment sculptured to their charms: Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest, Laid like twin roses in one balmy nest. Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow. There is no other presence like to thine, When thou approachest with thy babes divine, Thy shadowy face above them bending low, Blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow.

Oft have I taken Sleep from thy dark arms, And fondled her fair head, with poppies wreathed, Within my bosom's depths, until its storms With her were hushed and I but faintly breathed. And then her sister, Dream, with frolic art Arose from rest, and on my sleeping heart Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost; Worlds where my stranger soul sang songs to me, And talked with spirits by a rainbowed sea, Or smiled, an unfamiliar shape of frost, Floating on gales of breathless melody.

Day comes to us in garish glory garbed; But thou, thou bringest to the tired heart Rest and deep silence, in which are absorbed All the vain tumults of the mind and mart. Whether thou comest with hands full of stars, Or clothed in storm and clouds, the lightning bars, Rolling the thunder like some mighty dress, God moves with thee; we seem to hear His feet, Wind-like, along the floors of Heaven beat; To see His face, revealed in awfulness, Through thee, O Night, to ban us or to bless.

A FALLEN BEECH

Nevermore at doorways that are barken Shall the madcap wind knock and the moonlight; Nor the circle which thou once didst darken, Shine with footsteps of the neighbouring moonlight, Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken.

Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces, Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter, Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places; Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor, Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces.

And no more, between the savage wonder Of the sunset and the moon's up-coming, Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder.

Oft the Satyr-spirit, beauty-drunken, Of the Spring called; and the music measure Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken.

And the germs, deep down in darkness rooted, Bubbled green from all thy million oilets, Where the spirits, rain-and-sunbeam-suited, Of the April made their whispering toilets, Or within thy stately shadow footed.

Oft the hours of blonde Summer tinkled At the windows of thy twigs, and found thee Bird-blithe; or, with shapely bodies, twinkled Lissom feet of naked flowers around thee, Where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam-sprinkled.

And the Autumn with his gypsy-coated Troop of days beneath thy branches rested, Swarthy-faced and dark of eye; and throated Songs of roaming; or with red hand tested Every nut-bur that above him floated.

Then the Winter, barren-browed, but rich in Shaggy followers of frost and freezing, Made the floor of thy broad boughs his kitchen, Trapper-like, to camp in; grimly easing Limbs snow-furred and moccasined with lichen.

Now, alas! no more do these invest thee With the dignity of whilom gladness! They--unto whose hearts thou once confessed thee Of thy dreams--now know thee not! and sadness Sits beside thee where, forgot, dost rest thee.

A TWILIGHT MOTH

All day the primroses have thought of thee, Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat; All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly Veiled snowy faces,--that no bee might greet Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;-- Keeping Sultana-charms for thee, at last, Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays Nocturns of fragrance, thy wing'd shadow links In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith; O bearer of their order's shibboleth, Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks.

What dost thou whisper in the balsam's ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,-- A syllabled silence that no man may hear,-- As dreamily upon its stem it rocks? What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some spectre of some perished flower of phlox?

O voyager of that universe which lies Between the four walls of this garden fair,-- Whose constellations are the fireflies That wheel their instant courses everywhere,-- 'Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees Mimic Booetes and the Pleiades, Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air.

Gnome-wrought of moonbeam fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.-- Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy, That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me! And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!

THE GRASSHOPPER

What joy you take in making hotness hotter, In emphasising dulness with your buzz, Making monotony more monotonous! When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp Filling the stillness. Or,--as urchins beat A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,-- Your switch-like music whips the midday heat. O bur of sound caught in the Summer's hair, We hear you everywhere!

We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles, Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds, Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds, And by the wood 'round which the rail-fence rambles, Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw. Or,--like to tomboy truants, at their play With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw,-- You sing away the careless summer-day. O brier-like voice that clings in idleness To Summer's drowsy dress!

You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding, Improvident, who of the summer make One long green mealtime, and for winter take No care, aye singing or just merely feeding! Happy-go-lucky vagabond,--'though frost Shall pierce, ere long, your green coat or your brown, And pinch your body,--let no song be lost, But as you lived into your grave go down-- Like some small poet with his little rhyme, Forgotten of all time.

BEFORE THE RAIN

Before the rain, low in the obscure east, Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray; Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased, Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay Like some white spider hungry for its prey. Vindictive looked the scowling firmament, In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray, Seemed filled with malice of some dark intent.

The marsh-frog croaked; and underneath the stone The peevish cricket raised a creaking cry. Within the world these sounds were heard alone, Save when the ruffian wind swept from the sky, Making each tree like some sad spirit sigh; Or shook the clumsy beetle from its weed, That, in the drowsy darkness, bungling by, Sharded the silence with its feverish speed.

Slowly the tempest gathered. Hours passed Before was heard the thunder's sullen drum Rumbling night's hollow; and the Earth at last, Restless with waiting,--like a woman, dumb With doubting of the love that should have clomb Her casement hours ago,--avowed again, 'Mid protestations, joy that he had come. And all night long I heard the Heavens explain.

AFTER RAIN

Behold the blossom-bosomed Day again, With all the star-white Hours in her train, Laughs out of pearl-lights through a golden ray, That, leaning on the woodland wildness, blends A sprinkled amber with the showers that lay Their oblong emeralds on the leafy ends. Behold her bend with maiden-braided brows Above the wildflower, sidewise with its strain Of dewy happiness, to kiss again Each drop to death; or, under rainy boughs, With fingers, fragrant as the woodland rain, Gather the sparkles from the sycamore, To set within each core Of crimson roses girdling her hips, Where each bud dreams and drips. Smoothing her blue-black hair,--where many a tusk Of iris flashes,--like the falchions' sheen Of Faery 'round blue banners of its Queen,-- Is it a Naiad singing in the dusk, That haunts the spring, where all the moss is musk With footsteps of the flowers on the banks? Or just a wild-bird voluble with thanks?

Balm for each blade of grass: the Hours prepare A festival each weed's invited to. Each bee is drunken with the honied air: And all the air is eloquent with blue. The wet hay glitters, and the harvester Tinkles his scythe,--as twinkling as the dew,-- That shall not spare Blossom or brier in its sweeping path; And, ere it cut one swath, Rings them they die, and tells them to prepare.

What is the spice that haunts each glen and glade? A Dryad's lips, who slumbers in the shade? A Faun, who lets the heavy ivy-wreath Slip to his thigh as, reaching up, he pulls The chestnut blossoms in whole bosomfuls? A sylvan Spirit, whose sweet mouth doth breathe Her viewless presence near us, unafraid? Or troops of ghosts of blooms, that whitely wade The brook? whose wisdom knows no other song Than that the bird sings where it builds beneath The wild-rose and sits singing all day long.

Oh, let me sit with silence for a space, A little while forgetting that fierce part Of man that struggles in the toiling mart; Where God can look into my heart's own heart From unsoiled heights made amiable with grace; And where the sermons that the old oaks keep Can steal into me.--And what better then Than, turning to the moss a quiet face, To fall asleep? a little while to sleep And dream of wiser worlds and wiser men.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

I

The shadows sit and stand about its door Like uninvited guests and poor; And all the long, hot summer day The grating locust dins its roundelay In one old sycamore. The squirrel leaves upon its rotting roof, In empty hulls, its tracks; And in its clapboard cracks The spider weaves a windy woof; Its cells the mud-wasp packs. The she-fox whelps upon its floor; The owlet roosts above its door; And where the musty mosses run, The freckled snake basks in the sun.

II

The children of what fathers sleep Beneath these melancholy pines? The slow slugs crawl among their graves where creep The doddered poison-vines. The orchard, near the meadow deep, Lifts up decrepit arms, Gray-lichened in a withering heap. No sap swells up to make it leap As once in calms and storms; No blossom lulls its age asleep; Each breeze brings sad alarms. Big, bell-round pears and apples, russet-red, No maiden gathers now; The worm-bored trunks weep gum, like tears, instead, From each decaying bough.

III

The woodlands around it are solitary And fold it like gaunt hands; The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary, And the hum of the country is weary, so weary! And the bees go by in bands To other lovelier lands. The grasses are rotting in walk and in bower; The lonesomeness,--dank and rank As a chamber where lies for a lonely hour An old-man's corpse with many a flower,-- Is hushed and blank. And even the birds have passed it by, To sing their songs to a happier sky, A happier sky and bank.

IV

In its desolate halls are lying, Gold, blood-red and browned, Drifted leaves of summer dying; And the winds, above them sighing, Turn them round and round, Make a ghostly sound As of footsteps falling, flying, Voices through the chambers crying, Of the haunted house.

V

Gazing down in her white shroud, Shroud of windy cloud, Comes at night the phantom moon; Comes and all the shadows soon, Crowding in the rooms, arouse; Shadows, ghosts, her rays lead on, Till beneath the cloud Like a ghost she's gone, In her gusty shroud, O'er the haunted house.

OCTOBER

I oft have met her slowly wandering Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild, Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring, As if on her the sumach copse had smiled. Or I have seen her sitting, tall and brown,-- Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,-- Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves She wound great drowsy wreaths and cast them down; The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim Far out behind, deep as the rustling sheaves.

Or in the hill-lands I have often seen The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between, Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint. Or I have met her 'twixt two beechen hills, Within a dingled valley near a fall, Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower; Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills Went babbling through the wildwood's arrased hall, Where burned the beech and maples glared their power.

Or I have met her by some ruined mill, Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine, On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled chill, And watched her swinging in the wild-grape vine. While Beauty, sad among the vales and mountains, More sad than death, or all that death can teach, Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms, Where splashed the murmur of the forest's fountains; With all her loveliness did she beseech, And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms.

Once only in a hollow, girt with trees, A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain, I glimpsed her cheeks red-berried by the breeze, In her dark eyes the night's sidereal stain. And once upon an orchard's tangled path, Where all the golden-rod had turned to brown, Where russets rolled and leaves were sweet of breath, I have beheld her 'mid her aftermath Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown, Within her gaze the deeps of life and death.

INDIAN SUMMER

The dawn is a warp of fever, The eve is a woof of fire; And the month is a singing weaver Weaving a red desire.

With stars Dawn dices with Even For the rosy gold they heap On the blue of the day's deep heaven, On the black of the night's far deep.

It's--'Reins to the blood!' and 'Marry!'-- The season's a prince who burns With the teasing lusts that harry His heart for a wench who spurns.

It's--'Crown us a beaker with sherry, To drink to the doxy's heels; A tankard of wine o' the berry, To lips like a cloven peel's.

''S death! if a king be saddened, Right so let a fool laugh lies: But wine! when a king is gladdened, And a woman's waist and her eyes.'

He hath shattered the loom of the weaver, And left but a leaf that flits, He hath seized heaven's gold, and a fever Of mist and of frost is its.

He hath tippled the buxom beauty, And gotten her hug and her kiss-- The wide world's royal booty To pile at her feet for this.

ALONG THE OHIO

Athwart a sky of brass long welts of gold; A path of gold the wide Ohio lies; Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold, The dark-blue hill-tops rise.

And westward dips the crescent of the moon Through great cloud-feathers, flushed with rosy ray, That close around the crystal of her lune The redbird wings of Day.

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

Was it the boat, the solitude and hush, That with dead Indians peopled all the glooms? That made each bank, meseemed, and every bush Start into eagle-plumes?

That made me seem to hear the breaking brush, And as the deer's great antlers swelled in view, To hear the arrow twang from cane and rush, That dipped to the canoe?

To see the glimmering wigwams by the waves? And, wildly clad, around the camp-fires' glow, The Shawnee chieftains with their painted braves, Each grasping his war-bow?

But now the vision like the sunset fades, The ribs of golden clouds have oozed their light; And from the west, like sombre sachem shades, Gallop the shades of night.

The broad Ohio glitters to the stars; And many murmurs whisper in its woods-- Is it the sorrow of dead warriors For their lost solitudes?

The moon goes down; and like another moon The crescent of the river twinkles there, Unchanged as when the eyes of Daniel Boone Beheld it flowing fair.

A COIGN OF THE FOREST

The hills hang woods around, where green, below Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss, Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year's nuts; The water hums one bar there; and a glow Of gold lies steady where the trailers toss Red, bugled blossoms and a rock abuts; In spots the wild-phlox and oxalis grow Where beech-roots bulge the loam, protrude across The grass-grown road and roll it into ruts.

And where the sumach brakes grow dusk and dense, Among the rocks, great yellow violets, Blue-bells and wind-flowers bloom; the agaric In dampness crowds; a fungus, thick, intense With gold and crimson and wax-white, that sets The May-apples along the terraced creek At bold defiance. Where the old rail-fence Divides the hollow, there the bee-bird whets His bill, and there the elder hedge is thick.

No one can miss it; for two cat-birds nest, Calling all morning, in the trumpet-vine; And there at noon the pewee sits and floats A woodland welcome; and his very best At eve the red-bird sings, as if to sign The record of its loveliness with notes. At night the moon stoops over it to rest, And unreluctant stars. Where waters shine There runs a whisper as of wind-swept oats.

CREOLE SERENADE