Part 4

The day is dead; and in the west The slender crescent of the moon-- Diana's crystal-kindled crest-- Sinks hillward in a silvery swoon. What is the murmur in the dell? The stealthy whisper and the drip? A Dryad with her leaf-light trip? A Naiad o'er her fountain well?-- Who with white fingers for her comb, Sleeks her blue hair, and from its curls Showers slim minnows and pale pearls, And hollow music of the foam. What is it in the vistaed ways That leans and springs, and stoops and sways?-- The naked limbs of one who flees? An Oread who hesitates Before the Satyr form that waits, Crouching to leap, that there she sees? Or under boughs, reclining cool, A Hamadryad, like a pool Of moonlight, palely beautiful? Or Limnad, with her lilied face, More lovely than the misty lace That haunts a star and gives it grace? Or is it some Leimoniad In wildwood flowers dimly clad? Oblong blossoms white as froth, Or mottled like the tiger-moth; Or brindled as the brows of death, Wild of hue and wild of breath: Here ethereal flame and milk Blent with velvet and with silk; Here an iridescent glow Mixed with satin and with snow: Pansy, poppy and the pale Serpolet and galingale; Mandrake and anemone, Honey-reservoirs o' the bee; Cistus and the cyclamen,-- Cheeked like blushing Hebe this, And the other white as is Bubbled milk of Venus when Cupid's baby mouth is pressed, Rosy to her rosy breast. And, besides, all flowers that mate With aroma, and in hue Stars and rainbows duplicate Here on earth for me and you.

Yea! at last mine eyes can see! 'Tis no shadow of the tree Swaying softly there, but she!-- Maenad, Bassarid, Bacchant, What you will, who doth enchant Night with sensuous nudity. Lo! again I hear her pant Breasting through the dewy glooms-- Through the glow-worm gleams and glowers Of the starlight;--wood-perfumes Swoon around her and frail showers Of the leaflet-tilted rain. Lo! like love, she comes again Through the pale voluptuous dusk, Sweet of limb with breasts of musk. With her lips, like blossoms, breathing Honeyed pungence of her kiss, And her auburn tresses wreathing Like umbrageous helichrys, There she stands, like fire and snow, In the moon's ambrosial glow, Both her shapely loins low-looped With the balmy blossoms, drooped, Of the deep amaracus. Spiritual, yet sensual, Lo, she ever greets me thus In my vision; white and tall, Her delicious body there,-- Raimented with amorous air,-- To my mind expresses all The allurements of the world. And once more I seem to feel On my soul, like frenzy, hurled All the passionate past.--I reel, Greek again in ancient Greece, In the Pyrrhic revelries; In the mad and Maenad dance; Onward dragged with violence; Pan and old Silenus and Faunus and a Bacchant band Round me. Wild my wine-stained hand O'er tumultuous hair is lifted; While the flushed and Phallic orgies Whirl around me; and the marges Of the wood are torn and rifted With lascivious laugh and shout. And barbarian there again,-- Shameless with the shameless rout, Bacchus lusting in each vein,-- With her pagan lips on mine, Like a god made drunk with wine, On I reel; and in the revels Her loose hair, the dance dishevels, Blows, and 'thwart my vision swims All the splendour of her limbs....

So it seems. Yet woods are lonely. And when I again awake, I shall find their faces only Moonbeams in the boughs that shake; And their revels, but the rush Of night-winds through bough and brush. Yet my dreaming--is it more Than mere dreaming? Is a door Opened in my soul? a curtain Raised? to let me see for certain I have lived that life before?

THE NAIAD

She sits among the iris stalks Of babbling brooks; and leans for hours Among the river's lily flowers, Or on their whiteness walks: Above dark forest pools, gray rocks Wall in, she leans with dripping locks, And listening to the echo, talks With her own face--Iothera.

There is no forest of the hills, No valley of the solitude, Nor fern nor moss, that may elude Her searching step that stills: She dreams among the wild-rose brakes Of fountains that the ripple shakes, And, dreaming of herself, she fills The silence with 'Iothera.'

And every wind that haunts the ways Of leaf and bough, once having kissed Her virgin nudity, goes whist With wonder and amaze. There blows no breeze which hath not learned Her name's sweet melody, and yearned To kiss her mouth that laughs and says, 'Iothera, Iothera.'

No wild thing of the wood, no bird, Or brown or blue, or gold or gray, Beneath the sun's or moonlight's ray, That hath not loved and heard; They are her pupils; she can say No new thing but, within a day, They have its music, word for word, Harmonious as Iothera.

No man who lives and is not wise With love for common flowers and trees, Bee, bird, and beast, and brook, and breeze, And rocks and hills and skies,-- Search where he will,--shall ever see One flutter of her drapery, One glimpse of limbs, or hair, or eyes Of beautiful Iothera.

THE LIMNAD

I

The lake she haunts gleams dreamily 'Twixt sleepy boughs of melody, Set 'mid the hills beside the sea, In tangled bush and brier; Where the ghostly sunsets write Wondrous things in golden light; And above the pine-crowned height, Clouds of twilight, rosy white, Build their towers of fire.

II

'Mid the rushes there that swing, Flowering flags where voices sing When low winds are murmuring, Murmuring to stars that glitter; Blossom-white, with purple locks, Underneath the stars' still flocks, In the dusky waves she rocks, Rocks, and all the landscape mocks With a song most sweet and bitter.

III

Soft it sounds, at first, as dreams Filled with tears that fall in streams; Then it soars, until it seems Beauty's very self hath spoken; And the woods grow silent quite, Stars wax faint and flowers turn white; And the nightingales that light Near, or hear her through the night, Die, their hearts with longing broken.

IV

Dark, dim and sad o'er mournful lands, White-throated stars heaped in her hands, Like wildwood buds, the Twilight stands, The Twilight dreaming lingers; Listening where the Limnad sings Witcheries, whose beauty brings A great moon from hidden springs, Pale with amorous quiverings Feet of fire and silvery fingers.

V

In the vales Auloniads, On the mountains Oreads, On the leas Leimoniads, Naked as the stars that glisten, Pan, the Satyrs, Dryades, Fountain-lovely Naiades, Foam-lipped Oceanides, Breathless 'mid their seas and trees, Stay and stop and lean and listen.

VI

Large-eyed, Siren-like she stands, In the lake or on its sands, And with rapture from the hands Of the Night some stars are shaken; To her song the rushes swing, Lilies nod and ripples ring, Lost in helpless listening-- These will wake that hear her sing, But one mortal will not waken.

INTIMATIONS

I

Is it uneasy moonlight On the restless field, that stirs? Or wild white meadow-blossoms The night-wind bends and blurs?

Is it the dolorous water, That sobs in the woods and sighs? Or heart of an ancient oak-tree, That breaks and, sighing, dies?

The wind is vague with the shadows That wander in No-Man's Land; The water is dark with the voices That weep on the Unknown strand.

O ghosts of the winds that call me! O ghosts of the whispering waves! As sad as forgotten flowers That die upon nameless graves!

What is this thing you tell me In tongues of a twilight race, Of death, with the vanished features, Mantled, of my own face?

II

The old enigmas of the deathless dawns And riddles of the all immortal eves,-- That still o'er Delphic lawns Speak as the gods spoke through oracular leaves-- I read with new-born eyes, Remembering how, a slave; They buried me, a living sacrifice, Once in a dead king's grave.

Or crowned with hyacinth and helichrys, How, towards the altar in the marble gloom,-- Hearing the magadis Dirge through the pale amaracine perfume,-- 'Mid chanting priests I trod, With never a sigh or pause, To give my life to pacify a god, And save my country's cause.

Again: Cyrenian roses on wild hair, And oil and purple smeared on breasts and cheeks, How, with mad torches there,-- Reddening the cedars of Cithaeron's peaks,-- With gesture and fierce glance, Lascivious Maenad bands Once drew and slew me in the Pyrrhic dance, With Bacchanalian hands.

III

In eons of the senses, My spirit knew of yore, I found the Isle of Circe And felt her magic lore; And still the soul remembers What I was once before.

She gave me flowers to smell of That wizard branches bore, Of weird and sorcerous beauty, Whose stems dripped human gore-- Their scent when I remember I know that world once more.

She gave me fruits to eat of That grew upon the shore, Of necromantic ripeness, With human flesh at core-- Their taste when I remember I know that life once more.

And then, behold! a serpent, That glides my face before, With eyes of tears and fire That glare me o'er and o'er-- I look into its eyeballs, And know myself once more.

BEFORE THE TEMPLE

I

All desolate she sate her down Upon the marble of the temple's stair. You would have thought her, with her eyes of brown, Flushed cheeks and hazel hair, A dryad dreaming there.

II

A priest of Bacchus passed, nor stopped To chide her; deeming her--whose chiton hid But half her bosom, and whose girdle dropped-- Some grief-drowned Bassarid, The god of wine had chid.

III

With wreaths of woodland cyclamen For Dian's shrine, a shepherdess drew near, All her young thoughts on vestal beauty, when-- She dare not look for fear-- Behold the goddess here!

IV

Fierce lights on shields of bossy brass And helms of gold, next from the hills deploy Tall youths of Argos. And she sees _him_ pass, Flushed with heroic joy, On towards the siege of Troy.

ANTHEM OF DAWN

I

Then up the orient heights to the zenith that balanced the crescent,-- Up and far up and over,--the heaven grew erubescent, Vibrant with rose and with ruby from hands of the harpist Dawn, Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament's barbition; And the East was a priest who adored with offerings of gold and of gems, And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible hems Of the glittering robes of her limbs; that, lily and amethyst, Swept glorying on and on through temples of cloud and mist.

II

Then out of the splendour and richness, that burned like a magic stone, The torrent suffusion that deepened and dazzled and broadened and shone, The pomp and the pageant of colour, triumphal procession of glare, The sun, like a king in armour, breathing splendour from feet to hair, Stood forth with majesty girdled, as a hero who towers afar Where the bannered gates are bristling hells and the walls are roaring war: And broad on the back of the world, like a Cherubin's fiery blade, The effulgent gaze of his aspect fell in glittering accolade.

III

Then billowing blue, like an ocean, rolled from the shores of dawn to even: And the stars, like rafts, went down: and the moon, like a ghost-ship driven, A feather of foam, from port to port of the cloud-built isles that dotted, With pearl and cameo, bays of the day, her canvas webbed and rooted, Lay lost in the gulf of heaven: while over her mixed and melted The beautiful children of Morn, whose bodies are opal-belted; The beautiful daughters of Dawn, who, over and under and after The rivered radiance wrestled; and rainbowed heaven with laughter Of halcyon sapphire.--O Dawn! thou visible mirth, Thou hallelujah of heaven! hosanna of Earth!

AT THE LANE'S END

I

No more to strip the roses from The rose-boughs of her porch's place!-- I dreamed last night that I was home Beside a rose--her face.

I must have smiled in sleep--who knows?-- The rose aroma filled the lane; I saw her white hand's lifted rose That called me home again.

And yet when I awoke--so wan, An old face wet with icy tears!-- Somehow, it seems, sleep had misdrawn A love gone thirty years.

II

The clouds roll up and the clouds roll down Over the roofs of the little town; Out in the hills where the pike winds by Fields of clover and bottoms of rye, You will hear no sound but the barking cough Of the striped chipmunk where the lane leads off; You will hear no bird but the sapsuckers Far off in the forest,--that seems to purr, As the warm wind fondles its top, grown hot, Like the docile back of an ocelot: You will see no thing but the shine and shade Of briers that climb and of weeds that wade The glittering creeks of the light, that fills The dusty road and the red-keel hills-- And all day long in the pennyroy'l The grasshoppers at their anvils toil; Thick click of their tireless hammers thrum, And the wheezy belts of their bellows hum; Tinkers who solder the silence and heat To make the loneliness more complete. Around old rails where the blackberries Are reddening ripe, and the bumble-bees Are a drowsy rustle of Summer's skirts, And the bob-white's wing is the fan she flirts. Under the hill, through the iron weeds, And ox-eyed daisies and milkweeds, leads The path forgotten of all but one. Where elder bushes are sick with sun, And wild raspberries branch big blue veins O'er the face of the rock, where the old spring rains Its sparkling splinters of molten spar On the gravel bed where the tadpoles are,-- You will find the pales of the fallen fence, And the tangled orchard and vineyard, dense With the weedy neglect of thirty years. The garden there,--where the soft sky clears Like an old sweet face that has dried its tears;-- The garden plot where the cabbage grew And the pompous pumpkin; and beans that blew Balloons of white by the melon patch; Maize; and tomatoes that seemed to catch Oblong amber and agate balls Thrown from the sun in the frosty falls: Long rows of currants and gooseberries, And the balsam-gourd with its honey-bees. And here was a nook for the princess-plumes, The snap-dragons and the poppy-blooms, Mother's sweet-williams and pansy flowers, And the morning-glories' bewildered bowers, Tipping their cornucopias up For the humming-birds that came to sup. And over it all was the Sabbath peace Of the land whose lap was the love of these; And the old log-house where my innocence died, With my boyhood buried side by side.

Shall a man with a face as withered and gray As the wasp-nest stowed in a loft away,-- Where the hornets haunt and the mortar drops From the loosened logs of the clapboard tops;-- Whom vice has aged as the rotting rooms The rain where memories haunt the glooms; A hitch in his joints like the rheum that gnars In the rasping hinge of the door that jars; A harsh, cracked throat like the old stone flue Where the swallows build the summer through; Shall a man, I say, with the spider sins That the long years spin in the outs and ins Of his soul, returning to see once more His boyhood's home, where his life was poor With toil and tears and their fretfulness, But rich with health and the hopes that bless The unsoiled wealth of a vigorous youth; Shall he not take comfort and know the truth In its threadbare raiment of falsehood?--Yea! In his crumbled past he shall kneel and pray, Like a pilgrim come to the shrine again Of the homely saints that shall soothe his pain, And arise and depart made clean from stain!

III

Years of care can not erase Visions of the hills and trees Closing in the dam and race; Not the mile-long memories Of the mill-stream's lovely place.

How the sunsets used to stain Mirror of the water lying Under eaves made dark with rain! Where the red-bird, westward flying, Lit to try one song again.

Dingles, hills, and woods, and springs, Where we came in calm and storm, Swinging in the grape-vine swings, Wading where the rocks were warm, With our fishing-nets and strings.

Here the road plunged down the hill, Under ash and chinquapin,-- Where the grasshoppers would drill Ears of silence with their din,-- To the willow-girdled mill.

There the path beyond the ford Takes the woodside, just below Shallows that the lilies sword, Where the scarlet blossoms blow Of the trumpet-vine and gourd.

Summer winds, that sink with heat, On the pelted waters winnow Moony petals that repeat Crescents, where the startled minnow Beats a glittering retreat.

Summer winds that bear the scent Of the iron-weed and mint, Weary with sweet freight and spent, On the deeper pools imprint Stumbling steps in many a dent.

Summer winds, that split the husk Of the peach and nectarine, Trail along the amber dusk Hazy skirts of gray and green, Spilling balms of dew and musk.

Where with balls of bursting juice Summer sees the red wild-plum Strew the gravel; ripened loose, Autumn hears the pawpaw drum Plumpness on the rocks that bruise:

There we found the water-beech, One forgotten August noon, With a hornet-nest in reach,-- Like a fairyland balloon, Full of bustling fairy speech.--

Some invasion sure it was; For we heard the captains scold; Waspish cavalry a-buzz,-- Troopers uniformed in gold, Sable-slashed,--to charge on us.

Could I find the sedgy angle, Where the dragon-flies would turn Slender flittings into spangle On the sunlight? or would burn-- Where the berries made a tangle--

Sparkling green and brassy blue; Rendezvousing, by the stream, Bands of elf-banditti, who, Brigands of the bloom and beam, Drunken were with honey-dew.

Could I find the pond that lay Where vermilion blossoms showered Fragrance down the daisied way? That the sassafras embowered With the spice of early May?

Could I find it--did I seek-- The old mill? Its weather-beaten Wheel and gable by the creek? With its warping roof; worm-eaten, Dusty rafters worn and weak.

Where old shadows haunt old places, Loft and hopper, stair and bin; Ghostly with the dust that laces Webs that usher phantoms in, Wistful with remembered faces.

While the frogs' grave litanies Drowse in far-off antiphone, Supplicating, till the eyes Of dead friendships, long alone In the dusky corners,--rise.

Moonrays or the splintered slip Of a star? within the darkling Twilight, where the fireflies dip-- As if Night a myriad sparkling Jewels from her hands let slip:

While again some farm-boy crosses,-- With a corn-sack for the meal,-- O'er the creek, through ferns and mosses Sprinkled by the old mill-wheel, Where the water drips and tosses.

THE FARMSTEAD

Yes, I love the homestead. There In the spring the lilacs blew Plenteous perfume everywhere; There in summer gladioles grew Parallels of scarlet glare.

And the moon-hued primrose cool, Satin-soft and redolent; Honeysuckles beautiful, Filling all the air with scent; Roses red or white as wool.

Roses, glorious and lush, Rich in tender-tinted dyes, Like the gay tempestuous rush Of unnumbered butterflies, Clustering o'er each bending bush.

Here japonica and box, And the wayward violets; Clumps of star-enamelled phlox, And the myriad flowery jets Of the twilight four-o'-clocks.

Ah, the beauty of the place! When the June made one great rose, Full of musk and mellow grace, In the garden's humming close, Of her comely mother face!

Bubble-like, the hollyhocks Budded, burst, and flaunted wide Gypsy beauty from their stocks; Morning glories, bubble-dyed, Swung in honey-hearted flocks.

Tawny tiger-lilies flung Doublets slashed with crimson on; Graceful slave-girls, fair and young, Like Circassians, in the sun Alabaster lilies swung.

Ah, the droning of the bee; In his dusty pantaloons Tumbling in the fleurs-de-lis; In the drowsy afternoons Dreaming in the pink sweet-pea.

Ah, the moaning wildwood-dove! With its throat of amethyst Rippled like a shining cove Which a wind to pearl hath kissed, Moaning, moaning of its love.

And the insects' gossip thin-- From the summer hotness hid-- In lone, leafy deeps of green; Then at eve the katydid With its hard, unvaried din.

Often from the whispering hills, Borne from out the golden dusk,-- Gold with gold of daffodils,-- Thrilled into the garden's musk The wild wail of whippoorwills.

From the purple-tangled trees, Like the white, full heart of night, Solemn with majestic peace, Swam the big moon, veined with light; Like some gorgeous golden-fleece.

She was there with me.--And who, In the magic of the hour, Had not sworn that they could view, Beading on each blade and flower Moony blisters of the dew?

And each fairy of our home,-- Firefly,--its taper lit In the honey-scented gloam, Dashing down the dusk with it Like an instant-flaming foam.

And we heard the calling, calling, Of the screech-owl in the brake; Where the trumpet-vine hung, crawling Down the ledge, into the lake Heard the sighing streamlet falling.

Then we wandered to the creek Where the water-lilies, growing Thick as stars, lay white and weak; Or against the brooklet's flowing Bent and bathed a bashful cheek.

And the moonlight, rippling golden, Fell in virgin aureoles On their bosoms, half unfolden, Where, it seemed, the fairies' souls Dwelt as perfume,--unbeholden;--

Or lay sleeping, pearly-tented, Baby-cribbed within each bud, While the night-wind, piney-scented, Swooning over field and flood, Rocked them on the waters dented.

Then the low, melodious bell Of a sleeping heifer tinkled, In some berry-briered dell, As her satin dewlap wrinkled With the cud that made it swell.

And, returning home, we heard, In a beech-tree at the gate, Some brown, dream-behaunted bird, Singing of its absent mate, Of the mate that never heard.

And, you see, now I am gray, Why within the old, old place, With such memories, I stay; Fancy out her absent face Long since passed away.