Part 2

Passes perhaps some lonely ship With exile hearts that homeward ache,-- While far beneath is flashed a word That soon shall bid them bleed or break.

When the Clover blooms again

“When the clover blooms again, And the rain-birds in the rain Make the sad-heart noon seem sweeter And the joy of June completer I shall see his face again!”

Of her lover over sea So she whispered happily; And she prayed, while men were sleeping, “Mary, have him in thy keeping As he sails the stormy sea!”

White and silent lay his face In a still, green-watered place, Where the long, gray weed scarce lifted, And the sand was lightly sifted O’er his unremembering face.

At Tide Water

The red and yellow of the Autumn salt-grass, The gray flats, and the yellow-gray full tide, The lonely stacks, the grave expanse of marshes,-- O Land wherein my memories abide, I have come back that you may make me tranquil, Resting a little at your heart of peace, Remembering much amid your serious leisure, Forgetting more amid your large release. For yours the wisdom of the night and morning, The word of the inevitable years, The open Heaven’s unobscured communion, And the dim whisper of the wheeling spheres.

The great things and the terrible I bring you, To be illumined in your spacious breath,-- Love, and the ashes of desire, and anguish, Strange laughter, and the unhealing wound of death. These in the world, all these, have come upon me, Leaving me mute and shaken with surprise. Oh, turn them in your measureless contemplation, And in their mastery teach me to be wise.

The Falling Leaves

Lightly He blows, and at His breath they fall, The perishing kindreds of the leaves; they drift, Spent flames of scarlet, gold aerial, Across the hollow year, noiseless and swift. Lightly He blows, and countless as the falling Of snow by night upon a solemn sea, The ages circle down beyond recalling, To strew the hollows of Eternity. He sees them drifting through the spaces dim, And leaves and ages are as one to Him.

Marjory

(A Backwoods Ballad)

Spring, summer, autumn, winter, Over the wild world rolls the year. Comes June to the rose-red tamarack buds, But Marjory comes not here.

The pastures miss her; the house without her Grows forgotten, and gray, and old; The wind, and the lonely light of the sun, Are heavy with tears untold.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter, Morning, evening, over and o’er! The swallow returns to the nested rafter, But Marjory comes no more.

The gray barn-doors in the long wind rattle Hour by hour of the long white day. The horses fret by the well-filled manger Since Marjory went away.

The sheep she fed at the bars await her. The milch cows low for her down the lane. They long for her light, light hand at the milking,-- They long for her hand in vain.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter, Morning and evening, over and o’er! The bees come back with the willow catkins, But Marjory comes no more.

The voice of the far-off city called to her. Was it long years or an hour ago? She went away, with dear eyes weeping, To a world she did not know.

The berried pastures they could not keep her, The brook, nor the buttercup-golden hill, Nor even the long, long love familiar,-- The strange voice called her still.

She would not stay for the old home garden;-- The scarlet poppy, the mignonette, The fox-glove bell, and the kind-eyed pansy, Their hearts will not forget.

Oh, that her feet had not forgotten The woodland country, the homeward way! Oh, to look out of the sad, bright window And see her come back, some day!

Spring, summer, autumn, winter, Over the wild world rolls the year. Comes joy to the bird on the nested rafter; But Marjory comes not here.

The Solitary Woodsman

When the gray lake-water rushes Past the dripping alder bushes, And the bodeful autumn wind In the fir-tree weeps and hushes,--

When the air is sharply damp Round the solitary camp, And the moose-bush in the thicket Glimmers like a scarlet lamp,--

When the birches twinkle yellow, And the cornel bunches mellow, And the owl across the twilight Trumpets to his downy fellow,--

When the nut-fed chipmunks romp Through the maples’ crimson pomp, And the slim viburnum flushes In the darkness of the swamp,--

When the blueberries are dead, When the rowan clusters red, And the shy bear, summer-sleekened, In the bracken makes his bed,--

On a day there comes once more To the latched and lonely door, Down the wood-road striding silent, One who has been here before.

Green spruce branches for his head, Here he makes his simple bed, Couching with the sun, and rising When the dawn is frosty red.

All day long he wanders wide With the gray moss for his guide, And his lonely axe-stroke startles The expectant forest-side.

Toward the quiet close of day Back to camp he takes his way, And about his sober footsteps Unafraid the squirrels play.

On his roof the red leaf falls, At his door the blue-jay calls, And he hears the wood-mice hurry Up and down his rough log walls;

Hears the laughter of the loon Thrill the dying afternoon,-- Hears the calling of the moose Echo to the early moon.

And he hears the partridge drumming, The belated hornet humming,-- All the faint, prophetic sounds That foretell the winter’s coming.

And the wind about his eaves Through the chilly night-wet grieves, And the earth’s dumb patience fills him, Fellow to the falling leaves.

The Stirrup Cup

Life at my stirrup lifted wistful eyes, And as she gave the parting cup to me,-- Death’s pale companion for the silent sea,-- “I know,” she said, “that land and where it lies. A pledge between us now before you go, That when you meet me there your soul may know!”

Ice

When Winter scourged the meadow and the hill And in the withered leafage worked his will, The water shrank, and shuddered, and stood still,-- Then built himself a magic house of glass, Irised with memories of flowers and grass, Wherein to sit and watch the fury pass.

The Hermit

Above the blindness of content, The ignorance of ease, Inhabiting within his soul A shrine of memories,

Between the silences of sleep Attentively he hears The endless crawling sob and strain, The spending of the years.

He sees the lapsing stream go by His unperturbed face, Out of a dark, into a dark, Across a lighted space.

He calls it Life, this lighted space Upon the moving flood. He sees the water white with tears, He sees it red with blood.

And many specks upon the tide He sees and marks by name,-- Motes of a day, and fools of Fate, And challengers of fame;

With here a people, there a babe, A blossom, or a crown,-- They whirl a little, gleam, and pass, Or in the eddies drown.

He waits. He waits one day to see The lapsing of the stream, The eddying forms, the darknesses, Dissolve into a dream.

“O Thou who bidd’st”

O Thou who bidd’st a million germs decay That one white bloom may soar into the day, Mine eyes unseal to see their souls in death Borne back to Thee upon the lily’s breath.

Ascription

O Thou who hast beneath Thy hand The dark foundations of the land,-- The motion of whose ordered thought An instant universe hath wrought,--

Who hast within Thine equal heed The rolling sun, the ripening seed, The azure of the speedwell’s eye, The vast solemnities of sky,--

Who hear’st no less the feeble note Of one small bird’s awakening throat, Than that unnamed, tremendous chord Arcturus sounds before his Lord,--

More sweet to Thee than all acclaim Of storm and ocean, stars and flame, In favour more before Thy face Than pageantry of time and space,

The worship and the service be Of him Thou madest most like Thee,-- Who in his nostrils hath Thy breath, Whose spirit is the lord of death!

_Set up by J. S. Cushing & Co., and printed by Berwick & Smith, at the Norwood Press, for the publishers, Lamson, Wolffe & Co., in the year Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-eight._ * * *

Transcriber's Note

Pg. 17: Added title to poem as indicated in the Table of Contents.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.