Chapter 6
Down in the woods a sorcerer, Out of rank rain and death, distills,-- Through chill alembics of the air,-- Aromas that brood everywhere Among the whisper-haunted hills: The bitter myrrh of dead leaves fills Wet valleys (where the gaunt weeds bleach) With rainy scents of wood-decay;-- As if a spirit all the day Sat breathing softly 'neath the beech.
With other eyes I see her flit, The wood-witch of the wild perfumes, Among her elfin owls,--that sit, A drowsy white, in crescent-lit Dim glens of opalescent glooms:-- Where, for her magic, buds and blooms Mysterious perfumes, while she stands, A thornlike shadow, summoning The sleepy odors, that take wing Like bubbles from her dewy hands.
X
Among the woods they call to me-- The lights that haunt the wood and stream; Voices of such white ecstasy As moves with hushed lips through a dream: They stand in auraed radiances, Or flash with nimbused limbs across Their golden shadows on the moss, Or slip in silver through the trees.
What love can give the heart in me More hope and exaltation than The hand of light that tips the tree And beckons far from marts of man? That reaches foamy fingers through The broken ripple, and replies With sparkling speech of lips and eyes To souls who seek and still pursue.
XI
Give me the streams, that counterfeit The twilight of autumnal skies; The shadowy, silent waters, lit With fire like a woman's eyes! Slow waters that, in autumn, glass The scarlet-strewn and golden grass, And drink the sunset's tawny dyes.
Give me the pools, that lie among The centuried forests! give me those, Deep, dim, and sad as darkness hung Beneath the sunset's somber rose: Still pools, in whose vague mirrors look-- Like ragged gypsies round a book Of magic--trees in wild repose.
No quiet thing, or innocent, Of water, earth, or air shall please My soul now: but the violent Between the sunset and the trees: The fierce, the splendid, and intense, That love matures in innocence, Like mighty music, give me these!
XII
When thorn-tree copses still were bare And black along the turbid brook; When catkined willows blurred and shook Great tawny tangles in the air; In bottomlands, the first thaw makes An oozy bog, beneath the trees, Prophetic of the spring that wakes, Sang the sonorous hylodes.
Now that wild winds have stripped the thorn, And clogged with leaves the forest-creek; Now that the woods look blown and bleak, And webs are frosty white at morn; At night beneath the spectral sky, A far foreboding cry I hear-- The wild fowl calling as they fly? Or wild voice of the dying Year?
XIII
And still my soul holds phantom tryst, When chestnuts hiss among the coals, Upon the Evening of All Souls, When all the night is moon and mist, And all the world is mystery; I kiss dear lips that death hath kissed, And gaze in eyes no man may see, Filled with a love long lost to me.
I hear the night-wind's ghostly glove Flutter the window: then the knob Of some dark door turn, with a sob As when love comes to gaze on love Who lies pale-coffined in a room: And then the iron gallop of The storm, who rides outside; his plume Sweeping the night with dread and gloom.
So fancy takes the mind, and paints The darkness with eidolon light, And writes the dead's romance in night On the dim Evening of All Saints: Unheard the hissing nuts; the clink And fall of coals, whose shadow faints Around the hearts that sit and think, Borne far beyond the actual's brink.
XIV
I heard the wind, before the morn Stretched gaunt, gray fingers 'thwart my pane, Drive clouds down, a dark dragon-train; Its iron visor closed, a horn Of steel from out the north it wound.-- No morn like yesterday's! whose mouth, A cool carnation, from the south Breathed through a golden reed the sound Of days that drop clear gold upon Cerulean silver floors of dawn.
And all of yesterday is lost And swallowed in to-day's wild light-- The birth deformed of day and night, The illegitimate, who cost Its mother secret tears and sighs; Unlovely since unloved; and chilled With sorrows and the shame that filled Its parents' love; which was not wise In passion as the day and night That married yestermorn with light.
XV
Down through the dark, indignant trees, On indistinguishable wings Of storm, the wind of evening swings; Before its insane anger flees Distracted leaf and shattered bough: There is a rushing as when seas Of thunder beat an iron prow On reefs of wrath and roaring wreck: 'Mid stormy leaves, a hurrying speck Of flickering blackness, driven by, A mad bat whirls along the sky.
Like some sad shadow, in the eve's Deep melancholy--visible As by some strange and twilight spell-- A gaunt girl stands among the leaves, The night-wind in her dolorous dress: Symbolic of the life that grieves, Of toil that patience makes not less, Her load of fagots fallen there.-- A wilder shadow sweeps the air, And she is gone.... Was it the dumb Eidolon of the month to come?
XVI
The song birds--are they flown away? The song birds of the summer time, That sang their souls into the day, And set the laughing hours to rhyme. No catbird scatters through the bush The sparkling crystals of its song; Within the woods no hermit-thrush Thridding with vocal gold the hush.
All day the crows fly cawing past: The acorns drop: the forests scowl: At night I hear the bitter blast Hoot with the hooting of the owl. The wild creeks freeze: the ways are strewn With leaves that clog: beneath the tree The bird, that set its toil to tune, And made a home for melody, Lies dead beneath the snow-white moon.
OCTOBER
Far off a wind blew, and I heard Wild echoes of the woods reply-- The herald of some royal word, With bannered trumpet, blown on high, Meseemed then passed me by:
Who summoned marvels there to meet, With pomp, upon a cloth of gold; Where berries of the bittersweet, That, splitting, showed the coals they hold, Sowed garnets through the wold:
Where, under tents of maples, seeds Of smooth carnelian, oval red, The spice-bush spangled: where, like beads, The dogwood's rounded rubies--fed With fire--blazed and bled.
And there I saw amid the rout Of months, in richness cavalier, A minnesinger--lips apout; A gypsy face; straight as a spear; A rose stuck in his ear:
Eyes, sparkling like old German wine, All mirth and moonlight; naught to spare Of slender beard, that lent a line To his short lip; October there, With chestnut curling hair.
His brown baretta swept its plume Red through the leaves; his purple hose, Puffed at the thighs, made gleam of gloom; His tawny doublet, slashed with rose, And laced with crimson bows,
Outshone the wahoo's scarlet pride, The haw, in rich vermilion dressed: A dagger dangling at his side, A slim lute, banded to his breast, Whereon his hands were pressed.
I saw him come.... And, lo, to hear The lilt of his approaching lute, No wonder that the regnant Year Bent down her beauty, blushing mute, Her heart beneath his foot.
FRIENDS
Down through the woods, along the way That fords the stream; by rock and tree, Where in the bramble-bell the bee Swings; and through twilights green and gray The redbird flashes suddenly, My thoughts went wandering to-day.
I found the fields where, row on row, The blackberries hang dark with fruit; Where, nesting at the elder's root, The partridge whistles soft and low; The fields, that billow to the foot Of those old hills we used to know.
There lay the pond, all willow-bound, On whose bright face, when noons were hot, We marked the bubbles rise; some plot To lure us in; while all around Our heads,--like faery fancies,--shot The dragonflies without a sound.
The pond, above which evening bent To gaze upon her gypsy face; Wherein the twinkling night would trace A vague, inverted firmament; In which the green frogs tuned their bass, And firefly sparkles came and went.
The oldtime place we often ranged, When we were playmates, you and I; The oldtime fields, with boyhood's sky Still blue above them!--Naught was changed: Nothing.--Alas! then, tell me why Should we be? whom the years estranged.
COMRADERY
With eyes hand-arched he looks into The morning's face; then turns away With truant feet, all wet with dew, Out for a holiday.
The hill brook sings; incessant stars, Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast; And where he wades its water-bars Its song is happiest.
A comrade of the chinquapin, He looks into its knotty eyes And sees its heart; and, deep within, Its soul that makes him wise.
The wood-thrush knows and follows him, Who whistles up the birds and bees; And round him all the perfumes swim Of woodland loam and trees.
Where'er he pass the silvery springs' Foam-people sing the flowers awake; And sappy lips of bark-clad things Laugh ripe each berried brake.
His touch is a companionship; His word an old authority: He comes, a lyric on his lip, The woodboy--Poesy.
BARE BOUGHS
O heart,--that beat the bird's blithe blood, The blithe bird's strain, and understood The song it sang to leaf and bud,-- What dost thou in the wood?
O soul,--that kept the brook's glad flow, The glad brook's word to sun and moon,-- What dost thou here where song lies low, And dead the dreams of June?
Where once was heard a voice of song, The hautboys of the mad winds sing; Where once a music flowed along, The rain's wild bugle's ring.
The weedy water frets and ails, And moans in many a sunless fall; And, o'er the melancholy, trails The black crow's eldritch call.
Unhappy brook! O withered wood! O days, whom Death makes comrades of! Where are the birds that thrilled the blood When Life struck hands with Love?
A song, one soared against the blue; A song, one silvered in the leaves; A song, one blew where orchards grew Gold-appled to the eaves.
The birds are flown; the flowers, dead; And sky and earth are bleak and gray: Where Joy once went, all light of tread, Grief haunts the leaf-wild way.
DAYS AND DAYS
The days that clothed white limbs with heat, And rocked the red rose on their breast, Have passed with amber-sandaled feet Into the ruby-gated west.
These were the days that filled the heart With overflowing riches of Life, in whose soul no dream shall start But hath its origin in love.
Now come the days gray-huddled in The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip; Who pin beneath a gypsy chin The frosty marigold and hip.
The days, whose forms fall shadowy Athwart the heart: whose misty breath Shapes saddest sweets of memory Out of the bitterness of death.
AUTUMN SORROW
Ah me! too soon the autumn comes Among these purple-plaintive hills! Too soon among the forest gums Premonitory flame she spills, Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.
Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims With wet the moonflower's elfin moons; And, like exhausted starlight, dims The last slim lily-disk; and swoons With scents of hazy afternoons.
Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies, And build the west's cadaverous fires, Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes, And hands that wake an ancient lyre, Beside the ghost of dead Desire.
THE TREE-TOAD
I
Secluded, solitary on some underbough, Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light, Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how The slow toadstool comes bulging, moony white, Through loosening loam; or how, against the night, The glowworm gathers silver to endow The darkness with; or how the dew conspires To hang, at dusk, with lamps of chilly fires Each blade that shrivels now.
II
O vague confederate of the whippoorwill, Of owl and cricket and the katydid! Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid In cedars, twilight sleeps--each azure lid Drooping a line of golden eyeball still.-- Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice Within the Garden of the Hours apoise On dusk's deep daffodil.
III
Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over. Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight's hush, and little intimate Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate Round rim of rainy moon!
IV
Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour When they may gambol under haw and thorn, Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower? Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower The liriodendron is? from whence is borne The elfin music of thy bell's deep bass, To summon Faeries to their starlit maze, To summon them or warn.
THE CHIPMUNK
I
He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence, Or on the fallen tree,--brown as a leaf Fall stripes with russet,--gambols down the dense Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence He comes, nor whither (in a time so brief) He vanishes--swift carrier of some Fay, Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief-- A goblin glimpse upon some wildwood way.
II
What harlequin mood of nature qualified Him so with happiness? and limbed him with Such young activity as winds, that ride The ripples, have, dancing on every side? As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight, Gnome-like, in darkness,--like a moonlight myth,-- Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.
III
Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps; Lulled by near noises of the laboring mole Tunneling its mine--like some ungainly Troll-- Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps Picking its rusty and monotonous lute; Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps, And trees unrolling mighty root on root.
IV
Such is the music of his sleeping hours. Day hath another--'tis a melody He trips to, made by the assembled flowers, And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers, And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree. Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze (The silent music of Earth's ecstasy) The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days.
THE WILD IRIS
That day we wandered 'mid the hills,--so lone Clouds are not lonelier, the forest lay In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way: And many a bird the glimmering light along Showered the golden bubbles of its song.
Then in the valley, where the brook went by, Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,-- An isolated slip of fallen sky, Epitomizing heaven in its sum,-- An iris bloomed--blue, as if, flower-disguised, The gaze of Spring had there materialized.
I have forgotten many things since then-- Much beauty and much happiness and grief; And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men, Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief. "'Tis winter now," so says each barren bough; And face and hair proclaim 'tis winter now.
I would forget the gladness of that spring! I would forget that day when she and I, Between the bird-song and the blossoming, Went hand in hand beneath the soft May sky!-- Much is forgotten, yea--and yet, and yet, The things we would we never can forget.
Nor I how May then minted treasuries Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white: Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort, And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt.
But most of all, yea, it were well for me, Me and my heart, that I forget that flower, The blue wild iris, azure fleur-de-lis, That she and I together found that hour. Its recollection can but emphasize The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes.
DROUTH
I
The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops, Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,-- Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,-- An empty wagon rattles through the heat.
II
Where now the blue wild iris? flowers whose mouths Are moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint, That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South's Wild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hint At coming showers that the rainbows tint? Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows? The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves; The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves; The freckled touch-me-not and forest rose.
III
Dead! dead! all dead beside the drouth-burnt brook, Shrouded in moss or in the shriveled grass. Where waved their bells, from which the wild-bee shook The dewdrop once,--gaunt, in a nightmare mass, The rank weeds crowd; through which the cattle pass, Thirsty and lean, seeking some meager spring, Closed in with thorns, on which stray bits of wool The panting sheep have left, that sought the cool, From morn till evening wearily wandering.
IV
No bird is heard; no throat to whistle awake The sleepy hush; to let its music leak Fresh, bubble-like, through bloom-roofs of the brake: Only the green-gray heron, famine-weak,-- Searching the stale pools of the minnowless creek,-- Utters its call; and then the rain-crow, too, False prophet now, croaks to the stagnant air; While overhead,--still as if painted there,-- A buzzard hangs, black on the burning blue.
RAIN
Around, the stillness deepened; then the grain Went wild with wind; and every briery lane Was swept with dust; and then, tempestuous black, Hillward the tempest heaved a monster back, That on the thunder leaned as on a cane; And on huge shoulders bore a cloudy pack, That gullied gold from many a lightning-crack: One big drop splashed and wrinkled down the pane, And then field, hill, and wood were lost in rain.
At last, through clouds,--as from a cavern hewn. Into night's heart,--the sun burst angry roon; And every cedar, with its weight of wet, Against the sunset's fiery splendor set, Frightened to beauty, seemed with rubies strewn: Then in drenched gardens, like sweet phantoms met, Dim odors rose of pink and mignonette; And in the east a confidence, that soon Grew to the calm assurance of the moon.
AT SUNSET
Into the sunset's turquoise marge The moon dips, like a pearly barge Enchantment sails through magic seas To faeryland Hesperides, Over the hills and away.
Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown, The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down; Her apron filled with stars she stands, And one or two slip from her hands Over the hills and away.
Above the wood's black caldron bends The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends The dew and heat, whose bubbles make The mist and musk that haunt the brake Over the hills and away.
Oh, come with me, and let us go Beyond the sunset lying low; Beyond the twilight and the night, Into Love's kingdom of long light, Over the hills and away.
THE LEAF-CRICKET
I
Small twilight singer Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger Of dusk's dim glimmer, How chill thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer Vibrate, soft-sighing, Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying. I stand and listen, And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten With rose and lily, Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly, Breathing around its cold and colorless breath, Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death.
II
I see thee quaintly Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly-- (As thin as spangle Of cobwebbed rain)--held up at airy angle; I hear thy tinkle With faery notes the silvery stillness sprinkle;
Investing wholly The moonlight with divinest melancholy: Until, in seeming, I see the Spirit of Summer sadly dreaming Amid her ripened orchards, russet-strewn, Her great, grave eyes fixed on the harvest-moon.
III
As dewdrops beady; As mist minute, thy notes ring low and reedy: The vaguest vapor Of melody, now near; now, like some taper Of sound, far-fading-- Thou will-o'-wisp of music aye evading. Among the bowers, The fog-washed stalks of Autumn's weeds and flowers, By hill and hollow, I hear thy murmur and in vain I follow-- Thou jack-o'-lantern voice, thou pixy cry, Thou dirge, that tellest Beauty she must die.
IV
And when the frantic Wild winds of Autumn with the dead leaves antic; And walnuts scatter The mire of lanes; and dropping acorns patter In grove and forest, Like some frail grief with the rude blast thou warrest, Sending thy slender Far cry against the gale, that, rough, untender, Untouched of sorrow, Sweeps thee aside, where, haply, I to-morrow Shall find thee lying--tiny, cold and crushed, Thy weak wings folded and thy music hushed.
THE WIND OF WINTER
The Winter Wind, the wind of death, Who knocked upon my door, Now through the keyhole entereth, Invisible and hoar: He breathes around his icy breath And treads the flickering floor.
I heard him, wandering in the night, Tap at my windowpane; With ghostly fingers, snowy white, I heard him tug in vain, Until the shuddering candlelight Did cringe with fear and strain.
The fire, awakened by his voice, Leapt up with frantic arms, Like some wild babe that greets with noise Its father home who storms, With rosy gestures that rejoice, And crimson kiss that warms.
Now in the hearth he sits and, drowned Among the ashes, blows; Or through the room goes stealing round On cautious-creeping toes, Deep-mantled in the drowsy sound Of night that sleets and snows.
And oft, like some thin faery-thing, The stormy hush amid, I hear his captive trebles sing Beneath the kettle's lid; Or now a harp of elfland string In some dark cranny hid.
Again I hear him, implike, whine, Cramped in the gusty flue; Or knotted in the resinous pine Raise goblin cry and hue, While through the smoke his eyeballs shine, A sooty red and blue.
At last I hear him, nearing dawn, Take up his roaring broom, And sweep wild leaves from wood and lawn, And from the heavens the gloom, To show the gaunt world lying wan, And morn's cold rose a-bloom.
THE OWLET
I
When dusk is drowned in drowsy dreams, And slow the hues of sunset die; When firefly and moth go by, And in still streams the new moon seems Another moon and sky: Then from the hills there comes a cry, The owlet's cry: A shivering voice that sobs and screams, With terror screams:--
"Who is it, who is it, who-o-o? Who rides through the dusk and dew, With a pair of horns, As thin as thorns, And face a bubble-blue?-- Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?"
II
When night has dulled the lily's white, And opened wide the moonflower's eyes; When pale mists rise and veil the skies, And round the height in whispering flight The night-wind sounds and sighs: Then in the wood again it cries, The owlet cries: A shivering voice that calls in fright, In maundering fright:--