Chapter 7

"Who is it, who is it, who-o-o? Who walks with a shuffling shoe 'Mid the gusty trees, With a face none sees, And a form as ghostly, too?-- Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?"

III

When midnight leans a listening ear And tinkles on her insect lutes; When 'mid the roots the cricket flutes, And marsh and mere, now far, now near, A jack-o'-lantern foots: Then o'er the pool again it hoots, The owlet hoots: A voice that shivers as with fear, That cries with fear:--

"Who is it, who is it, who-o-o? Who creeps with his glowworm crew Above the mire With a corpse-light fire, As only dead men do?-- Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?"

EVENING ON THE FARM

From out the hills where twilight stands, Above the shadowy pasture lands, With strained and strident cry, Beneath pale skies that sunset bands, The bull-bats fly.

A cloud hangs over, strange of shape, And, colored like the half-ripe grape, Seems some uneven stain On heaven's azure; thin as crape, And blue as rain.

By ways, that sunset's sardonyx O'erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks, Through which the cattle came, The mullein-stalks seem giant wicks Of downy flame.

From woods no glimmer enters in, Above the streams that, wandering, win To where the wood pool bids, Those haunters of the dusk begin,-- The katydids.

Adown the dark the firefly marks Its flight in gold and emerald sparks; And, loosened from his chain, The shaggy mastiff bounds and barks, And barks again.

Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay; And now an owlet, far away, Cries twice or thrice, "T-o-o-w-h-o-o"; And cool dim moths of mottled gray Flit through the dew.

The silence sounds its frog-bassoon, Where, on the woodland creek's lagoon,-- Pale as a ghostly girl Lost 'mid the trees,--looks down the moon With face of pearl.

Within the shed where logs, late hewed, Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood Make blurs of white and brown, The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood Of teetering down.

The clattering guineas in the tree Din for a time; and quietly The henhouse, near the fence, Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry Of cocks and hens.

A cowbell tinkles by the rails, Where, streaming white in foaming pails, Milk makes an uddery sound; While overhead the black bat trails Around and round.

The night is still. The slow cows chew A drowsy cud. The bird that flew And sang is in its nest. It is the time of falling dew, Of dreams and rest.

The beehives sleep; and round the walk, The garden path, from stalk to stalk The bungling beetle booms, Where two soft shadows stand and talk Among the blooms.

The stars are thick: the light is dead That dyed the west: and Drowsyhead, Tuning his cricket-pipe, Nods, and some apple, round and red, Drops over-ripe.

Now down the road, that shambles by, A window, shining like an eye Through climbing rose and gourd, Shows Age and young Rusticity Seated at board.

THE LOCUST

Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reedlike breast, Makest meridian music, long and loud, Accentuating summer!--Dost thy best To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon-- When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady-browed, Upon his sultry scythe--thou tangible tune Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies.

Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes; Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills The land with death as sullenly he takes Downward his dusty way. 'Midst woods and fields At every pool his burning thirst he slakes: No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields A spring from him; no creek evades his eye: He needs but look and they are withered dry.

Thou singest, and thy song is as a spell Of somnolence to charm the land with sleep; A thorn of sound that pierces dale and dell, Diffusing slumber over vale and steep. Sleepy the forest, nodding sleepy boughs; Sleepy the pastures with their sleepy sheep: Sleepy the creek where sleepily the cows Stand knee-deep; and the very heaven seems Sleepy and lost in undetermined dreams.

Art thou a rattle that Monotony, Summer's dull nurse, old sister of slow Time, Shakes for Day's peevish pleasure, who in glee Takes its discordant music for sweet rhyme? Or oboe that the Summer Noontide plays, Sitting with Ripeness 'neath the orchard tree, Trying repeatedly the same shrill phrase, Until the musky peach with weariness Drops, and the hum of murmuring bees grows less?

THE DEAD DAY

The west builds high a sepulcher Of cloudy granite and of gold, Where twilight's priestly hours inter The Day like some great king of old.

A censer, rimmed with silver fire, The new moon swings above his tomb; While, organ-stops of God's own choir, Star after star throbs in the gloom.

And Night draws near, the sadly sweet-- A nun whose face is calm and fair-- And kneeling at the dead Day's feet Her soul goes up in mists like prayer.

In prayer, we feel through dewy gleam And flowery fragrance, and--above All earth--the ecstasy and dream That haunt the mystic heart of love.

THE OLD WATER MILL

Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise, Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skies Pilot great clouds like towering argosies, And hawk and buzzard breast the azure breeze. With many a foaming fall and glimmering reach Of placid murmur, under elm and beech, The creek goes twinkling through long gleams and glooms Of woodland quiet, summered with perfumes: The creek, in whose clear shallows minnow-schools Glitter or dart; and by whose deeper pools The blue kingfishers and the herons haunt; That, often startled from the freckled flaunt Of blackberry-lilies--where they feed or hide-- Trail a lank flight along the forestside With eery clangor. Here a sycamore Smooth, wave-uprooted, builds from shore to shore A headlong bridge; and there, a storm-hurled oak Lays a long dam, where sand and gravel choke The water's lazy way. Here mistflower blurs Its bit of heaven; there the ox-eye stirs Its gloaming hues of pearl and gold; and here, A gray, cool stain, like dawn's own atmosphere, The dim wild carrot lifts its crumpled crest: And over all, at slender flight or rest, The dragonflies, like coruscating rays Of lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase, Drowsily sparkle through the summer days: And, dewlap-deep, here from the noontide heat The bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat; And through the willows girdling the hill, Now far, now near, borne as the soft winds will, Comes the low rushing of the water-mill.

Ah, lovely to me from a little child, How changed the place! wherein once, undefiled, The glad communion of the sky and stream Went with me like a presence and a dream. Where once the brambled meads and orchardlands, Poured ripe abundance down with mellow hands Of summer; and the birds of field and wood Called to me in a tongue I understood; And in the tangles of the old rail-fence Even the insect tumult had some sense, And every sound a happy eloquence: And more to me than wisest books can teach The wind and water said; whose words did reach My soul, addressing their magnificent speech,-- Raucous and rushing,--from the old mill-wheel, That made the rolling mill-cogs snore and reel, Like some old ogre in a faerytale Nodding above his meat and mug of ale.

How memory takes me back the ways that lead-- As when a boy--through woodland and through mead! To orchards fruited; or to fields in bloom; Or briery fallows, like a mighty room, Through which the winds swing censers of perfume, And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit;-- A wildwood feast, that stayed the plowboy's foot When to the tasseling acres of the corn He drove his team, fresh in the primrose morn; And from the liberal banquet, nature lent, Plucked dewy handfuls as he whistling went.--

A boy once more, I stand with sunburnt feet And watch the harvester sweep down the wheat; Or laze with warm limbs in the unstacked straw Near by the thresher, whose insatiate maw Devours the sheaves, hot-drawling out its hum-- Like some great sleepy bee, above a bloom, Made drunk with honey--while, grown big with grain, The bulging sacks receive the golden rain. Again I tread the valley, sweet with hay, And hear the bobwhite calling far away, Or wood-dove cooing in the elder-brake; Or see the sassafras bushes madly shake As swift, a rufous instant, in the glen The red fox leaps and gallops to his den: Or, standing in the violet-colored gloam, Hear roadways sound with holiday riding home From church or fair, or country barbecue, Which half the county to some village drew.

How spilled with berries were its summer hills, And strewn with walnuts all its autumn rills!-- And chestnuts too! burred from the spring's long flowers; June's, when their tree-tops streamed delirious showers Of blossoming silver, cool, crepuscular, And like a nebulous radiance shone afar.-- And maples! how their sappy hearts would pour Rude troughs of syrup, when the winter hoar Steamed with the sugar-kettle, day and night, And, red, the snow was streaked with firelight. Then it was glorious! the mill-dam's edge One slope of frosty crystal, laid a ledge Of pearl across; above which, sleeted trees Tossed arms of ice, that, clashing in the breeze, Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles, Thin as the peal of far-off elfin bells: A sound that in my city dreams I hear, That brings before me, under skies that clear, The old mill in its winter garb of snow, Its frozen wheel like a hoar beard below, And its west windows, two deep eyes aglow.

Ah, ancient mill, still do I picture o'er Thy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor; Thy door,--like some brown, honest hand of toil, And honorable with service of the soil,-- Forever open; to which, on his back The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack, And while the miller measures out his toll, Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,-- That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,-- The harmless gossip of the passing day: Good country talk, that says how so-and-so Lived, died, or wedded: how curculio And codling-moth play havoc with the fruit, Smut ruins the corn and blight the grapes to boot: Or what is news from town: next county fair: How well the crops are looking everywhere:-- Now this, now that, on which their interests fix, Prospects for rain or frost, and politics. While, all around, the sweet smell of the meal Filters, warm-pouring from the rolling wheel Into the bin; beside which, mealy white, The miller looms, dim in the dusty light.

Again I see the miller's home between The crinkling creek and hills of beechen green: Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown, Who oft o'erawed my boyhood with his frown And gray-browed mien: again he tries to reach My youthful soul with fervid scriptural speech.-- For he, of all the countryside confessed, The most religious was and goodliest; A Methodist, who at all meetings led; Prayed with his family ere they went to bed. No books except the Bible had he read-- At least so seemed it to my younger head.-- All things of Heaven and Earth he'd prove by this, Be it a fact or mere hypothesis: For to his simple wisdom, reverent, _"The Bible says"_ was all of argument.-- God keep his soul! his bones were long since laid Among the sunken gravestones in the shade Of those dark-lichened rocks, that wall around The family burying-ground with cedars crowned: Where bristling teasel and the brier combine With clambering wood-rose and the wildgrape-vine To hide the stone whereon his name and dates Neglect, with mossy hand, obliterates.

ARGONAUTS

With argosies of dawn he sails, And triremes of the dusk, The Seas of Song, whereon the gales Are myths that trail wild musk.

He hears the hail of Siren bands From headlands sunset-kissed; The Lotus-eaters wave pale hands Within a land of mist.

For many a league he hears the roar Of the Symplegades; And through the far foam of its shore The Isle of Sappho sees.

All day he looks, with hazy lids, At gods who cleave the deep; All night he hears the Nereïds Sing their wild hearts asleep.

When heaven thunders overhead, And hell upheaves the Vast, Dim faces of the ocean's dead Gaze at him from each mast.

He but repeats the oracle That bade him first set sail; And cheers his soul with, "All is well! Go on! I will not fail."

Behold! he sails no earthly bark And on no earthly sea, Who down the years into the dark,-- Divine of destiny,--

Holds to his purpose,--ships of Greece,-- Ideal-steered afar, For whom awaits the Golden Fleece, The fame that is his star.

"THE MORN THAT BREAKS ITS HEART OF GOLD"

From an ode "In Commemoration of the Founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony."

The morn that breaks its heart of gold Above the purple hills; The eve, that spills Its nautilus splendor where the sea is rolled; The night, that leads the vast procession in Of stars and dreams,-- The beauty that shall never die or pass:-- The winds, that spin Of rain the misty mantles of the grass, And thunder raiment of the mountain-streams; The sunbeams, penciling with gold the dusk Green cowls of ancient woods; The shadows, thridding, veiled with musk, The moon-pathed solitudes, Call to my Fancy, saying, "Follow! follow!" Till, following, I see,-- Fair as a cascade in a rainbowed hollow,-- A dream, a shape, take form, Clad on with every charm,--

The vision of that Ideality, Which lured the pioneer in wood and hill, And beckoned him from earth and sky; The dream that cannot die, Their children's children did fulfill, In stone and iron and wood, Out of the solitude, And by a stalwart act Create a mighty fact-- A Nation, now that stands Clad on with hope and beauty, strength and song, Eternal, young and strong, Planting her heel on wrong, Her starry banner in triumphant hands....

Within her face the rose Of Alleghany dawns; Limbed with Alaskan snows, Floridian starlight in her eyes,-- Eyes stern as steel yet tender as a fawn's,-- And in her hair The rapture of her rivers; and the dare, As perishless as truth, That o'er the crags of her Sierras flies, Urging the eagle ardor through her veins, Behold her where, Around her radiant youth,

The spirits of the cataracts and plains, The genii of the floods and forests, meet, In rainbow mists circling her brow and feet: The forces vast that sit In session round her; powers paraclete, That guard her presence; awful forms and fair, Making secure her place; Guiding her surely as the worlds through space Do laws sidereal; edicts, thunder-lit, Of skyed eternity, in splendor borne On planetary wings of night and morn.

* * * * *

From her high place she sees Her long procession of accomplished acts, Cloud-winged refulgences Of thoughts in steel and stone, of marble dreams, Lift up tremendous battlements, Sun-blinding, built of facts; While in her soul she seems, Listening, to hear, as from innumerable tents, Æonian thunder, wonder, and applause Of all the heroic ages that are gone; Feeling secure That, as her Past, her Future shall endure, As did her Cause When redly broke the dawn Of fierce rebellion, and, beneath its star, The firmaments of war Poured down infernal rain, And North and South lay bleeding mid their slain. And now, no less, shall her great Cause prevail, More so in peace than war, Through the thrilled wire and electric rail, Carrying her message far: Shaping her dream Within the brain of steam, That, with a myriad hands, Labors unceasingly, and knits her lands In firmer union; joining plain and stream With steel; and binding shore to shore With bands of iron;--nerves and arteries, Along whose adamant forever pour Her concrete thoughts, her tireless energies.

A VOICE ON THE WIND

I

She walks with the wind on the windy height When the rocks are loud and the waves are white, And all night long she calls through the night, "O my children, come home!" Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud, Tosses around her like a shroud, While over the deep her voice rings loud,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!"

II

Who is she who wanders alone, When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown? Who walks all night and makes her moan, "O my children, come home!" Whose face is raised to the blinding gale; Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale, While over the world goes by her wail,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!"

III

She walks with the wind in the windy wood; The dark rain drips from her hair and hood, And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued, "O my children, come home!" Where the trees loom gaunt and the rocks stretch drear, The owl and the fox crouch back with fear, As wild through the wood her voice they hear,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!"

IV

Who is she who shudders by When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly? Who walks all night with her wailing cry, "O my children, come home!" Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue, With wan feet wounded and hands wild-wrung, Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!"

V

'Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees, The mother of Death and of Mysteries, Who cries on the wind all night to these, "O my children, come home!" The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain, Calling her children home again, Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!"

REQUIEM

I

No more for him, where hills look down, Shall Morning crown Her rainy brow with blossom bands!-- The Morning Hours, whose rosy hands Drop wildflowers of the breaking skies Upon the sod 'neath which he lies.-- No more for him! No more! No more!

II

No more for him, where waters sleep, Shall Evening heap The long gold of the perfect days! The Eventide, whose warm hand lays Great poppies of the afterglow Upon the turf he rests below.-- No more for him! No more! no more!

Ill

No more for him, where woodlands loom, Shall Midnight bloom The star-flowered acres of the blue! The Midnight Hours, whose dim hands strew Dead leaves of darkness, hushed and deep, Upon the grave where he doth sleep.-- No more for him! No more! No more!

IV

The hills, that Morning's footsteps wake: The waves that take A brightness from the Eve; the woods And solitudes, o'er which Night broods, Their Spirits have, whose parts are one With him, whose mortal part is done. Whose part is done.

LYNCHERS

At the moon's down-going let it be On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree.

The red-rock road of the underbrush, Where the woman came through the summer hush.

The sumac high and the elder thick, Where we found the stone and the ragged stick.

The trampled road of the thicket, full Of footprints down to the quarry pool.

The rocks that ooze with the hue of lead, Where we found her lying stark and dead.

The scraggy wood; the negro hut, With its doors and windows locked and shut.

A secret signal; a foot's rough tramp; A knock at the door; a lifted lamp.

An oath; a scuffle; a ring of masks; A voice that answers a voice that asks.

A group of shadows; the moon's red fleck; A running noose and a man's bared neck.

A word, a curse, and a shape that swings; The lonely night and a bat's black wings.

At the moon's down-going let it be On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree.

THE PARTING

She passed the thorn-trees, whose gaunt branches tossed Their spider-shadows round her; and the breeze, Beneath the ashen moon, was full of frost, And mouthed and mumbled to the sickly trees, Like some starved hag who sees her children freeze.

Dry-eyed she waited by the sycamore. Some stars made misty blotches in the sky. And all the wretched willows on the shore Looked faded as a jaundiced cheek or eye. She felt their pity and could only sigh.

And then his skiff ground on the river rocks. Whistling he came into the shadow made By that dead tree. He kissed her dark brown locks; And round her form his eager arms were laid. Passive she stood, her secret unbetrayed.

And then she spoke, while still his greeting kiss Ached in her hair. She did not dare to lift Her eyes to his--her anguished eyes to his, While tears smote crystal in her throat. One rift Of weakness humored might set all adrift.

Fields over which a path, overwhelmed with burrs And ragweeds, noisy with the grasshoppers, Leads,--lost, irresolute as paths the cows Wear through the woods,--unto a woodshed; then, With wrecks of windows, to a huddled house, Where men have murdered men.

A house, whose tottering chimney, clay and rock, Is seamed and crannied; whose lame door and lock Are bullet-bored; around which, there and here, Are sinister stains.--One dreads to look around.-- The place seems thinking of that time of fear And dares not breathe a sound.

Within is emptiness: The sunlight falls On faded journals papering the walls; On advertisement chromos, torn with time, Around a hearth where wasps and spiders build.-- The house is dead: meseems that night of crime It, too, was shot and killed.

KU KLUX

We have sent him seeds of the melon's core, And nailed a warning upon his door: By the Ku Klux laws we can do no more.

Down in the hollow, 'mid crib and stack, The roof of his low-porched house looms black; Not a line of light at the door-sill's crack.

Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride! The hounds can sense though the fox may hide! And for a word too much men oft have died.

The clouds blow heavy toward the moon. The edge of the storm will reach it soon. The kildee cries and the lonesome loon.

The clouds shall flush with a wilder glare Than the lightning makes with its angled flare, When the Ku Klux verdict is given there.

In the pause of the thunder rolling low, A rifle's answer--who shall know From the wind's fierce hurl and the rain's black blow?

Only the signature, written grim At the end of the message brought to him-- A hempen rope and a twisted limb.

So arm and mount! and mask and ride! The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!-- For a word too much men oft have died.

EIDOLONS

The white moth-mullein brushed its slim Cool, faery flowers against his knee; In places where the way lay dim The branches, arching suddenly, Made tomblike mystery for him.

The wild-rose and the elder, drenched With rain, made pale a misty place,-- From which, as from a ghost, he blenched; He walking with averted face, And lips in desolation clenched.

For far within the forest,--where Weird shadows stood like phantom men, And where the ground-hog dug its lair, The she-fox whelped and had her den,-- The thing kept calling, buried there.

One dead trunk, like a ruined tower, Dark-green with toppling trailers, shoved Its wild wreck o'er the bush; one bower Looked like a dead man, capped and gloved, The one who haunted him each hour.