Part 3

But something ’mid the pauses of the dark Doth teach me that I am not all alone, For I have dreamed in my dread, maddest hour, An awful shadow, blacker than my black, Went ever with me. Hearken to me now: I never felt a hand or saw a face, I never knew a comfort more than sleep, The winters they are only barren snows, And age is hard, and death waits at the last.

But I have felt in some dim, shapeless way, As memories long remembered after youth, That back of all there is some mighty will, Beyond the little dreams that we are here, Beyond the misery of our days and years, Beyond the outmost system’s outmost rim, Where wrinkled suns in awful blackness swim, A wondrous mercy that is working still.

THE DREAMERS.

They lingered on the middle heights, Betwixt the brown earth and the heaven; They whispered, “We are not the night’s, But pallid children of the even.”

They muttered, “We are not the day’s, For the old struggle and endeavor, The rugged and unquiet ways, Are dead and driven past for ever.”

They dreamed upon the cricket’s tune, The winds that stirred the withered grasses: But never saw the blood-red moon, That lit the spectre mountain-passes.

They sat and marked the brooklet steal In smoke-mist o’er its silvered surges: But marked not, with its peal on peal, The storm that swept the granite gorges.

They dreamed the shimmer and the shade, And sought in pools for haunted faces: Nor heard again the cannonade, In dreams from earth’s old battle-places.

They spake, “The ages all are dead, The strife, the struggle and the glory; We are the silences that wed, Betwixt the story and the story.

“We are the little winds that moan Between the woodlands and the meadows, We are the ghosted leaves, wind-blown Across the gust-light and the shadows.”

Then came a soul across those lands, Whose face was all one glad, rapt wonder; And spake: “The skies are ribbed with bands Of fire, and heaven all racked with thunder.

“Climb up and see the glory spread, High over cliff and ’scarpment yawning: The night is past, the dark is dead, Behold the triumph of the dawning!”

Then laughed they with a wistful scorn, “You are a ghost, a long-dead vision; You passed by ages ere was born This twilight of the days elysian.

“There is no hope, there is no strife, But only haunted hearts that hunger, About a dead, scarce dreamed-of life, Old ages when the earth was younger.”

Then came by one in mad distress, “Haste, haste, below where strong arms weaken, The fighting ones grow less and less! Great cities of the world are taken!

“Dread evil rolls by like a flood, Men’s bones beneath his surges whiten, Go where the ages mark in blood The footsteps that their days enlighten.”

Still they but heard, discordant mirth, The thin winds through the dead stalks rattle; While out from far-off haunts of earth, There smote the mighty sound of battle.

Now there was heard an awful cry, Despair that rended heaven asunder, White pauses when a cause would die, Where love was lost and souls went under.

The while these feebly dreamed and talked, Betwixt the brown earth and the heaven, Faint ghosts of men who breathed and walked, But deader than the dead ones even.

And out there on the middle height, They sought in pools for haunted faces, Nor heard the cry across the night, That swept from earth’s dread battle-places.

THE MOTHER.

I.

It was April, blossoming spring, They buried me, when the birds did sing;

Earth, in clammy wedging earth, They banked my bed with a black, damp girth.

Under the damp and under the mould, I kenned my breasts were clammy and cold.

Out from the red beams, slanting and bright, I kenned my cheeks were sunken and white.

I was a dream, and the world was a dream, And yet I kenned all things that seem.

I was a dream, and the world was a dream, But you cannot bury a red sunbeam.

For though in the under-grave’s doom-night I lay all silent and stark and white,

Yet over my head I seemed to know The murmurous moods of wind and snow,

The snows that wasted, the winds that blew, The rays that slanted, the clouds that drew

The water-ghosts up from lakes below, And the little flower-souls in earth that grow.

Under earth, in the grave’s stark night, I felt the stars and the moon’s pale light.

I felt the winds of ocean and land That whispered the blossoms soft and bland.

Though they had buried me dark and low, My soul with the season’s seemed to grow.

II.

I was a bride in my sickness sore, I was a bride nine months and more.

From throes of pain they buried me low, For death had finished a mother’s woe.

But under the sod, in the grave’s dread doom, I dreamed of my baby in glimmer and gloom.

I dreamed of my babe, and I kenned that his rest Was broken in wailings on my dead breast.

I dreamed that a rose-leaf hand did cling: Oh, you cannot bury a mother in spring.

When the winds are soft and the blossoms are red She could not sleep in her cold earth-bed.

I dreamed of my babe for a day and a night, And then I rose in my grave-clothes white.

I rose like a flower from my damp earth-bed To the world of sorrowing overhead.

Men would have called me a thing of harm, But dreams of my babe made me rosy and warm.

I felt my breasts swell under my shroud; No stars shone white, no winds were loud;

But I stole me past the graveyard wall, For the voice of my baby seemed to call;

And I kenned me a voice, though my lips were dumb: Hush, baby, hush! for mother is come.

I passed the streets to my husband’s home; The chamber stairs in a dream I clomb;

I heard the sound of each sleeper’s breath, Light waves that break on the shores of death.

I listened a space at my chamber door, Then stole like a moon-ray over its floor.

My babe was asleep on a stranger arm, “O baby, my baby, the grave is so warm,

“Though dark and so deep, for mother is there! O come with me from the pain and care!

“O come with me from the anguish of earth, Where the bed is banked with a blossoming girth,

“Where the pillow is soft and the rest is long, And mother will croon you a slumber-song,

“A slumber-song that will charm your eyes To a sleep that never in earth-song lies!

“The loves of earth your being can spare, But never the grave, for mother is there.”

I nestled him soft to my throbbing breast, And stole me back to my long, long rest.

And here I lie with him under the stars, Dead to earth, its peace and its wars;

Dead to its hates, its hopes, and its harms, So long as he cradles up soft in my arms.

And heaven may open its shimmering doors, And saints make music on pearly floors,

And hell may yawn to its infinite sea, But they never can take my baby from me.

For so much a part of my soul he hath grown That God doth know of it high on His throne.

And here I lie with him under the flowers That sun-winds rock through the billowy hours,

With the night-airs that steal from the murmuring sea, Bringing sweet peace to my baby and me.

DUSK.

Down by the shore at even, when the waves Lap lightly on the reedy rims, and soft, One trembling star, a blossom, flames aloft, Where the sunk sun the western heaven laves With lowest tides of day; the tired world craves For the great night, that cometh brooding in, With draught of healing over earth’s far din, And blessed rest that recreates and saves.

Far in the breathing woods the whip-poor-will Reiterates his plaintive note; and hark! A dusky night-hawk whirrs athwart the dark, Haunting the shadows, till in silvern swoon, Hunted by her own spirit, strange and still, Over the waters comes the wan, white moon.

OUT OF POMPEII.

She lay, face downward, on her bended arm, In this her new, sweet dream of human bliss, Her heart within her fearful, fluttering, warm, Her lips yet pained with love’s first timorous kiss. She did not note the darkening afternoon, She did not mark the lowering of the sky O’er that great city. Earth had given its boon Unto her lips, love touched her and passed by.

In one dread moment all the sky grew dark, The hideous rain, the panic, the red rout, Where love lost love, and all the world might mark The city overwhelmed, blotted out Without one cry, so quick oblivion came, And life passed to the black where all forget; But she,—we know not of her house or name,— In love’s sweet musings doth lie dreaming yet.

The dread hell passed, the ruined world grew still, And the great city passed to nothingness: The ages went and mankind worked its will. Then men stood still amid the centuries’ press, And in the ash-hid ruins opened bare, As she lay down in her shamed loveliness, Sculptured and frozen, late they found her there, Image of love ’mid all that hideousness.

Her head, face downward, on her bended arm, Her single robe that showed her shapely form, Her wondrous fate love keeps divinely warm Over the centuries, past the slaying storm, The heart can read in writings time hath left, That linger still through death’s oblivion; And in this waste of life and light bereft, She brings again a beauty that had gone.

And if there be a day when all shall wake, As dreams the hoping, doubting human heart, The dim forgetfulness of death will break For her as one who sleeps with lips apart; And did God call her suddenly, I know She’d wake as morning wakened by the thrush, Feel that red kiss across the centuries glow, And make all heaven rosier by her blush.

MORNING ON THE SHORE.

The lake is blue with morning; and the sky Sweet, clear, and burnished as an orient pearl. High in its vastness, scream and skim and whirl White gull-flocks where the gleaming beaches die Into dim distance, where great marshes lie. Far in ashore the woods are warm with dreams, The dew-wet road in ruddy sunlight gleams, The sweet, cool earth, the clear blue heaven on high.

Across the morn a carolling school-boy goes, Filling the world with youth to heaven’s stair; Some chattering squirrel answers from his tree; But down beyond the headland, where ice-floes Are great in winter, pleading in mute prayer, A dead, drowned face stares up immutably.

PAN THE FALLEN.

He wandered into the market With pipes and goatish hoof; He wandered in a grotesque shape, And no one stood aloof. For the children crowded round him, The wives and greybeards, too, To crack their jokes and have their mirth, And see what Pan would do.

The Pan he was they knew him, Part man, but mostly beast, Who drank, and lied, and snatched what bones Men threw him from their feast; Who seemed in sin so merry, So careless in his woe, That men despised, scarce pitied him, And still would have it so.

He swelled his pipes and thrilled them, And drew the silent tear; He made the gravest clack with mirth By his sardonic leer. He blew his pipes full sweetly At their amused demands, And caught the scornful, earth-flung pence That fell from careless hands.

He saw the mob’s derision, And took it kindly, too, And when an epithet was flung, A coarser back he threw; But under all the masking Of a brute, unseemly part, I looked, and saw a wounded soul, And a god-like, breaking heart.

And back of the elfin music, The burlesque, clownish play, I knew a wail that the weird pipes made, A look that was far away,— A gaze into some far heaven Whence a soul had fallen down; But the mob only saw the grotesque beast And the antics of the clown.

For scant-flung pence he paid them With mirth and elfin play, Till, tired for a time of his antics queer, They passed and went their way; Then there in the empty market He ate his scanty crust, And, tired face turned to heaven, down He laid him in the dust.

And over his wild, strange features A softer light there fell, And on his worn, earth-driven heart A peace ineffable. And the moon rose over the market, But Pan the beast was dead; While Pan the god lay silent there, With his strange, distorted head.

And the people, when they found him, Stood still with awesome fear. No more they saw the beast’s rude hoof, The furtive, clownish leer; But the lightest in that audience Went silent from the place, For they knew the look of a god released That shone from his dead face.

THE CLOUD MAIDEN.

She folds about her shining form The azure mantle of the skies, And sendeth earthward, kind and warm, The gentle lightnings of her eyes.

She drifts in gold and azure furled, This sweet, mad demon of the air, Her love the kindliest in God’s world, But when she hates, her hate beware.

She floats at heaven’s gates when dawn Spills in the east his rosy fires, She comes at eve when day is gone, Reviving all his dead desires.

All essences came to her birth, The dews that drop, the airs that run; She is the offspring of the earth, The daughter of the flaming sun.

She is most kind to everything, The thirsty grasses, buds and flowers, And to the poet’s heart doth bring Thought-blossoms from her skyey bowers.

The spirits of the upper space, The swart, black genies under sea, All for the glamour of her face, Are hers through all eternity.

They love, they hate, they wake, they sleep, Just as she waves her shining hands; Just as she wills, the deepest deep Is stirred to do her heart’s commands.

But when her mad, weird mood comes on Her demons all go mad with her; They shout the churning seas upon, And wrap the heavens in a blur.

She trails a ragged witch in grey Across the heaven’s wind-blown bars, And in her ashen folds away She hides the shuddering moon and stars.

And when she winds her ebon cloak, And leaps red levin from her eyes, She rends the century-ringèd oak, And laughs in thunder as it lies.

THE WERE-WOLVES.

They hasten, still they hasten, From the even to the dawn; And their tired eyes gleam and glisten Under north skies white and wan. Each panter in the darkness Is a demon-haunted soul, The shadowy, phantom were-wolves, Who circle round the Pole.

Their tongues are crimson flaming, Their haunted blue eyes gleam, And they strain them to the utmost O’er frozen lake and stream; Their cry one note of agony, That is neither yelp nor bark, These panters of the northern waste, Who hound them to the dark.

You may hear their hurried breathing, You may see their fleeting forms, At the pallid polar midnight, When the north is gathering storms; When the arctic frosts are flaming, And the ice-field thunders roll; These demon-haunted were-wolves, Who circle round the Pole.

They hasten, still they hasten, Across the northern night, Filled with a frighted madness, A horror of the light; Forever and forever, Like leaves before the wind, They leave the wan, white gleaming Of the dawning far behind.

Their only peace is darkness, Their rest to hasten on Into the heart of midnight, Forever from the dawn. Across far phantom ice-floes The eye of night may mark These horror-haunted were-wolves Who hound them to the dark.

All through this hideous journey, They are the souls of men Who in the far dark-ages Made Europe one black fen. They fled from courts and convents, And bound their mortal dust With demon wolfish girdles Of human hate and lust.

These who could have been god-like, Chose, each a loathsome beast, Amid the heart’s foul graveyards, On putrid thoughts to feast; But the great God who made them Gave each a human soul, And so ’mid night forever They circle round the Pole.

A praying for the blackness, A longing for the night, For each is doomed forever By a horror of the light; And far in the heart of midnight, Where their shadowy flight is hurled, They feel with pain the dawning That creeps in round the world.

Under the northern midnight, The white, glint ice upon, They hasten, still they hasten, With their horror of the dawn; Forever and forever, Into the night away They hasten, still they hasten Unto the judgment day.

BELATED.

The year drifts sadly back this way, With Autumn’s grief and pain; But with the red leaf and the gold She ne’er will come again.

This world hath its weird beauteousness, That youth in music stirs, But time will ne’er bring back to earth The beauty that was hers.

You could not call a red leaf God’s If she were not God’s too; A light fell on such eyes and lips

When her smile went the day’s went too, Night, when she closed her eyes, Lost half its glory. When she woke Earth changed to paradise.

She looked so peaceful in her sleep When they laid her to her rest, I could not help but think upon An infant at the breast.

She looked so like to one who’d wake This side the break of dawn; I grudged the very earth they heaped Her snow-like breast upon.

I hear her low voice calling soft, Her footstep at the doors; I wake up in the dead of night, And walk the wintry floors.

I see her croon her babe to sleep, Athwart the moonlight now, Her wealth of golden hair that fell Across her gentle brow.

I often walk at death of day, Amid the sunset firs, And dream the world will no more know The beauty that was hers.

I wonder in some far-off state, If love can conquer death, Will I know her and she know me, As when she drew life’s breath?

And will she stand at some flame-gate, And wait and watch for me, And fall upon my breast and weep With joy my face to see?

And bring the little ones around To climb to father’s arms; While her sweet face, the face of yore, To mother-beauty warms?

And we go, laughing, weeping, through Some gate of crystal dome, While love grows God-like more and more, To greet the wanderer home.

AN AUGUST REVERIE.

There is an autumn sense subdues the air, Though it is August and the season still A part of summer, and the woodlands fair. I hear it in the humming of the mill, I feel it in the rustling of the trees, That scarcely shiver in the passing breeze.

’Tis but a touch of Winter ere his time, A presaging of sleep and icy death, When skies are rich and fields are in their prime, And heaven and earth commingle in a breath:— When hazy airs are stirred with gossamer wings, And in shorn fields the shrill cicada sings.

So comes the slow revolving of the year, The glory of nature ripening to decay, When in those paths by which, through loves austere, All men and beasts and blossoms find their way, By steady easings of the spirit’s dream, From sunlight past the pallid starlight’s beam.

Nor should the spirit sorrow as it passes, Declining slowly by the heights it came; We are but brothers to the birds and grasses, In our brief coming and our end the same:— And though we glory, god-like in our day, Perchance some kindred law their lives obey.

There are a thousand beauties gathered round, The sounds of waters falling over-night, The morning scents that steamed from the fresh ground, The hair-like streaming of the morning light Through early mists and dim, wet woods where brooks Chatter, half-seen, down under mossy nooks.

The ragged daisy starring all the fields, The buttercup abrim with pallid gold, The thistle and burr-flowers hedged with prickly shields, All common weeds the draggled pastures hold, With shrivelled pods and leaves, are kin to me, Like-heirs of earth and her maturity.

They speak a silent speech that is their own, These wise and gentle teachers of the grass; And when their brief and common days are flown, A certain beauty from the year doth pass:— A beauty of whose light no eye can tell, Save that it went; and my heart knew it well.

I may not know each plant as some men know them, Like children gather beasts and birds to tame; But I went ’mid them as the winds that blow them, From childhood’s hour, and loved without a name:— There is more of beauty in a field of weeds, Than in all blooms the hot-house garden breeds.

For they are nature’s children, in their faces I see that sweet obedience to the sky That marks these dwellers of the wilding places, Who with the season’s being live and die; Knowing no love but of the wind and sun, Who still are nature’s when their life is done.

They are a part of all the haze-filled hours, The happy, happy world all drenched with light, The far-off, chiming click-clack of the mowers, And yon blue hills whose mists elude my sight, And they to me will ever bring in dreams Far mist-clad heights and brimming rain-fed streams.

In this dream August air, whose ripened leaf, Pausing before it puts death’s glories on, Deepens its green, and the half-garnered sheaf Gladdens the haze-filled sunlight; love hath gone Beyond the material, trembling like a star, To those sure heights where all thought’s glories are.

And Thought, that is the greatness of this earth, And man’s most inmost being, soars and soars, Beyond the eye’s horizon’s outmost girth, Garners all beauty, on all mystery pores:— Like some ethereal fountain in its flow, Finds heavens where the senses may not go.

IN THE SPRING FIELDS.

There dwells a spirit in the budding year— As motherhood doth beautify the face— That even lends these barren glebes a grace, And fills grey hours with beauty that were drear And bleak when the loud, storming March was here: A glamour that the thrilled heart dimly traces In swelling boughs and soft, wet, windy spaces, And sunlands where the chattering birds make cheer.

I thread the uplands where the wind’s footfalls Stir leaves in gusty hollows, autumn’s urns. Seaward the river’s shining breast expands, High in the windy pines a lone crow calls, And far below some patient ploughman turns His great black furrow over steaming lands.

IN A JUNE NIGHT.

See how the luminous night hath drawn around The curtains of her majesty, and o’er The far-heard, murmurous sounds of earthly life Hath dropped the mantle of her misty sleep, That spreads itself and folds the corners in Of darkness round this hid rim of the world.