Part 2

Then we may meet the Oread, whose eyes Are dewdrops where twin heavens shine confessed: She, all the maiden modesty's surprise Rosying her temples,--to slim loins and breast Tempestuous, brown, bewildering tresses pressed,-- Shall stand a moment's moiety in wise Of some delicious dream, then shrink, distressed, Like some wild mist that, hardly seen, is gone, Footing the ferny hillside without sound; Or, like storm sunlight, her white limbs shall bound, A thistle's instant, towards a woody rise, A flying glimmer o'er the dew-drenched lawn.

IV

And we may see the Satyrs in the shades Of drowsy dells pipe, and, goat-footed, dance; And Pan himself reel rollicking through the glades; Or, hidden in bosky bow'rs, the Lust, perchance, Faun-like, that waits with heated, animal glance The advent of the Loveliness that wades Thigh-deep through flowers, naked as Romance, All unsuspecting, till two hairy arms Clasp her rebellious beauty, panting white, Whose tearful terror, struggling into might, Beats the brute brow resisting, but evades Not him, for whom the gods designed her charms.

WAITING

Were it but May now, while Our hearts are yearning, How they would bound and smile, The young blood burning! Around the tedious dial No slow hands turning.

Were it but May now!--say, What joy to go, Your hand in mine all day, Where blossoms blow! Your hand, more white than May, May's flowers of snow.

Were it but May now!--think, What wealth she has! The bluet and wild-pink, Wild flowers,--that mass About the wood-brook's brink,-- And sassafras.

Nights, that the large stars strew, Heaven on heaven rolled; Nights, pearled with stars and dew, Whose heavens hold Aromas, and the new Moon's curve of gold.

So mad, so wild is March!-- I long, oh, long To see the redbud's torch Flame far and strong; Hear, on my vine-climbed porch, The bluebird's song.

How slow the Hours creep, Each with a crutch!-- Ah, could my spirit leap Its bounds and touch That day, no thing would keep-- Or matter much!

But now, with you away, Time halts and crawls, Feet clogged with winter clay, That never falls, While, distant still, that day Of meeting calls.

LONGINGS

Now when the first wild violets peer All rain-filled at blue April skies, As on one smiles one's sweetheart dear With the big teardrops in her eyes:

Now when the May-apples, I wis, Bloom white along lone, greenwood creeks, As bashful as the cheeks you kiss, As waxen as your sweetheart's cheeks:

Within the soul what longings rise To stamp the town-dust from the feet! Fare forth to gaze in Spring's clean eyes, And kiss her cheeks so cool and sweet!

THE SWEET O' THE YEAR

I

How can I help from laughing, while The daffodillies at me smile? The dancing dew winks tipsily In clusters of the lilac-tree, And crocus' mouths and hyacinths' Storm through the grassy labyrinths A mirth of pearl and violet; While roses, bud by bud, Laugh from each dainty-lacing net Red lips of maidenhood.

II

How can I help from singing when The swallow and the hawk again Are noisy in the hyaline Of happy heavens, clear as wine? The robin, lustily and shrill, Pipes on the timber-belted hill; And o'er the fallow skim the bold, Mad orioles that glow Like shining shafts of ingot gold Shot from the morning's bow.

III

How can I help from loving, dear, Since love is of the sweetened year?-- The very insects feel his power, And chirr and chirrup hour on hour; The bee and beetle in the noon, The cricket underneath the moon:-- What else to do but follow too, Since youth is on the wing, Lord Life who follows through the dew Lord Love a-carolling.

IN MIDDLE SPRING

Now the fields are rolled into turbulent gold, And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent With the emerald surges of wood and of wold, A flower-foam bursting redolent: Now the dingles and deeps of the woodland old Are glad with a sibilant life new sent, Too rare to be told are the manifold, Sweet fancies that quicken, eloquent, In the heart that no longer is cold.

How it knows of the wings of the hawk ere it swings From the drippled dew scintillant seen! Where the redbird hides, ere it flies or sings, In melodious quiverings of green! How the sun to the dogwood such kisses brings That it laughs into blossoms of wonderful sheen; While the wind, to the strings of his lute that rings, Makes love to apple and nectarine, Till the sap in them rosily springs.

Go seek in the ray for a sworded fay, The chestnut's buds into blooms that rips; And look in the brook, that runs laughing gay, For the Nymph with the laughing lips; In the brake for the Dryad whose eyes are gray, From whose bosom the perfume drips; The Faun hid away, where the branches sway, Thick ivy low down on his hips, Pursed lips on a syrinx at play.

So, ho! for the rose, the Romeo rose, And the lyric it hides in its heart! And, oh, for the epic the oak-tree knows, Sonorous as Homer in art! And it's ho! for the prose of the weed that grows Green-writing Earth's commonest part!-- What God may propose let us learn of those, The songs and the dreams that start In the heart of each blossom that blows.

A SPRING SHOWER

We stood where the fields were beryl, The redolent woodland was warm; And the heaven above us, now sterile, Was alive with the pulse-winds of storm.

We had watched the green wheat brighten And gloom as it winced at each gust; And the turbulent maples whiten As the lane blew gray with dust.

White flakes from the blossoming cherry, Pink snows of the peaches were blown, And star-bloom wrecks of the berry And dogwood petals were sown.

Then instantly heaven was sullied, And earth was thrilled with alarm, As a cloud, that the thunder had gullied, Thrust over the sunlight its arm.

The birds to dry coverts had hurried, And hid in their leafy-built rooms; And the bees and the hornets had buried Themselves in the bells of the blooms.

Then down from the clouds, as from towers, Rode slant the tall lancers of rain, And charged the fair troops of the flowers, And trampled the grass of the plain.

And the armies of blossoms were scattered; Their standards hung draggled and lank; And the rose and the lily were shattered, And the iris lay crushed on its bank.

But high in the storm was the swallow, And the rock-loud voice of the fall, From its ramparts of forest, rang hollow Defiance and challenge o'er all.

But the storm and its clouds passed over, And left but one cloud in the west, Wet wafts that were fragrant with clover, And the sun slow-sinking to rest.

Rain-drippings and rain in the poppies, And scents as of honey and bees; A touch of wild light on the coppice, That turned into flames the drenched trees.

Then the cloud in the sunset was riven, And bubbled and rippled with gold, And over the gorges of heaven, Like a gonfalon vast was unrolled.

HEPATICAS

In the frail hepaticas-- That the early Springtide tossed, Sapphire-like, along the ways Of the woodlands that she crossed-- I behold, with other eyes, Footprints of a dream that flies.

One who leads me; whom I seek: In whose loveliness there is All the glamour that the Greek Knew as wind-borne Artemis.-- I am mortal. Woe is me! Her sweet immortality!

Spirit, must I always fare, Following thy averted looks? Now thy white arm, now thy hair, Glimpsed among the trees and brooks? Thou who hauntest, whispering, All the slopes and vales of Spring.

Cease to lure! or grant to me All thy beauty! though it pain, Slay with splendor utterly! Flash revealment on my brain! And one moment let me see All thy immortality!

SPIRITS OF SPRING

I

Over the summer seas, From the Hesperides, Warm as the southern breeze, Gather the Spirits, Clad on with sun and rain, Fire in each ardent vein, Who, with a wild refrain, Waken the germs that the Season inherits.

II

See, where they come, like mist, Gleaming with amethyst, Trailing the light that kissed Vine-tangled mountains Looming o'er tropic lakes, Where every wind, that shakes Tamarisk coverts, makes Music that haunts like the falling of fountains.

III

You may behold the beat Of their wild hearts of heat, And their rose-flashing feet Flying before us: Hear them among the trees Whispering like far-off seas, Waking the drowsy bees, Wild-birds and flowers and torrents sonorous.

IV

You may behold their eyes, Star-like, that sapphire dyes, To which the blossoms rise Star-like; and shadows Flee from: and, golden deep, As through the woods they sweep, See their wild curls that keep Asphodel memories that kindle the meadows.

V

Music of forest-streams, Fragrance and dewy gleams, Daybreak and dawn and dreams, High things and lowly, Mix in their limbs of light, Which, what they touch of blight, Quicken to blossom white, Raise to be beautiful, perfect, and holy.

VI

Come! do not sit and wait Now that once desolate Fields are intoxicate With birds and flowers! And all the woods are rife With resurrected life, Passion and purple strife Of the warm winds and the turbulent showers.

VII

Come! let us lie and dream Here by the wildwood stream, Where many a twinkling gleam Falls on the rooty Banks; and the forest glooms Rain down their redbud blooms, Armfuls of wild perfumes-- Winds! or Auloniads busy with beauty.

MIRABILE DICTU

I

There dwells a goddess in the West, An Island in death-lonesome seas; No towered towns are hers confessed, No castled forts or palaces; Hers, simple worshipers at best, The buds, the birds, the bees.

II

And she hath wonder-words of song, So heavenly beautiful and shed So sweetly from her honeyed tongue, The savage creatures, it is said, Hark, marble-still, their wilds among, And nightingales fall dead.

III

I know her not, nor have I known: I only feel that she is there: For when my heart is most alone, Her deep communion fills the air,-- Her influence calls me from my own,-- Miraculously fair.

IV

Then fain am I to sing and sing, And then again to fly and fly, Beyond the flight of cloud or wing, Far under azure arcs of sky; My love at her chaste feet to fling, Behold her face and--die.

A DREAMER OF DREAMS

He lived beyond men, and so stood Admitted to the brotherhood Of beauty; dreams, with which he trod Companioned as some sylvan god. And oft men wondered, when his thought Made all their knowledge seem as naught, If he, like Uther's mystic son, Had not been born for Avalon.

When wandering 'mid the whispering trees, His soul communed with every breeze; Heard voices calling from the glades, Bloom-words of the Leimoniads; Or Dryads of the ash and oak, Who syllabled his name and spoke With him of presences and powers That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.

By every violet-hallowed brook, Where every bramble-matted nook Rippled and laughed with water sounds, He walked like one on sainted grounds, Fearing intrusion on the spell That kept some fountain-spirit's well, Or woodland genius, sitting where Red, racy berries kissed his hair.

Once when the wind, far o'er the hill, Had fall'n and left the wildwood still For Dawn's dim feet to glide across,-- Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss, The air around him golden ripe With daybreak,--there, with oaten pipe, His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan, Goat-bearded, and half-brute, half-man; Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme Blew in his reed to rudest time; And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye-- Beneath the slowly silvering sky, Whose light shone through the forest's roof-- Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof The branch was snapped, and, interfused Between great roots, the moss was bruised.

And often when he wandered through Old forests at the fall of dew-- A new Endymion who sought A beauty higher than all thought-- Some night, men said, most surely he Would favored be of deity: That in the holy solitude Her sudden presence, long pursued, Unto his gaze would be confessed; The awful moonlight of her breast Come, high with majesty, and hold His heart's blood till his heart were cold, Unpulsed, unsinewed, and undone, And snatch his soul to Avalon.

PAN

I

Haunter of green intricácies Where the sunlight's amber laces Deeps of darkest violet; Where the shaggy Satyr chases Nymphs and Dryads, fair as Graces, Whose white limbs with dew are wet: Piper in hid mountain places, Where the blue-eyed Oread braces Winds which in her sweet cheeks set Of Aurora rosy traces; While the Faun from myrtle mazes Watches with an eye of jet: What art thou and these dim races, Thou, O Pan, of many faces, Who art ruler yet?

II

Tell me, piper, have I ever Heard thy hollow syrinx quiver Trickling music in the trees? Where the hazel copses shiver, Have I heard its dronings sever The warm silence, or the bees? Ripple murmurings that never Could be born of fall or river, Or the whispering breeze.

III

Once in tempest it was given Me to see thee,--where the leven Lit the craggy wood with glare,-- Dancing, while,--like wedges driven,-- Thunder split the deeps of heaven, And the wild rain swept thy hair.-- What art thou, whose presence, even While with fear my heart was riven, Healed it as with prayer?

A STORMY SUNSET

I

Soul of my body! what a death For such a day of grief and gloom, Unbroken sorrow of the sky!-- 'Tis as if God's own loving breath Had swept the piled-up thunder by, And, bursting through the tempest's sheath, Cleft from its pod a giant bloom.

II

See how the glory grows! unrolled, Expanding length on radiant length Of cloud-wrought petals.--Vast, a rose The western heavens of flame unfold, Where, sparkling thro' the splendor, glows The evening star, fresh-faced with strength-- A raindrop in its heart of gold.

A WOODLAND GRAVE

White moons may come, white moons may go, She sleeps where early blossoms blow; Knows nothing of the leafy June, That leans above her, night and noon, Crowned now with sunbeam, now with moon, Watching her roses grow.

The downy moth at evening comes And flutters round their honeyed blooms: Long, languid clouds, like ivory, That isle the blue lagoons of sky, Grow red as molten gold and dye With flame the pine-dark glooms.

Dew, dripping from wet fern and leaf; The wind, that shakes the blossom's sheaf; The slender sound of water lone, That makes a harp-string of some stone, And now a wood-bird's twilight moan, Seem whisp'rings there of grief.

Her garden, where the lilacs grew, Where, on old walls, old roses blew, Head-heavy with their mellow musk, Where, when the beetle's drone was husk, She lingered in the dying dusk, No more shall know that knew.

Her orchard,--where the Spring and she Stood listening to each bird and bee,-- That, from its fragrant firmament, Snowed blossoms on her as she went, (A blossom with their blossoms blent) No more her face shall see.

White moons may come, white moons may go, She sleeps where early blossoms blow; Around her headstone many a seed Shall sow itself; and briar and weed Shall grow to hide it from men's heed, And none will care or know.

THE OLD BYWAY

Its rotting fence one scarcely sees Through sumac and wild blackberries. Thick elder and the bramble-rose, Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees Hang droning in repose.

The little lizards lie all day Gray on its rocks of lichen-gray; And there, gay Ariels of the sun, The butterflies make bright its way, And paths where chipmunks run.

Its lyric there the redbird lifts, While, overhead, the swallow drifts 'Neath sun-soaked clouds of palest cream,-- In which the wind makes azure rifts,-- And there the wood-doves dream.

The brown grasshoppers rasp and bound 'Mid weeds and briars that hedge it round; And in its grass-grown ruts,--where stirs The harmless snake,--mole-crickets sound; O'erhead the locust whirs.

At evening, when the sad west turns To lonely night a cheek that burns, The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing; And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns The wind wakes, whispering.

THE WOODPATH

Here Spring her first frail violets blows; Broadcast her whitest wind-flowers sows Through starry mosses amber-fair, And fronded ferns and briar-rose, Hart's-tongue and maidenhair.

Here fungus life is beautiful; Slim mushroom and the thick toadstool,-- As various colored as are blooms,-- Dot their damp cones through shadows cool, And breathe forth rain perfumes.

Here stray the wandering cows to rest; The calling cat-bird builds its nest In spicewood bushes dark and deep; Here raps the woodpecker its best, And here young rabbits leap.

Beech, oak, and cedar; hickories; The pawpaw and persimmon trees; And tangled vines and sumac-brush, Make dark the daylight, where the bees Drone, and the wood-springs gush.

Here to pale melancholy moons, In haunted nights of dreamy Junes, Wails wildly the weird whippoorwill, Whose strains, like those the owlet croons, Wild woods with phantoms fill.

THE SOUND OF THE SAP

When the ice was thick on the flower-beds, And the sleet was caked on the briar; When the frost was down in the brown bulb's heads, And the ways were clogged with mire:

When the snow on syringa and spiræa-tree Seemed the ghosts of perished flowers; And the days were sorry as sorry could be, And Time limped, cursing his fardel of hours:

Heigh-ho! had I not a book and the logs, That chirped with the sap in the burning?-- Or was it the frogs in the far-off bogs? Or the bush-sparrow's song at the turning?

And I strolled by ways that the Springtime knows, In her mossy dells, and her ferny passes; Where the earth was holy with lily and rose, And the myriad life of the grasses.

And I spoke with the Spring as a lover, who speaks To his sweetheart; to whom he has given A kiss that has kindled the rose of her cheeks, And her eyes with the laughter of heaven.

The sound of the sap!--What a simple thing!-- But the sound of the sap had the power To make the song-sparrow come and sing, And the winter woodlands flower!

THE DRYAD

I have seen her limpid eyes, Large with gradual laughter, rise In the wild-rose nettles; Slowly, like twin flowers, unfold, Smiling,--when the wind, behold! Whisked them into petals.

I have seen her hardy cheek, Like a molten coral, leak Through the leaves around it Of thick Chickasaws; but so, When I made more certain, lo! A red plum I found it.

I have found her racy lips, And her roguish finger-tips, But a haw or berry; Glimmers of her there and here, Just, forsooth, enough to cheer, And to make me merry.

Often from the ferny rocks Dazzling rimples of her locks At me she hath shaken; And I've followed--but in vain!-- They had trickled into rain, Sunlit, on the braken.

Once her full limbs flashed on me, Naked, where a royal tree Checkered mossy places With soft sunlight and dim shade,-- Such a haunt as myths have made For the Satyr races.

There, it seemed, hid amorous Pan; For a sudden pleading ran Through the thicket, wooing Me to search and, suddenly, From the swaying elder-tree, Flew a wild-dove, cooing.

A DEAD LILY

The South saluted her mouth Till her breath was sweet with the South.

The North in her ear breathed low, Till her veins ran crystal and snow.

The West 'neath her eyelids blew, Till her heart beat honey and dew.

And the East with his magic old Changed her body to pearl and gold.

And she stood like a beautiful thought That a godhead of love had wrought....

How strange that the Power begot it Only to kill it and rot it!

THE DEAD OREAD

Her heart is still and leaps no more With holy passion when the breeze, Her whilom playmate, as before, Comes with the language of the bees, Sad songs her mountain cedars sing, And water-music murmuring.

Her calm, white feet,--once fleet and fast As Daphne's when a god pursued,-- No more will dance like sunlight past The gold-green vistas of the wood, Where every quailing floweret Smiled into life where they were set.

Hers were the limbs of living light, And breasts of snow, as virginal As mountain drifts; and throat as white As foam of mountain waterfall; And hyacinthine curls, that streamed Like mountain mists, and gloomed and gleamed.

Her presence breathed such scents as haunt Deep mountain dells and solitudes, Aromas wild,--like some wild plant That fills with sweetness all the woods;-- And comradeship with stars and skies Shone in the azure of her eyes.

Her grave be by a mossy rock Upon the top of some high hill, Removed, remote from men who mock The myths, the dreams of life they kill; Where all of love and naught of lust May guard her solitary dust.

PAX VOBISCUM

I

I know that from thine eyes The Spring her violets grew; Those bits of April skies, On which the green turf lies, Whereon they blossom blue.

II

I know that Summer wrought From thy sweet heart that rose, With such faint fragrance fraught,-- Its pale, poetic thought Of peace and deep repose.--

III

That Autumn, like some god, From thy delicious hair,-- Lost sunlight 'neath the sod,-- Shot up this goldenrod To toss it everywhere.

IV

That Winter from thy breast The snowdrop's whiteness stole-- Much kinder than the rest-- Thy innocence confessed, The pureness of thy soul.

AT REST

I heard the dead man, where he lay Within the open coffin, say:--

"Why do they come to weep and cry Around me now?--Because I lie So silent, and my heart's at rest? Because the pistons of my blood No more in this machinery thud? And on these eyes, that once were blessed With magnetism and fire, are pressed The soldered eyelids, like a sheath? On which the icy hand of Death Hath laid invisible coins of lead Stamped with the image of his head?