Part 12

“While my voice your ear shall soothe With a whisper soft and smooth Till your care shall wax uncouth.

“Come! where forests, line on line,-- Armies of the oak and pine,-- Scale the hills and shout and shine.

“We will wander, hand in hand, Ways where tall the toadstools stand, Mile-stones white of Fairyland.

“While your eyes my lips shall kiss, Dewy as a wild-rose is, Till they gaze on naught but bliss.

“On the meadows you will hear, Leaning low your spirit ear, Cautious footsteps drawing near.

“You will deem it but a bee, Murmuring soft and sleepily, Till your inner sight shall see

“’Tis a presence passing slow, All its shining hair ablow, Through the white-tops’ tossing snow.

“By the waters, if you will, And your inmost soul is still, Melody your ears shall fill.

“You will deem it but the stream Rippling onward in a dream, Till upon your gaze shall gleam

“Arm of spray and throat of foam-- ’Tis a spirit there a-roam Where the radiant waters comb.

“In the forest, if you heed, You shall hear a magic reed Sow sweet notes like silver seed.

“You will deem your ears have heard Stir of tree or song of bird, Till your startled eyes are blurred

“By a vision, instant seen, Naked gold and naked green, Glimmering the boughs between.

“Follow me! and you shall see Wonder-worlds of mystery That are only known to me!”

Thus outside my city door Speaks the Wind its wildwood lore, Speaks, and lo! I go once more.

THE WIND OF WINTER

The Winter Wind, the wind of death, Who knocked upon my door, Now through the key-hole 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 window pane, With ghostly fingers, snowy white, I heard him tug in vain, Until the shuddering candle-light 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-stepping toes, Deep-mantled in the drowsy sound Of night that sleets and snows.

And oft, like some thin fairy-thing, The stormy hush amid, I hear his captive trebles ring Beneath the kettle’s lid; Or now a harp of elfland string In some dark cranny hid.

Again I hear him, imp-like, 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 LEAF-CRICKET

I

Small twilight singer Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger Of dusk’s dim glimmer, How cool 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, Thy fairy notes, the silvery stillness sprinkle; Investing wholly The moonlight with divinest melancholy: Until, in seeming, I see the Spirit of the Summer dreaming Amid her ripened orchards, apple-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 elfin 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 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 gleams, A sickle in the sky: Then from the hills there comes a cry, The owlet’s cry: A shivering voice that sobs and screams, That, frightened, screams:--

“Who is it, who is it, who? 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?”

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 woods again it cries, The owlet cries: A shivering voice that calls in fright, In maundering fright:--

“Who is it, who is it, who? 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?”

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 in fear:--

“Who is it, who is it, who? Who creeps with his glow-worm crew Above the mire With a corpse-light fire, As only dead men do? Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who?”

THE POET

He stands above all worldly schism, And, gazing over life’s abysm, Beholds, within the starry range Of heaven, laws of death and change, That, through his soul’s prophetic prism, Are turned to rainbows wild and strange.

Through nature is his hope made surer Of that ideal, his allurer, By whom his life is upward drawn To mount pale pinnacles of dawn, ’Mid which all that is fairer, purer Of love and lore it comes upon.

An alkahest, that makes gold metal Of dross, his mind is--where one petal Of one wild-rose will well outweigh The piled-up facts of every-day-- Where commonplaces, there that settle, Are changed to things of heavenly ray.

He climbs by steps of stars and flowers, Companioned of the spirit Hours, And sets his feet in pastures where No merely mortal feet may fare; And higher than the stars he towers Though lowly as the flowers there.

His comrades are his own high fancies And thoughts in which his soul romances; And every part of heaven or earth He visits, lo, assumes new worth; And touched with loftier traits and trances Reshines as with a lovelier birth.

He is the play, also the player; The word that’s said, likewise the sayer; And in the books of heart and head There is no thing he has not read; Of time and tears he is the weigher, And mouthpiece ’twixt the quick and dead.

He dies: but, mounting ever higher, Wings Phœnix-like from out his pyre Above our mortal day and night, Clothed on with sempiternal light; And raimented in thought’s fine fire Flames on in everlasting flight.

Unseen, yet seen, on heights of visions, Above all praise and world derisions, His spirit and his deathless brood Of dreams fare on, a multitude, While on the pillar of great missions His name and place are granite-hewed.

SUMMER NOONTIDE

The slender snail clings to the leaf Gray on its silvered underside; And slowly, slowlier than the snail, with brief Bright steps, whose ripening touch foretells the sheaf, Her warm hands berry-dyed, Comes down the tanned Noontide.

The pungent fragrance of the mint And pennyroyal drench her gown, That leaves long shreds of trumpet-blossom tint Among the thorns, and everywhere the glint Of gold and white and brown Her flowery steps waft down.

The leaves, like hands with emerald veined, Along her way try their wild best To reach the jewel--whose hot hue was drained From some rich rose that all the June contained-- The butterfly, soft pressed Upon her sunny breast.

Her shawl, the lace-like elder bloom, She hangs upon the hillside brake, Smelling of warmth and of her breast’s perfume, And, lying in the citron-colored gloom Beside the lilied lake, She stares the buds awake.

Or, with a smile, through watery deeps She leads the oaring turtle’s legs; Or guides the crimson fin, that swims and sleeps, From pad to pad, from which the young frog leaps; And to its nest’s green eggs The reed-bird there that begs.

Then ’mid the fields of unmown hay She shows the bees where sweets are found; And points the butterflies, at airy play, And dragon-flies, along the water-way, Where honeyed flowers abound For them to flicker round.

Or where ripe apples pelt with gold Some barn--around which, coned with snow, The wild-potato blooms--she mounts its old Mossed roof, and through warped sides, the knots have holed, Lets her long glances glow Into the loft below.

To show the mud-wasp at its cell Slenderly busy: swallows, too, Packing against a beam their nest’s clay shell; And crouching in the dark the owl as well With all her downy crew Of owlets gray of hue.

These are her joys; and until dusk Lounging she walks where reapers reap, From sultry raiment shaking scents of musk, Rustling the corn within its silken husk, And driving down heav’n’s deep White herds of clouds like sheep.

TO THE LOCUST

Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reed-like 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?

JULY

Now ’tis the time when, tall, The long blue torches of the bellflower gleam Among the trees; and, by the wooded stream, In many a fragrant ball, Blooms of the button-bush fall.

Let us go forth and seek Woods where the wild plums redden and the beech Plumps its stout burrs; and, swelling, just in reach, The pawpaw, emerald-sleek, Ripens along the creek.

Now ’tis the time when ways Of glimmering green flaunt white the giant plumes Of the black-cohosh; and through bramble glooms,-- A blur of orange rays,-- The butterfly-blossoms blaze.

Let us go forth and hear The spiral music that the locusts beat, And that small spray of sound, so grassy sweet, Dear to a country ear, The cricket’s summer cheer.

Now golden celandine Is hairy hung with silvery sacs of seeds, And bugled o’er with freckled gold, like beads, Beneath the fox-grape vine, The jewel-weed’s blossoms shine.

Let us go forth and see The dragon-and the butterfly, like gems, Spangling the sunbeams; and the clover stems, Weighed down with many a bee, Nodding mellifluously.

Now morns are full of song; The cat-bird and the red-bird and the jay Upon the hilltops rouse the ruddy day, Who, dewy, blithe, and strong, Lures their wild wings along.

Now noons are full of dreams; The clouds of heaven and the wandering breeze Follow a vision; and the flowers and trees, The hills and fields and streams, Are lapped in mystic gleams.

The nights are full of love; The stars and moon take up the golden tale Of the sunk sun, and passionate and pale, Mixing their fires above, Grow eloquent thereof.

Such days are like a sigh That beauty heaves from a full heart of bliss: Such nights are like the sweetness of a kiss On lips that half deny-- The warm lips of July.

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 From out the violet hills, Those haunters of the dusk begin, The whippoorwills.

Adown the dark the firefly marks Its flight in golden-emerald sparks; And, loosened from his chain, The shaggy watch-dog 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 hen-house, near the fence, Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry Of cocks and hens.

A cow-bell 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 brown bees 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 where Toil sups and these things lie-- His heart and hoard.

UNDER THE HUNTER’S MOON

White from her chrysalis of cloud, The moth-like moon swings upward through the night; And all the bee-like stars that crowd Heav’n’s hollow hive wane in her silvery light.

Along the distance folds of mist Hang frost-pale, ridging all the dark with gray; Tinting the trees with amethyst, Touching with pearl and purple every spray.

All night the stealthy frost and fog Conspire to slay the rich-robed weeds and flowers; To strip the woods of wealth, and clog With piled-up gold of leaves the creek that cowers.

I seem to see their Spirits stand, Molded of moonlight, faint of form and face, Now reaching high a chilly hand To pluck some walnut from its spicy place:

Now with fine fingers, phantom-cold, Splitting the wahoo’s pods of rose, and thin The bittersweet’s globes of gold, To show the coal-red berries packed within:

Now on frail threads of gossamer Stringing slim pearls of moisture; necklacing The flow’rs; and spreading cobweb fur, Crystalled with stardew, over everything;

While ’neath the moon, with moon-white feet, They wander and a moon-chill music draw From thin leaf-cricket flutes--the sweet, Dim dirge of Autumn dying in the shaw.

IN THE LANE

When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock, And the brown bee drones i’ the rose, And the west is a red-streaked four-o’-clock, And summer is near its close-- It’s--Oh, for the gate and the locust lane And dusk and dew and home again!

When the katydid sings and the cricket cries, And ghosts of the mists ascend, And the evening-star is a lamp i’ the skies, And summer is near its end-- It’s--Oh, for the fence and the leafy lane, And the twilight peace and the tryst again!

When the owlet hoots in the dogwood-tree, That leans to the rippling Run, And the wind is a wildwood melody, And summer is almost done-- It’s--Oh, for the bridge and the bramble lane, And the fragrant hush and her hands again!

When fields smell moist with the dewy hay, And woods are cool and wan, And a path for dreams is the Milky-way, And summer is nearly gone-- It’s--Oh, for the rock and the woodland lane, And the silence and stars and her lips again!

When the weight of the apples breaks down the limbs, And musk-melons split with sweet, And the moon’s broad boat in the heaven swims, And summer has spent its heat-- It’s--Oh, for the lane, the trysting lane, And the deep-mooned night and her love again!

EPIPHANY

There is nothing that eases my heart so much As the wind that blows from the great green hills; ’Tis a hand of balsam whose healing touch Unburdens my bosom of ills.

There is nothing that maketh my soul to rejoice Like the sunset flaming without a flaw: ’Tis a burning bush whence God’s own voice Addresses my spirit with awe.

There is nothing that hallows my mind, meseems, Like the night with its moon and its starry slope: ’Tis a mystical lily whose golden gleams Fulfill my being with hope.

There is nothing, no, nothing, we see and feel, That speaks to our souls some beautiful thought, That was not created to help us and heal Our lives that are overwrought.

LIFE

I

_Pessimist_

There is never a thing we dream or do But was dreamed and done in the ages gone; Everything’s old; there is nothing that’s new, And so it will be while the world goes on.

The thoughts we think have been thought before; The deeds we do have long been done; We pride ourselves on our love and lore And both are as old as the moon and sun.

We strive and struggle and swink and sweat, And the end for each is one and the same; Time and the sun and the frost and wet Will wear from its pillar the greatest name.

No answer comes for our prayer or curse, No word replies though we shriek in air; Ever the taciturn universe Stretches unchanged for our curse or prayer.

With our mind’s small light in the dark we crawl,-- Glow-worm glimmers that creep about,-- Till the Power that made us, over us all Poises His foot and treads us out.

Unasked He fashions us out of clay, A little water, a little dust, And then in our holes He thrusts us away, With never a word, to rot and rust.

’Tis a sorry play with a sorry plot, This life of hate and of lust and pain, Where we play our parts and are soon forgot, And all that we do is done in vain.

II

_Optimist_

There is never a dream but it shall come true, And never a deed but was wrought by plan; And life is filled with the strange and new, And ever has been since the world began.

As mind develops and soul matures These two shall parent Earth’s mightier acts; Love is a fact, and ’tis love endures ‘Though the world make wreck of all other facts.

Through thought alone shall our age obtain Above all ages gone before; The tribes of sloth, of brawn, not brain, Are the tribes that perish, are known no more.

Within ourselves is a voice of Awe, And a hand that points to balanced Scales; The one is Love, and the other, Law, And their presence alone it is avails.

For every shadow about our way There is a glory of moon and sun; But the hope within us hath more of ray Than the light of the sun and the moon made one.

Behind all being a purpose lies, Undeviating as God hath willed; And he alone it is who dies, Who leaves that purpose unfulfilled.

Life is an epic the Master sings, Whose theme is Man, and whose music, Soul, Where each is a word in the Song of Things, That shall roll on while the ages roll.

MEETING IN THE WOODS

Through ferns and moss the path wound to A hollow where the touch-me-nots Swung horns of honey filled with dew; And where--like footprints--violets blue And bluets made sweet sapphire blots, ’Twas there that she had passed I knew.

The grass, the very wilderness On either side, breathed rapture of Her passage: ’twas her hand or dress That touched some tree--a slight caress-- That made the wood-birds sing above; Her step that woke the flowers, I guess.

I hurried, till across my way, Foam-footed, bounding through the wood, A brook, like some wild child at play, Went laughing loud its roundelay; And there upon its bank she stood, A sunbeam clad in forest gray.