Part 6

It seems, of crystal fallen there. And now the wind sweeps through the wood With sighings, and the solitude Seems shaken with a mighty care.

Decay and melancholy drape The near-by hills in mysteries Of mist, through which the rocks and trees Loom, hazy, each a phantom shape.

To sullenness the surly crow All his derisive being yields, And o’er the barren stubble-fields Flaps, cawless, wrapped in hungry woe.

II

_Evening_

As eve comes on the teasel stoops Its spike-crowned cone before the blast: The tattered leaves drive whirling past In frantic and fantastic troops.

The matted elder-copses sigh; Their broad, blue combs, with berries weighed, Like heavy pendulums are swayed With every gust that wanders by.

Through broken walls of tangled brier, That hedge the lane, the sumachs thrust Their scarlet torches, red as rust, Lit with the sunset’s stolid fire.

The eve is here: Cold, hard, and drear The cloudless west with livid white Of flaming silver walls the night Far as one star’s thin rays appear.

Wedged ’thwart the west’s white luridness The wild geese wing; from roseless domes The far “honk” of the leader comes Lonely and harsh and colorless.

The west dies down; and in its cup, Shadow on shadow, pours the night; The east glows with a mystic light; The stars are keen; the moon comes up.

THE WHITE EVENING

On hills, beneath the steely skies, The wind-tossed forests rock and roar: Along the river’s ringing shore Homeward the skimming skater flies.

On windy meads of icy brakes, Where, sheathed in sleet, the haw-tree stands, The moon looks down on glistening lands, Where with the cold each bramble shakes.

Last night the sleet made white the world: All day the wind moaned in the pines: Now like a wolf, that whines and whines, Like some wild wolf its hate is hurled

Against the hut upon the wold, And the one willow by the stream: Where, huddled, in the moon’s chill gleam, The houseless hare leaps through the cold.

The moon sinks low, the thin new-moon, And with it, like a bit of spar, Sinks down the large white evening-star, Beneath which earth seems crystal-hewn.

Slim o’er the tree-tops, weighed with white, The country church’s spire doth swell, A scintillating icicle; While fitfully the village light

Stabs, stains with sallow stars the dark: Homeward the creaking wagons strain: The smithy glares: the tavern’s vane Points northward in its ghostly sark.

And from the north, with stinging lash, Driving his herds of snow and sleet, Upon his steed of wind, whose feet Hurl through the iron woods and crash

Along the hills, with blow on blow, The tempest sweeps; before his shout The moon and stars are blotted out, And fold on fold rolls down the snow.

DREAMS

My thoughts have borne me far away To beauties of an older day, Where, crowned with roses, stands the Dawn, Striking her seven-stringed barbiton Of flame, whose chords give being to The seven colors, hue for hue; The music of the color-dream She builds the day from, beam by beam.

My thoughts have borne me far away To myths of a diviner day, Where, sitting on the mountain, Noon Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune Of rest and shade and clouds and skies, Wherein her calm dreams idealize Light as a presence, heavenly fair, Sleeping with all her beauty bare.

My thoughts have borne me far away To visions of a wiser day, Where, stealing through the wilderness, Night walks, a sad-eyed votaress, And prays with mystic words she hears Behind the thunder of the spheres, The starry utterance that is hers With which she fills the universe.

THE BROOK

To it the forest tells The mystery that haunts its heart and folds Its form in cogitation deep, that holds The shadow of each myth that dwells In nature--be it Nymph or Fay or Faun-- And whispering of them to the dales and dells, It wanders on and on.

To it the heaven shows The secret of its soul; true images Of dreams that form its aspect; and with these Reflected in its countenance it goes, With pictures of the skies, the dusk and dawn, Within its breast, as every blossom knows, For them to gaze upon.

Through it the world-soul sends Its heart’s creating pulse that beats and sings The music of maternity whence springs All life; and shaping earthly ends,-- From the deep sources of the heavens drawn,-- Planting its ways with beauty, on it wends, On and for ever on.

THE OLD SWING

Under the boughs of spring She swung in the old rope-swing.

Her cheeks, with their happy blood, Glowed pink as the apple-bud.

Her eyes, with their deep delight, Shone glad as the stars of night.

Her curls, with their romp and fun, Tossed hoiden to wind and sun.

Her lips, with their laughter shrill, Rippled like some wild rill.

Under the boughs of spring She swung in the old rope-swing.

And I,--who leaned on the fence, Watching her innocence,

As, under the boughs that bent, Now high, now low, she went,

In her soul the ecstasies Of the stars, the brooks, the breeze,--

Had given the rest of my years, With their, blessings, and hopes, and fears,

To have been as she was then; And, just for a moment, again

A boy in the old rope-swing Under the boughs of spring.

TO AUTUMN

I feel thee as one feels a flower’s, A dead flower’s fragrance in a room,-- A dim, gray grief that haunts the hours With sad perfume.

Thou charm’st me as a ghostly lily Might charm a garden’s withered space, With the pale pathos and the chilly Hush of thy face.

I hearken in thy fogs; I hearken When, like the phantom of dead Night, With immaterial limbs they darken The day with white.

With wrecks of rain and mad winds, heaping Red ruins of riven rose and leaf, Make sad my heart, O Autumn! sweeping The world with grief.

WINTER DREAMS

How does it come that now I go Down ways made blue with bluets’ eyes? Along the creek-road as the crow With mocking laughter flies?

A wild bird beats a crippled wing To lure me from its brush-built nest; Then, like a brook, I hear it sing Its wildwood happiest.

Beyond the orchard hills are dells Of knee-deep huckleberries, white With little bell-blooms, May-time swells With sweetness and delight.

The faun wakes in me, wild and keen, And, with the joy the rathe months hold, Kicks happy heels in deeps of green And rolls in deeper gold.

My Shakespeare falls: I wake: and frost And ice seam every flower-bed: Where once each stalk, an Edgar, tossed, Poor Tom now shakes instead.

Where once th’ gladiole, gleaming, shook A wand of folly at the sun, The humped stock hath a withered look-- The poor, pale Fool is done.

A great, gray beard the rose-bush hath,-- An old king’s,--where hangs many a tear, Near the dead lily by the path-- Cordelia and Lear.

TANSY AND SWEET-ALYSSUM

A FLOWER OF THE FIELDS

Bee-bitten in the orchard hung The peach; or, fallen in the weeds, Lay rotting, where still sucked and sung The gray bee, boring to the seed’s Pink pulp and honey blackly stung.

The orchard-path, which wound around The garden,--with its heat one twinge Of dinning locusts,--picket-bound And ragged, brought me where one hinge Held up the gate that scraped the ground.

All seemed the same: the martin-box-- Sun-warped, with pygmy balconies-- Still stood, with all its twittering flocks, Perched on its pole above the peas And silvery-seeded onion-stocks.

The clove-pink and the rose; the clump Of coppery sunflowers, with the heat Sick to the heart: the garden stump, Red with geranium-pots, and sweet With moss and ferns, this side the pump.

I rested with one hesitant hand Upon the gate. The lonesome day, Droning with insects, made the land One dry stagnation. Soaked with hay And scents of weeds the hot wind fanned.

I breathed the sultry scents, my eyes Parched as my lips. And yet I felt My limbs were ice.--As one who flies To some wild woe.--How sleepy smelt The hay-hot heat that soaked the skies!

Noon nodded; dreamier, lonesomer For one long, plaintive, forest-side Bird-quaver.--And I knew me near Some heartbreak anguish.... She had died. I felt it, and no need to hear.

I passed the quince-and pear-tree; where, All up the porch, a grape-vine trails.-- How strange that fruit, whatever air Or earth it grows in, never fails To find its native flavor there!

And she was as a flower, too, That grows its proper bloom and scent No matter what the soil: she, who, Born better than her place, still lent Grace to the lowliness she knew....

They met me at the porch and were Gaunt-eyed with weeping.--Then the room Shut out the country’s heat and purr, And left light stricken into gloom-- So love and I might look on her.

ON STONY-RUN

O cheerly, cheerly by the road, And merrily down the hillet, And where the bottom-lands are sowed With bristle-bearded millet;

Then o’er a pebbled path it goes Through woodland dale and dingle, Unto a farmstead’s windowed rose, And roof of moss and shingle.

Then darkly, darkly through the brush, And dimly round the boulder, Where cane and water-weeds grow lush, Its current clear flows colder.

Then by the cedared way that leads, Through burr and bramble-thickets, Unto a burial-ground of weeds Fenced in with broken pickets.

Then slowly, slowly down the vale, And wearily through the rushes, Where sunlight of the noon is pale, Its shadowy water hushes.

For oft her young face smiled upon Its deeps here, willow-shaded; And oft with bare feet in the sun Its shallows there she waded.

No more beneath the twinkling leaves Shall stand the farmer’s daughter!-- softly past the cottage eaves, O memory-haunted water!

No more shall bend her laughing face Above it where the rose is!-- Sigh softly past the burial-place Where all her youth reposes.

HOME

Among the fields the camomile Seems blown mist in the lightning’s glare: Cool, rainy odors drench the air; Night speaks above; the angry smile Of storm within her stare.

The way that I shall take to-night Is through the wood whose branches fill The road with double darkness, till, Between the boughs, a window’s light Shines out upon the hill.

The fence; and then the path that goes Around a trailer-tangled rock, Through puckered pink and hollyhock, Unto a latch-gate’s unkempt rose, And door whereat I knock.

Bright on the old-time flower-place The lamp streams through the foggy pane The door is opened to the rain: And in the door--her happy face And outstretched hands again.

DUSK IN THE WOODS

Three miles of trees it is: and I Came through the woods that waited, dumb, For the cool summer dusk to come; And lingered there to watch the sky Up which the gradual sunset clomb.

A tree-toad quavered in a tree; And then a sudden whippoorwill Called overhead, so wildly shrill The sleeping wood, it seemed to me, Cried out and then again was still.

Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight An owl took; and, at drowsy strife, The cricket tuned its fairy fife; And like a ghostflower, silent white, The wood-moth glimmered into life.

And in the punk-wood everywhere The insects ticked, or bored below The rotted bark; and, glow on glow, The lambent fireflies here and there Lit up their jack-o’-lantern show.

I heard a vesper-sparrow sing, Withdrawn, it seemed, into the far Slow sunset’s tranquil cinnabar; The crimson, softly smouldering Behind gaunt trunks, with its one star.

A dog barked: and down ways that gleamed, Through dew and clover, faint the noise Of cow-bells moved. And then a voice, That sang a-milking, so it seemed, Made glad my heart as some glad boy’s.

And then the lane: and, full in view, A farm-house with a rose-grown gate, And honeysuckle paths, await For night, the moon, and love and you-- These are the things that made me late.

COMRADES

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 red-bird flashes suddenly, My thoughts went wandering to-day.

I found the fields where, row on row, The blackberries hang black their 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, still willow-bound, On whose bright surface, when the hot Noon burnt above, we chased the knot Of water-striders; while around Our heads, like bits of rainbow, shot The dragon-flies 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 old-time woods we often ranged, When we were playmates, you and I; The old-time 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.

THE ROCK

Here, at its base, in dingled deeps Of spice-bush, where the ivy creeps, The cold spring scoops its hollow; And there, three mossy stepping-stones Make ripple murmurs; undertones Of foam, whose low falls follow A voice far in the wood that drones.

The quail pipes here when noons are hot; And here, in coolness sunlight-shot, Beneath a roof of briers, The red fox skulks at close of day; And here, at night, the shadows gray Stand like Franciscan friars, With moonbeam beads whereon they pray.

Here yawns the woodchuck’s dark-dug hole; And there the tunnel of the mole Heaves under weed and flower; A sandy pit-fall here and there The ant-lion digs and lies a-lair And here, for sun and shower, The spider weaves a silvery snare.

The poison-oak’s rank tendrils twine The rock’s south side; the trumpet-vine, With crimson bugles sprinkled, Makes green its eastern side; the west Is rough with lichens; and, gray-pressed Into an angle wrinkled, The hornets hang an oblong nest.

The north is hid from sun and star, And here,--like an Inquisitor Of Faëry Inquisition, Who roots out Elfland heresy,-- Deep in the rock, cowled shadowy And grave as his commission, The owl sits magisterially.

STANDING-STONE CREEK

A weed-grown slope, whereon the rain Has washed the brown rocks bare, Leads tangled from a lonely lane Down to a creek’s broad stair Of stone, that, through the solitude, Winds onward to a quiet wood.

An intermittent roof of shade The beech above it throws; Along its steps a balustrade Of beauty builds the rose; In which, a stately lamp of green, At intervals, the cedar’s seen.

The water, carpeting each ledge Of rock that runs across, Glints ’twixt a flow’r-embroidered edge Of ferns and grass and moss; And in its deeps the wood and sky Seem patterns of the softest dye.

Long corridors of pleasant dusk Within the house of leaves It reaches; where, on looms of musk, The ceaseless locust weaves A web of summer; and perfume Trails a sweet gown from room to room.

Green windows of the boughs, that swing, It passes, where the notes Of birds are glad thoughts entering, And butterflies are motes; And now a vista where the day Opens a door of wind and ray.

It is a stairway for all sounds That haunt the woodland sides; On which, boy-like, the Southwind bounds, Girl-like, the sunbeam glides; And, like fond parents, following these, The old-time dreams of rest and peace.

“CLOUDS OF THE AUTUMN NIGHT”

Clouds of the autumn night, Under the hunter’s-moon,-- Ghostly and windy white,-- Whither, like leaves wild strewn, Take ye your stormy flight?

Out of the west, where dusk, From her red window-sill, Leaned with a wand of tusk, Witch-like, and wood and hill Phantomed with mist and musk

Into the east, where morn Sleeps in a shadowy close, Shut with a gate of horn, Round which the dreams she knows Flutter with rose and thorn.

Blow from the west! oh, blow, Clouds that the tempest steers! And with your rain and snow Bear of my heart the tears, And of my soul the woe.

Into the east then pass, Clouds that the night-winds sweep! And on her grave’s sere grass, There where she lies asleep, There let them fall, alas!

THEN AND NOW

When my old heart was young, my dear, The earth and heaven were so near That in my dreams I oft could hear The steps of airy races; In woodlands, where bright waters ran, On hills, God’s rainbows used to span, I followed voices not of man, And smiled in spirit faces.

Now my old heart is old, my sweet, No longer earth and heaven meet; All life is grown to one dull street Where fact with fancy clashes; The voices now that speak to me Are prose instead of poetry; And in the faces now I see Is less of flame than ashes.

BY THE TRYSTING-BEECH

Deep in the west a berry-colored bar Of sunset gleams; against which one tall fir Stands outlined dark; above which--courier Of dew and dreams--burns dusk’s appointed star. And flash on flash, as when the elves wage war In Goblinland, the fireflies bombard The silence; and, like spirits, o’er the sward The twilight winds bring fragrance from afar. And now, withdrawn into the hill-wood belts, A whippoorwill; while, with attendant states Of pearl and silver, slow the great moon melts Into the night--to show me where _she_ waits,-- Like some slim moonbeam,--by the old beech-tree, Who keeps her lips, fresh as a flower, for me.

AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN

There is a place hung o’er of summer boughs And dreamy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps; Where waters flow, within whose lazy deeps, Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drowse, The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows Tinkle the stillness; and the bob-white keeps Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps, And children’s laughter haunts an old-time house: A place where life wears ever an honest smell Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom-- Like some sweet, modest girl--within her hair; Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell Far from the city’s strife, whose cares consume-- Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.

THE HAUNTED WOODLAND

Here in the golden darkness And green night of the woods, A flitting form I follow, A shadow that eludes-- Or is it but the phantom Of former forest moods?

The phantom of some fancy I knew when I was young, And in my dreaming boyhood, The wildwood flow’rs among, Young face to face with Faëry Spoke in no unknown tongue.

Blue were her eyes, and golden The nimbus of her hair; And scarlet as a flower Her mouth that kissed me there; That kissed and bade me follow, And smiled away my care.

A magic and a marvel Lived in her word and look, As down among the blossoms She sate me by the brook, And read me wonder-legends In Nature’s Story Book.

Loved fairy-tales forgotten, She never reads again, Of beautiful enchantments That haunt the sun and rain, And, in the wind and water, Chant a mysterious strain.

And so I search the forest, Wherein my spirit feels, In stream, or tree, or flower Herself she still conceals-- But now she flies who followed, Whom Earth no more reveals.

COMRADERY

With eyes hand-arched he looks into The morning’s face, then turns away With school-boy 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 supple springs’ Foam-people sing the flowers awake; And sappy lips of bark-clad things Laugh ripe each fruited brake.

His touch is a companionship; His word, an old authority: He comes, a lyric on his lip, Unstudied Poesy.

OCCULT

Unto the soul’s companionship Of things that only seem to be, Earth points with magic finger-tip And bids thee see How Fancy keeps thee company.

For oft at dawn hast not beheld A spirit of prismatic hue Blow wide the buds, which night hath swelled? And stain them through With heav’n’s ethereal gold and blue?

While at her side another went With gleams of enigmatic white? A spirit who distributes scent, To vale and height, In footsteps of the rosy light?

And oft at dusk hast thou not seen The star-fays bring their caravans Of dew, and glitter all the green, Night’s shadow tans, With drops the rain-hung cobweb spans?

Nor watched with these the elfins go Who tune faint instruments--that sound Like that moon-music insects blow?-- Then haunted ground Thou hast not trodden, never found!

WOOD-WORDS

I

The spirits of the forest, That to the winds give voice-- I lie the livelong April day And wonder what it is they say That makes the leaves rejoice.

The spirits of the forest, That breathe in bud and bloom-- I walk within the haw-tree brake And wonder how it is they make The bubbles of perfume.

The spirits of the forest, That dwell in every spring-- I lean above the brook’s bright blue And wonder what it is they do That makes the water sing.

The spirits of the forest, That haunt the sun’s green glow-- Down fungus ways of fern I steal And would surprise what they conceal, In dew, that twinkles so.

O spirits of the forest, Here are my heart and hand!-- Oh, send a gleam or glow-worm ray To guide my soul the firefly way That leads to Fairyland.

II

The time when dog-tooth violets Hold up inverted horns of gold,-- The elvish cups that Spring upsets With dripping feet, when April wets The sun-and-shadow-marbled wold,--

Is come. And by each leafing way The sorrel drops pale blots of pink; And, like an angled star a fay Sets on her forehead’s pallid day, The blossoms of the trillium wink.

Within the vale, by rock and stream,-- A fragile, fairy porcelain,-- Blue as a baby’s eyes a-dream, The bluets blow; and gleam in gleam The sun-shot dogwoods flash with rain.