Part 7

It is the time to cast off care; To make glad intimates of these:-- The frank-faced sunbeam laughing there: The great-heart wind, that bids us share The optimism of the trees.

III

The white ghosts of the flowers, The gray ghosts of the trees, Rise when the April showers, And haunt the wildwood bowers, And trail along the breeze: The white ghosts of the flowers, The gray ghosts of the trees.

Oft in the woodless places I feel their dim control; The wildflowers’ perished faces, The great trees’ vanished races, That meet me soul to soul: Oft in the woodless places I feel their dim control.

IV

Crab-apple buds, whose bells The mouth of April kissed; That hang,--like rosy shells Around a Naiad’s wrist,-- Pink as dawn-tinted mist.

And paw-paw buds, whose dark Deep auburn blossoms shake On boughs,--as ’neath the bark A dryad’s eyes awake,-- Brown as a midnight lake.

These, with symbolic blooms Of wind-flower and wild-phlox, I found among the glooms Of hill-lost woods and rocks, Lairs of the hare and fox.

The beetle in the brush, The bird about the creek, The bee within the hush, And I, whose love was meek, Stood still to hear these speak

The language that records, In flower-syllables, The hieroglyphic words Of beauty, who enspells The world and aye compels.

THE WIND AT NIGHT

I

Not till the wildman wind is shrill, Howling upon the hill In every wolfish tree, whose boisterous boughs, Like desperate arms, gesture and beat the night, And down huge clouds, in chasms of stormy white, The frightened moon hurries above the house, Shall I lie down; and, deep,-- Letting the mad wind keep Its shouting revel round me,--fall asleep.

II

Not till its dark halloo is hushed, And where wild waters rushed,-- Like some hoof’d terror underneath its whip And spur of foam,--remains A ghostly glass, hill-framed; whereover stains Of moony mists and rains, And stealthy starbeams, still as spectres, slip; Shall I--with thoughts that take Unto themselves the ache Of silence as a sound--from sleep awake.

AIRY TONGUES

I

There is a song the wet leaves lisp When Morn comes down the woodland way; And misty as a thistle-wisp Her gown gleams, windy gray: A song that seems to say, “Awake! ’tis day!”

There is a sigh when Day sits down Beside the sunlight-lulled lagoon; While on her glistening hair and gown The rose of rest is strew: A sigh, that seems to croon, “Come rest! ’tis noon!”

There is a whisper when the stars, Above an evening-purpled height, Crown the dead Day with nenuphars Of fire, gold and white: A voice, that seems t’ invite, “Come love! ’tis night!”

II

Before the rathe song-sparrow sings Among the haw-trees in the lane, And to the wind the locust flings Its early clusters fresh with rain; Beyond the morning-star, that swings Its rose of fire above the spire, Between the morning’s watchet wings, A wild voice rings o’er brooks and boughs-- “Arouse! arouse!”

Before the first brown owlet cries Among the grape-vines on the hill, And in the dam with half-shut eyes The lilies rock above the mill; Beyond the oblong moon, that flies, A pearly flower, above the tower, Between the twilight’s primrose skies, A soft voice sighs, from east to west-- “To rest! to rest!”

RAIN AND WIND

I hear the hoofs of horses Galloping over the hill, Galloping on and galloping on, When all the night is shrill With wind and rain that beats the pane-- And my soul with awe is still.

For every dripping window Their headlong rush makes bound, Galloping up, and galloping by, Then back again and around, Till the gusty roofs ring with their hoofs, And the draughty cellars sound.

And then I hear black horsemen Hallooing in the night; Hallooing and hallooing, They ride o’er vale and height, And the branches snap and the shutters clap With the fury of their flight.

Then at each door a horseman,-- With burly bearded lip Hallooing through the keyhole,-- Pauses with cloak a-drip; And the door-knob shakes and the panel quakes ’Neath the anger of his whip.

All night I hear their gallop, And their wild halloo’s alarm; The tree-tops sound and the vanes go round In forest and on farm; But never a hair of a thing is there-- Only the wind and storm.

UNDER ARCTURUS

I

“I belt the morn with ribboned mist; With baldricked blue I gird the noon, And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed, White-buckled with the hunter’s-moon.

“These follow me,” the Season says: “Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways, With gipsy gold that weighs their backs.”

II

A daybreak horn the Autumn blows, As with a sun-tanned hand he parts Wet boughs whereon the berry glows; And at his feet the red fox starts.

The leafy leash that holds his hounds Is loosed; and all the noonday hush Is startled; and the hillside sounds Behind the fox’s bounding brush.

When red dusk makes the western sky A fire-lit window through the firs, He stoops to see the red fox die Among the chestnut’s broken burrs.

Then fanfaree and fanfaree, His bugle sounds; the world below Grows hushed to hear; and two or three Soft stars dream through the afterglow.

III

Like some black host the shadows fall, And blackness camps among the trees; Each wildwood road, a Goblin Hall, Grows populous with mysteries.

Night comes with brows of ragged storm, And limbs of writhen cloud and mist; The rain-wind hangs upon his arm Like some wild girl who cries unkissed.

By his gaunt hands the leaves are shed In headlong troops and nightmare herds; And, like a witch who calls the dead, The hill-stream whirls with foaming words.

Then all is sudden silence and Dark fear--like his who can not see, Yet hears, lost in a haunted land, Death rattling on a gallow’s-tree.

IV

The days approach again; the days Whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag When in the haze by puddled ways The gnarled thorn seems a crookéd hag.

When rotting orchards reek with rain; And woodlands crumble, leaf and log; And in the drizzling yard again The gourd is tagged with points of fog.

Now let me seat my soul among The woods’ dim dreams, and come in touch With melancholy, sad of tongue And sweet, who says so much, so much.

BARE BOUGHS

O heart,--that beat the bird’s blithe blood, The blithe bird’s strain, and understood The song it sang to leaf and bud,-- What dost thou in the wood?

O soul,--that kept the brook’s glad flow, The glad brook’s word to sun and moon,-- What dost thou here where song lies low, Dead as the dreams of June?

Where once was heard a voice of song, The hautboys of the mad winds sing; Where once a music flowed along, The rain’s wild bugles ring.

The weedy water frets and ails, And moans in many a sunless fall; And, o’er the melancholy, trails The black crow’s eldritch call.

Unhappy brook! O withered wood! O days, whom death makes comrades of! Where are the birds that thrilled the blood When Life struck hands with Love?

A song, one soared against the blue; A song, one bubbled in the leaves: A song, one threw where orchards grew Red-appled to the eaves.

The birds are flown; the flowers are dead; And sky and earth are bleak and gray; The wild winds hang i’ the boughs instead, And wild leaves strew the way.

A THRENODY

I

The rainy smell of a ferny dell, Whose shadow no sun-ray flaws, When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds Telling her beads Of haws.

II

The phantom mist, that is moonbeam-kissed, On hills where the trees are thinned, When Autumn leans at the oak-root’s scarp, Touching a harp Of wind.

III

The cricket’s chirr ’neath brier and burr, By leaf-strewn pools and streams, When Autumn stands ’mid the dropping nuts, With the book, she shuts, Of dreams.

IV

The gray “Alas” of the days that pass, And the hope that says “Adieu,” A parting sorrow, a shriveled flower, And one ghost’s hour With you.

SNOW

The moon, like a round device On a shadowy shield of war, Hangs white in a heaven of ice With a solitary star.

The wind is sunk to a sigh, And the waters are steeled with frost; And gray in the eastern sky The last snow-cloud is lost.

White fields, that are winter-starved; Black woods, that are winter-fraught; And Earth like a face death-carved With the iron of some black thought.

AN OLD SONG

I

It’s, Oh, for the hills, where the wind’s some one With a vagabond foot that follows! And a cheer-up hand that he claps upon Your arm with the hearty words, “Come on! We’ll soon be out of the hollows, My heart! We’ll soon be out of the hollows!”

II

It’s, Oh, for the songs, where the hope’s some one With a renegade foot that doubles! And a kindly look that he turns upon Your face with the friendly laugh, “Come on! We’ll soon be out of the troubles, My heart! We’ll soon be out of the troubles!”

BABY MARY

Deep in baby Mary’s eyes, Baby Mary’s sweet blue eyes, Dwell the golden memories Of the music once her ears Heard in far-off Paradise: So she has no time for tears,-- Baby Mary,-- Listening to the songs she hears.

Soft in baby Mary’s face, Baby Mary’s lovely face, If you watch, you, too, may trace Dreams her spirit-self hath seen In some far-off Eden-place, Whence her soul she can not wean,-- Baby Mary,-- Dreaming in a world between.

A SUNSET FANCY

Wide in the west a lake Of flame that seems to shake As if the Midgard snake Deep down did breathe: An isle of purple glow, Where rosy rivers flow Down peaks of cloudy snow With fire beneath.

And there the Tower-of-Night, With windows all a-light, Frowns on a burning height, Wherein she sleeps,-- Young through the years of doom,-- Veiled with her hair’s gold gloom, She, the Valkyrie, whom Enchantment keeps.

THE FEN-FIRE

The misty rain makes dim my face, The night’s black cloak is o’er me; I tread the dripping cypress-place, A flickering light before me.

Out of the death of leaves that rot And ooze and weedy water, My form was breathed to haunt this spot, Death’s immaterial daughter.

The owl that whoops upon the yew, The snake that lairs within it, Have seen my wild face flashing blue For one fantastic minute.

But should you follow where my eyes Like some pale lamp decoy you, Beware! lest suddenly I rise With love that shall destroy you.

THE WOOD

Witch-hazel, dogwood, and the maple here; And there the oak and hickory; Linn, poplar, and the beech-tree, far and near As the eased eye can see.

Wild-ginger; wahoo, with its flat balloons; And brakes of briers of a twilight green; And fox-grapes plumed with summer; and strung moons Of mandrake flowers between.

Deep gold-green ferns, and mosses green and gray,-- Mats for what naked myth’s white feet?-- And, cool and calm, a cascade far away With ever-even beat.

Old logs, made sweet with death; rough bits of bark; And tangled twig and knotted root; And sunshine splashes and great pools of dark; And many a wild-bird’s flute.

Here let me sit until the Indian, Dusk, With copper-colored face, comes down; Sowing the wildwood with star-fire and musk, And shadows blue and brown.

Then side by side with some magician Dream, I’ll take the owlet-haunted lane,-- Half-roofed with vines,--led by a firefly gleam, That brings me home again.

WOOD NOTES

I

There is a flute that follows me From tree to tree: A water flute a spirit sets To silver lips in waterfalls, And through the breath of violets A sparkling music calls:-- “Hither! halloo! Oh, follow! Down leafy hill and hollow, Where, through clear swirls, With feet like pearls, Wade down the blue-eyed country girls. Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!”

II

There is a pipe that plays to me From tree to tree: A bramble pipe an elfin holds To golden lips in berry brakes, And, swinging o’er the elder wolds, A flickering music makes:-- “Come over! Come over The new-mown clover! Come over the fresh-cut hay! Where, there by the berries, With cheeks like cherries, And locks with which the warm wind merries, Brown girls are hilling the hay, All day! Come over the fields and away!-- Come over! Come over!”

HILLS OF THE WEST

Hills of the west, that gird Forest and farm, Home of the nesting bird, Housing from harm, When, on your tops, is heard Storm.

Hills of the west, that bar Belts of the gloam, Under the twilight’s star, Where the mists roam, Take ye the wanderer Home.

Hills of the west, that dream Under the moon, Making of wind and stream, Late heard and soon, Parts of your lives that seem Tune.

Hills of the west, that take Silence to ye, Be it for sorrow’s sake Or memory, Part of such silence make Me.

THE WIND OF SPRING

The wind that breathes of columbines And celandines that crowd the rocks; That shakes the balsam of the pines With music from his airy locks, Stops at my city door and knocks.

He calls me far a-forest, where The twin-leaf and the blood-root bloom; And, circled by the amber air, Life sits with beauty and perfume Weaving the new web of her loom.

He calls me where the waters run Through fronding fern where wades the hern; And, sparkling in the equal sun, Song leans beside her brimming urn, And dreams the dreams that love shall learn.

The wind has summoned, and I go: To con God’s meaning in each line The wildflow’rs write; and, walking slow, God’s purpose, of which song is sign,-- The wind’s great, gusty hand in mine.

THE WILLOW BOTTOM

Lush green the grass that grows between The willows of the bottom-land; Edged by the careless water, tall and green The brown-topped cat-tails stand.

The cows come gently here to browse, Slow through the great-leafed sycamores: You hear a dog bark from a low-roofed house With cedars round its doors.

Then all is quiet as the wings Of the one buzzard floating there: Anon a woman’s high-pitched voice that sings An old camp-meeting air.

A cock that flaps and crows; and then-- Heard drowsy through the rustling corn-- A flutter, and the cackling of a hen Within a hay-sweet barn.

How still again! no water stirs: No wind is heard: although the weeds Are waved a little: and from silk-filled burrs Drift by a few soft seeds.

So drugged with dreams the place, that you Expect to see her gliding by,-- Hummed round of bees, through blossoms spilling dew,-- The Spirit of July.

THE RED-BIRD

Red clouds and reddest flowers, And now two redder wings Swim through the rosy hours; Red wings among the flowers; And now the red-bird sings.

God makes the red clouds ripples Of flame that seem to split In rubies and in dripples Of rose where rills and ripples The singing flame that lit.

Red clouds of sundered splendor; God whispered one small word, Rich, sweet, and wild and tender-- Straight, in the vibrant splendor, The word became a bird.

He flies beneath the garnet Of clouds that flame and float,-- When summer hears the hornet Hum round the plum, turned garnet,-- Heaven’s music in his throat.

CLEARING

Before the wind, with rain-drowned stocks, The pleated, crimson hollyhocks Are bending; And, smouldering in the breaking brown, Above the hills that rim the town, The day is ending.

The air is heavy with the damp; And, one by one, each cottage lamp Is lighted; Infrequent passers of the street Stroll on or stop to talk or greet, Benighted.

I look beyond my city yard, And watch the white moon struggling hard, Cloud-buried; The wind is driving toward the east, A wreck of pearl, all cracked and creased And serried.

At times the moon, erupting, streaks Some long cloud, raised in mountain peaks Of shadow,-- That, seamed with silver, vein on vein, Grows to a far volcano chain Of Eldorado.

The wind, that blows from out the hills, Is like a woman’s touch that stills A sorrow: The moon sits high with many a star In the deep calm: and fair and far Abides to-morrow.

AUTUMN SORROW

Ah me! too soon the Autumn comes Among these purple-plaintive hills! Too soon among the forest gums Premonitory flame she spills, Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims With wet the moon-flow’r’s elfin moons; And, like exhausted starlight, dims The last slim lily-disk; and swoons With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies, And build the west’s cadaverous fire, Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes, And hands that wake her ancient lyre, Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

A DARK DAY OF SUMMER

Though Summer walks the world to-day With corn-crowned hours for her guard, Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray, And wait in Autumn’s weedy yard.

And where the larkspur and the phlox Spread carpets for her feet to pass, She stands with sombre, dripping locks Bound bleak with fog-washed zinnias.

Sad terra-cotta-colored flowers, Whose disks the trickling wet has tinged With dingy lustre, like the bowers, Flame-flecked with leaves, the frost has singed.

She, with slow feet,--’mid gaunt gold blooms Of marigolds her fingers twist,-- Passes, dim-swathed in Fall’s perfumes And dreams of sullen rain and mist.

DAYS AND DAYS

The days that clothed white limbs with heat, And rocked the red rose on their breast, Have passed with amber-sandaled feet, Into the ruby-gated west.

These were the days that filled the heart With overflowing riches of Life; in whose soul no dream shall start But hath its origin in love.

Now come the days gray-huddled in The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip; Who pin beneath a gypsy chin The frosty marigold and hip.--

The days, whose forms fall shadowy Athwart the heart; whose misty breath Shapes saddest sweets of memory Out of the bitterness of death.

DROUTH IN AUTUMN

Gnarled acorn-oaks against a west Of copper, cavernous with fire; A wind of frost that gives no rest To such lean leaves as haunt the brier, And hide the cricket’s vibrant wire.

Sere, shivering shocks, and stubble blurred With bramble-blots of dull maroon; And creekless hills whereon no herd Finds pasture, and whereo’er the loon Flies, haggard as the rainless moon.

IN SUMMER

When in dry hollows, hilled with hay, The vesper-sparrow sings afar; And golden gray dusk dies away Beneath the amber evening-star: There, where a warm and shadowy arm The woodland lays around the farm, I’ll meet you at the tryst, the tryst! And kiss your lips no man hath kissed! I’ll meet you at the twilight tryst,-- With a hey and a ho!-- Sweetheart! I’ll kiss you at the tryst!

When clover fields smell cool with dew, And crickets cry, and roads are still; And faint and few the fireflies strew The dark where calls the whippoorwill; There, in the lane, where sweet again The petals of the wild-rose rain, I’ll take in mine your hand, your hand! And say the words you’ll understand! Your soft hand nestling in my hand,-- With a hey and a ho!-- Sweetheart! All loving hand in hand!

IN WINTER

I

When black frosts pluck the acorns down, And in the lane the waters freeze; And ’thwart red skies the wild-fowl flies, And death sits grimly in the trees; When home-lights glitter through the brown Of dusk like shaggy eyes,-- Before the door his feet, sweetheart, And two white arms that greet, sweetheart, And two white arms that greet.

II

When ways are drifted with the leaves, And winds make music in the thorns; And lone and lost above the frost The new-moon shows its silver horns; When underneath the lamplit eaves The opened door is crossed,-- A happy heart and light, sweetheart, And lips that kiss good night, sweetheart, And lips that kiss good night.

ON THE FARM

I

He sang a song as he sowed the field, Sowed the field at break of day: “When the pursed-up leaves are as lips that yield Balm and balsam, and Spring,--concealed In the odorous green,--is so revealed, Halloo and oh! Hallo for the woods and the far away!”

II

He trilled a song as he mowed the mead, Mowed the mead as noon begun: “When the hills are gold with the ripened seed, As the sunset stairs of the clouds that lead To the sky where Summer knows naught of need, Halloo and oh! Hallo for the hills and the harvest sun!”

III

He hummed a song as he swung the flail, Swung the flail in the afternoon: “When the idle fields are a wrecker’s tale, That the Autumn tells to the twilight pale, As the Year turns seaward a crimson sail, Halloo and oh! Hallo for the fields and the hunter’s-moon!”

IV

He whistled a song as he shouldered his axe, Shouldered his axe in the evening storm: “When the snow of the road shows the rabbit’s tracks, And the wind is a whip that the Winter cracks, With a herdsman’s cry, o’er the clouds black backs, Halloo and oh! Hallo for home and a fire to warm!”

PATHS

I

What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- The path that takes me, in the spring, Past quince-trees where the bluebirds sing, Where peonies are blossoming, Unto a porch, wistaria-hung, Around whose steps May-lilies blow, A fair girl reaches down among, Her arm more white than their sweet snow.

II

What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- Another path that leads me, when The summer-time is here again, Past hollyhocks that shame the west When the red sun has sunk to rest; To roses bowering a nest, A lattice, ’neath which mignonette And deep geraniums surge and sough, Where, in the twilight, starless yet, A fair girl’s eyes are stars enough.

III

What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- A path that takes me, when the days Of autumn wrap the hills in haze, Beneath the pippin-pelting tree, ’Mid flitting butterfly and bee; Unto a door where, fiery, The creeper climbs; and, garnet-hued, The cock’s-comb and the dahlia flare, And in the door, where shades intrude, Gleams bright a fair girl’s sunbeam hair.

IV