Part 8

What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- A path that brings me through the frost Of winter, when the moon is tossed In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak The tattered ice, whereunder is A fire-flickering window-space; And in the light, with lips to kiss, A fair girl’s welcome-giving face.

A SONG IN SEASON

I

When in the wind the vane turns round, And round, and round; And in his kennel whines the hound: When all the gable eaves are bound With icicles of ragged gray, A tattered gray; There is little to do, and much to say, And you hug your fire and pass the day With a thought of the springtime, dearie.

II

When late at night the owlet hoots, And hoots, and hoots; And wild winds make of keyholes flutes: When to the door the goodman’s boots Stamp through the snow the light strains red, The firelight’s red; There is nothing to do, and all is said, And you quaff your cider and go to bed And dream of the summer, dearie.

III

When, nearing dawn, the black cock crows, And crows, and crows; And from the barn the milch-cow lows: And the milkmaid’s cheeks have each a rose, And the still skies show a star or two, Or one or two; There is little to say, and much to do, And the heartier done the happier you, With a song of the winter, dearie.

BEFORE THE END

How does the Autumn in her mind conclude The tragic masque her frosty pencil writes, Broad on the pages of the days and nights, In burning lines of orchard, wold, and wood? What lonelier forms--that at the year’s door stood At spectral wait--with wildly wasted lights Shall enter? and with melancholy rites Inaugurate their sadder sisterhood?-- Sorrow, who lifts a signal hand, and slow The green leaf fevers, falling ere it dies; Regret, whose pale lips summon: and gaunt Woe Wakes the wild wind-harps with sonorous sighs; And Sleep, who sits with poppied eyes and sees The earth and sky grow dream-accessories.

HOAR-FROST

The frail eidolons of all blossoms Spring, Year after year, about the forest tossed, The magic touch of the enchanter, Frost, Back from the Heaven of the Flow’rs doth bring; Each branch and bush in silence visiting With phantom beauty of its blooms long lost: Each dead weed bends, white-haunted of its ghost, Each dead flower stands ghostly with blossoming. This is the wonder-legend Nature tells To the gray moon and mist a winter’s night; The fairy-tale which from her fancy wells With all the glamour of her soul’s delight: Before the summoning sorcery of her eyes Rising, as might a dream materialize.

COLD

A mist that froze beneath the moon and shook Minutest frosty crystals in the air. All night the wind was still as lonely Care Who sighs before her shivering inglenook. The face of Winter wore a cruder look Than when he shakes the icicles from his hair, And, in the boisterous pauses, lets his stare Freeze through the forest, fettering bough and brook. He is the despot now who sits and dreams Of desolation and despair, and smiles At poverty, who hath no place to rest, Who wanders o’er Life’s snow-made-pathless miles, And sees the Home-of-Comfort’s window gleams, Hugging her rag-wrapped baby to her breast.

THE WINTER MOON

Deep in the dell I watched her as she rose, A face of icy fire, o’er the hills; With snow-sad eyes that froze the forest rills, And snow-sad feet that bleached the meadow snows: Pale as some young witch who, a-listening, goes To her first meeting with the Fiend; whose fears Fix demon eyes behind each bush she nears; Stops, yet must on, fearful of following foes. And so I chased her, startled in the wood Like a discovered oread, who flies The faun who found her sleeping, each nude limb Glittering betrayal through the solitude; Till in a frosty cloud I saw her swim Like a drowned face, a blur beneath the ice.

THE HILLSIDE GRAVE

Ten-thousand deep the drifted daisies break Here at the hill’s foot; on its top, the wheat Hangs meagre-bearded; and, in vague retreat, The wisp-like blooms of the moth-mulleins shake. And where the wild-pink drops a crimson flake, And morning-glories, like young lips, make sweet The shadowed hush, low in the honeyed heat, The wild-bees hum--as if afraid to wake One sleeping here, with no white stone to tell If it be youth or maiden. Just the stem Of one wild rose, towering o’er brier and weed, Where all the day the wild-birds requiem; Within whose shade the timid violets spell An epitaph, the stars alone can read.

THE COVERED BRIDGE

There, from its entrance, lost in matted vines,-- Where in the valley foams a waterfall,-- Is glimpsed a ruined mill’s remaining wall; Here, by the road, the black-eyed Susan mines Hot brass and bronze; the trumpet-trailer shines Red as the plumage of the cardinal. Faint from the forest comes the rain-crow’s call Where dusty Summer dreams among the pines. This is the spot where Spring writes wildflower verses In primrose pink, while, drowsing o’er his reins, The ploughman, all unnoticing, plods along: And where the Autumn opens weedy purses Of sleepy silver, while the corn-piled wains Rumble the bridge like some deep throat of song.

THE CREEK-ROAD

Calling, the heron flies athwart the blue That sleeps above it; reach on rocky reach Of water sings by sycamore and beech, In whose warm shade bloom lilies not a few. It is a page whereon the sun and dew Scrawl sparkling words in dawn’s delicious speech; A laboratory where the wood-winds teach, Dissect each scent and analyze each hue. Not otherwise than beautiful, doth it Record the happenings of each summer day; Where we may read, as in a catalogue, When passed a thresher; when a load of hay; Or when a rabbit; or a bird, that lit; And now a barefoot truant and his dog.

ABANDONED

The hornets build in plaster dropping rooms, And on its mossy porch the lizard lies; Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies, And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms. Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs With ghostly lips among the attic glooms. And now a heron, now a kingfisher, Flits in the willows where the riffle seems At each faint fall to hesitate to leap, Fluttering the silence with a little stir. Here Summer seems a placid face asleep, And the near world a figment of her dreams.

OMENS

Sad on the hills the poppied sunset died. Slow as a fungus breaking through the crusts Of forest leaves, the waning half-moon thrusts Through gray-brown clouds one milky silver side; In her vague light the dogwoods, dim-descried, Seem dying torches flourished by the gusts; The apple-orchards seem the restless dusts Of wind-thinned mists upon the hills they hide. It is a night of omens whom late May Meets, like a wraith, among her train of hours; An apparition with appealing eye And hesitant foot, that walks a willowed way, And, speaking through the fading moon and flowers, Bids her prepare her gentle soul to die.

IMPERFECTION

Not as the eye hath seen shall we behold Romance and beauty when we’ve passed away; That robed the dull facts of the intimate day In life’s wild raiment of unusual gold: Not as the ear hath heard shall we be told, Hereafter, myth and legend once that lay Warm at the heart of Nature, clothing clay In attributes of no material mold. These were imperfect of necessity, That wrought through imperfection for far ends Of perfectness--as calm philosophy, Teaching a child, from his high heaven descends To earth’s familiar things; informingly Vesting his thoughts in that it comprehends.

ARCANA

Earth hath her images of utterance, Her hieroglyphic meanings which elude; A symbol language of similitude, Into whose secrets science may not glance; In which the Mind-in-Nature doth romance In miracles that baffle if pursued-- No guess shall search them and no thought intrude Beyond the limits of her sufferance. So doth the great Intelligence above Hide His own thought’s creations; and attire Forms in the dream’s ideal, which He dowers With immaterial loveliness and love-- As essences of fragrance and of fire-- Preaching th’ evangels of the stars and flowers.

FULFILLMENT

There are some souls who may look in on these Essential peoples of the earth and air-- That have the stars and flowers in their care-- And read their soul-suggestive secrecies: Heart-intimates and comrades of the trees, Who from them learn, what no known schools declare, God’s knowledge; and from winds, that, singing, fare, God’s gospel, filled with mighty harmonies. Souls, unto whom the waves impart a word Of fuller faith; the sunset and the dawn Preach sermons more inspired even than The tongues of Pentecost; as, distant heard In forms of change, through Nature upward drawn, God doth address th’ immortal part of Man.

TOO LATE

I looked upon a dead girl’s face and heard What seemed the voice of Death cry out to me, Deep in her heart, all of the agony Of her lost dreams, complaining word on word:-- How on her soul no soul had touched, or stirred Her life’s sad depths to rippling melody, Or made the imaged longing, there, to be The realization of a hope deferred. So in her life had Love behaved to her. Between the lonely chapters of her years And her young eyes making no golden blur With god-bright face and hair; who led me to Her side at last, and bade me, through my tears, With Death’s dumb lips, too late, to see and know.

THE WITCH

She gropes and hobbles, where the dropsied rocks Are hairy with the lichens and the twist Of knotted wolf’s-bane, mumbling in the mist, Hawk-nosed and wrinkle-eyed with scrawny locks. At her bent back the moon, slow-sinking, mocks, Like some lewd evil whom the Fiend hath kissed; Once at her feet the slipping serpent hissed, And once the owl called to the forest fox.-- What Sabboth brew does she intend? What root Now seek for, seal for what satanic spell Of incantations and demonic fire?-- From her rude hut, hill-huddled in the brier, What dark Familiar points her sure pursuit, There, with gaunt eyes, red with the glow of Hell?

THE SOMNAMBULIST

Oaks and a water. By the water--eyes, Ice-green and steadfast as still stars; and hair Yellow as eyes deep in a she-wolf’s lair; And limbs--like mist the lightning’s flicker dyes. The humped oaks huddle under iron skies; The dry wind whirls the dead leaves everywhere; White on the water falls a vulture-glare Of moon, and black the circling raven flies. Again the power of this thing hath laid Compulsion on me: and I seem to hear A sweet voice calling me beyond the gates To longed-for love: I come: each forest glade Seems reaching out white arms to draw me near-- Nearer and nearer to the death that waits.

OPIUM

_On reading De Quincey’s “Confessions of an Opium Eater.”_

I seemed to stand before a temple walled From shadows and night’s unrealities; Filled with dark music of dead memories, And voices,--lost in darkness,--deep that called. I entered. And beneath the dome’s high-halled Immensity one forced me to my knees Before a blackness--throned ’mid semblances And spectres--crowned with flames of emerald. Then, lo! two shapes that thundered at mine ears The names of Horror and Oblivion,-- Priests of this god,--and bade me die and dream. Then, in the heart of Hell, a thousand years Meseemed I lay--dead! while the iron stream Of Time beat out the seconds, one by one.

MUSIC AND SLEEP

These have a life that hath no part in death: These circumscribe the soul and make it strong: Between the breathing of a dream and song, Building a world of beauty in a breath. Unto the heart the voice of this one saith Ideals, its emotions live among; Unto the mind the other speaks a tongue Of visions, where the guess,--men christen Faith,-- May face the fact of immortality-- As may a rose its unembodied scent, Or star its own reflected radiance. We do not know these save subconsciously, To whose mysterious shadows God hath lent No certain shape, no certain countenance.

AMBITION

Now to my lips lift thou some opiate Of dull forgetfulness! while in thy gaze Still lures the loveless beauty that betrays, And in thy mouth the music that is hate. No promise more hast thou to make me wait; No smile to cozen my sick heart with praise! Far, far behind thee stretch laborious days, And far before thee, labors soon and late. Thine is the fen-fire that we deem a star, Flying before us, ever fugitive, Thy mocking policy still holds afar: And thine the voice to which our longings give Hope’s siren face, that speaks us sweet and fair, Only at last to whelm us with despair.

DESPONDENCY

Not all the bravery that day puts on Of gold and azure, ardent or austere, Shall ease my soul of sorrow; grief, more dear Than all the joy that heavenly hope may don. Far up the skies the rumor of the dawn May run, and eve like some wild torch appear; These shall not change the darkness, gathered here, Of thought that rusts like an old sword undrawn. Oh, for a place far-sunken from the sun! A wildwood cave of primitive rocks and moss! Where Sleep and Silence--breast to married breast-- Lie with their child, night-eyed Oblivion; Where, freed from all the burden of my cross, I might forget, I might forget--and rest!

DESPAIR

Shut in with phantoms of life’s hollow hopes, And shadows of old sins satiety slew, And the young ghosts of the dead dreams love knew, Out of the day into the night she gropes. Behind her, high the silvered summit slopes Of hope and faith, she will not turn to view; But towards the cave of heartbreak, harsh of hue, She goes, where all the dropsied horror ropes. There is a voice of waters in her ears, And on her brow a wind that never dies: One is the anguish of desired tears; One is the sorrow of unuttered sighs; And, burdened with the immemorial years, Downward she goes with never lifted eyes.

QUATRAINS

I

_Penury_

Above his misered embers, gaunt and gray, With toil-gnarled limbs he stoops: around his hut, Want, like a hobbling hag, goes, night and day, Trying the windows and the doors tight-shut.

II

_Strategy_

Craft’s silent sister and the daughter deep Of Contemplation, she, who spreads below A hostile tent soft comfort for her foe, With eyes of Jael watching till he sleep.

III

_Tempest_

With helms of lightning, glittering in the skies, On steeds of thunder, form on cloudy form, Terrific beauty in their hair and eyes, Sweep down the wild Valkyries of the storm.

IV

_The Locust Blossom_

The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour: Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet, Was born the fragrant beauty of this flower.

V

_Melancholy_

With shadowy immortelles of memory About her brow, she sits with eyes that look Upon the stream of Lethe wearily, In hesitant hands Death’s partly-opened book.

VI

_Content_

Among the meadows of Life’s sad unease-- In labor still renewing her soul’s youth-- With trust, for patience, and with love, for peace, Singing she goes with the calm face of Ruth.

VII

_Life and Death_

Of our own selves God makes a glass, wherein Two shades are imaged, passing like a breath: And one is Life, whose other name is Sin; And one is Love, whose other name is Death.

VIII

_Sorrow_

Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice Of lost Love’s tears, and, famishing, can but taste The dead-sea fruit of Life’s remembered joys.

A LAST WORD

_Not for myself, but for the sake of Song, Would I succeed as others have who gave Their lives unto her, shaping sure and strong Her lovely limbs that made them god and slave._

_Not for myself, but for the sake of Art, Would I advance beyond the others’ best, Winning a deeper secret from her heart To hang it moonlike ’mid the starry rest._

NATURE POEMS

(SECOND SERIES)

FOREWORD

_In the first rare Spring of song, In my heart’s young hours, In my youth ’twas thus I sang, Choosing ’mid the flowers_:--

“_Fair the Dandelion is, But for me too lowly; And the winsome Violet Is, forsooth, too holy. ‘But the Touch-me-not?’--Go to! What! a face that’s speckled Like a common milking-maid’s, Whom the sun hath freckled. Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt; And the Trillium-Lily, In her spotless gown, ’s a prude, Sanctified and silly. By her cap the Columbine, To my mind, ’s too merry-- Gossips, I would sooner woo Some plebeian Berry. And the shy Anemone-- Well, her face shows sorrow; Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day, Dead and gone to-morrow. Then that hold-eyed, buxom wench, Big and blond and lazy,-- She’s been chosen over oft!-- Sirs, I mean the Daisy. Pleasant persons are they all, And their virtues many; Faith! I know but good of each, And naught ill of any. But I choose a May-Apple; She shall be my Lady; Blooming, hidden and refined, Sweet in places shady.”_

_In my youth ’twas thus I sang, In my heart’s young hours, In the first rare Spring of song, Choosing ’mid the flowers. So I hesitated when Time alone was reckoned By the hours that Fancy smiled, Love and Beauty beckoned. Hard it was for me to choose From the flowers that flattered;_

_And the blossom that I chose Soon lay dead and scattered. Hard I found it then, ah me! Hard I found the choosing; Harder, harder since I’ve found, All too hard, the losing. Haply had I chosen then From the weeds that tangle Wayside, woodland, and the wall Of my garden’s angle, I had chosen better, yea, For these later hours-- Longer live the weeds, and oft Sweeter are than flowers._

WEEDS BY THE WALL

THE CRICKET

I

First of the insect choir, in the spring We hear his faint voice fluttering in the grass, Beneath some blossom’s rosy covering, Or frond of fern, upon a wildwood pass. When in the marsh, in clamorous orchestras, The shrill hylodes pipe; when, in the haw’s Bee-swarming blooms, or tasseling sassafras, Sweet threads of silvery song the sparrow draws, Bow-like, athwart the vibrant atmosphere,-- Like some dim dream low-breathed in slumber’s ear,-- We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_.

II

All summer long the mellowing meadows thrill To his blithe music. Be it day or night, Close gossip of the grass, on field and hill He serenades the silence with delight: Silence, that hears the melon slowly split With ripeness; and the plump peach, hornet-bit, Loosen and fall; and everywhere the white, Warm, silk-like stir of leafy lights that flit As breezes blow; above which, loudly clear,-- Like joy who sings of life and has no fear,-- We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_.

III

Then in the autumn, by the waterside, Leaf-huddled; or along the weed-grown walks, He dirges low the flowers that have died, Or with their ghosts holds solitary talks. Lover of warmth, all day above the click And crunching of the sorghum-press, through thick Sweet steam of juice; all night when, white as chalk, The hunter’s-moon hangs o’er the rustling rick, Within the barn ’mid munching cow and steer,-- Soft as a memory the heart holds dear,-- We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_.

IV

Kinsman and cousin of the Faëry Race, All winter long he sets his sober mirth,-- That brings good-luck to many a fireplace,-- To folk-lore song and saga of the hearth. Between the back-log’s bluster and the slim High twittering of the kettle,--sounds that hymn Home-comforts,--when, outside, the starless earth Is icicled in every laden limb,-- Defying frost and all the sad and sere,-- Like love that dies not and is always near,-- We hear his _Cheer, cheer, cheer_.

THE TREE TOAD

I

Secluded, solitary on some underbough Or cradled in a leaf, ’mid glimmering light, Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how The slow toadstool comes bulging, moony white, Through loosening loam; or how, against the night, The glow-worm gathers silver to endow The darkness with; or how the dew conspires To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires Each blade that shrivels now.

II

O vague confederate of the whippoorwill, Of owl and cricket and the katydid! Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill Vibrating note and send’st it where, half hid In cedars, twilight sleeps--each azure lid Drooping a line of golden eyeball still.-- Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice Within the Garden of the Hours apoise On dusk’s deep daffodil.

III

Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over. Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight’s hush, and little intimate Of eve’s first fluttering star and delicate Round rim of rainy moon!

IV

Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour When they may gambol under haw and thorn, Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower? Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower The liriodendron is? from whence is borne The elfin music of thy bell’s deep bass, To summon Fairies to their starlit maze, To summon them or warn.

THE SCREECH-OWL

I

When, one by one, the stars have trembled through Eve’s shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire-- As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew Orbs its bright beads;--and, one by one, the choir Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier: Then through the woods--where wandering winds pursue A ceaseless whisper--like an eery lyre Struck in the Erl-king’s halls, where ghosts and dreams Hold revelry, your goblin music screams, Shivering and strange as some strange thought come true.

II