Kentucky Poems

SPRING TWILIGHT

The sun set late; and left along the westA belt of furious ruby, o'er which snowsOf clouds unrolled; each cloud a mighty breastBlooming with almond-rose.The sun set late; and wafts of wind beat down,And cuffed the blossoms from the blossoming quince;Scattered the pollen from the lily's crown,And made the clover wince.By dusky forests, through whose fretful boughsIn flying fragments shot the evening's flame,Adown the tangled lane the quiet cowsWith dreamy tinklings came.The sun set late; but hardly had he goneWhen o'er the moon's gold-litten crescent there,Clean Phosphor, polished as a precious stone,Burned in fair deeps of air.As from faint stars the glory waned and waned,The crickets made the oldtime garden shrill;And past the luminous pasture-lands complainedThe first far whippoorwill.

A SLEET-STORM IN MAY

On southern winds shot through with amber light,Breathing soft balm and clothed in cloudy white,The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills,Waking the crocus and the daffodils.O'er the cold Earth she breathed a tender sigh —The maples sang and flung their banners high,Their crimson-tasselled pennons, and the elmBound his dark brows with a green-crested helm.Beneath the musky rot of Autumn's leaves,Under the forest's myriad naked eaves,Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue,Robed in the starlight of the twinkling dew.With timid tread adown the barren woodSpring held her way, when, lo! before her stoodWhite-mantled Winter wagging his white head,Stormy his brow and stormily he said:'The God of Terror, and the King of Storm,Must I remind thee how my iron armRaised my red standards 'mid these conquered bowers,Turning their green to crimson? – Thou, with flowers,Thou wouldst supplant me! nay! usurp my throne! —Audacious one!' – And at her breast he tossedA bitter javelin of ice and frost;And left her lying on th' unfeeling mould.The fragile blossoms, gathered in the foldOf her warm bosom, fell in desolate rowsAbout her beauty, and, like fragrant snows,Covered her lovely hands and beautiful feet,Or on her lips lay like last kisses sweetThat died there. Lilacs, musky of the May,And bluer violets and snowdrops layEntombed in crystal, icy dim and fair,Like teardrops scattered in her heavenly hair.Alas! sad heart, break not beneath the pain!Time changeth all; the Beautiful wakes again. —We should not question such; a higher powerKnows best what bud is ripest or what flower,And silently plucks it at the fittest hour.

UNREQUITED

Passion? not hers, within whose virgin eyesAll Eden lay. – And I remember howI drank the Heaven of her gaze with sighs —She never sighed, nor gave me kiss or vow.So have I seen a clear October pool,Cold, liquid topaz, set within the searGold of the woodland, tremorless and cool,Reflecting all the heartbreak of the year.Sweetheart? not she whose voice was music sweet;Whose face was sweeter than melodious prayer.Sweetheart I called her. – When did she repeatSweet to one hope or heart to one despair?So have I seen a rose set round with thorn,Sung to and sung to by a bird of spring,And when, breast-pierced, the bird lay all forlorn,The rose bloomed on, fair and unnoticing.

THE HEART O' SPRING

Whiten, oh whiten, O clouds of lawn!Lily-like clouds that whiten above,Now like a dove, and now like a swan,But never, oh never – pass on! pass on!Never so white as the throat of my love.Blue-black night on the mountain peaksIs not so black as the locks o' my love!Stars that shine through the evening streaksOver the torrent that flashes and breaks,Are not so bright as the eyes o' my love!Moon in a cloud, a cloud of snow,Mist in the vale where the rivulet sounds,Dropping from ledge to ledge below,Turning to gold in the sunset's glow,Are not so soft as her footstep sounds.Sound o' May winds in the blossoming trees,Is not so sweet as her laugh that rings;Song o' wild birds on the morning breeze,Birds and brooks and murmur o' bees,Are harsh to her voice when she laughs or sings.The rose of my heart is she, my dawn!My star o' the east, my moon above!My soul takes ship for the AvalonOf her heart of hearts, and shall sail onTill it anchors safe in its haven of love.

'A BROKEN RAINBOW ON THE SKIES OF MAY'

A broken rainbow on the skies of May,Touching the dripping roses and low clouds,And in wet clouds its scattered glories lost: —So in the sorrow of her soul the ghostOf one great love, of iridescent ray,Spanning the roses dim of memory,Against the tumult of life's rushing crowds —A broken rainbow on the skies of May.A flashing humming-bird among the flowers,Deep-coloured blooms; its slender tongue and billSucking the syrups and the calyxed myrrhs,Till, being full of sweets, away it whirrs: —Such was his love that won her heart's rich bowersTo give to him their all, their honied showers,The bloom from which he drank his body's fill —A flashing humming-bird among the flowers.A moon, moth-white, that through long mists of fleeceMoves amber-girt into a bulk of black,And, lost to vision, rims the black with froth: —A love that swept its moon, like some great moth,Across the heaven of her soul's young peace;And, smoothly passing, in the clouds did ceaseOf time, through which its burning light comes back —A moon, moth-white, that moves through mists of fleece.A bolt of living thunder downward hurled,Momental blazing from the piled-up storm,That instants out the mountains and the ocean,The towering crag, then blots the sight's commotion: —Love, love that swiftly coming bared the world,The deeps of life, 'round which fate's clouds are curled,And, ceasing, left all night and black alarm —A bolt of living thunder downward hurled.

ORGIE

On nights like this, when bayou and lagoonDream in the moonlight's mystic radiance,I seem to walk like one deep in a tranceWith old-world myths born of the mist and moon.Lascivious eyes and mouths of sensual roseSmile into mine; and breasts of luring light,And tresses streaming golden to the night,Persuade me onward where the forest glows.And then it seems along the haunted hillsThere falls a flutter as of beautiful feet,As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meetTo drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills.And then I feel her limbs will be revealedLike some great snow-white moth among the trees;Her vampire beauty, waiting there to seizeAnd dance me downward where my doom is sealed.

REVERIE

What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought,What walls of Parian, whiter than a rose,What towers of crystal, for the eyes of thought,Hast builded on far Islands of Repose?Thy cloudy columns, vast, Corinthian,Or huge, Ionic, colonnade the heightsOf dreamland, looming o'er the soul's deep seas;Built melodies of marble, that no manHas ever reached, except in fancy's flights,Templing the presence of perpetual ease.Oft, where o'er plastic frieze and plinths of spar, —In glimmering solitudes of pillared stone, —The twilight blossoms with one violet star,With thee, O Reverie, I have stood alone,And there beheld, from out the Mythic Age,The rosy breasts of Cytherea – fair,Full-cestused, and suggestive of what lovesImmortal – rise; and heard the lyric rageOf sun-burnt Poesy, whose throat breathes bareO'er leopard skins, fluting among his groves.Oft, where thy castled peaks and templed valesCloud – like convulsive sunsets – shores that dream,Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas whose sailsGleam white as lilies on a lilied stream,My soul has dreamed. Or by thy sapphire sea,In thy arcaded gardens, in the shadeOf breathing sculpture, oft has walked with thought,And bent, in shadowy attitude, its kneeBefore the shrine of Beauty that must fadeAnd leave no memory of the mind that wrought.Who hath beheld thy caverns where, in heaps,The wines of Lethe and Love's witchery,In sealéd Amphoræ a sibyl keeps,World-old, for ever guarded secretly? —No wine of Xeres or of Syracuse!No fine Falernian and no vile Sabine! —The stolen fire of a demigod,Whose bubbled purple goddess feet did bruiseIn crusted vats of vintage, where the greenFlames with wild poppies, on the Samian sod.Oh, for the deep enchantment of one draught!The reckless ecstasy of classic earth! —With godlike eyes to laugh as gods have laughedIn eyes of mortal brown, a mighty mirth.Of deity delirious with desire!To breathe the dropping roses of the shrines,The splashing wine-libation and the blood,And all the young priest's dreaming! To inspireMy eager soul with beauty, 'til it shinesAn utt'rance of life's loftier brotherhood!So would I slumber in the old-world shades,And Poesy should touch me, as some boldWild bee a pulpy lily of the glades,Barbaric-covered with the kernelled gold;And feel the glory of the Golden AgeLess godly than my purpose, strong to dareDeath with the pure immortal lips of love:Less lovely than my soul's ideal rageTo mate itself with Music and declareItself part meaning of the stars above.

LETHE

IThere is a scent of roses and spilt wineBetween the moonlight and the laurel coppice;The marble idol glimmers on its shrine,White as a star, among a heaven of poppies.Here all my life lies like a spilth of wine.There is a mouth of music like a lute,A nightingale that singeth to one flower;Between the falling flower and the fruit,Where love hath died, the music of an hour.IITo sit alone with memory and a rose;To dwell with shadows of whilom romances;To make one hour of a year of woesAnd walk on starlight, in ethereal trances,With love's lost face fair as a moon-white rose.To shape from music and the scent of budsLove's spirit and its presence of sweet fire,Between the heart's wild burning and the blood's,Is part of life and of the soul's desire.IIIThere is a song to silence and the stars,Between the forest and the temple's arches;And down the stream of night, like nenuphars,The tossing fires of the revellers' torches. —Here all my life waits lonely as the stars. —Shall not one hour of all those hours sufficeFor resignation God hath given as dower?Between the summons and the sacrificeOne hour of love, th' eternity of an hour?IVThe shrine is shattered and the bird is gone;Dark is the house of music and of bridal;The stars are stricken and the storm comes on;Lost in a wreck of roses lies the idol,Sad as the memory of a joy that's gone. —To dream of perished gladness and a kiss,Waking the last chord of love's broken lyre,Between remembering and forgetting, thisIs part of life and of the soul's desire.

DIONYSIA

The day is dead; and in the westThe slender crescent of the moon —Diana's crystal-kindled crest —Sinks hillward in a silvery swoon.What is the murmur in the dell?The stealthy whisper and the drip?A Dryad with her leaf-light trip?A Naiad o'er her fountain well? —Who with white fingers for her comb,Sleeks her blue hair, and from its curlsShowers slim minnows and pale pearls,And hollow music of the foam.What is it in the vistaed waysThat leans and springs, and stoops and sways? —The naked limbs of one who flees?An Oread who hesitatesBefore the Satyr form that waits,Crouching to leap, that there she sees?Or under boughs, reclining cool,A Hamadryad, like a poolOf moonlight, palely beautiful?Or Limnad, with her lilied face,More lovely than the misty laceThat haunts a star and gives it grace?Or is it some LeimoniadIn wildwood flowers dimly clad?Oblong blossoms white as froth,Or mottled like the tiger-moth;Or brindled as the brows of death,Wild of hue and wild of breath:Here ethereal flame and milkBlent with velvet and with silk;Here an iridescent glowMixed with satin and with snow:Pansy, poppy and the paleSerpolet and galingale;Mandrake and anemone,Honey-reservoirs o' the bee;Cistus and the cyclamen, —Cheeked like blushing Hebe this,And the other white as isBubbled milk of Venus whenCupid's baby mouth is pressed,Rosy to her rosy breast.And, besides, all flowers that mateWith aroma, and in hueStars and rainbows duplicateHere on earth for me and you.Yea! at last mine eyes can see!'Tis no shadow of the treeSwaying softly there, but she! —Mænad, Bassarid, Bacchant,What you will, who doth enchantNight with sensuous nudity.Lo! again I hear her pantBreasting through the dewy glooms —Through the glow-worm gleams and glowersOf the starlight; – wood-perfumesSwoon around her and frail showersOf the leaflet-tilted rain.Lo! like love, she comes againThrough the pale voluptuous dusk,Sweet of limb with breasts of musk.With her lips, like blossoms, breathingHoneyed pungence of her kiss,And her auburn tresses wreathingLike umbrageous helichrys,There she stands, like fire and snow,In the moon's ambrosial glow,Both her shapely loins low-loopedWith the balmy blossoms, drooped,Of the deep amaracus.Spiritual, yet sensual,Lo, she ever greets me thusIn my vision; white and tall,Her delicious body there, —Raimented with amorous air, —To my mind expresses allThe allurements of the world.And once more I seem to feelOn my soul, like frenzy, hurledAll the passionate past. – I reel,Greek again in ancient Greece,In the Pyrrhic revelries;In the mad and Mænad dance;Onward dragged with violence;Pan and old Silenus andFaunus and a Bacchant bandRound me. Wild my wine-stained handO'er tumultuous hair is lifted;While the flushed and Phallic orgiesWhirl around me; and the margesOf the wood are torn and riftedWith lascivious laugh and shout.And barbarian there again, —Shameless with the shameless rout,Bacchus lusting in each vein, —With her pagan lips on mine,Like a god made drunk with wine,On I reel; and in the revelsHer loose hair, the dance dishevels,Blows, and 'thwart my vision swimsAll the splendour of her limbs…So it seems. Yet woods are lonely.And when I again awake,I shall find their faces onlyMoonbeams in the boughs that shake;And their revels, but the rushOf night-winds through bough and brush.Yet my dreaming – is it moreThan mere dreaming? Is a doorOpened in my soul? a curtainRaised? to let me see for certainI have lived that life before?

THE NAIAD

She sits among the iris stalksOf babbling brooks; and leans for hoursAmong the river's lily flowers,Or on their whiteness walks:Above dark forest pools, gray rocksWall in, she leans with dripping locks,And listening to the echo, talksWith her own face – Iothera.There is no forest of the hills,No valley of the solitude,Nor fern nor moss, that may eludeHer searching step that stills:She dreams among the wild-rose brakesOf fountains that the ripple shakes,And, dreaming of herself, she fillsThe silence with 'Iothera.'And every wind that haunts the waysOf leaf and bough, once having kissedHer virgin nudity, goes whistWith wonder and amaze.There blows no breeze which hath not learnedHer name's sweet melody, and yearnedTo kiss her mouth that laughs and says,'Iothera, Iothera.'No wild thing of the wood, no bird,Or brown or blue, or gold or gray,Beneath the sun's or moonlight's ray,That hath not loved and heard;They are her pupils; she can sayNo new thing but, within a day,They have its music, word for word,Harmonious as Iothera.No man who lives and is not wiseWith love for common flowers and trees,Bee, bird, and beast, and brook, and breeze,And rocks and hills and skies, —Search where he will, – shall ever seeOne flutter of her drapery,One glimpse of limbs, or hair, or eyesOf beautiful Iothera.

THE LIMNAD

IThe lake she haunts gleams dreamily'Twixt sleepy boughs of melody,Set 'mid the hills beside the sea,In tangled bush and brier;Where the ghostly sunsets writeWondrous things in golden light;And above the pine-crowned height,Clouds of twilight, rosy white,Build their towers of fire.II'Mid the rushes there that swing,Flowering flags where voices singWhen low winds are murmuring,Murmuring to stars that glitter;Blossom-white, with purple locks,Underneath the stars' still flocks,In the dusky waves she rocks,Rocks, and all the landscape mocksWith a song most sweet and bitter.IIISoft it sounds, at first, as dreamsFilled with tears that fall in streams;Then it soars, until it seemsBeauty's very self hath spoken;And the woods grow silent quite,Stars wax faint and flowers turn white;And the nightingales that lightNear, or hear her through the night,Die, their hearts with longing broken.IVDark, dim and sad o'er mournful lands,White-throated stars heaped in her hands,Like wildwood buds, the Twilight stands,The Twilight dreaming lingers;Listening where the Limnad singsWitcheries, whose beauty bringsA great moon from hidden springs,Pale with amorous quiveringsFeet of fire and silvery fingers.VIn the vales Auloniads,On the mountains Oreads,On the leas Leimoniads,Naked as the stars that glisten,Pan, the Satyrs, Dryades,Fountain-lovely Naiades,Foam-lipped Oceanides,Breathless 'mid their seas and trees,Stay and stop and lean and listen.VILarge-eyed, Siren-like she stands,In the lake or on its sands,And with rapture from the handsOf the Night some stars are shaken;To her song the rushes swing,Lilies nod and ripples ring,Lost in helpless listening —These will wake that hear her sing,But one mortal will not waken.

INTIMATIONS

IIs it uneasy moonlightOn the restless field, that stirs?Or wild white meadow-blossomsThe night-wind bends and blurs?Is it the dolorous water,That sobs in the woods and sighs?Or heart of an ancient oak-tree,That breaks and, sighing, dies?The wind is vague with the shadowsThat wander in No-Man's Land;The water is dark with the voicesThat weep on the Unknown strand.O ghosts of the winds that call me!O ghosts of the whispering waves!As sad as forgotten flowersThat die upon nameless graves!What is this thing you tell meIn tongues of a twilight race,Of death, with the vanished features,Mantled, of my own face?IIThe old enigmas of the deathless dawnsAnd riddles of the all immortal eves, —That still o'er Delphic lawnsSpeak as the gods spoke through oracular leaves —I read with new-born eyes,Remembering how, a slave;They buried me, a living sacrifice,Once in a dead king's grave.Or crowned with hyacinth and helichrys,How, towards the altar in the marble gloom, —Hearing the magadisDirge through the pale amaracine perfume, —'Mid chanting priests I trod,With never a sigh or pause,To give my life to pacify a god,And save my country's cause.Again: Cyrenian roses on wild hair,And oil and purple smeared on breasts and cheeks,How, with mad torches there, —Reddening the cedars of Cithæron's peaks, —With gesture and fierce glance,Lascivious Mænad bandsOnce drew and slew me in the Pyrrhic dance,With Bacchanalian hands.IIIIn eons of the senses,My spirit knew of yore,I found the Isle of CirceAnd felt her magic lore;And still the soul remembersWhat I was once before.She gave me flowers to smell ofThat wizard branches bore,Of weird and sorcerous beauty,Whose stems dripped human gore —Their scent when I rememberI know that world once more.She gave me fruits to eat ofThat grew upon the shore,Of necromantic ripeness,With human flesh at core —Their taste when I rememberI know that life once more.And then, behold! a serpent,That glides my face before,With eyes of tears and fireThat glare me o'er and o'er —I look into its eyeballs,And know myself once more.

BEFORE THE TEMPLE

IAll desolate she sate her downUpon the marble of the temple's stair.You would have thought her, with her eyes of brown,Flushed cheeks and hazel hair,A dryad dreaming there.IIA priest of Bacchus passed, nor stoppedTo chide her; deeming her – whose chiton hidBut half her bosom, and whose girdle dropped —Some grief-drowned Bassarid,The god of wine had chid.IIIWith wreaths of woodland cyclamenFor Dian's shrine, a shepherdess drew near,All her young thoughts on vestal beauty, when —She dare not look for fear —Behold the goddess here!IVFierce lights on shields of bossy brassAnd helms of gold, next from the hills deployTall youths of Argos. And she sees him pass,Flushed with heroic joy,On towards the siege of Troy.

ANTHEM OF DAWN

IThen up the orient heights to the zenith that balanced the crescent, —Up and far up and over, – the heaven grew erubescent,Vibrant with rose and with ruby from hands of the harpist Dawn,Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament's barbition;And the East was a priest who adored with offerings of gold and of gems,And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible hemsOf the glittering robes of her limbs; that, lily and amethyst,Swept glorying on and on through temples of cloud and mist.IIThen out of the splendour and richness, that burned like a magic stone,The torrent suffusion that deepened and dazzled and broadened and shone,The pomp and the pageant of colour, triumphal procession of glare,The sun, like a king in armour, breathing splendour from feet to hair,Stood forth with majesty girdled, as a hero who towers afarWhere the bannered gates are bristling hells and the walls are roaringwar:And broad on the back of the world, like a Cherubin's fiery blade,The effulgent gaze of his aspect fell in glittering accolade.IIIThen billowing blue, like an ocean, rolled from the shores of dawn toeven:And the stars, like rafts, went down: and the moon, like a ghost-shipdriven,A feather of foam, from port to port of the cloud-built isles thatdotted,With pearl and cameo, bays of the day, her canvas webbed and rooted,Lay lost in the gulf of heaven: while over her mixed and meltedThe beautiful children of Morn, whose bodies are opal-belted;The beautiful daughters of Dawn, who, over and under and afterThe rivered radiance wrestled; and rainbowed heaven with laughterOf halcyon sapphire. – O Dawn! thou visible mirth,Thou hallelujah of heaven! hosanna of Earth!

AT THE LANE'S END

INo more to strip the roses fromThe rose-boughs of her porch's place! —I dreamed last night that I was homeBeside a rose – her face.I must have smiled in sleep – who knows? —The rose aroma filled the lane;I saw her white hand's lifted roseThat called me home again.And yet when I awoke – so wan,An old face wet with icy tears! —Somehow, it seems, sleep had misdrawnA love gone thirty years.IIThe clouds roll up and the clouds roll downOver the roofs of the little town;Out in the hills where the pike winds byFields of clover and bottoms of rye,You will hear no sound but the barking coughOf the striped chipmunk where the lane leads off;You will hear no bird but the sapsuckersFar off in the forest, – that seems to purr,As the warm wind fondles its top, grown hot,Like the docile back of an ocelot:You will see no thing but the shine and shadeOf briers that climb and of weeds that wadeThe glittering creeks of the light, that fillsThe dusty road and the red-keel hills —And all day long in the pennyroy'lThe grasshoppers at their anvils toil;Thick click of their tireless hammers thrum,And the wheezy belts of their bellows hum;Tinkers who solder the silence and heatTo make the loneliness more complete.Around old rails where the blackberriesAre reddening ripe, and the bumble-beesAre a drowsy rustle of Summer's skirts,And the bob-white's wing is the fan she flirts.Under the hill, through the iron weeds,And ox-eyed daisies and milkweeds, leadsThe path forgotten of all but one.Where elder bushes are sick with sun,And wild raspberries branch big blue veinsO'er the face of the rock, where the old spring rainsIts sparkling splinters of molten sparOn the gravel bed where the tadpoles are, —You will find the pales of the fallen fence,And the tangled orchard and vineyard, denseWith the weedy neglect of thirty years.The garden there, – where the soft sky clearsLike an old sweet face that has dried its tears; —The garden plot where the cabbage grewAnd the pompous pumpkin; and beans that blewBalloons of white by the melon patch;Maize; and tomatoes that seemed to catchOblong amber and agate ballsThrown from the sun in the frosty falls:Long rows of currants and gooseberries,And the balsam-gourd with its honey-bees.And here was a nook for the princess-plumes,The snap-dragons and the poppy-blooms,Mother's sweet-williams and pansy flowers,And the morning-glories' bewildered bowers,Tipping their cornucopias upFor the humming-birds that came to sup.And over it all was the Sabbath peaceOf the land whose lap was the love of these;And the old log-house where my innocence died,With my boyhood buried side by side.Shall a man with a face as withered and grayAs the wasp-nest stowed in a loft away, —Where the hornets haunt and the mortar dropsFrom the loosened logs of the clap-board tops; —Whom vice has aged as the rotting roomsThe rain where memories haunt the glooms;A hitch in his joints like the rheum that gnarsIn the rasping hinge of the door that jars;A harsh, cracked throat like the old stone flueWhere the swallows build the summer through;Shall a man, I say, with the spider sinsThat the long years spin in the outs and insOf his soul, returning to see once moreHis boyhood's home, where his life was poorWith toil and tears and their fretfulness,But rich with health and the hopes that blessThe unsoiled wealth of a vigorous youth;Shall he not take comfort and know the truthIn its threadbare raiment of falsehood? – Yea!In his crumbled past he shall kneel and pray,Like a pilgrim come to the shrine againOf the homely saints that shall soothe his pain,And arise and depart made clean from stain!IIIYears of care can not eraseVisions of the hills and treesClosing in the dam and race;Not the mile-long memoriesOf the mill-stream's lovely place.How the sunsets used to stainMirror of the water lyingUnder eaves made dark with rain!Where the red-bird, westward flying,Lit to try one song again.Dingles, hills, and woods, and springs,Where we came in calm and storm,Swinging in the grape-vine swings,Wading where the rocks were warm,With our fishing-nets and strings.Here the road plunged down the hill,Under ash and chinquapin, —Where the grasshoppers would drillEars of silence with their din, —To the willow-girdled mill.There the path beyond the fordTakes the woodside, just belowShallows that the lilies sword,Where the scarlet blossoms blowOf the trumpet-vine and gourd.Summer winds, that sink with heat,On the pelted waters winnowMoony petals that repeatCrescents, where the startled minnowBeats a glittering retreat.Summer winds that bear the scentOf the iron-weed and mint,Weary with sweet freight and spent,On the deeper pools imprintStumbling steps in many a dent.Summer winds, that split the huskOf the peach and nectarine,Trail along the amber duskHazy skirts of gray and green,Spilling balms of dew and musk.Where with balls of bursting juiceSummer sees the red wild-plumStrew the gravel; ripened loose,Autumn hears the pawpaw drumPlumpness on the rocks that bruise:There we found the water-beech,One forgotten August noon,With a hornet-nest in reach, —Like a fairyland balloon,Full of bustling fairy speech. —Some invasion sure it was;For we heard the captains scold;Waspish cavalry a-buzz, —Troopers uniformed in gold,Sable-slashed, – to charge on us.Could I find the sedgy angle,Where the dragon-flies would turnSlender flittings into spangleOn the sunlight? or would burn —Where the berries made a tangle —Sparkling green and brassy blue;Rendezvousing, by the stream,Bands of elf-banditti, who,Brigands of the bloom and beam,Drunken were with honey-dew.Could I find the pond that layWhere vermilion blossoms showeredFragrance down the daisied way?That the sassafras emboweredWith the spice of early May?Could I find it – did I seek —The old mill? Its weather-beatenWheel and gable by the creek?With its warping roof; worm-eaten,Dusty rafters worn and weak.Where old shadows haunt old places,Loft and hopper, stair and bin;Ghostly with the dust that lacesWebs that usher phantoms in,Wistful with remembered faces.While the frogs' grave litaniesDrowse in far-off antiphone,Supplicating, till the eyesOf dead friendships, long aloneIn the dusky corners, – rise.Moonrays or the splintered slipOf a star? within the darklingTwilight, where the fire-flies dip —As if Night a myriad sparklingJewels from her hands let slip:While again some farm-boy crosses, —With a corn-sack for the meal, —O'er the creek, through ferns and mossesSprinkled by the old mill-wheel,Where the water drips and tosses.