Kentucky Poems

THE HILLS

There is no joy of earth that thrillsMy bosom like the far-off hills!Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,Beckon our mutabilityTo follow and to gaze uponFoundations of the dusk and dawn.Meseems the very heavens are massedUpon their shoulders, vague and vastWith all the skyey burden ofThe winds and clouds and stars above.Lo, how they sit before us, seeingThe laws that give all Beauty being!Behold! to them, when dawn is near,The nomads of the air appear,Unfolding crimson camps of dayIn brilliant bands; then march away;And under burning battlementsOf twilight plant their tinted tents.The truth of olden myths, that broodBy haunted stream and haunted wood,They see; and feel the happinessOf old at which we only guess:The dreams, the ancients loved and knew,Still as their rocks and trees are true:Not otherwise than presencesThe tempest and the calm to these:One, shouting on them all the night,Black-limbed and veined with lambent light;The other with the ministryOf all soft things that companyWith music – an embodied form,Giving to solitude the charmOf leaves and waters and the peaceOf bird-begotten melodies —And who at night doth still conferWith the mild moon, that telleth herPale tale of lonely love, untilWan images of passion fillThe heights with shapes that glimmer byClad on with sleep and memory.

CONTENT

When I behold how some pursueFame, that is Care's embodimentOr fortune, whose false face looks true, —An humble home with sweet contentIs all I ask for me and you.An humble home, where pigeons coo,Whose path leads under breezy linesOf frosty-berried cedars toA gate, one mass of trumpet-vines,Is all I ask for me and you.A garden, which all summer through,The roses old make redolent,And morning-glories, gay of hue,And tansy, with its homely scent,Is all I ask for me and you.An orchard, that the pippins strew,From whose bruised gold the juices spring;A vineyard, where the grapes hang blue,Wine-big and ripe for vintaging,Is all I ask for me and you.A lane that leads to some far viewOf forest or of fallow-land,Bloomed o'er with rose and meadow-rue,Each with a bee in its hot hand,Is all I ask for me and you.At morn, a pathway deep with dew,And birds to vary time and tune;At eve, a sunset avenue,And whippoorwills that haunt the moon,Is all I ask for me and you.Dear heart, with wants so small and few,And faith, that's better far than gold,A lowly friend, a child or two,To care for us when we are old,Is all I ask for me and you.

HEART OF MY HEART

Here where the season turns the land to gold,Among the fields our feet have known of old, —When we were children who would laugh and run,Glad little playmates of the wind and sun, —Before came toil and care and years went ill,And one forgot and one remembered still;Heart of my heart, among the old fields here,Give me your hands and let me draw you near,Heart of my heart.Stars are not truer than your soul is true —What need I more of heaven then than you?Flowers are not sweeter than your face is sweet —What need I more to make my world complete?O woman nature, love that still endures,What strength has ours that is not born of yours?Heart of my heart, to you, whatever come,To you the lead, whose love hath led me home.Heart of my heart.

OCTOBER

Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blowsA tourney-trumpet on the listed hill;Past is the splendour of the royal roseAnd duchess daffodil.Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden's space,Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold,A ragged beggar with a lovely face,Reigns the sad marigold.And I have sought June's butterfly for days,To find it – like a coreopsis bloom —Amber and seal, rain-murdered 'neath the blazeOf this sunflower's plume.Here drones the bee; and there sky-daring wingsVoyage blue gulfs of heaven; the last songThe red-bird flings me as adieu, still ringsUpon yon pear-tree's prong.No angry sunset brims with rubier redThe bowl of heaven than the days, indeed,Pour in each blossom of this salvia-bed,Where each leaf seems to bleed.And where the wood-gnats dance, like some slight mist,Above the efforts of the weedy stream,The girl, October, tired of the tryst,Dreams a diviner dream.One foot just dipping the caressing wave,One knee at languid angle; locks that drownHands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave,Watching the leaves drift down.

MYTH AND ROMANCE

IWhen I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring,Just at the time of opening apple-buds,When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering,On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,There is an unseen presence that eludes: —Perhaps a dryad, in whose tresses clingThe loamy odours of old solitudes,Who, from her beechen doorway, calls, and leadsMy soul to follow; now with dimpling wordsOf leaves; and now with syllables of birds;While here and there – is it her limbs that swing?Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?IIOr, haply, 'tis a Naiad now who slips,Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass,While from her dripping hair and breasts and hipsThe moisture rains cool music on the grass.Her have I heard and followed, yet, alas!Have seen no more than the wet ray that dipsThe shivered waters, wrinkling where I pass;But in the liquid light where she doth hide,I have beheld the azure of her gazeSmiling; and, where the orbing ripple plays,Among her minnows I have heard her lips,Bubbling, make merry by the waterside.IIIOr now it is an Oread – whose eyesAre constellated dusk – who stands confessed,As naked as a flow'r; her heart's surprise,Like morning's rose, mantling her brow and breast:She, shrinking from my presence, all distressedStands for a startled moment ere she flies,Her deep hair blowing, up the mountain crest,Wild as a mist that trails along the dawn.And is't her footfalls lure me? or the soundOf airs that stir the crisp leaf on the ground?And is't her body glimmers on yon rise?Or dogwood blossoms snowing on the lawn?IVNow 'tis a satyr piping serenadesOn a slim reed. Now Pan and Faun advanceBeneath green-hollowed roofs of forest glades,Their feet gone mad with music: now, perchance,Sylvanus sleeping, on whose leafy tranceThe nymphs stand gazing in dim ambuscadesOf sun-embodied perfume. – Myth, Romance,Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms,Compelling me to follow. Day and nightI hear their voices and behold the lightOf their divinity that still evades,And still allures me in a thousand forms.

GENIUS LOCI

IWhat wood-god, on this water's mossy curb,Lost in reflections of earth's loveliness,Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?I who haphazard, wandering at a guess,Came on this spot, wherein with gold and flameOf buds and blooms the season writes its name. —Ah me! could I have seen him ere alarmOf my approach aroused him from his calm!As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warmAs a wood-rose, and filled the air with balmOf his wild breath as with ethereal sap.IIDoes not the moss retain some slight impress,Green-dented down, of where he lay or trod?Do not the flow'rs, so reticent, confessWith conscious looks the contact of a god?Does not the very water garrulouslyBoast the indulgence of a deity?And, hark! in burly beech and sycamoreHow all the birds proclaim it! and the leavesRejoice with clappings of their myriad hands!And shall not I believe, too, and adore,With such wide proof? – Yea, though my soul perceivesNo evident presence, still it understands.IIIAnd for a while it moves me to lie downHere on the spot his god-head sanctified:Mayhap some dream he dreamed may linger, brownAnd young as joy, around the forest side;Some dream within whose heart lives no disdainFor such as I whose love is sweet and sane;That may repeat, so none but I may hear —As one might tell a pearl-strung rosary —Some epic that the leaves have learned to croon,Some lyric whispered in the wild-flow'r's ear,Whose murmurous lines are sung by bird and bee,And all the insects of the night and noon.IVFor, all around me, upon field and hill,Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes;As if the music of a god's goodwillHad taken on material attributesIn blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam,That runs its silvery scales on every stream;In sunbeam bars, up which the butterfly,A golden note, vibrates then flutters on —Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan,That have assumed a visible entity,And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun,Behold, I seem, and am no more a man.

DISCOVERY

What is it now that I shall seekWhere woods dip downward, in the hills;A mossy nook, a ferny creek,And May among the daffodils.Or in the valley's vistaed glow,Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines,Shall I behold her coming slow,Sweet May, among the columbines?With red-bud cheeks and bluet eyes,Big eyes, the homes of happiness,To meet me with the old surprise,Her hoiden hair all bonnetless.Who waits for me, where, note for note,The birds make glad the forest trees?A dogwood blossom at her throat,My May among th' anemones.As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,And dewdrops drink the moonlight's gleam,My soul shall kiss her lips' perfumes,And drink the magic of her dreams.

THE OLD SPRING

IUnder rocks whereon the roseLike a strip of morning glows;Where the azure-throated newtDrowses on the twisted root;And the brown bees, humming homeward,Stop to suck the honey-dew;Fern and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward,Drips the wildwood spring I knew,Drips the spring my boyhood knew.IIMyrrh and music everywhereHaunt its cascades; – like the hairThat a naiad tosses cool,Swimming strangely beautiful,With white fragrance for her bosom,For her mouth a breath of song: —Under leaf and branch and blossomFlows the woodland spring along,Sparkling, singing flows along.IIIStill the wet wan mornings touchIts gray rocks, perhaps; and suchSlender stars as dusk may havePierce the rose that roofs its wave;Still the thrush may call at noontideAnd the whippoorwill at night;Nevermore, by sun or moontide,Shall I see it gliding white,Falling, flowing, wild and white.

THE FOREST SPRING

Push back the brambles, berry-blue:The hollowed spring is full in view:Deep-tangled with luxuriant fernIts rock-embedded, crystal urn.Not for the loneliness that keepsThe coigne wherein its silence sleeps;Not for wild butterflies that swayTheir pansy pinions all the dayAbove its mirror; nor the bee,Nor dragon-fly, that passing seeThemselves reflected in its spar;Not for the one white liquid star,That twinkles in its firmament;Nor moon-shot clouds, so slowly sentAthwart it when the kindly nightBeads all its grasses with the lightSmall jewels of the dimpled dew;Not for the day's inverted blueNor the quaint, dimly coloured stonesThat dance within it where it moans:Not for all these I love to sitIn silence and to gaze in it.But, know, a nymph with merry eyesLooks at me from its laughing skies;A graceful glimmering nymph who playsAll the long fragrant summer daysWith instant sights of bees and birds,And speaks with them in water words,And for whose nakedness the airWeaves moony mists, and on whose hair,Unfilleted, the night will setThat lone star as a coronet.

TRANSMUTATION

To me all beauty that I seeIs melody made visible:An earth-translated state, may be,Of music heard in Heaven or Hell.Out of some love-impassioned strainOf saints, the rose evolved its bloom;And, dreaming of it here again,Perhaps re-lives it as perfume.Out of some chant that demons singOf hate and pain, the sunset grew;And, haply, still remembering,Re-lives it here as some wild hue.

DEAD CITIES

Out of it all but this remains: —I was with one who crossed wide chainsOf the Cordilleras, whose peaksLock in the wilds of Yucatan,Chiapas and Honduras. Weeks —And then a city that no manHad ever seen; so dim and old,No chronicle has ever toldThe history of men who piledIts temples and huge teocallisAmong mimosa-blooming valleys;Or how its altars were defiledWith human blood; whose idols thereWith eyes of stone still stand and stare.So old the moon can only knowHow old, since ancient forests growOn mighty wall and pyramid.Huge ceïbas, whose trunks were scarredWith ages, and dense yuccas, hidFanes 'mid the cacti, scarlet-starred.I looked upon its paven ways,And saw it in its kingliest days;When from the lordly palace one,A victim, walked with prince and priest,Who turned brown faces toward the eastIn worship of the rising sun:At night ten hundred temples' spiresOn gold burnt everlasting fires.Uxmal? Palenque? or Copan?I know not. Only how no manHad ever seen; and still my soulBelieves it vaster than the three.Volcanic rock walled in the whole,Lost in the woods as in some sea.I only read its hieroglyphs,Perused its monster monolithsOf death, gigantic heads; and readThe pictured codex of its fate,The perished Toltec; while in hateMad monkeys cursed me, as if deadPriests of its past had taken formTo guard its ruined shrines from harm.

FROST

Magician he, who, autumn nights,Down from the starry heavens whirls;A harlequin in spangled tights,Whose wand's touch carpets earth with pearls.Through him each pane presents a scene,A Lilliputian landscape, whereThe world is white instead of green,And trees and houses hang in air.Where Elfins gambol and delight,And haunt the jewelled bells of flowers;Where upside-down we see the nightWith many moons and starry showers.And surely in his wand or handIs Midas magic, for, behold,Some morn we wake and find the land,Both field and forest, turned to gold.

A NIGHT IN JUNE

IWhite as a lily moulded of Earth's milkThat eve the moon bloomed in a hyacinth sky;Soft in the gleaming glens the wind went by,Faint as a phantom clothed in unseen silk:Bright as a naiad's leap, from shine to shadeThe runnel twinkled through the shaken brier;Above the hills one long cloud, pulsed with fire,Flashed like a great enchantment-welded blade.And when the western sky seemed some weird land,And night a witching spell at whose commandOne sloping star fell green from heav'n; and deepThe warm rose opened for the moth to sleep;Then she, consenting, laid her hands in his,And lifted up her lips for their first kiss.IIThere where they part, the porch's steps are strewnWith wind-blown petals of the purple vine;Athwart the porch the shadow of a pineCleaves the white moonlight; and like some calm runeHeaven says to Earth, shines the majestic moon;And now a meteor draws a lilac lineAcross the welkin, as if God would signThe perfect poem of this night of June.The wood-wind stirs the flowering chestnut-tree,Whose curving blossoms strew the glimmering grassLike crescents that wind-wrinkled waters glass;And, like a moonstone in a frill of flame,The dewdrop trembles on the peony,As in a lover's heart his sweetheart's name.

THE DREAMER

Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers,And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh;Or, on each season, spell the epitaphOf its dead months repeated in their flowers;Or list the music of the strolling showers,Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff,Or read the day's delivered monographThrough all the chapters of its dædal hours.Still with the same child-faith and child regardHe looks on Nature, hearing at her heart,The Beautiful beat out the time and place,Through which no lesson of this life is hard,No struggle vain of science or of art,That dies with failure written on its face.

WINTER

The flute, whence Summer's dreamy fingertipsDrew music, – ripening the pinched kernels inThe burly chestnut and the chinquapin,Red-rounding-out the oval haws and hips, —Now Winter crushes to his stormy lips,And surly songs whistle around his chin;Now the wild days and wilder nights beginWhen, at the eaves, the crooked icicle drips.Thy songs, O Summer, are not lost so soon!Still dwells a memory in thy hollow flute,Which unto Winter's masculine airs doth giveThy own creative qualities of tune,Through which we see each bough bend white with fruit,Each bush with bloom, in snow commemorative.

MID-WINTER

All day the clouds hung ashen with the cold;And through the snow the muffled waters fell;The day seemed drowned in grief too deep to tell,Like some old hermit whose last bead is told.At eve the wind woke, and the snow clouds rolledAside to leave the fierce sky visible;Harsh as an iron landscape of wan hellThe dark hills hung framed in with gloomy gold.And then, towards night, the wind seemed some one atMy window wailing: now a little childCrying outside my door; and now the longHowl of some starved beast down the flue. I satAnd knew 'twas Winter with his madman songOf miseries on which he stared and smiled.

SPRING

First came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips;A pursuivant who heralded a prince:And dawn put on her livery of tints,And dusk bound gold about her hair and hips:And, all in silver mail, the sunlight came,A knight, who bade the winter let him pass;And freed imprisoned beauty, naked asThe Court of Love, in all her wildflower shame.And so she came, in breeze-borne loveliness,Across the hills; and heav'n bent down to bless:Above her head the birds were as a lyre;And at her feet, like some strong worshipper,The shouting water pæan'd praise of herWho, with blue eyes, set the wild world on fire.

TRANSFORMATION

It is the time when, by the forest falls,The touch-me-nots hang fairy folly-caps;When ferns and flowers fill the lichened lapsOf rocks with colour, rich as orient shawls:And in my heart I hear a voice that callsMe woodward, where the hamadryad wrapsHer limbs in bark, and, bubbling in the saps,Sings the sweet Greek of Pan's old madrigals:There is a gleam that lures me up the stream —A Naiad swimming with wet limbs of light?Perfume that leads me on from dream to dream —An Oread's footprints fragrant with her flight?And, lo! meseems I am a Faun again,Part of the myths that I pursue in vain.

RESPONSE

There is a music of immaculate love,That beats within the virgin veins of Spring, —And trillium blossoms, like the stars that clingTo fairies' wands; and, strung on sprays above,White-hearts and mandrake blooms – that look enoughLike the elves' washing – white with launderingOf May-moon dews; and all pale-openingWild-flowers of the woods are born thereof.There is no sod Spring's white foot brushes butMust feel the music that vibrates within,And thrill to the communicated touchResponsive harmonies, that must unshutThe heart of Beauty for Song's concrete kin,Emotions – that are flowers – born of such.

THE SWASHBUCKLER

Squat-nosed and broad, of big and pompous port;A tavern visage, apoplexy haunts,All pimple-puffed: the Falstaff-like resortOf fat debauchery, whose veined cheek flauntsA flabby purple: rusty-spurred he standsIn rakehell boots and belt, and hanger thatClaps when, with greasy gauntlets on his hands,He swaggers past in cloak and slouch-plumed hat.Aggression marches armies in his words;And in his oaths great deeds ride cap-à-pie;His looks, his gestures breathe the breath of swords;And in his carriage camp all wars to be: —With him of battles there shall be no lackWhile buxom wenches are and stoops of sack.

SIMULACRA

Dark in the west the sunset's sombre wrackUnrolled vast walls the rams of war had split,Along whose battlements the battle litTempestuous beacons; and, with gates hurled back,A mighty city, red with ruin and sack,Through burning breaches, crumbling bit by bit,Showed where the God of Slaughter seemed to sitWith Conflagration glaring at each crack. —Who knows? perhaps as sleep unto us makesOur dreams as real as our waking seemsWith recollections time can not destroy,So in the mind of Nature now awakes,Haply, some wilder memory, and she dreamsThe stormy story of the fall of Troy.

CAVERNS

WRITTEN OF COLOSSAL CAVE, KENTUCKYAisles and abysses; leagues no man explores,Of rock that labyrinths and night that drips;Where everlasting silence broods, with lipsOf adamant, o'er earthquake-builded floors.Where forms, such as the Demon-World adores,Laborious water carves; whence echo slipsWild-tongued o'er pools where petrifaction stripsHer breasts of crystal from which crystal pours. —Here where primordial fear, the Gorgon, sitsStaring all life to stone in ghastly mirth,I seem to tread, with awe no tongue can tell, —Beneath vast domes, by torrent-tortured pits,'Mid wrecks terrific of the ruined Earth, —An ancient causeway of forgotten Hell.

THE BLUE BIRD

From morn till noon upon the window-paneThe tempest tapped with rainy finger-nails,And all the afternoon the blustering galesBeat at the door with furious feet of rain.The rose, near which the lily bloom lay slain,Like some red wound dripped by the garden rails,On which the sullen slug left slimy trails —Meseemed the sun would never shine again.Then in the drench, long, loud and full of cheer, —A skyey herald tabarded in blue, —A bluebird bugled … and at once a bowWas bent in heaven, and I seemed to hearGod's sapphire spaces crystallising throughThe strata'd clouds in azure tremolo.

QUATRAINS

POETRYWho hath beheld the goddess face to face,Blind with her beauty, all his days shall goClimbing lone mountains towards her temple's place,Weighed with song's sweet, inexorable woe.THE UNIMAGINATIVEEach form of beauty's but the new disguiseOf thoughts more beautiful than forms can be;Sceptics, who search with unanointed eyes,Never the Earth's wild fairy-dance shall see.MUSICGod-born before the Sons of God, she hurled,With awful symphonies of flood and fire,God's name on rocking Chaos – world by worldFlamed as the universe rolled from her lyre.THE THREE ELEMENTSThey come as couriers of Heaven: their feetSonorous-sandalled with majestic awe;In raiment of swift foam and wind and heat,Blowing the trumpets of God's wrath and law.ROMEAbove the circus of the world she sat,Beautiful and base, a harlot crowned with pride:Fierce nations, upon whom she sneered and spat,Shrieked at her feet and for her pastime died.ON READING THE LIFE OF HAROUN ER RESHIDDown all the lanterned Bagdad of our youthHe steals, with golden justice for the poor:Within his palace – you shall know the truth! —A blood-smeared headsman hides behind each door.MNEMOSYNEIn classic beauty, cold, immaculate,A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands,Upon her brow deep-chiselled love and hate,That sorrow o'er dead roses in her hands.BEAUTYHigh as a star, yet lowly as a flower,Unknown she takes her unassuming placeAt Earth's proud masquerade – the appointed hourStrikes, and, behold! the marvel of her face.THE STARSThese – the bright symbols of man's hope and fame,In which he reads his blessing or his curse —Are syllables with which God speaks his nameIn the vast utterance of the universe.ECHODweller in hollow places, hills and rocks,Daughter of Silence and old Solitude,Tip-toe she stands within her cave or wood,Her only life the noises that she mocks.

ADVENTURERS

Seemingly over the hill-tops,Possibly under the hills,A tireless wing that never drops,And a song that never stills.Epics heard on the stars' lips?Lyrics read in the dew? —To sing the song at our finger-tips,And live the world anew!Cavaliers of the Cortés kind,Bold and stern and strong, —And, oh, for a fine and muscular mindTo sing a new-world's song!Sailing seas of the silver morn,Winds of the balm and spice,To put the old-world art to scornAt the price of any price!Danger, death, but the hope high!God's, if the purpose fail!Into the deeds of a vaster skySailing a dauntless sail.

EPILOGUE

IO Life! O Death! O God!Have we not striven?Have we not known Thee, GodAs Thy stars know Heaven?Have we not held Thee true,True as thy deepest,Sweet and immaculate blueHeaven that feels Thy dew!Have we not known Thee true,O God who keepest.IIO God, our Father, God! —Who gav'st us fire,To soar beyond the sod,To rise, aspire —What though we strive and strive,And all our soul says 'live'?The empty scorn of menWill sneer it down again.And, O sun-centred high,Who, too, art Poet,Beneath Thy tender skyEach day new Keatses die,Calling all life a lie;Can this be so – and why? —And canst Thou know it?IIIWe know Thee beautiful,We know Thee bitter!Help Thou! – Men's eyes are dull,O God most beautiful!Make thou their souls less fullOf things mere glitter.Dost Thou not see our tears?Dost Thou not hear the yearsTreading our hearts to shards,O Lord of all the Lords? —Arouse Thee, God of Hosts,There 'mid Thy glorious ghosts,So high and holy!Have mercy on our tears!Have mercy on our years!Our strivings and our fears,O Lord of lordly peers,On us, so lowly!IVOn us, so fondly fainTo tell what mother-painOf Nature makes the rain.On us, so glad to showThe sorrow of her snow,And all her winds that blow.Us, who interpret rightHer mystic rose of light,Her moony rune of night.Us, who have utterance forEach warm, flame-hearted starThat stammers from afar.Who hear the tears and sighsOf every bud that diesWhile heav'n's dew on it lies.Who see the power that dowersThe wildwood bosks and bowersWith musk of sap and flowers.Who see what no man seesIn water, earth, and breeze,And in the hearts of trees.Turn not away Thy light,O God! – Our strength is slight!Help us who breast the height!Have mercy, Infinite!Have mercy!