Poems

MOLY

  When by the wall the tiger-flower swings    A head of sultry slumber and aroma;  And by the path, whereon the blown rose flings    Its obsolete beauty, the long lilies foam a  White place of perfume, like a beautiful breast—  Between the pansy fire of the west,  And poppy mist of moonrise in the east,    This heartache will have ceased.  The witchcraft of soft music and sweet sleep—    Let it beguile the burthen from my spirit,  And white dreams reap me as strong reapers reap    The ripened grain and full blown blossom near it;  Let me behold how gladness gives the whole  The transformed countenance of my own soul—  Between the sunset and the risen moon    Let sorrow vanish soon.  And these things then shall keep me company:    The elfins of the dew; the spirit of laughter  Who haunts the wind; the god of melody    Who sings within the stream, that reaches after  The flow'rs that rock themselves to his caress:  These of themselves shall shape my happiness,  Whose visible presence I shall lean upon,    Feeling that care is gone.  Forgetting how the cankered flower must die;    The worm-pierced fruit fall, sicklied to its syrup;  How joy, begotten 'twixt a sigh and sigh,  Waits with one foot forever in the stirrup,—  Remembering how within the hollow lute  Soft music sleeps when music's voice is mute;  And in the heart, when all seems black despair,    Hope sits, awaiting there.

POPPY AND MANDRAGORA

    Let us go far from here!  Here there is sadness in the early year:  Here sorrow waits where joy went laughing late:  The sicklied face of heaven hangs like hate  Above the woodland and the meadowland;  And Spring hath taken fire in her hand  Of frost and made a dead bloom of her face,  Which was a flower of marvel once and grace,  And sweet serenity and stainless glow.    Delay not. Let us go.    Let us go far away  Into the sunrise of a fairer May:  Where all the nights resign them to the moon,  And drug their souls with odor and soft tune,  And tell their dreams in starlight: where the hours  Teach immortality with fadeless flowers;  And all the day the bee weights down the bloom,  And all the night the moth shakes strange perfume,  Like music, from the flower-bells' affluence.    Let us go far from hence.    Why should we sit and weep,  And yearn with heavy eyelids still to sleep?  Forever hiding from our hearts the hate,—  Death within death,—life doth accumulate,  Like winter snows along the barren leas  And sterile hills, whereon no lover sees  The crocus limn the beautiful in flame;  Or hyacinth and jonquil write the name  Of Love in fire, for each passer-by.    Why should we sit and sigh?    We will not stay and long,  Here where our souls are wasting for a song;  Where no bird sings; and, dim beneath the stars,  No silvery water strikes melodious bars;  And in the rocks and forest-covered hills  No quick-tongued echo from her grotto fills  With eery syllables the solitude—  The vocal image of the voice that wooed—  She, of wild sounds the airy looking-glass.    Our souls are tired, alas!    What should we say to her?—  To Spring, who in our hearts makes no sweet stir:  Who looks not on us nor gives thought unto:  Too busy with the birth of flowers and dew,  And vague gold wings within the chrysalis;  Or Love, who will not miss us; had no kiss  To give your soul or the sad soul of me,  Who bound our hearts to her in poesy,  Long since, and wear her badge of service still.—    Have we not served our fill?    We will go far away.  Song will not care, who slays our souls each day  With the dark daggers of denying eyes,  And lips of silence! … Had she sighed us lies,  Not passionate, yet falsely tremulous,  And lent her mouth to ours in mockery; thus  Smiled from calm eyes as if appreciative;  Then, then our love had taught itself to live  Feeding itself on hope, and recompense.    But no!—So let us hence.    So be the Bible shut  Of all her Beauty, and her wisdom but  A clasp for memory! We will not seek  The light that came not when the soul was weak  With longing, and the darkness gave no sign  Of star-born comfort. Nay! why kneel and whine  Sad psalms of patience and hosannas of  Old hope and dreary canticles of love?—  Let us depart, since, as we long supposed,    For us God's book was closed.

A ROAD SONG

  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."  It's—Oh, for the songs, where the hope's some one  With a renegade foot that doubles!  And a jolly lilt that he flings to the sun  As he turns with the friendly laugh, "Come on!  We'll soon be out of the troubles,    My heart!  We'll soon be out of the troubles!"

PHANTOMS

  This was her home; one mossy gable thrust    Above the cedars and the locust trees:  This was her home, whose beauty now is dust,    A lonely memory for melodies    The wild birds sing, the wild birds and the bees.  Here every evening is a prayer: no boast    Or ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth;  Here, through the twilight, like a pale flower's ghost,    A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth;    And dusk spreads darkness like a dewy cloth.  In vagabond velvet, on the placid day,    A stain of crimson, lolls the butterfly;  The south wind sows with ripple and with ray    The pleasant waters; and the gentle sky    Looks on the homestead like a quiet eye.  Their melancholy quaver, lone and low,    When day is done, the gray tree-toads repeat:  The whippoorwills, far in the afterglow,    Complain to silence: and the lightnings beat,    In one still cloud, glimmers of golden heat.  He comes not yet: not till the dusk is dead,    And all the western glow is far withdrawn;  Not till,—a sleepy mouth love's kiss makes red,—    The baby bud opes in a rosy yawn,    Breathing sweet guesses at the dreamed-of dawn.  When in the shadows, like a rain of gold,    The fireflies stream steadily; and bright  Along the moss the glowworm, as of old,    A crawling sparkle—like a crooked light    In smoldering vellum—scrawls a square of night,—  Then will he come; and she will lean to him,—    She,—the sweet phantom,—memory of that place,—  Between the starlight and his eyes; so dim    With suave control and soul-compelling grace,    He cannot help but speak her, face to face.

INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL

I  The hills are full of prophecies  And ancient voices of the dead;  Of hidden shapes that no man sees,  Pale, visionary presences,  That speak the things no tongue hath said,  No mind hath thought, no eye hath read.  The streams are full of oracles,  And momentary whisperings;  An immaterial beauty swells  Its breezy silver o'er the shells  With wordless speech that sings and sings  The message of diviner things.  No indeterminable thought is theirs,  The stars', the sunsets' and the flowers';  Whose inexpressible speech declares  Th' immortal Beautiful, who shares  This mortal riddle which is ours,  Beyond the forward-flying hours.II  It holds and beckons in the streams;  It lures and touches us in all  The flowers of the golden fall—  The mystic essence of our dreams:  A nymph blows bubbling music where  Faint water ripples down the rocks;  A faun goes dancing hoiden locks,  And piping a Pandean air,  Through trees the instant wind shakes bare.  Our dreams are never otherwise  Than real when they hold us so;  We in some future life shall know  Them parts of it and recognize  Them as ideal substance, whence  The actual is—(as flowers and trees,  From color sources no one sees,  Draw dyes, the substance of a sense)—  Material with intelligence.III  What intimations made them wise,  The mournful pine, the pleasant beech?  What strange and esoteric speech?—  (Communicated from the skies  In runic whispers)—that invokes  The boles that sleep within the seeds,  And out of narrow darkness leads  The vast assemblies of the oaks.  Within his knowledge, what one reads  The poems written by the flowers?  The sermons, past all speech of ours,  Preached by the gospel of the weeds?—  O eloquence of coloring!  O thoughts of syllabled perfume!  O beauty uttered into bloom!  Teach me your language! let me sing!IV  Along my mind flies suddenly  A wildwood thought that will not die;  That makes me brother to the bee,  And cousin to the butterfly:  A thought, such as gives perfume to  The blushes of the bramble-rose,  And, fixed in quivering crystal, glows  A captive in the prismed dew.  It leads the feet no certain way;  No frequent path of human feet:  Its wild eyes follow me all day;  All day I hear its wild heart beat:  And in the night it sings and sighs  The songs the winds and waters love;  Its wild heart lying tranced above,  And tranced the wildness of its eyes.V  Oh, joy, to walk the way that goes  Through woods of sweet-gum and of beech!  Where, like a ruby left in reach,  The berry of the dogwood glows:  Or where the bristling hillsides mass,  'Twixt belts of tawny sassafras,  Brown shocks of corn in wigwam rows!  Where, in the hazy morning, runs  The stony branch that pools and drips,  The red-haws and the wild-rose hips  Are strewn like pebbles; and the sun's  Own gold seems captured by the weeds;  To see, through scintillating seeds,  The hunters steal with glimmering guns!  Oh, joy, to go the path which lies  Through woodlands where the trees are tall!  Beneath the misty moon of fall,  Whose ghostly girdle prophesies  A morn wind-swept and gray with rain;  When, o'er the lonely, leaf-blown lane,  The night-hawk like a dead leaf flies!  To stand within the dewy ring  Where pale death smites the boneset blooms,  And everlasting's flowers, and plumes  Of mint, with aromatic wing!  And hear the creek,—whose sobbing seems  A wild-man murmuring in his dreams,—  And insect violins that sing.  Or where the dim persimmon tree  Rains on the path its frosty fruit,  And in the oak the owl doth hoot,  Beneath the moon and mist, to see  The outcast Year go,—Hagar-wise,—  With far-off, melancholy eyes,  And lips that sigh for sympathy.VI  Towards evening, where the sweet-gum flung  Its thorny balls among the weeds,  And where the milkweed's sleepy seeds,—  A faery Feast of Lanterns,—swung;  The cricket tuned a plaintive lyre,  And o'er the hills the sunset hung  A purple parchment scrawled with fire.  From silver-blue to amethyst  The shadows deepened in the vale;  And belt by belt the pearly-pale  Aladdin fabric of the mist  Built up its exhalation far;  A jewel on an Afrit's wrist,  One star gemmed sunset's cinnabar.  Then night drew near, as when, alone,  The heart and soul grow intimate;  And on the hills the twilight sate  With shadows, whose wild robes were sown  With dreams and whispers;—dreams, that led  The heart once with love's monotone,  And memories of the living-dead.VII  All night the rain-gusts shook the leaves  Around my window; and the blast  Rumbled the flickering flue, and fast  The storm streamed from the dripping eaves.  As if—'neath skies gone mad with fear—  The witches' Sabboth galloped past,  The forests leapt like startled deer.  All night I heard the sweeping sleet;  And when the morning came, as slow  As wan affliction, with the woe  Of all the world dragged at her feet,  No spear of purple shattered through  The dark gray of the east; no bow  Of gold shot arrows swift and blue.  But rain, that whipped the windows; filled  The spouts with rushings; and around  The garden stamped, and sowed the ground  With limbs and leaves; the wood-pool filled  With overgurgling.—Bleak and cold  The fields looked, where the footpath wound  Through teasel and bur-marigold.  Yet there's a kindness in such days  Of gloom, that doth console regret  With sympathy of tears, which wet  Old eyes that watch the back-log blaze.—  A kindness, alien to the deep  Glad blue of sunny days that let  No thought in of the lives that weep.VIII  This dawn, through which the Autumn glowers,—  As might a face within our sleep,  With stone-gray eyes that weep and weep,  And wet brows bound with sodden flowers,—  Is sunset to some sister land;  A land of ruins and of palms;  Rich sunset, crimson with long calms,—  Whose burning belt low mountains bar,—  That sees some brown Rebecca stand  Beside a well the camel-band  Winds down to 'neath the evening star.  O sunset, sister to this dawn!  O dawn, whose face is turned away!  Who gazest not upon this day,  But back upon the day that's gone!  Enamored so of loveliness,  The retrospect of what thou wast,  Oh, to thyself the present trust!  And as thy past be beautiful  With hues, that never can grow less!  Waiting thy pleasure to express  New beauty lest the world grow dull.IX  Down in the woods a sorcerer,  Out of rank rain and death, distills,—  Through chill alembics of the air,—  Aromas that brood everywhere  Among the whisper-haunted hills:  The bitter myrrh of dead leaves fills  Wet valleys (where the gaunt weeds bleach)  With rainy scents of wood-decay;—  As if a spirit all the day  Sat breathing softly 'neath the beech.  With other eyes I see her flit,  The wood-witch of the wild perfumes,  Among her elfin owls,—that sit,  A drowsy white, in crescent-lit  Dim glens of opalescent glooms:—  Where, for her magic, buds and blooms  Mysterious perfumes, while she stands,  A thornlike shadow, summoning  The sleepy odors, that take wing  Like bubbles from her dewy hands.X  Among the woods they call to me—  The lights that haunt the wood and stream;  Voices of such white ecstasy  As moves with hushed lips through a dream:  They stand in auraed radiances,  Or flash with nimbused limbs across  Their golden shadows on the moss,  Or slip in silver through the trees.  What love can give the heart in me  More hope and exaltation than  The hand of light that tips the tree  And beckons far from marts of man?  That reaches foamy fingers through  The broken ripple, and replies  With sparkling speech of lips and eyes  To souls who seek and still pursue.XI  Give me the streams, that counterfeit  The twilight of autumnal skies;  The shadowy, silent waters, lit  With fire like a woman's eyes!  Slow waters that, in autumn, glass  The scarlet-strewn and golden grass,  And drink the sunset's tawny dyes.  Give me the pools, that lie among  The centuried forests! give me those,  Deep, dim, and sad as darkness hung  Beneath the sunset's somber rose:  Still pools, in whose vague mirrors look—  Like ragged gypsies round a book  Of magic—trees in wild repose.  No quiet thing, or innocent,  Of water, earth, or air shall please  My soul now: but the violent  Between the sunset and the trees:  The fierce, the splendid, and intense,  That love matures in innocence,  Like mighty music, give me these!XII  When thorn-tree copses still were bare  And black along the turbid brook;  When catkined willows blurred and shook  Great tawny tangles in the air;  In bottomlands, the first thaw makes  An oozy bog, beneath the trees,  Prophetic of the spring that wakes,  Sang the sonorous hylodes.  Now that wild winds have stripped the thorn,  And clogged with leaves the forest-creek;  Now that the woods look blown and bleak,  And webs are frosty white at morn;  At night beneath the spectral sky,  A far foreboding cry I hear—  The wild fowl calling as they fly?  Or wild voice of the dying Year?XIII  And still my soul holds phantom tryst,  When chestnuts hiss among the coals,  Upon the Evening of All Souls,  When all the night is moon and mist,  And all the world is mystery;  I kiss dear lips that death hath kissed,  And gaze in eyes no man may see,  Filled with a love long lost to me.  I hear the night-wind's ghostly glove  Flutter the window: then the knob  Of some dark door turn, with a sob  As when love comes to gaze on love  Who lies pale-coffined in a room:  And then the iron gallop of  The storm, who rides outside; his plume  Sweeping the night with dread and gloom.  So fancy takes the mind, and paints  The darkness with eidolon light,  And writes the dead's romance in night  On the dim Evening of All Saints:  Unheard the hissing nuts; the clink  And fall of coals, whose shadow faints  Around the hearts that sit and think,  Borne far beyond the actual's brink.XIV  I heard the wind, before the morn  Stretched gaunt, gray fingers 'thwart my pane,  Drive clouds down, a dark dragon-train;  Its iron visor closed, a horn  Of steel from out the north it wound.—  No morn like yesterday's! whose mouth,  A cool carnation, from the south  Breathed through a golden reed the sound  Of days that drop clear gold upon  Cerulean silver floors of dawn.  And all of yesterday is lost  And swallowed in to-day's wild light—  The birth deformed of day and night,  The illegitimate, who cost  Its mother secret tears and sighs;  Unlovely since unloved; and chilled  With sorrows and the shame that filled  Its parents' love; which was not wise  In passion as the day and night  That married yestermorn with light.XV  Down through the dark, indignant trees,  On indistinguishable wings  Of storm, the wind of evening swings;  Before its insane anger flees  Distracted leaf and shattered bough:  There is a rushing as when seas  Of thunder beat an iron prow  On reefs of wrath and roaring wreck:  'Mid stormy leaves, a hurrying speck  Of flickering blackness, driven by,  A mad bat whirls along the sky.  Like some sad shadow, in the eve's  Deep melancholy—visible  As by some strange and twilight spell—  A gaunt girl stands among the leaves,  The night-wind in her dolorous dress:  Symbolic of the life that grieves,  Of toil that patience makes not less,  Her load of fagots fallen there.—  A wilder shadow sweeps the air,  And she is gone…. Was it the dumb  Eidolon of the month to come?XVI  The song birds—are they flown away?  The song birds of the summer time,  That sang their souls into the day,  And set the laughing hours to rhyme.  No catbird scatters through the bush  The sparkling crystals of its song;  Within the woods no hermit-thrush  Thridding with vocal gold the hush.  All day the crows fly cawing past:  The acorns drop: the forests scowl:  At night I hear the bitter blast  Hoot with the hooting of the owl.  The wild creeks freeze: the ways are strewn  With leaves that clog: beneath the tree  The bird, that set its toil to tune,  And made a home for melody,  Lies dead beneath the snow-white moon.

OCTOBER

  Far off a wind blew, and I heard    Wild echoes of the woods reply—  The herald of some royal word,    With bannered trumpet, blown on high,      Meseemed then passed me by:  Who summoned marvels there to meet,    With pomp, upon a cloth of gold;  Where berries of the bittersweet,    That, splitting, showed the coals they hold,      Sowed garnets through the wold:  Where, under tents of maples, seeds    Of smooth carnelian, oval red,  The spice-bush spangled: where, like beads,    The dogwood's rounded rubies—fed      With fire—blazed and bled.  And there I saw amid the rout    Of months, in richness cavalier,  A minnesinger—lips apout;    A gypsy face; straight as a spear;      A rose stuck in his ear:  Eyes, sparkling like old German wine,    All mirth and moonlight; naught to spare  Of slender beard, that lent a line    To his short lip; October there,      With chestnut curling hair.  His brown baretta swept its plume    Red through the leaves; his purple hose,  Puffed at the thighs, made gleam of gloom;    His tawny doublet, slashed with rose,      And laced with crimson bows,  Outshone the wahoo's scarlet pride,    The haw, in rich vermilion dressed:  A dagger dangling at his side,    A slim lute, banded to his breast,      Whereon his hands were pressed.  I saw him come…. And, lo, to hear    The lilt of his approaching lute,  No wonder that the regnant Year    Bent down her beauty, blushing mute,      Her heart beneath his foot.

FRIENDS

  Down through the woods, along the way  That fords the stream; by rock and tree,  Where in the bramble-bell the bee  Swings; and through twilights green and gray  The redbird flashes suddenly,  My thoughts went wandering to-day.  I found the fields where, row on row,  The blackberries hang dark with fruit;  Where, nesting at the elder's root,  The partridge whistles soft and low;  The fields, that billow to the foot  Of those old hills we used to know.  There lay the pond, all willow-bound,  On whose bright face, when noons were hot,  We marked the bubbles rise; some plot  To lure us in; while all around  Our heads,—like faery fancies,—shot  The dragonflies without a sound.  The pond, above which evening bent  To gaze upon her gypsy face;  Wherein the twinkling night would trace  A vague, inverted firmament;  In which the green frogs tuned their bass,  And firefly sparkles came and went.  The oldtime place we often ranged,  When we were playmates, you and I;  The oldtime fields, with boyhood's sky  Still blue above them!—Naught was changed:  Nothing.—Alas! then, tell me why  Should we be? whom the years estranged.

COMRADERY

  With eyes hand-arched he looks into  The morning's face; then turns away  With truant feet, all wet with dew,  Out for a holiday.  The hill brook sings; incessant stars,  Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast;  And where he wades its water-bars  Its song is happiest.  A comrade of the chinquapin,  He looks into its knotty eyes  And sees its heart; and, deep within,  Its soul that makes him wise.  The wood-thrush knows and follows him,  Who whistles up the birds and bees;  And round him all the perfumes swim  Of woodland loam and trees.  Where'er he pass the silvery springs'  Foam-people sing the flowers awake;  And sappy lips of bark-clad things  Laugh ripe each berried brake.  His touch is a companionship;  His word an old authority:  He comes, a lyric on his lip,  The woodboy—Poesy.

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,  And dead 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 bugle's 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 silvered in the leaves;  A song, one blew where orchards grew  Gold-appled to the eaves.  The birds are flown; the flowers, dead;  And sky and earth are bleak and gray:  Where Joy once went, all light of tread,  Grief haunts the leaf-wild way.

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.

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 moonflower'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 fires,  Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,  And hands that wake an ancient lyre,  Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

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 glowworm 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 Faeries to their starlit maze,      To summon them or warn.