Transcriber's Notes

List of Poems did not appear in original book. Original spellings and punctuation have been retained. Typographical error marked with mouse-hover pop-up.

LIST OF POEMS

[PROEM.]
[A VOICE ON THE WIND]
[THE LAND OF HEARTS MADE WHOLE]
[THE WIND OF WINTER]
[THE WIND OF SUMMER]
[THE SPIRIT OF THE FOREST SPRING]
[TO THE LEAF-CRICKET]
[THE OWLET]
[VINE AND SYCAMORE]
[THE POET]
[EVENING ON THE FARM]
[THE BROOK]
[SUMMER NOONTIDE]
[HEAT]
[JULY]
[TO THE LOCUST]
[YOUNG SEPTEMBER]
[UNDER THE HUNTER'S MOON]
[RAIN IN THE WOODS]
[IN THE LANE]
[A FOREST IDYL]
[UNDER THE ROSE]
[IN AUTUMN]
[EPIPHANY]
[LIFE]
[NEVER]
[MEETING IN THE WOODS]
[A MAID WHO DIED OLD]
[COMMUNICANTS]
[THE DEAD DAY]
[KNIGHT-ERRANT]
[THE END OF SUMMER]
[LIGHT AND WIND]
[SUPERSTITION]
[UNCALLED]
[LOVE DESPISED]
[THE DEATH OF LOVE]
[GERALDINE, GERALDINE]
[ALLUREMENT]
[BLACK VESPER'S PAGEANTS.]

A Voice on the Wind

And Other Poems

by

Madison Cawein

Copyrighted 1902, by Madison Cawein

For permission to reprint several of the poems included in this volume thanks are due to the Atlantic Monthly,
Harper's Magazine, The Century Magazine, Smart Set, Saturday Evening Post, and Lippincott's Magazine.

INSCRIBED

TO

EDMUND GOSSE

AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF APPRECIATION AND ESTEEM

PROEM.

Oh, for a soul that fulfills
Music like that of a bird!
Thrilling with rapture the hills,
Heedless if any one heard.

Or, like the flower that blooms
Lone in the midst of the trees,
Filling the woods with perfumes,
Careless if any one sees.

Or, like the wandering wind,
Over the meadows that swings,
Bringing wild sweets to mankind,
Knowing not that which it brings.

Oh, for a way to impart
Beauty, no matter how hard!
Like unto nature, whose art
Never once dreams of reward.

A Voice on the Wind

A VOICE ON THE WIND

She walks with the wind on the windy height
When the rocks are loud and the waves are white,
And all night long she calls through the night,
"O, my children, come home!"
Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,
Tosses around her like a shroud,
While over the deep her voice rings loud,—
"O, my children, come home, come home!
O, my children, come home!"

Who is she who wanders alone,
When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown?
Who walks all night and makes her moan,
"O, my children, come home!"
Whose face is raised to the blinding gale;
Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale,
While over the world is heard her wail,—
"O, my children, come home, come home!
O, my children, come home!"

She walks with the wind in the windy wood;
The sad rain drips from her hair and hood,
And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued,
"O, my children, come home!"
"O, my children, come home!"
Where the trees are gaunt and the rocks are drear,
The owl and the fox crouch down in fear,
While wild through the wood her voice they hear,—
"O, my children, come home, come home!
O, my children, come home!"

Who is she who shudders by
When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly?
Who walks all night with her wailing cry,
"O, my children, come home!"
Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue,
With pale feet wounded and hands wan-wrung,
Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung,—
"O, my children, come home, come home!
O, my children, come home!"

'Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees,
The mother of Death and Mysteries,
Who cries on the wind all night to these,
"O, my children, come home!"
The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain,
Calling her children home again,
Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain,
"O, my children, come home, come home!
O, my children, come home!"

THE LAND OF HEARTS MADE WHOLE

Do you know the way that goes
Over fields of rue and rose,—
Warm of scent and hot of hue,
Roofed with heaven's bluest blue,—
To the Vale of Dreams Come True?

Do you know the path that twines,
Banked with elder-bosks and vines,
Under boughs that shade a stream,
Hurrying, crystal as a gleam,
To the Hills of Love a-Dream?

Tell me, tell me, have you gone
Through the fields and woods of dawn,
Meadowlands and trees that roll,
Great of grass and huge of bole,
To the Land of Hearts Made Whole?

On the way, among the fields,
Poppies lift vermilion shields,
In whose hearts the golden Noon,
Murmuring her drowsy tune,
Rocks the sleepy bees that croon.

On the way, amid the woods,
Mandrakes muster multitudes,
'Mid whose blossoms, white as tusk,
Glides the glimmering Forest-Dusk,
With her fluttering moths of musk.

Here you hear the stealthy stir
Of shy lives of hoof and fur;
Harmless things that hide and peer,
Hearts that sucked the milk of fear—
Fox and rabbit, squirrel and deer.

Here you see the mossy flight
Of faint forms that love the night—
Whippoorwill- and owlet-things,
Whose far call before you brings
Wonder-worlds of happenings.

Now in sunlight, now in shade,
Water, like a brandished blade,
Foaming forward, wild of flight,
Startles then arrests the sight,
Whirling steely loops of light.

Thro' the tree-tops, down the vale,
Breezes pass and leave a trail
Of cool music that the birds,
Following in happy herds,
Gather up in twittering words.

Blossoms, frail and manifold,
Strew the way with pearl and gold;
Blurs, that seem the darling print
Of the Springtime's feet, or glint
Of her twinkling gown's torn tint.

There the myths of old endure:
Dreams that are the world-soul's cure;
Things that have no place or play
In the facts of Everyday
'Round your presence smile and sway.

Suddenly your eyes may see,
Stepping softly from her tree,
Slim of form and wet with dew,
The brown dryad; lips the hue
Of a berry bit into.

You may mark the naiad rise
From her pool's reflected skies;
In her gaze the heaven that dreams,
Starred, in twilight-haunted streams,
Mixed with water's grayer gleams.

You may see the laurel's girth,
Big of bloom, give fragrant birth
To the oread whose hair,
Musk and darkness, light and air,
Fills the hush with wonder there.

You may mark the rocks divide,
And the faun before you glide,
Piping on a magic reed,
Sowing many a music seed,
From which bloom and mushroom bead.

Of the rain and sunlight born,
Young of beard and young of horn,
You may see the satyr lie,
With a very knowing eye,
Teaching youngling birds to fly.

These shall cheer and follow you
Through the Vale of Dreams Come True;
Wind-like voices, leaf-like feet;
Forms of mist and hazy heat,
In whose pulses sunbeams beat.

Lo! you tread enchanted ground!
From the hollows all around
Elf and spirit, gnome and fay,
Guide your feet along the way
Till the dewy close of day.

Then beside you, jet on jet,
Emerald-hued or violet,
Flickering swings a firefly light,
Aye to guide your steps a-right
From the valley to the height.

Steep the way is; when at last
Vale and wood and stream are passed,
From the heights you shall behold
Panther heavens of spotted gold
Tiger-tawny deeps unfold.

You shall see on stocks and stones
Sunset's bell-deep color tones
Fallen; and the valleys filled
With dusk's purple music, spilled
On the silence rapture-thrilled.

Then, as answering bell greets bell,
Night ring in her miracle
Of the doméd dark, o'er-rolled,
Note on note, with starlight cold,
'Twixt the moon's broad peal of gold.

On the hill-top Love-a-Dream
Shows you then her window-gleam;
Brings you home and folds your soul
In the peace of vale and knoll,
In the Land of Hearts Made Whole.

THE WIND OF WINTER

The Winter Wind, the wind of death,
Who knocked upon my door,
Now through the key-hole entereth,
Invisible and hoar;
He breathes around his icy breath
And treads the flickering floor.

I heard him, wandering in the night,
Tap at my window pane,
With ghostly fingers, snowy white,
I heard him tug in vain,
Until the shuddering candle-light
With fear did cringe and strain.

The fire, awakened by his voice,
Leapt up with frantic arms,
Like some wild babe that greets with noise
Its father home who storms,
With rosy gestures that rejoice
And crimson kiss that warms.

Now in the hearth he sits and, drowned
Among the ashes, blows;
Or through the room goes stealing 'round
On cautious-stepping toes,
Deep mantled in the drowsy sound
Of night that sleets and snows.

And oft, like some thin fairy-thing,
The stormy hush amid,
I hear his captive trebles ring
Beneath the kettle's lid;
Or now a harp of elfland string
In some dark cranny hid.

Again I hear him, imp-like, whine
Cramped in the gusty flue;
Or knotted in the resinous pine
Raise goblin cry and hue,
While through the smoke his eyeballs shine,
A sooty red and blue.

At last I hear him, nearing dawn,
Take up his roaring broom,
And sweep wild leaves from wood and lawn,
And from the heavens the gloom,
To show the gaunt world lying wan,
And morn's cold rose a-bloom.

THE WIND OF SUMMER

From the hills and far away
All the long, warm summer day
Comes the wind and seems to say:

"Come, oh, come! and let us go
Where the meadows bend and blow,
Waving with the white-tops' snow.

"'Neath the hyssop-colored sky
'Mid the meadows we will lie
Watching the white clouds roll by;

"While your hair my hands shall press
With a cooling tenderness
Till your grief grows less and less.

"Come, oh, come! and let us roam
Where the rock-cut waters comb
Flowing crystal into foam.

"Under trees whose trunks are brown,
On the banks that violets crown,
We will watch the fish flash down;

"While your ear my voice shall soothe
With a whisper soft and smooth
Till your care shall wax uncouth.

"Come! where forests, line on line,
Armies of the oak and pine,
Scale the hills and shout and shine.

"We will wander, hand in hand,
Ways where tall the toadstools stand,
Mile-stones white of Fairyland.

"While your eyes my lips shall kiss,
Dewy as a wild rose is,
Till they gaze on naught but bliss.

"On the meadows you will hear,
Leaning low your spirit ear,
Cautious footsteps drawing near.

"You will deem it but a bee,
Murmuring soft and sleepily,
Till your inner sight shall see

"'Tis a presence passing slow,
All its shining hair ablow,
Through the white-tops' tossing snow.

"By the waters, if you will,
And your inmost soul be still,
Melody your ears shall fill.

"You will deem it but the stream
Rippling onward in a dream,
Till upon your gaze shall gleam

"Arm of spray and throat of foam—
'Tis a spirit there aroam
Where the radiant waters comb.

"In the forest, if you heed,
You shall hear a magic reed
Sow sweet notes like silver seed.

"You will deem your ears have heard
Stir of tree or song of bird,
Till your startled eyes are blurred

"By a vision, instant seen,
Naked gold and beryl green,
Glimmering bright the boughs between.

"Follow me! and you shall see
Wonder-worlds of mystery
That are only known to me!"

Thus outside my city door
Speaks the Wind its wildwood lore,
Speaks and lo! I go once more.

THE SPIRIT OF THE FOREST SPRING

Over the rocks she trails her locks,
Her mossy locks that drip, drip, drip;
Her sparkling eyes smile at the skies
In friendship-wise and fellowship;
While the gleam and glance of her countenance
Lull into trance the woodland places,
As over the rocks she trails her locks,
Her dripping locks that the long fern graces.

She pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse,
Its crystal cruse that drips, drips, drips;
And all the day its diamond spray
Is heard to play from her finger-tips;
And the slight soft sound makes haunted ground
Of the woods around that the sunlight laces,
As she pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse,
Its dripping cruse that no man traces.

She swims and swims with glimmering limbs,
With lucid limbs that drip, drip, drip;
Where beechen boughs build a leafy house
For her form to drowse or her feet to trip;
And the liquid beat of her rippling feet
Makes three-times sweet the forest mazes,
As she swims and swims with glimmering limbs,
With dripping limbs through the twilight's hazes.

Then wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps,
She whispering sleeps and drips, drips, drips;
Where moon and mist wreathe neck and wrist,
While, starry-whist, through the night she slips;
And the heavenly dream of her soul makes gleam
The falls that stream and the foam that races,
As wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps,
She dripping sleeps or starward gazes.

TO THE LEAF-CRICKET

I

II

III

IV

THE OWLET

I

"Who is it, who is it, who?
Who rides through the dusk and dew,
With a pair o' horns,
As thin as thorns,
And face a bubble blue?
Who, who, who!
Who is it, who is it, who?"

II

"Who is it, who is it, who?
Who walks with a shuffling shoe,
'Mid the gusty trees,
With a face none sees,
And a form as ghostly too?
Who, who, who!
Who is it, who is it, who?"

III

"Who is it, who is it, who?
Who creeps with his glow-worm crew
Above the mire
With a corpse-light fire,
As only dead men do?
Who, who, who!
Who is it, who is it, who?"

VINE AND SYCAMORE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

THE POET

He stands above all worldly schism,
And, gazing over life's abysm,
Beholds within the starry range
Of heaven laws of death and change,
That, through his soul's prophetic prism,
Are turned to rainbows wild and strange.

Through nature is his hope made surer
Of that ideal, his allurer,
By whom his life is upward drawn
To mount pale pinnacles of dawn,
'Mid which all that is fairer, purer
Of love and lore it comes upon.

An alkahest, that makes gold metal
Of dross, his mind is—where one petal
Of one wild-rose will all outweigh
The piled-up facts of everyday—
Where commonplaces, there that settle,
Are changed to things of heavenly ray.

He climbs by steps of stars and flowers,
Companioned of the dreaming hours,
And sets his feet in pastures where
No merely mortal feet may fare;
And higher than the stars he towers
Though lowlier than the flowers there.

His comrades are his own high fancies
And thoughts in which his soul romances;
And every part of heaven or earth
He visits, lo, assumes new worth;
And touched with loftier traits and trances
Re-shines as with a lovelier birth.

He is the play, likewise the player;
The word that's said, also the sayer;
And in the books of heart and head
There is no thing he has not read;
Of time and tears he is the weigher,
And mouthpiece 'twixt the quick and dead.

He dies: but, mounting ever higher,
Wings Phœnix-like from out his pyre
Above our mortal day and night,
Clothed on with sempiternal light;
And raimented in thought's far fire
Flames on in everlasting flight.

Unseen, yet seen, on heights of visions,
Above all praise and world derisions,
His spirit and his deathless brood
Of dreams fare on, a multitude,
While on the pillar of great missions
His name and place are granite-hewed.

EVENING ON THE FARM

From out the hills, where twilight stands,
Above the shadowy pasture lands,
With strained and strident cry,
Beneath pale skies that sunset bands,
The bull-bats fly.

A cloud hangs over, strange of shape,
And, colored like the half-ripe grape,
Seems some uneven stain
On heaven's azure, thin as crape,
And blue as rain.

By ways, that sunset's sardonyx
O'erflares, and gates the farmboy clicks,
Through which the cattle came,
The mullein stalks seem giant wicks
Of downy flame.

From woods no glimmer enters in,
Above the streams that wandering win
From out the violet hills,
Those haunters of the dusk begin,
The whippoorwills.

Adown the dark the firefly marks
Its flight in golden-emerald sparks;
And, loosened from his chain,
The shaggy watchdog bounds and barks,
And barks again.

Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay;
And now an owlet, far away,
Cries twice or thrice, "Twohoo;"
And cool dim moths of mottled gray
Flit through the dew.

The silence sounds its frog-bassoon,
Where on the woodland creek's lagoon,
Pale as a ghostly girl
Lost 'mid the trees, looks down the moon
With face of pearl.

Within the shed where logs, late hewed,
Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood
Make blurs of white and brown,
The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood
Of teetering down.

The clattering guineas in the tree
Din for a time; and quietly
The henhouse, near the fence,
Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry
Of cocks and hens.

A cow-bell tinkles by the rails,
Where, streaming white in foaming pails,
Milk makes an uddery sound;
While overhead the black bat trails
Around and 'round.

The night is still. The slow cows chew
A drowsy cud. The bird that flew
And sang is in its nest.
It is the time of falling dew,
Of dreams and rest.

The brown bees sleep; and 'round the walk,
The garden path, from stalk to stalk
The bungling beetle booms,
Where two soft shadows stand and talk
Among the blooms.

The stars are thick: the light is dead
That dyed the West: and Drowsyhead,
Tuning his cricket-pipe,
Nods, and some apple, round and red,
Drops over ripe.

Now down the road, that shambles by,
A window, shining like an eye
Through climbing rose and gourd,
Shows where Toil sups and these things lie,
His heart and hoard.

THE BROOK

To it the forest tells
The mystery that haunts its heart and folds
Its form in cogitation deep, that holds
The shadow of each myth that dwells
In nature—be it Nymph or Fay or Faun—
And whispering of them to the dales and dells,
It wanders on and on.

To it the heaven shows
The secret of its soul; true images
Of dreams that form its aspect; and with these
Reflected in its countenance it goes,
With pictures of the skies, the dusk and dawn,
Within its breast, as every blossom knows,
For them to gaze upon.

Through it the world-soul sends
Its heart's creating pulse that beats and sings
The music of maternity whence springs
All life; and shaping earthly ends,
From the deep sources of the heavens drawn,
Planting its ways with beauty, on it wends,
On and forever on.

SUMMER NOONTIDE

The slender snail clings to the leaf,
Gray on its silvered underside:
And slowly, slowlier than the snail, with brief
Bright steps, whose ripening touch foretells the sheaf,
Her warm hands berry-dyed,
Comes down the tanned Noontide.

The pungent fragrance of the mint
And pennyroyal drench her gown,
That leaves long shreds of trumpet-blossom tint
Among the thorns, and everywhere the glint
Of gold and white and brown
Her flowery steps waft down.

The leaves, like hands with emerald veined,
Along her way try their wild best
To reach the jewel—whose hot hue was drained
From some rich rose that all the June contained—
The butterfly, soft pressed
Upon her sunny breast.

Her shawl, the lace-like elder bloom,
She hangs upon the hillside brake,
Smelling of warmth and of her breast's perfume,
And, lying in the citron-colored gloom
Beside the lilied lake,
She stares the buds awake.

Or, with a smile, through watery deeps
She leads the oaring turtle's legs;
Or guides the crimson fish, that swims and sleeps,
From pad to pad, from which the young frog leaps;
And to its nest's green eggs
The bird that pleads and begs.

Then 'mid the fields of unmown hay
She shows the bees where sweets are found;
And points the butterflies, at airy play,
And dragonflies, along the water-way,
Where honeyed flowers abound
For them to flicker 'round.

Or where ripe apples pelt with gold
Some barn—around which, coned with snow,
The wild-potato blooms—she mounts its old
Mossed roof, and through warped sides, the knots have holed,
Lets her long glances glow
Into the loft below.

To show the mud-wasp at its cell
Slenderly busy; swallows, too,
Packing against a beam their nest's clay shell;
And crouching in the dark the owl as well
With all her downy crew
Of owlets gray of hue.

These are her joys, and until dusk
Lounging she walks where reapers reap,
From sultry raiment shaking scents of musk,
Rustling the corn within its silken husk,
And driving down heav'n's deep
White herds of clouds like sheep.

HEAT

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

JULY

Now 'tis the time when, tall,
The long blue torches of the bellflower gleam
Among the trees; and, by the wooded stream.
In many a fragrant ball.
Blooms of the button-bush fall.

Let us go forth and seek
Woods where the wild plums redden and the beech
Plumps its packed burs: and, swelling, just in reach.
The pawpaw, emerald sleek.
Ripens along the creek.

Now 'tis the time when ways
Of glimmering green flaunt white the misty plumes
Of the black-cohosh; and through bramble glooms,
A blur of orange rays,
The butterfly-blossoms blaze.

Let us go forth and hear
The spiral music that the locusts beat,
And that small spray of sound, so grassy sweet,
Dear to a country ear,
The cricket's summer cheer.

Now golden celandine
Is hairy hung with silvery sacks of seeds.
And bugled o'er with freckled gold, like beads.
Beneath the fox-grape vine,
The jewel-weed's blossoms shine.

Let us go forth and see
The dragon- and the butterfly, like gems,
Spangling the sunbeams; and the clover stems,
Weighed down by many a bee,
Nodding mellifluously.

Now morns are full of song;
The catbird and the redbird and the jay
Upon the hilltops rouse the rosy day,
Who, dewy, blithe, and strong,
Lures their wild wings along.

Now noons are full of dreams;
The clouds of heaven and the wandering breeze
Follow a vision; and the flowers and trees,
The hills and fields and streams,
Are lapped in mystic gleams.

The nights are full of love;
The stars and moon take up the golden tale
Of the sunk sun, and passionate and pale,
Mixing their fires above,
Grow eloquent thereof.

Such days are like a sigh
That beauty heaves from a full heart of bliss:
Such nights are like the sweetness of a kiss
On lips that half deny,
The warm lips of July.

TO THE LOCUST

Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reed-like breast,
Makest meridian music, long and loud,
Accentuating summer!—dost thy best
To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd
With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon
When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady browed,
Upon his sultry scythe—thou tangible tune
Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise
Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies.

Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills
Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes;
Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills
The land with death as sullenly he takes
Downward his dusty way: 'midst woods and fields
At every pool his burning thirst he slakes:
No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields
A spring from him; no creek evades his eye;
He needs but look and they are withered dry.

Thou singest, and thy song is as a spell
Of somnolence to charm the land with sleep;
A thorn of sound that pierces dale and dell,
Diffusing slumber over vale and steep.
Diffusing slumber over vale and steep.
Sleepy the forest, nodding sleepy boughs;
The pastures sleepy with their sleepy sheep;
Sleepy the creek where sleepily the cows
Stand knee-deep: and the very heaven seems
Sleepy and lost in undetermined dreams.

Art thou a rattle that Monotony,
Summer's dull nurse, old sister of slow Time,
Shakes for Day's peevish pleasure, who in glee
Takes its discordant music for sweet rhyme?
Or oboe that the Summer Noontide plays,
Sitting with Ripeness 'neath the orchard-tree,
Trying repeatedly the same shrill phrase,
Until the musky peach with drowsiness
Drops, and the hum of bees grows less and less?

YOUNG SEPTEMBER

I

II

III

IV

UNDER THE HUNTER'S MOON

White from her chrysalis of cloud,
The moth-like moon swings upward through the night;
And all the bee-like stars that crowd
The hollow hive of heav'n wane in her light.

Along the distance, folds of mist
Hang frost-pale, ridging all the dark with gray;
Tinting the trees with amethyst,
Touching with pearl and purple every spray.

All night the stealthy frost and fog
Conspire to slay the rich-robed weeds and flowers:
To strip of wealth the woods, and clog
With piled-up gold of leaves the creek that cowers.

I seem to see their Spirits stand,
Molded of moonlight, faint of form and face,
Now reaching high a chilly hand
To pluck some walnut from its spicy place:

Now with fine fingers, phantom-cold,
Splitting the wahoo's pods of rose, and thin
The bittersweet's balls o' gold,
To show the coal-red berries packed within:

Now on dim threads of gossamer
Stringing pale pearls of moisture; necklacing
The flow'rs; and spreading cobweb fur,
Crystaled with stardew, over everything:

While 'neath the moon, with moon-white feet,
They go and, chill, a moon-soft music draw
From wan leaf-cricket flutes—the sweet,
Sad dirge of Autumn dying in the shaw.

RAIN IN THE WOODS

When on the leaves the rain persists,
And every gust brings showers down;
When all the woodland smokes with mists,
I take the old road out of town
Into the hills through which it twists.

I find the vale where catnip grows,
Where boneset blooms, with moisture bowed;
The vale through which the red creek flows,
Turbid with hill-washed clay, and loud
As some wild horn a hunter blows.

Around the root the beetle glides,
A living beryl; and the ant,
Large, agate-red, a garnet, slides
Beneath the rock; and every plant
Is roof for some frail thing that hides.

Like knots against the trunks of trees
The lichen-colored moths are pressed;
And, wedged in hollow blooms, the bees
Seem clots of pollen; in its nest
The wasp has crawled and lies at ease.

The locust harsh, that sharply saws
The silence of the summer noon;
The katydid that thinly draws
Its fine file o'er the bars of moon;
And grasshopper that drills each pause:

The mantis, long-clawed, furtive, lean—
Fierce feline of the insect hordes—
And dragonfly, gauze-winged and green,
Beneath the wild-grape's leaves and gourd's,
Have housed themselves and rest unseen.

The butterfly and forest-bird
Are huddled on the same gnarled bough,
From which, like some rain-voweled word
That dampness hoarsely utters now,
The tree-toad's voice is vaguely heard.

I crouch and listen; and again
The woods are filled with phantom forms—
With shapes, grotesque in mystic train,
That rise and reach to me cool arms
Of mist; the wandering wraiths of rain.

I see them come; fantastic, fair;
Chill, mushroom-colored: sky and earth
Grow ghostly with their floating hair
And trailing limbs, that have their birth
In wetness—fungi of the air.

O wraiths of rain! O ghosts of mist!
Still fold me, hold me, and pursue!
Still let my lips by yours be kissed!
Still draw me with your hands of dew
Unto the tryst, the dripping tryst.

IN THE LANE

When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock,
And the brown bee drones i' the rose,
And the west is a red-streaked four-o'-clock,
And summer is near its close—
It's—Oh, for the gate and the locust lane
And dusk and dew and home again!

When the katydid sings and the cricket cries,
And ghosts of the mists ascend,
And the evening-star is a lamp i' the skies,
And summer is near its end—
It's—Oh, for the fence and the leafy lane,
And the twilight peace and the tryst again!

When the owlet hoots in the dogwood-tree,
That leans to the rippling Run,
And the wind is a wildwood melody,
And summer is almost done—
It's—Oh, for the bridge and the bramble lane,
And the fragrant hush and her hands again!

When fields smell moist with the dewy hay,
And woods are cool and wan,
And a path for dreams is the Milky-way,
And summer is nearly gone—
It's—Oh, for the rock and the woodland lane
And the silence and stars and her lips again!

When the weight of the apples breaks down the boughs,
And musk-melons split with sweet,
And the moon is a-bloom in the Heaven's house,
And summer has spent its heat—
It's—Oh, for the lane, the trysting lane,
And the deep-mooned night and her love again!

A FOREST IDYL

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

UNDER THE ROSE

He told a story to her,
A story old yet new—
And was it of the Faëry Folk
That dance along the dew?

The night was hung with silence
As a room is hung with cloth,
And soundless, through the rose-sweet hush,
Swooned dim the down-white moth.

Along the east a shimmer,
A tenuous breath of flame,
From which, as from a bath of light,
Nymph-like, the girl-moon came.

And pendent in the purple
Of heaven, like fireflies,
Bubbles of gold the great stars blew
From windows of the skies.

He told a story to her,
A story full of dreams—
And was it of the Elfin things
That haunt the thin moonbeams?

Upon the hill a thorn-tree,
Crooked and gnarled and gray,
Against the moon seemed some crutch'd hag
Dragging a child away.

And in the vale a runnel,
That dripped from shelf to shelf,
Seemed, in the night, a woodland witch
Who muttered to herself.

Along the land a zephyr,
Whose breath was wild perfume,
That seemed a sorceress who wove
Sweet spells of beam and bloom.

He told a story to her,
A story young yet old—
And was it of the mystic things
Men's eyes shall ne'er behold?

They heard the dew drip faintly
From out the green-cupped leaf;
They heard the petals of the rose
Unfolding from their sheaf.

They saw the wind light-footing
The waters into sheen;
They saw the starlight kiss to sleep
The blossoms on the green.

They heard and saw these wonders;
These things they saw and heard;
And other things within the heart
For which there is no word.

He told a story to her,
The story men call Love,
Whose echoes fill the ages past,
And the world ne'er tires of.

IN AUTUMN

I

Weary alway will it be to-day,
Weary and wan and wet;
Dawn and noon will the clouds hang gray,
And the autumn wind will sigh and say,
"He comes not yet, not yet.
Weary alway, alway!"

II

Weary, ah me! to-night will be,
Weary and wild and hoar;
Rain and mist will blow from the sea,
And the wind will sob in the autumn tree,
"He comes no more, no more.
Weary, ah me! ah me!"

EPIPHANY

There is nothing that eases my heart so much
As the wind that blows from the purple hills;
'Tis a hand of balsam whose healing touch
Unburdens my bosom of ills.

There is nothing that causes my soul to rejoice
Like the sunset flaming without a flaw:
'Tis a burning bush whence God's own voice
Addresses my spirit with awe.

There is nothing that hallows my mind, meseems,
Like the night with its moon and its stars above;
'Tis a mystical lily whose golden gleams
Fulfill my being with love.

There is nothing, no, nothing, we see and feel.
That speaks to our souls some beautiful thought,
That was not created to help us, and heal
Our lives that are overwrought.

LIFE

I

PESSIMIST

The thoughts we think have been thought before;
The deeds we do have long been done;
We pride ourselves on our love and lore
And both are as old as the moon and sun.

We strive and struggle and swink and sweat,
And the end for each is one and the same;
Time and the sun and the frost and wet
Will wear from its pillar the greatest name.

No answer comes for our prayer or curse,
No word replies though we shriek in air;
Ever the taciturn universe
Stretches unchanged for our curse or prayer.

With our mind's small light in the dark we crawl,—
Glow-worm glimmers that creep about,—
Tilt the Power that shaped us, over us all
Poises His foot and treads us out.

Unasked He fashions us out of clay,
A little water, a little dust,
And then in our holes He thrusts us away,
With never a word, to rot and rust.

'Tis a sorry play with a sorry plot,
This life of hate and of lust and pain,
Where we play our parts and are soon forgot,
And all that we do is done in vain.

II

OPTIMIST

As mind develops and soul matures
These two shall parent Earth's mightier acts;
Love is a fact, and 'tis love endures
'Though the world make wreck of all other facts.

Through thought alone shall our Age obtain
Above all Ages gone before;
The tribes of sloth, of brawn, not brain,
Are the tribes that perish, are known no more.