THE POEMS OF
MADISON CAWEIN
VOLUME III
NATURE POEMS

Undreamed of things that happened long ago [Page 8]
A House in the Hills

THE POEMS OF
M A D I S O N C A W E I N
Volume III
NATURE POEMS

Illustrated
WITH PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS
BY ERIC PAPE
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1892, 1893, 1896, 1898,
1899, 1901, 1902 and 1907, by Madison
Cawein
Copyright 1896, by Copeland and Day; 1898, by
R. H. Russell
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
TO
DOCTOR HENRY A. COTTELL
WHOSE KIND WORDS OF FRIENDSHIP AND APPROVAL
HAVE ENCOURAGED ME WHEN I MOST
NEEDED ENCOURAGEMENT

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PROLOGUE

There is a poetry that speaks
Through common things: the grasshopper,
That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks,
Says all of summer to my ear:
And in the cricket’s cry I hear
The fireside speak, and feel the frost
Work mysteries of silver near
On country casements, while, deep lost
In snow, the gatepost seems a sheeted ghost.

And other things give rare delight:
The guttural harps the green-frogs tune,
Those minstrels of the falling night,
That hail the sickle of the moon
From grassy pools that glass her lune:
Or,—all of August in its loud
Dry cry,—the locust’s call at noon,
That emphasizes heat, no cloud
Of lazy white makes less with its cool shroud.

The rain,—whose cloud dark-lids the moon,
That great white eyeball of the night,—
Makes music for me; to its tune
I hear the flowers unfolding white,
The mushroom growing, and the slight
Green sound of grass that dances near;
The melon ripening with delight;
And in the orchard, soft and clear,
The apple redly rounding out its sphere.

The grigs make music as of old,
To which the fairies whirl and shine
Within the moonlight’s prodigal gold,
On woodways wild with many a vine:
When all the wilderness with wine
Of stars is drunk, I hear it say—
“Is God restricted to confine
His wonders only to the day,
That yields the abstract tangible to clay?”

And to my ear the wind of Morn,—
When on her rubric forehead far
One star burns big,—lifts a vast horn
Of wonder where all murmurs are:
In which I hear the waters war,
The torrent and the blue abyss,
And pines,—that terrace bar on bar
The mountain side,—like lovers kiss,
And whisper words where all of grandeur is.

The jutting crags,—dark, iron-veined
With ore,—the peaks, where eagles scream,
That pour their cataracts, rainbow-stained,
Like hair, in many a mountain stream,
Can lift my soul beyond the dream
Of all religions; make me scan
No mere external or extreme,
But inward pierce the outward plan
And learn that rocks have souls as well as man.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the fragile wildflowers bloom;
Where the pensive silence pleaches
Green a roof of cool perfume,
Have you felt an awe imperious
As when, in a church, mysterious
Windows paint with God the gloom?

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the rock-ledged waters flow;
Where the sun’s slant splendor bleaches
Every wave to foaming snow,
Have you felt a music solemn
As when minster arch and column
Echo organ worship low?

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the light and shade are blent;
Where the forest-bird beseeches,
And the breeze is brimmed with scent,—
Is it joy or melancholy
That o’erwhelms us partly, wholly,
To our spirit’s betterment?

In the shadow of the beeches
Lay me where no eye perceives;
Where,—like some great arm that reaches
Gently as a love that grieves,—
One gnarled root may clasp me kindly
While the long years, working blindly,
Slowly change my dust to leaves.

A FALLEN BEECH

Nevermore at doorways that are barken
Shall the madcap wind knock and the moonlight;
Nor the circle which thou once didst darken,
Shine with footsteps of the neighboring moonlight,
Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken.

Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces,
Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter,
Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places;
Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor,
Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces.

And no more, between the savage wonder
Of the sunset and the moon’s up-coming,
Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under
Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming
Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder.

Oft the Satyr-spirit, beauty-drunken,
Of the Spring called; and the music measure
Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken
Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure
Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken.

And the germs, deep down in darkness rooted,
Bubbled green from all thy million oilets,
Where the spirits, rain and sunbeam suited,
Of the April made their whispering toilets,
Or within thy stately shadow footed.

Oft the hours of blonde Summer tinkled
At the windows of thy twigs, and found thee
Bird-blithe; or, with shapely bodies, twinkled
Lissom feet of naked flowers around thee,
Where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam-sprinkled.

And the Autumn with his gypsy-coated
Troop of days beneath thy branches rested,
Swarthy-faced and dark of eye; and throated
Songs of hunting; or with red hand tested
Every nut-burr that above him floated.

Then the Winter, barren-browed, but rich in
Shaggy followers of frost and freezing,
Made the floor of thy broad boughs his kitchen,
Trapper-like, to camp in; grimly easing
Limbs snow-furred and moccasined with lichen.

Now, alas! no more do these invest thee
With the dignity of whilom gladness!
They—unto whose hearts thou once confessed thee
Of thy dreams—now know thee not! and sadness
Sits beside thee where, forgot, dost rest thee.

A COIGNE OF THE FOREST

The hills hang woods around, where green, below
Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss,
Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year’s nuts;
The water hums one bar there; and a glow
Of gold lies steady where the trailers toss
Red, bugled blossoms and a rock abuts;
In spots the wild-phlox and oxalis grow
Where beech-roots bulge the loam, and welt across
The grass-grown road and roll it into ruts.

And where the sumach brakes grow dusk and dense,
Among the rocks, great yellow violets,
Blue-bells and windflowers bloom; the agaric
In dampness crowds; a fungus, thick, intense
With gold and crimson and wax-white, that sets
The May-apples along the terraced creek
At bold defiance. Where the old rail-fence
Divides the hollow, there the bee-bird whets
His bill, and there the elder hedge is thick.

No one can miss it; for two cat-birds nest,
Calling all morning, in the trumpet-vine;
And there at noon the pewee sits and floats
A woodland welcome; and his very best
At eve the red-bird sings, as if to sign
The record of its loveliness with notes.
At night the moon stoops over it to rest,
And unreluctant stars, in whose faint shine
There runs a whisper as of wind-swept oats.

A HOUSE IN THE HILLS

Old hearts that hold the saddest memories
Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet
Light, happy moods of younger natures which
Their sadness contacts and so sanctifies.

And such to me is an old gabled house,
Deserted, and neglected, and unknown,
Lost in the tangled hollow of its hills,
Dark, cedared hills, and dreamy orchard-lands;
With but its host of shrouded memories
Haunting its ruined rooms and desolate halls,—
Pathetic with their fallen finery,—
And whispering through its cob-webbed crevices
And roomy hearths, that sigh with ceaseless wind,
Undreamed of things that happened long ago.

Here in gray afternoons I love to sit,
And hear the running rain along the roof;
The creak and crack of noises that are born
Of silence or mysterious agencies;
The fitful footfalls of the wind adown
Grand, winding stairways, massy banistered;
A clapping door and then a sudden hush
As if the old house held its breath to see,—
Invisible to me,—a presence pass,
That brings a pleasant terror stiffening through
The tingling veins and staring from the eyes.
Then comes the rain again along the roof;
And in rain-rotted room and rain-stained hall
The drip and whisper of the wind and rain
Seem viewless footsteps of the sometime lords
And mistresses who lived here in the past.
And could the state material but assume
A state clairvoyant, then the dream-drugged eyes,
Perhaps, might see, from room to dusty room,
The ghosts of stately gentlemen glide by,
And glimmering ladies, all beruffled, trail
Long, haughty silks miraculously stiff.

THE WIND

“Wind of the East, if thou pass by the land where my loved ones dwell, I pray,
The fullest of greetings bear to them from me, their lover, and say
That I am the pledge of passion still.”—
FROM THE ARABIC.

The ways of the wind are eerie,
And I love them all:
The blithe, the mad, and the dreary,
Spring, winter, and fall.

When it tells to the waiting crocus
Its beak to show;
And hangs on the wayside locust
Bloom-bunches of snow.

When it comes like a balmy blessing
From the musky wood,
The half-grown roses caressing
Till their cheeks burn blood.

When it roars in the autumn season,
And whines with rain,
Or sleet, like a mind without reason,
Or a soul in pain.

When the woodways, once so spicy
With bud and bloom,
Are desolate, dead and icy
As the icy tomb.

When the puffed owl, crouched and frowsy,
In the hollow tree,
Sobs, dolorous, cold, and drowsy,
Its shuddering melody.

Then I love to sit in December
Where the big hearth sings,
And, dreaming, forget and remember
A host of things.

And the wind—I hear how it strangles,
And wails and sighs
On the roof’s sharp, shivering angles
That front the skies.

How it shouts and romps and tumbles
In attics o’erhead;
In the great-throated chimney rumbles,
Then all at once falls dead;

Then comes like the footsteps stealing
Of a child on the stair,
Or a bent, old gentleman feeling
His slippered way with care.

And my soul grows anxious-hearted
For those once dear—
The long-lost loves, departed,
In the wind draw near.

And I seem to see their faces—
Not one estranged—
In their old accustomed places
Round the wide hearth ranged.

And the wind, that waits and poises
Where the shadows sway,
Seems their visionary voices
Calling me far away.

Then I wake in tears and hear it
Wailing outside my door,—
Or is it some wandering spirit
Weeping upon the moor?

RAIN IN THE WOODS

When on the leaves the rain persists,
And every gust brings showers down;
When copse and woodland smoke 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 huntsman blows.

Around the root the beetle glides,
A burnished 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
Hang pollen-clotted; 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 guttural voice is heard.

I crouch and listen: and again
The woods are filled with phantom forms—
With shapes, grotesque in cloudy train,
That rise and reach to me cool arms
Of mist: dim, 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.

HEAT

I

Now is it as if Spring had never been,
And Winter but a memory and a dream,
Here where the Summer stands, her lap of green
Heaped high with bloom and beam,
Among her blackberry-lilies, low that lean
To kiss her feet; or, freckle-browed, that stare
Upon the dragonfly which, slimly seen,
Like a blue jewel flickering in her hair,
Sparkles above them there.

II

Knee-deep among the tepid pools the cows
Chew a slow cud or switch a slower tail,
Half-sunk in sleep beneath the beechen boughs,
Where thin the wood-gnats ail.
From bloom to bloom the languid butterflies drowse;
The sleepy bees make hardly any sound;
The only things the sun-rays can arouse,
It seems, are two black beetles rolling round
Upon the dusty ground.

III

Within its channel glares the creek and shrinks,
Beneath whose rocks the furtive crawfish hides
In stagnant places, where the green frog blinks,
And water-strider glides.
Far hotter seems it for the bird that drinks,
The startled kingfisher that screams and flies;
Hotter and lonelier for the purples and pinks
Of weeds that bloom, whose sultry perfumes rise
Stifling the swooning skies.

IV

From ragweed fallows, rye-fields, heaped with sheaves,
From blistering rocks, no moss or lichens crust,
And from the road, where every hoof-stroke heaves
A cloud of burning dust,
The hotness quivers, making limp the leaves,
That loll like panting tongues. The pulsing heat
Seems a wan wimple that the Summer weaves,
A veil, in which she wraps,—as in a sheet,—
The shriveling corn and wheat.

V

Furious, incessant in the weeds and briers
The sawing weed bugs sing: and, heat-begot,
The grasshoppers, so many strident wires,
Staccato stinging hot:
A lash of whirling sound that never tires,
The locust flails the noon, where harnessed Thirst,
Beside the road-spring, many a shod hoof mires,
Into the trough thrusts his hot head; immersed,
Round which cool bubbles burst.

VI

The sad, sweet voice of some wood-spirit who
Laments while watching a loved oak-tree die,
From the deep forest comes the wood-dove’s coo,
A long, lost, lonely cry.—
Oh, for a breeze! a mighty wind to woo
The woods to stormy laughter; sow like grain
The world with freshness of invisible dew,
And pile above far, fevered hill and plain
Cloud-bastions, black with rain.

YOUNG SEPTEMBER

I

With a look and a laugh where the stream was flowing,
September led me along the land;
Where the goldenrod and lobelia, glowing,
Seemed burning torches within her hand.
And faint as the thistle’s or milkweed’s feather
I glimpsed her form in the sparkling weather.

II

Now ’twas her hand and now her hair
That tossed me welcome everywhere;
That lured me onward through the stately rooms
Of forest, hung and carpeted with glooms,
And windowed wide with azure, doored with green,
Through which rich glimmers of her robe were seen—
Now, like some deep marsh-mallow, rosy-gold;
Now, like the great Joe-Pye-weed, fold on fold
Of heavy mauve; and now, like the intense
Massed ironweed, a purple opulence.

III

Along the bank in a wild procession
Of gold and sapphire the blossoms blew;
And borne on the breeze came their soft confession
In syllabled musk and honey-dew;
In words unheard that their lips kept saying,
Sweet as the lips of children praying.

IV

And so, meseemed, I heard them tell
How here her loving glance once fell
Upon this bank, and from its azure grew
The ageratum mist-flower’s happy hue;
How from her kiss, as crimson as the dawn,
The cardinal-flow’r drew its vermilion;
And from her hair’s blond touch th’ elecampane
Evolved the glory of its golden rain;
While from her starry footsteps, redolent,
The aster pearled its flowery firmament.

THE VINTAGER

Among the fragrant grapes she bows;
Long violet clusters heap her hands:
And, with bright brows, on him bestows
Sweet looks, like soft commands.

And from her sunburnt throat, at times,
As bubbles burst on new-made wine,
A happy fit of merry rhymes
Rings down the hills of vine.

And in his heart, remorseless, sweet,
Grew big the red-grape, passion, there;
His heart, that, ever at her feet,
Was filled with love’s despair.

But she, who ne’er the honeyed must
Of love had drained, a grown-up child,
Saw in him—merely one to trust,
And broke his heart, and smiled.

BLACK VESPER’S PAGEANTS

The day, all fierce with carmine, turns
An Indian face towards Earth and dies;
The west, like some gaunt vase, inurns
Its ashes under smoldering skies;
Athwart whose bowl one red cloud streams,
Wild as some dream an Aztec dreams.

Now shadows mass above the world,
And night comes on with wind and rain;
The mulberry-colored leaves are hurled
Like frantic hands against the pane.
And through the forests, bending low,
Night stalks like some gigantic Woe.

In hollows where the thistle shakes
A hoar bloom like a witch’s light,
From weed and flower the rain-wind rakes
Dead sweetness—as a wildman might,
From autumn leaves, the woods among,
Dig some dead woman, fair and young.

Now let me walk the woodland ways,
Alone! except for thoughts, that are
Akin to such wild nights and days—
A portion of the storm that far
Fills Heaven and Earth tumultuously,
And my own soul with ecstasy.

A TWILIGHT MOTH

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state
Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed;
Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white,
Goes softly messengering through the night,
Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.

All day the primroses have thought of thee,
Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;
All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly
Veiled snowy faces,—that no bee might greet
Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;—
Keeping Sultana-charms for thee, at last,
Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day’s
Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks
The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays
Nocturnes of fragrance, thy wing’d shadow links
In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;
O bearer of their order’s shibboleth,
Like some pale symbol fluttering o’er these pinks.

What dost thou whisper in the balsam’s ear
That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock’s,—
A syllabled silence that no man may hear,—
As dreamily upon its stem it rocks?
What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant,
Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant,
Some spectre of some perished flower of phlox?

O voyager of that universe which lies
Between the four walls of this garden fair,—
Whose constellations are the fireflies
That wheel their instant courses everywhere,—
’Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees
Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades,
Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air.

Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer,
Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest
Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her
His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.—
Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy,
That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me!
And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!

THE GRASSHOPPER

I

What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasizing dullness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water
In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp
Filing the stillness. Or,—as urchins beat
A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,—
Your switch-like music whips the midday heat.
O burr of sound caught in the Summer’s hair,
We hear you everywhere.

II

We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles,
Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds,
Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds,
And by the wood, round which the rail-fence rambles,
Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw.
Or,—like to tomboy truants, at their play
With noisy mirth among the barn’s deep straw,—
You sing away the careless summer-day.
O brier-like voice that clings in idleness
To Summer’s drowsy dress.

III

You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding,
Improvident, who of the summer make
One long green meal-time, and for winter take
No care, aye singing or just merely feeding!
Happy-go-lucky vagabond,—though frost
Shall pierce, ere long, your coat of green or brown,
And pinch your body,—let no song be lost,
But as you lived, into your grave go down—
Like some small poet with his little rhyme,
Forgotten of all time.

FOREST AND FIELD

I

Green, watery jets of light let through
The rippling foliage drenched with dew;
And golden glimmers, warm and dim,
That in the vistaed distance swim;
Where, round the wood-spring’s oozy urn,
The limp, loose fronds of forest fern
Trail like the tresses, green and wet,
A wood-nymph binds with violet.
O’er rocks that bulge and roots that knot
The emerald-amber mosses clot;
From matted walls of brier and brush
The elder nods its plumes of plush;
And, Argus-eyed with bloom on bloom,
The wild-rose breathes its wild perfume;
May-apples, ripening yellow, lean
With oblong fruit, a lemon-green,
Near Indian-turnips, long of stem,
That bear an acorn-oval gem,
As if some woodland Bacchus there,—
While braiding locks of hyacinth hair
With ivy-tod,—had idly tossed
His thyrsus down and so had lost:
And blood-root, that from scarlet wombs
Puts forth, in spring, its milk-white blooms,
That then like starry footsteps shine
Of April under beech and pine;
At which the gnarléd eyes of trees
Stare, big as Fauns’, at Dryadës,
That bend above a fountain’s spar,
As white and naked as a star.

The stagnant stream flows sleepily
Thick-paved with lily-pads; the bee,—
Brown, honey-drunk, a Bassarid,—
Booms past the mottled toad, that, hid
In calamus and blue-eyed grass,
Beside the water’s pooling glass,
Silenus-like, eyes stolidly
The Mænad-glittering dragonfly.
And pennyroyal and peppermint
Pour dry-hot odors without stint
From fields and banks of many streams;
And in their scent one almost seems
To see Demeter pass, her breath
Sweet with her triumph over death.—
A haze of floating saffron; sound
Of shy, crisp creepings o’er the ground;
The dip and stir of twig and leaf;
Tempestuous gusts of spices brief
Borne over bosks of sassafras
By winds that foot it on the grass;
Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings,
That hint at untold, hidden things—
Pan and Sylvanus who of old
Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.
A wily light beneath the trees
Quivers and dusks with every breeze—
A Hamadryad, haply, who,—
Culling her morning meal of dew
From frail, accustomed cups of flowers,—
Now sees some Satyr in the bowers,
Or hears his goat-hoof snapping press
A brittle branch, and in distress
Shrinks back; her dark, dishevelled hair
Veiling her limbs one instant there.

II

Down precipices of the dawn
The rivers of the day are drawn,
The soundless torrents, free and far,
Of gold that deluge every star.
There is a sound of winds and wings
That fills the woods with carollings;
And, dashed on moss and flower and fern,
And leaves, that quiver, breathe and burn,
Rose-radiance smites the solitudes,
The dew-drenched hills, the dripping woods
That twitter as with canticles
Of bird and brook; and air that smells
Of flowers, and buds, and boisterous bees,
Delirious honey and wet trees.—
Through briers that trip them, one by one,
With swinging pails, that flash the sun,
A troop of girls comes—berriers,
Whose bare feet glitter where they pass
Through dewdrop-trembling tufts of grass.
And, oh! their laughter and their cheers
Wake Echo on her shrubby rocks
Who, answering, from her mountain mocks
With rapid fairy horns—as if
Each mossy vale and weedy cliff
Had its imperial Oberon,
Who, seeking his Titania, hid
In coverts caverned from the sun,
In kingly wrath had called and chid.

Cloud-feathers, oozing orange light,
Make rich the Indian locks of Night;
Her dusky waist with sultry gold
Girdled and buckled fold on fold.
One star. A sound of bleating flocks.
Great shadows stretched along the rocks,
Like giant curses overthrown
By some Arthurian champion.
Soft-swimming sorceries of mist
That streak blue glens with amethyst.
And, tinkling in the clover dells,
The twilight sound of cattle-bells.
And where the marsh in reed and grass
Burns, angry as a shattered glass,
The flies blur sudden gold, and shine
Like drops of amber-scattered wine
Spun high by reeling Bacchanals,
When Bacchus wreathes his curling hair
With vine-leaves, and from every lair
His worshippers around him calls.
They come, they come, a happy throng,
The berriers with lilt and song;
Their pails brimmed black to tin-bright eaves
With luscious fruit, kept cool with leaves
Of aromatic sassafras;
’Twixt which a berry often slips,
Like laughter, from the purple mass,
Wine-swollen as Silenus’ lips.

III

The tanned and tired Noon climbs high
Up burning reaches of the sky;
Below the drowsy belts of pines
The rock-ledged river leaps and shines;
And over rainless hill and dell
Is blown the harvest’s sultry smell:
While, in the fields, one sees and hears
The brawny-throated harvesters,—
Their red brows beaded with the heat,—
By twos and threes among the wheat
Flash their hot scythes; behind them press
The binders—men and maids who sing
Like some mad troop of piping Pan;—
While all the hillsides, echoing, ring
Such sounds of Ariel airiness
As haunted freckled Caliban.

“O ho! O ho! ’tis noon I say.
The roses blow.
Away, away, above the hay,
To the song o’ the bees the roses sway;
The love-lays that they hum all day,
So low! so low!
The roses’ Minnesingers they.”

Up velvet lawns of lilac skies
The tawny moon begins to rise
Behind low, blue-black hills of trees,—
As rises up, in siren seas,
To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid,
A virgin-bosomed Oceanid.—
Gaunt shadows crouch by tree and scaur,
Dusk’s shaggy Satyrs waiting for
The Nymphs of moon, the Dryads white,
Who take with loveliness the night,
And glorify it with their love.
The sweet, far notes I hear, I hear,
Beyond dim pines and mellow ways;
The song of some fair harvester,
The lovely Limnad of the grove,
Whose singing charms me while it slays.

“O deep! O deep! the earth and air
Are sunk in sleep.
Adieu to care! Now everywhere
Is rest; and by the old oak there
The maiden with the nut-brown hair
Doth keep, doth keep
Tryst with her lover the young and fair.”

IV

Like Atalanta’s spheres of gold,
Within the orchard, apples rolled
From sudden hands of boughs that lay
Their leaves, like palms, against the day;
And near them pears of rusty brown
Rolled bruised; and peaches, pink with down,
And furry as the ears of Pan;
Or, like Diana’s cheeks, a tan
Beneath which burnt a tender fire;
Or wan as Psyche’s with desire.
And down the orchard vistas,—young,
A hickory basket by him swung,
A hat of straw against the sun
Drawn shadowy o’er his face,—he strode;
As if he looked to find some one,
His eyes searched every bend of road.
Before him, like a living burr,
Rattled the noisy grasshopper.
And where the cows’ melodious bells
Trailed music up and down the dells,
Beside the spring, that o’er the ground
Went whimpering like a fretful hound,
He saw her waiting, fair and slim,
Her pail forgotten there, for him.
Yellow as sunset skies and pale
As fairy clouds that stay or sail
Through azure vaults of summer, blue
As summer heavens, the wildflowers grew;
And blossoms on which spurts of light
Fell laughing—like the lips one might
Feign once were Hebe’s, or a girl’s
That laughter lights with rows of pearls.
Long ferns, in murmuring masses heaped;
And mosses moist, in beryl steeped
And musk aromas of the wood
And silence of the solitude:
And everything that near her blew
The spring had showered thick with dew.—
Across the rambling fence she leaned,
Her fresh, round arms all white and bare;
Her artless beauty, bonnet-screened,
Simplicity from feet to hair.
A wood-thrush gurgled in a vine—
Ah! ’tis his step, ’tis he she hears;
The wild-rose smelt like some rare wine—
He comes, ah, yes! ’tis he who nears.
And her brown eyes and happy face
Said welcome. And with rustic grace
He leant beside her; and they had
Some talk with youthful laughter glad:
I know not what: I know but this—
Its final period was a kiss.

SUMMER

I

Hang out your loveliest star, O Night! O Night!
Your richest rose, O Dawn!
To greet sweet Summer, her, who, clothed in light,
Leads Earth’s best hours on.
Hark! how the wild birds of the woods
Throat it within the dewy solitudes!
The brook sings low and soft,
The trees make song,
As, from her heaven aloft,
Comes blue-eyed Summer like a girl along.

II

And as the Day, her lover, leads her in,
How bright his beauty glows!
How red his lips, that ever try to win
Her mouth’s delicious rose!
And from the beating of his heart
Warm winds arise and sighing thence depart:
And from his eyes and hair
The light and dew
Fall round her everywhere,
And heaven above her is an arch of blue.

III

Come to the forest, or the treeless meadows
Deep with their hay or grain;
Come where the hills lift high their thrones of shadows,
And tawny orchards reign.
Come where the reapers whet the scythe;
Where golden sheaves are heaped; where berriers blithe,
With willow-basket and with pail,
Swarm knoll and plain;
Where flowers freckle every vale,
And Beauty goes with hands of berry-stain.

IV

Come where the dragonflies, a brassy blue,
Flit round the wildwood streams,
And, sucking at some horn of honey-dew,
The wild-bee hums and dreams.
Come where the butterfly waves wings of sleep,
Gold-disked and mottled, over blossoms deep:
Come where beneath the rustic bridge
The creek-frog cries;
Or in the shade the rainbowed midge,
Above the emerald pools, with murmurings flies.

V

Come where the cattle browse within the brake,
As red as oak and strong;
Where cattle-bells the echoes faintly wake,
And milkmaids sing their song.
Come where the vine-trailed rocks, with waters hoary,
Tell to the sun some legend old or story;
Or where the sunset to the land
Speaks words of gold;
Where Ripeness walks, a wheaten band
About her brow, making the buds unfold.

VI

Come where the woods lift up their stalwart arms
Unto the star-sown skies;
Knotted and gnarled, that to the winds and storms
Fling mighty rhapsodies:
Or to the moon repeat what they have seen,
When Night upon their shoulders vast doth lean.
Come where the dew’s clear syllable
Slips from the rose;
And where the fireflies fill
The dark with golden music of their glows.

VII

Now while the dingles and the vine-roofed glens
Whisper their flowery tale
Unto the silence; and the lakes and fens
Unto the moonlight pale
Murmur their rapture, let us seek her out,
Her of the honey throat and peach-sweet pout,
Summer! and at her feet,
The love of old
Lay like a sheaf of wheat,
And of our hearts the purest gold of gold.

INDIAN SUMMER

The dawn is a warp of fever,
The eve is a woof of fire;
And the month is a singing weaver
Weaving a red desire.

With stars Dawn dices with Even
For the rosy gold they heap
On the blue of the day’s broad heaven,
On the black of the night’s wide deep.

It’s—“Reins to the blood!” and “Marry!”
The Season’s a prince who burns
With the teasing lusts that harry
His heart for a wench who spurns.

It’s—“Crown us a beaker with sherry,
To drink to the doxy’s heels;
A tankard of wine o’ the berry,
To lips like a cloven peel’s.

“’S death! if a king be saddened,
Right so let a fool laugh lies:
But wine! when a king is gladdened,
And a woman’s waist and her eyes.”

He hath shattered the loom of the weaver,
And left but a leaf that flits,
He hath seized heaven’s gold, and a fever
Of mist and of frost is its.

He hath tippled the buxom beauty,
And gotten her hug and her kiss—
The wide world’s royal booty
To pile at her feet for this.

TO SORROW

I

O dark-eyed spirit of the marble brow,
Whose look is silence and whose touch is night,
Who walkest lonely through the world, O thou,
Who sittest lonely with Life’s blown-out light;
Who in the hollow hours of night’s noon
Criest like some lost child;
Whose anguish-fevered eyeballs seek the moon
To cool their pulses wild.
Thou who dost bend to kiss Joy’s sister cheek,
Turning its rose to alabaster; yea,
Thou who art terrible and mad and meek,
Why in my heart art thou enshrined to-day?
Sorrow, O say! O say!

II

Now Spring is here and all the world is white,
I will go forth, and where the forest robes
Itself in green, and every hill and height
Crowns its fair head with blossoms,—spirit globes
Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with dew,—
I will forget my grief,
And thee, O Sorrow, gazing at the blue,
Beneath a last year’s leaf,
Of some brief violet the south-wind woos,
Or bluet, whence the west-wind raked the snow;
The baby eyes of love, the darling hues
Of happiness, that thou canst never know,
Mother of pain and woe.

III

On some hoar upland, hoar with clustered thorns,
Hard by a river’s windy white of waves,
I shall sit down with Spring,—whose eyes are morns
Of light; whose cheeks the rose of health enslaves,—
And so forget thee, braiding in Spring’s hair
The snowdrop, tipped with green,
The cool-eyed primrose and the trillium fair,
And moony celandine.
Contented so to lie within her arms,
Forgetting all the sere and sad and wan,
Remembering Love alone, who, o’er earth’s storms,
High on the mountains of perpetual dawn,
Leads the glad Hours on.

IV

Or in the peace that follows storm, when Even,
Within the west, stands dreaming, lone and far,
Clad on with green and silver, and the Heaven
Is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering star,
I will lie down beside a mountain lake,
Round which the tall pines sigh,
And, breathing musk of rain from boughs that shake
Storm balsam, blowing by,
Make friends of Dream and Contemplation high,
And Music, listening to the mocking-bird,—
Who through the hush sends its melodious cry,—
And so forget a while that other word,
That all loved things must die.

NIGHT

Out of the East, as from an unknown shore,
Thou comest with thy children in thine arms,—
Slumber and Dream,—whom mortals so adore,—
Their flowing raiment sculptured to their charms:
Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest,
Laid like two roses in one balmy nest.
Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow.
There is no other presence like to thine,
When thou approachest with thy babes divine,
Thy shadowy face above them bending low,
Blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow.

Oft have I taken Sleep from thy dark arms,
And fondled her fair head, with poppies wreathed,
Within my bosom’s depths, until its storms
With her were hushed and I but faintly breathed:
And then her sister, Dream, with frolic art
Arose from rest, and in my sleeping heart
Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost;
Worlds where my stranger soul looked down at me,
Or walked with spirits by a rainbowed sea,
Or smiled, an unfamiliar shape of frost,
Floating on gales of breathless melody.

Day comes to us in garish glory garbed;
But thou, thou bringest to the tired heart
Rest and sweet silence, wherein are absorbed
All the vain tumults of the mind and mart.
Whether thou comest with hands full of stars,
Or clothed in storm and cloud, the lightning bars,
Rolling the thunder like a mighty dress,
God moves with thee; we seem to hear His feet,
Wind-like, along the floors of Heaven beat;
To see His face, revealed in awfulness,
Through thee, O Night, to ban us or to bless.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

I

The shadows sit and stand about its door
Like uninvited guests and poor;
And all the long, hot summer day
The ceaseless locust dins its roundelay
In one old sycamore.
The squirrel leaves upon its rotting roof
Its wandering tracks
In empty hulls; and in its clapboard cracks
The spider weaves a windy woof,
And cells of clay the mud-wasp packs.
The she-fox whelps upon its floor;
And o’er its sun warped door
The owlet roosts; and where the mosses run,
The freckled snake basks in the sun.

II

The children of what fathers sleep
Beneath those melancholy pines?
The slow slugs slime their headstones there where creep
The doddered poison-vines.
The orchard, near the meadow deep,
Lifts up decrepit arms,
Black-lichened in a withering heap.
No sap swells up to make it leap
And shout against spring’s storms;
No blossom lulls its age asleep;
The winds bring sad alarms.
Big, bell-round pears and pippins, russet-red,
No maiden gathers now;
The worm-bored trunks weep tears of gum instead,
Oozing from each old bough.

III

The woodlands around it are solitary
And fold it like gaunt hands;
The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary,
The hum of the country is lonesome and weary,
And the bees go by in bands
To gladder and lovelier lands.
The grasses are rotting in walk and in bower;
The loneliness,—dank and rank
As a chamber where lies for a lonely hour
An old-man’s corpse with many a flower,—
Is hushed and blank.
And even the birds have passed it by,
Gone with their songs to a happier sky,
A happier sky and bank.

IV

In its desolate halls are lying,
Gold, blood-red, and browned,
Drifted leaves of autumn dying;
And the winds, above them sighing,
Turn them round and round,
Make a ghostly sound
As of footsteps falling, flying,
Ghostly footsteps, faintly flying
Through the haunted house.

V

Gazing down in her white shroud,
Wov’n of windy cloud,
Comes at night the phantom moon;
Comes, and all the shadows soon,
Crowding chambers of the house,
Haunting whispering rooms, arouse;—
Shadows, ghosts, her rays lead on,
Till beneath the cloud
Like a ghost she’s gone,
In her gusty shroud,
O’er the haunted house.

AUTUMN

I oft have met her slowly wandering
Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,
Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring,
As if on her the scarlet copse had smiled:
Or I have seen her sitting, dark and tall,—
Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,—
Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves
She wound great drowsy wreaths and let them fall;
The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim
Far out behind, brown as the rustling sheaves.

Or in the hill-lands I have often seen
The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between,
Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint.
Or I have met her ’twixt two beechen hills,
Within a dingled valley near a fall,
Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower;
Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills
Went babbling through the wildwood’s arrased hall,
Where burned the beech and maples glared their power.

Or I have met her by a ruined mill,
Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine,
On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled, chill,
And watched her swinging in the wildgrapevine.
While Beauty, sad among the vales and mountains,
More sad than death, or all that death can teach,
Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms,
Where splashed the murmur of the forest’s fountains:
With all her loveliness did she beseech,
And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms.

Once only in a hollow, girt with trees,
A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain,
I glimpsed her cheeks, red-berried by the breeze,
In her dark eyes the night’s sidereal stain.
And once upon an orchard’s tangled path,
Where all the goldenrod had turned to brown,
Where russets rolled and leaves lay sweet of breath,
I did behold her ’mid her aftermath
Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown,
Within her gaze the dreams of life and death.

ALONG THE OHIO

Athwart a sky of brass long welts of gold;
A river of flame the wide Ohio lies;
Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold,
The dark-blue hill-tops rise.

And, westering, dips the crescent of the moon
Through great cloud-feathers, flushed with rosy ray,
That close around the crystal of her lune
The redbird wings of Day.

A little skiff slips o’er the burnished stream;
A wake of flame, that broadens far behind,
Follows in ripples; and the paddles gleam
Against the evening wind.

Was it the boat, the solitude, and hush,
That with dead Indians peopled all the glooms?
That made each bank, meseemed, and every bush,
Start into eagle-plumes?

That made me seem to hear the breaking brush,
And, as the stag’s great antlers swelled in view,
To hear the arrow twang from cane and rush,
That dipped to the canoe?

To see the glimmering wigwams by the waves?
And, wildly clad, around the camp-fires’ glow,
The Shawnee chieftains with their painted braves,
Each with his battle-bow?...

But now the vision like the sunset fades,
The clouds of ribbéd gold have oozed their light;
And from the west, like sombre sachem shades,
Gallop the shades of night.

The broad Ohio glitters to the stars;
And many murmurs wander through its woods—
Is it the mourning of dead warriors
For their lost solitudes?

The moon is set; but, like another moon,
The crescent of the river shimmers there,
Unchanged as when the eyes of Daniel Boone
Beheld it flowing fair.

THE OLD INN

Red-winding from the sleepy town,
One takes the lone, forgotten lane
Straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown
Bubbles in thorn-flowers sweet with rain,
Where breezes bend the gleaming grain
And cautious drip of higher leaves
The lower dips that drip again,
Above the tangled trees it heaves
Its gables and its haunted eaves.

One creeper, gnarled and blossomless,
O’erforests all its eastern wall;
The sighing cedars rake and press
Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl;
While, where the sun beats, drone and drawl
The mud-wasps; and one bushy bee,
Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall
To crowd into a crack.—To me
The shadows seem too scared to flee.

Of ragged chimneys martins make
Huge pipes of music; twittering, here
They build and brood.—My footfalls wake
Strange stealing echoes, till I fear
I’ll see my pale self drawing near,
My phantom self as in a glass;
Or one, men murdered, buried—where?—
Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass
With lips that seem to moan “Alas!”

THE MILL-WATER

The water-flag and wild cane grow
Round banks whereon the sunbeams sow
Ephemeral gold when, on its shores,
The wind sighs through the sycamores.

In one green angle, just in reach,
Between a willow-tree and beech,
Moss-grown and leaky lies a boat
The thick-grown lilies keep afloat.

And through its waters, half-awake,
Slow swims the spotted water-snake;
And near its edge, like some gray streak,
Stands gaunt the still fly-up-the-creek.

Between the lily-pads and blooms
The water-spirits set their looms,
And weave the lace-like light that dims
The glimmering leaves of under limbs.

Each lily is the hiding-place
Of some dim wood-thing’s elvish face,
That watches you with gold-green eyes
Where bubbles of its breathing rise.

I fancy, when the waxing moon
Leans through the trees and dreams of June;
And when the black bat slants its wing,
And lonelier the green-frogs sing;

I fancy, when the whippoorwill
In some old tree sings wildly shrill,
With glow-worm eyes that dot the dark,—
Each holding high a firefly spark,

To torch its way,—the wood-imps come:
And some float rocking here; and some
Unmoor the lily-leaves and oar
Around the old boat by the shore.

They climb through oozy weeds and moss;
They swarm its rotting sides and toss
Their firefly torches o’er its edge
Or hang them in the tangled sedge.

The boat is loosed. The moon is pale.
Around the dam they slowly sail.
Upon its bow, to pilot it,
A jack-o’-lantern flame doth sit.

Yes; I have seen it all in dreams:
Naught is forgotten—naught, it seems—
The strangled face, the matted hair,
Drown’d, of the woman trailing there.

THE DREAM

Thus did I dream:

It seemed the afternoon
Of some deep, tropic day; and yet the moon
Hung, round and bright with golden alchemy,
High in a heaven sapphire as the sea.
Long, lawny lengths of perishable cloud
Templed the west, o’er rolling forests bowed;
Clouds raining colors, gold and violet,
That, opening, seemed from inner worlds to let
Down hints of Parian beauty and lost charms
Of old romance, peopled with fairy forms.
And all about me fruited orchards grew,
Pear, quince, and peach, and plums of dusty blue;
Rose-apricots, and apples streaked with fire,
Kissed into ripeness by some sun’s desire,
And big with juice. And on far, fading hills,
Down which it seemed a hundred torrent rills
Flashed silent silver, vines and vines and vines
Terraced the world with vintage, cooling wines,
Pleasant and fragrant as the heart of June,
Their delicate tang drawn from the wine-white moon.

And from the clouds o’er this sweet world there dripped
An odorous music, strange and feverish-lipped,
That swung and swooned and panted as with sighs;
Investing at each throb the air with eyes
And forms of sensuous spirits, limpid white,
Clad on with raiment as of starry night;
Fair, frail embodiments of melody,
From out whose hearts of crystal one could see
The music stream like light through delicate hands
Hollowing a lamp. And as on sounding sands
The ocean murmur haunts the rosy shells,—
Within whose convolutions beauty dwells,—
My soul became a harp of vibrant love
Reëchoing all the harmony above.

SPRING TWILIGHT

The sun set late; and left along the west
A furious ruby; o’er which billowy snows
Of clouds unrolled; each cloud a mighty breast
Blooming with almond-rose.

The sun set late; and wafts of wind beat down,
And cuffed the blossoms from the blossoming quince;
Scattered the petals of the poppy’s crown,
And made the clover wince.

By dusking forests, through whose fretful boughs
In flying fragments shot the evening’s flame,
Adown the tangled lane the quiet cows
With dreamy tinklings came.

The sun set late; but scarcely had he gone
When o’er the moon’s gold-litten crescent there,
Bright 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 old-time garden shrill;
Beyond the luminous pasture-lands complained
The 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 elm
Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm.
Beneath the musky rot of last year’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 wood
Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood
White-mantled Winter nodding 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 arm
Raised rebel 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 tossed
A glittering spear of ice and piercing frost,
And struck her down, dead on th’ unfeeling mold.
The fragile blossoms, gathered in the fold
Of her young bosom, fell in desolate rows
About her beauty; and, like fragrant snows,
Covered her lovely hands and beautiful feet,
Or on her lips lay like last kisses sweet
That died there. Lilacs, musky of the May,
And bluer violets and snowdrops lay
Entombed in crystal, icy faint and fair,
Like teardrops scattered through 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 power
Knows best what bud is ripest, or what flower,
Silently plucks it at the fittest hour.

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 as white as the throat of my love.

Blue-black night on the mountain peaks—
Oh, not so black as the locks o’ my love!
Stars that shine through the evening’s streaks
Over the torrent that flashes and breaks,
Brighter the eyes of my love, my love!

Moon in a cloud, as white as snow,
Mist in the vale where the rivulet bounds,
Dropping from ledge to ledge below,
Turning to gold in the sunset’s glow,
Softer and sweeter her footstep sounds.

Sound o’ May winds in the blossoming trees,
Oh, not so sweet as her laugh that rings;
Song o’ wild birds on the morning breeze,
Birds and brooks and murmur o’ bees,
Sweeter her voice when she laughs or sings.

The rose o’ my heart is she; my dawn!
My star o’ the east, my moon above!
My soul takes ship for the Avalon
Of her heart of hearts, and shall sail on
Till 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 like scattered jewels lost:—
So in the sorrow of her soul the ghost
Of one great love, of iridescent ray,
Spanning the roses gray 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-colored blooms; its slender tongue and bill
Sucking the calyxed and the honeyed myrrhs,
Till, sick of sweets, to other flow’rs it whirrs:—
Such was his love that won her heart’s full bowers
To yield to him their all, their sweets in showers,
The flower from which he drank his body’s fill—
A flashing humming-bird among the flowers.

A moon, moth-white, that through far mists, like fleece,
Moves amber-girt into a bulk of black,
And, lost to sight, rims all 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 cease
Of time, through which its burning light comes back—
A moon, moth-white, that moves through mists like fleece.

A bolt of living thunder downward hurled,
Momental blazing from the piled-up storm,
That etches out the mountains and the ocean,
The towering rocks, 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 lagoon
Swoon in the moonlight’s mystic radiance,
I seem to walk like one deep in a trance
With old-world myths born of the mist and moon.

Lascivious eyes and mouths of sensual rose
Smile 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 hills
There falls a flutter as of beautiful feet,
As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet
To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills.

And then I feel her limbs will be revealed
Like some great snow-white moth among the trees;
Her vampire beauty, waiting there to seize
And drag me downward where my doom is sealed.

THE FARMSTEAD

Yes, I love the Farmstead. There
In the spring the lilacs blew
Plenteous perfume everywhere;
There in summer gladioles drew
Parallels of scarlet glare.

And the moon-hued primrose cool,
Satin-soft and redolent;
Honeysuckles beautiful,
Filling all the air with scent;
Roses red or white as wool.

Roses, glorious and lush,
Rich in tender-tinted dyes,
Like the gay tempestuous rush
Of unnumbered butterflies,
Clustering o’er each bending bush.

Here japonica and box,
And the wayward violets;
Clumps of star-enameled phlox,
And the myriad flowery jets
Of the twilight four-o’-clocks.

Ah, the beauty of the place!
When the June made one great rose,
Full of musk and mellow grace,
In the garden’s humming close,
Of her comely mother face!

Bubble-like the hollyhocks
Budded, burst, and flaunted wide
Gypsy beauty from their stocks;
Morning-glories, bubble-dyed,
Swung in honey-hearted flocks.

Tawny tiger-lilies flung
Doublets slashed with crimson on;
Graceful slave-girls, fair and young,
Like Circassians, in the sun
Alabaster lilies swung.

Ah, the droning of the bee;
In his dusty pantaloons
Tumbling in the fleurs-de-lis;
In the drowsy afternoons
Dreaming in the pink sweet-pea.

Ah, the moaning wildwood dove!
With its throat of amethyst
Rippled like a shining cove
Which a wind to pearl hath kissed,
Moaning, moaning of its love.

And the insects’ gossip thin—
From the summer hotness hid—
In lone, leafy deeps of green;
Then at eve the katydid
With its hard, unvaried din.

Often from the whispering hills,
Borne from out the golden dusk,—
Gold with gold of daffodils,—
Thrilled into the garden’s musk
The wild wail of whippoorwills.

From the purple-tangled trees,
Like the white, full heart of night,
Solemn with majestic peace,
Swam the big moon, veined with light,
Like some gorgeous golden-fleece.

She was there with me.—And who,
In the magic of the hour,
Had not sworn that they could view,
Beading on each blade and flower
Moony blisters of the dew?

And each fairy of our home,—
Firefly,—its taper lit
In the honey-scented gloam,
Dashing down the dusk with it
Like an instant-flaming foam.

And we heard the calling, calling,
Of the brown owl in the brake;
Where the trumpet-vine hung, crawling
Down the ledge, into the lake
Heard the sighing streamlet falling.

Then we wandered to the creek
Where the water-lilies, growing
Thick as stars, lay white and weak;
Or against the brooklet’s flowing
Stooped and bathed a bashful cheek.

And the moonlight, rippling golden,
Fell in virgin aureoles
On their bosoms, half-unfolden,
Where, it seemed, the fairies’ souls
Dreamed as perfume,—unbeholden;—

Lying sleeping, pearly-tented,
Baby-cribbed within each bud,
While the night-wind, pinewood-scented,
Swooning over field and flood,
Rocked them on the waters dented.

Then the low, melodious bell
Of a sleeping heifer tinkled,
In some berry-briered dell,
As her satin dewlap wrinkled
With the cud that made it swell.

And, returning home, we heard,
In a beech-tree at the gate,
Some brown, dream-behaunted bird,
Singing of its absent mate,
Of the mate that never heard.

And, you see, now I am gray,
Why within the old, old place,
With such memories, I stay:
Fancy out her absent face
Long since passed away.

She was mine—yes! still is mine:
And my frosty memory
Reels about her, as with wine
Warmed into young eyes that see
All the past that was divine.

Yes, I loved her, and have grown
Melancholy in that love,
And the memory alone
Of her loveliness whereof
She did sanctify each stone.

And where’er her flowers swing,
There she walks,—as if a bee
Fanned them with its airy wing,—
Down her garden, shadowy
In the hush the evenings bring.

THE BOY COLUMBUS

And he had mused on lands each bird,—
That winged from realms of Falerina,
O’er seas of the Enchanted Sword,—
In romance sang him, till he heard
Far foam on Islands of Alcina.

For rich Levant and old Castile
Let other seamen freight their galleys;
With Polo he and Mandeville
Through stranger seas a dreamy keel
Sailed into wonder-peopled valleys.

Far continents of flow’r and fruit,
Of everlasting spring; where fountains
’Mid flow’rs, with human faces, shoot;
Where races dwell, both man and brute,
In cities under golden mountains.

Where cataracts their thunders hurl
From heights the tempest has at mercy;
Vast peaks that touch the moon, and whirl
Wild torrents down of gold and pearl;
And forests strange as those of Circe.

Let rapiered Love lute, in the shade
Of royal gardens, to the Palace
And Court, that haunt the balustrade
Of terraces and still parade
Their vanity and guile and malice.

Him something calls, diviner yet
Than Love, more mighty than a lover;
Heroic Truth, that will not let
Deed lag; a purpose, westward set,
In eyes far-seeing to discover.

NORTH BEACH, FLORIDA