Now the Lilac Tree's in Bud
Now the lilac tree's in bud,
And the morning birds are loud.
Now a stirring in the blood
Moves the heart of every crowd.
Word has gone abroad somewhere
Of a great impending change.
There's a message in the air
Of an import glad and strange.
Not an idler in the street,
But is better off to-day.
Not a traveller you meet,
But has something wise to say.
Now there's not a road too long,
Not a day that is not good,
Not a mile but hears a song
Lifted from the misty wood.
Down along the Silvermine
That's the blackbird's cheerful note!
You can see him flash and shine
With the scarlet on his coat.
Now the winds are soft with rain,
And the twilight has a spell,
Who from gladness could refrain
Or with olden sorrows dwell?
White Iris
White Iris was a princess
In a kingdom long ago,
Mysterious as moonlight
And silent as the snow.
She drew the world in wonder
And swayed it with desire,
Ere Babylon was builded
Or a stone laid in Tyre.
Yet here within my garden
Her loveliness appears,
Undimmed by any sorrow
Of all the tragic years.
How kind that earth should treasure
So beautiful a thing—
All mystical enchantment,
To stir our hearts in spring!
The Tree of Heaven
Young foreign-born Ailanthus,
Because he grew so fast,
We scorned his easy daring
And doubted it would last.
But lo, when autumn gathers
And all the woods are old,
He stands in green and salmon,
A glory to behold!
Among the ancient monarchs
His airy tent is spread.
His robe of coronation
Is tasseled rosy red.
With something strange and Eastern,
His height and grace proclaim
His lineage and title
Is that celestial name.
This is the Tree of Heaven,
Which seems to say to us,
"Behold how rife is beauty,
And how victorious!"
Peony
"Pionia virtutem habet occultam."
Arnoldus Villanova—1235-1313.
Arnoldus Villanova
Six hundred years ago
Said Peonies have magic,
And I believe it so.
There stands his learned dictum
Which any boy may read,
But he who learns the secret
Will be made wise indeed.
Astrologer and doctor
In the science of his day,
Have we so far outstripped him?
What more is there to say?
His medieval Latin
Records the truth for us,
Which I translate—virtutem
Habet occultam—thus:
She hath a deep-hid virtue
No other flower hath.
When summer comes rejoicing
A-down my garden path,
In opulence of color,
In robe of satin sheen,
She casts o'er all the hours
Her sorcery serene.
A subtile, heartening fragrance
Comes piercing the warm hush,
And from the greening woodland
I hear the first wild thrush.
They move my heart to pity
For all the vanished years,
With ecstasy of longing
And tenderness of tears.
By many names we call her,—
Pale exquisite Aurore,
Luxuriant Gismonda
Or sunny Couronne D'Or.
What matter,—Grandiflora,
A queen in some proud book,
Or sweet familiar Piny
With her old-fashioned look?
The crowding Apple blossoms
Above the orchard wall;
The Moonflower in August
When eerie nights befall;
Chrysanthemum in autumn,
Whose pageantries appear
With mystery and silence
To deck the dying year;
And many a mystic flower
Of the wildwood I have known,
But Pionia Arnoldi
Hath a transport all her own.
For Peony, my Peony,
Hath strength to make me whole,—
She gives her heart of beauty
For the healing of my soul.
Arnoldus Villanova,
Though earth is growing old,
As long as life has longing
Your guess at truth will hold.
Still works the hidden power
After a thousand springs,—
The medicine for heartache
That lurks in lovely things.
The Urban Pan
Once more the magic days are come
With stronger sun and milder air;
The shops are full of daffodils;
There's golden leisure everywhere.
I heard my Lou this morning shout:
"Here comes the hurdy-gurdy man!"
And through the open window caught
The piping of the urban Pan.
I laid my wintry task aside,
And took a day to follow joy:
The trail of beauty and the call
That lured me when I was a boy.
I looked, and there looked up at me
A smiling, swarthy, hairy man
With kindling eye—and well I knew
The piping of the urban Pan.
He caught my mood; his hat was off;
I tossed the ungrudged silver down.
The cunning vagrant, every year
He casts his spell upon the town!
And we must fling him, old and young,
Our dimes or coppers, as we can;
And every heart must leap to hear
The piping of the urban Pan.
The music swells and fades again,
And I in dreams am far away,
Where a bright river sparkles down
To meet a blue Aegean bay.
There, in the springtime of the world,
Are dancing fauns, and in their van,
Is one who pipes a deathless tune—
The earth-born and the urban Pan.
And so he follows down the block,
A troop of children in his train,
The light-foot dancers of the street
Enamored of the reedy strain.
I hear their laughter rise and ring
Above the noise of truck and van,
As down the mellow wind fades out
The piping of the urban Pan.
The Sailing of the Fleets
Now the spring is in the town,
Now the wind is in the tree,
And the wintered keels go down
To the calling of the sea.
Out from mooring, dock, and slip,
Through the harbor buoys they glide,
Drawing seaward till they dip
To the swirling of the tide.
One by one and two by two,
Down the channel turns they go,
Steering for the open blue
Where the salty great airs blow;
Craft of many a build and trim,
Every stitch of sail unfurled,
Till they hang upon the rim
Of the azure ocean world.
Who has ever, man or boy,
Seen the sea all flecked with gold,
And not longed to go with joy
Forth upon adventures bold?
Who could bear to stay indoor,
Now the wind is in the street,
For the creaking of the oar
And the tugging of the sheet!
Now the spring is in the town,
Who would not a rover be,
When the wintered keels go down
To the calling of the sea?
'Tis May now in New England
'Tis May now in New England
And through the open door
I see the creamy breakers,
I hear the hollow roar.
Back to the golden marshes
Comes summer at full tide,
But not the golden comrade
Who was the summer's pride.
In Early May
O my dear, the world to-day
Is more lovely than a dream!
Magic hints from far away
Haunt the woodland, and the stream
Murmurs in his rocky bed
Things that never can be said.
Starry dogwood is in flower,
Gleaming through the mystic woods.
It is beauty's perfect hour
In the wild spring solitudes.
Now the orchards in full blow
Shed their petals white as snow.
All the air is honey-sweet
With the lilacs white and red,
Where the blossoming branches meet
In an arbor overhead.
And the laden cherry trees
Murmur with the hum of bees.
All the earth is fairy green,
And the sunlight filmy gold,
Full of ecstasies unseen,
Full of mysteries untold.
Who would not be out-of-door,
Now the spring is here once more!
Fireflies
The fireflies across the dusk
Are flashing signals through the gloom—
Courageous messengers of light
That dare immensities of doom.
About the seeding meadow-grass,
Like busy watchmen in the street,
They come and go, they turn and pass,
Lighting the way for Beauty's feet.
Or up they float on viewless wings
To twinkle high among the trees,
And rival with soft glimmerings
The shining of the Pleiades.
The stars that wheel above the hill
Are not more wonderful to see,
Nor the great tasks that they fulfill
More needed in eternity.
The Path to Sankoty
It winds along the headlands
Above the open sea—
The lonely moorland footpath
That leads to Sankoty.
The crooning sea spreads sailless
And gray to the world's rim,
Where hang the reeking fog-banks
Primordial and dim.
There fret the ceaseless currents,
And the eternal tide
Chafes over hidden shallows
Where the white horses ride.
The wistful fragrant moorlands
Whose smile bids panic cease,
Lie treeless and cloud-shadowed
In grave and lonely peace.
Across their flowering bosom,
From the far end of day
Blow clean the great soft moor-winds
All sweet with rose and bay.
A world as large and simple
As first emerged for man,
Cleared for the human drama,
Before the play began.
O well the soul must treasure
The calm that sets it free—
The vast and tender skyline,
The sea-turn's wizardry,
Solace of swaying grasses,
The friendship of sweet-fern—
And in the world's confusion
Remembering, must yearn
To tread the moorland footpath
That leads to Sankoty,
Hearing the field-larks shrilling
Beside the sailless sea.
Off Monomoy
Have you sailed Nantucket Sound
By lightship, buoy, and bell,
And lain becalmed at noon
On an oily summer swell?
Lazily drooped the sail,
Moveless the pennant hung,
Sagging over the rail
Idle the main boom swung;
The sea, one mirror of shine
A single breath would destroy,
Save for the far low line
Of treacherous Monomoy.
Yet eastward there toward Spain,
What castled cities rise
From the Atlantic plain,
To our enchanted eyes!
Turret and spire and roof
Looming out of the sea,
Where the prosy chart gives proof
No cape nor isle can be!
Can a vision shine so clear
Wherein no substance dwells?
One almost harks to hear
The sound of the city's bells.
And yet no pealing notes
Within those belfries be,
Save echoes from the throats
Of ship-bells lost at sea.
For none shall anchor there
Save those who long of yore,
When tide and wind were fair,
Sailed and came back no more.
And none shall climb the stairs
Within those ghostly towers,
Save those for whom sad prayers
Went up through fateful hours.
O image of the world,
O mirage of the sea,
Cloud-built and foam-impearled.
What sorcery fashioned thee?
What architect of dream,
What painter of desire,
Conceived that fairy scheme
Touched with fantastic fire?
Even so our city of hope
We mortal dreamers rear
Upon the perilous slope
Above the deep of fear;
Leaving half-known the good
Our kindly earth bestows,
For the feigned beatitude
Of a future no man knows.
Lord of the summer sea,
Whose tides are in thy hand,
Into immensity
The vision at thy command
Fades now, and leaves no sign,—
No light nor bell nor buoy,—
Only the faint low line
Of dangerous Monomoy.
In St. Germain Street
Through the street of St. Germain
March the tattered hosts of rain,
While the wind with vagrant fife
Whips their chilly ranks to life.
From the window I can see
Their ghostly banners blowing free,
As they pass to where the ships
Crowd about the wharves and slips.
There at day's end they embark
To invade the realms of dark,
And the sun comes out again
In the street of St. Germain.
Pan in the Catskills
They say that he is dead, and now no more
The reedy syrinx sounds among the hills,
When the long summer heat is on the land.
But I have heard the Catskill thrushes sing,
And therefore am incredulous of death,
Of pain and sorrow and mortality.
In these blue cañons, deep with hemlock shade,
In solitudes of twilight or of dawn,
I have been rapt away from time and care
By the enchantment of a golden strain
As pure as ever pierced the Thracian wild,
Filling the listener with a mute surmise.
At evening and at morning I have gone
Down the cool trail between the beech-tree boles,
And heard the haunting music of the wood
Ring through the silence of the dark ravine,
Flooding the earth with beauty and with joy
And all the ardors of creation old.
And then within my pagan heart awoke
Remembrance of far-off and fabled years
In the untarnished sunrise of the world,
When clear-eyed Hellas in her rapture heard
A slow mysterious piping wild and keen
Thrill through her vales, and whispered, "It is Pan!"
A New England June
These things I remember
Of New England June,
Like a vivid day-dream
In the azure noon,
While one haunting figure
Strays through every scene,
Like the soul of beauty
Through her lost demesne.
Gardens full of roses
And peonies a-blow
In the dewy morning,
Row on stately row,
Spreading their gay patterns,
Crimson, pied and cream,
Like some gorgeous fresco
Or an Eastern dream.
Nets of waving sunlight
Falling through the trees;
Fields of gold-white daisies
Rippling in the breeze;
Lazy lifting groundswells,
Breaking green as jade
On the lilac beaches,
Where the shore-birds wade.
Orchards full of blossom,
Where the bob-white calls
And the honeysuckle
Climbs the old gray walls;
Groves of silver birches,
Beds of roadside fern,
In the stone-fenced pasture
At the river's turn.
Out of every picture
Still she comes to me
With the morning freshness
Of the summer sea,—
A glory in her bearing,
A sea-light in her eyes,
As if she could not forget
The spell of Paradise.
Thrushes in the deep woods,
With their golden themes,
Fluting like the choirs
At the birth of dreams.
Fireflies in the meadows
At the gate of Night,
With their fairy lanterns
Twinkling soft and bright.
Ah, not in the roses,
Nor the azure noon,
Nor the thrushes' music,
Lies the soul of June.
It is something finer,
More unfading far,
Than the primrose evening
And the silver star;
Something of the rapture
My beloved had,
When she made the morning
Radiant and glad,—
Something of her gracious
Ecstasy of mien,
That still haunts the twilight,
Loving though unseen.
When the ghostly moonlight
Walks my garden ground,
Like a leisurely patrol
On his nightly round,
These things I remember
Of the long ago,
While the slumbrous roses
Neither care nor know.
The Tent of Noon
Behold, now, where the pageant of high June
Halts in the glowing noon!
The trailing shadows rest on plain and hill;
The bannered hosts are still,
While over forest crown and mountain head
The azure tent is spread.
The song is hushed in every woodland throat;
Moveless the lilies float;
Even the ancient ever-murmuring sea
Sighs only fitfully;
The cattle drowse in the field-corner's shade;
Peace on the world is laid.
It is the hour when Nature's caravan,
That bears the pilgrim Man
Across the desert of uncharted time
To his far hope sublime,
Rests in the green oasis of the year,
As if the end drew near.
Ah, traveller, hast thou naught of thanks or praise
For these fleet halcyon days?—
No courage to uplift thee from despair
Born with the breath of prayer?
Then turn thee to the lilied field once more!
God stands in his tent door.
Children of Dream
The black ash grows in the swampy ground,
The white ash in the dry;
The thrush he holds to the woodland bound,
The hawk to the open sky.
The trout he runs to the mountain brook,
The swordfish keeps the sea;
The brown bear knows where the blueberry grows.
The clover calls the bee.
The locust sings in the August noon,
The frog in the April night;
The iris loves the meadow-land,
The laurel loves the height.
And each will hold his tenure old
Of earth and sun and stream,
For all are creatures of desire
And children of a dream.
Roadside Flowers
We are the roadside flowers,
Straying from garden grounds,—
Lovers of idle hours,
Breakers of ordered bounds.
If only the earth will feed us,
If only the wind be kind,
We blossom for those who need us,
The stragglers left behind.
And lo, the Lord of the Garden,
He makes his sun to rise,
And his rain to fall with pardon
On our dusty paradise.
On us he has laid the duty,—
The task of the wandering breed,—
To better the world with beauty,
Wherever the way may lead.
Who shall inquire of the season,
Or question the wind where it blows?
We blossom and ask no reason.
The Lord of the Garden knows.
The Garden of Saint Rose
This is a holy refuge,
The garden of Saint Rose,
A fragrant altar to that peace
The world no longer knows.
Below a solemn hillside,
Within the folding shade
Of overhanging beech and pine
Its walls and walks are laid.
Cool through the heat of summer,
Still as a sacred grove,
It has the rapt unworldly air
Of mystery and love.
All day before its outlook
The mist-blue mountains loom,
And in its trees at tranquil dusk
The early stars will bloom.
Down its enchanted borders
Glad ranks of color stand,
Like hosts of silent seraphim
Awaiting love's command.
Lovely in adoration
They wait in patient line,
Snow-white and purple and deep gold
About the rose-gold shrine.
And there they guard the silence,
While still from her recess
Through sun and shade Saint Rose looks down
In mellow loveliness.
She seems to say, "O stranger,
Behold how loving care
That gives its life for beauty's sake,
Makes everything more fair!
"Then praise the Lord of gardens
For tree and flower and vine,
And bless all gardeners who have wrought
A resting place like mine!"
The World Voice
I heard the summer sea
Murmuring to the shore
Some endless story of a wrong
The whole world must deplore.
I heard the mountain wind
Conversing with the trees
Of an old sorrow of the hills,
Mysterious as the sea's.
And all that haunted day
It seemed that I could hear
The echo of an ancient speech
Ring in my listening ear.
And then it came to me,
That all that I had heard
Was my own heart in the sea's voice
And the wind's lonely word.
Songs of the Grass
I
ON THE DUNES.
Here all night on the dunes
In the rocking wind we sleep,
Watched by sentry stars,
Lulled by the drone of the deep.
Till hark, in the chill of the dawn
A field lark wakes and cries,
And over the floor of the sea
We watch the round sun rise.
The world is washed once more
In a tide of purple and gold,
And the heart of the land is filled
With desires and dreams untold.
II
LORD OF MORNING.
Lord of morning, light of day,
Sacred color-kindling sun,
We salute thee in the way,—
Pilgrims robed in rose and dun.
For thou art a pilgrim too,
Overlord of all our band.
In thy fervor we renew
Quests we do not understand.
At thy summons we arise,
At thy touch put glory on.
And with glad unanxious eyes
Take the journey thou hast gone.
III
THE TRAVELLER.
Before the night-blue fades
And the stars are quite gone,
I lift my head
At the noiseless tread
Of the angel of dawn.
I hear no word, yet my heart
Is beating apace;
Then in glory all still
On the eastern hill
I behold his face.
All day through the world he goes,
Making glad, setting free;
Then his day's work done,
On the galleon sun
He sinks in the sea.
The Choristers
When earth was finished and fashioned well,
There was never a musical note to tell
How glad God was, save the voice of the rain
And the sea and the wind on the lonely plain
And the rivers among the hills.
And so God made the marvellous birds
For a choir of joy transcending words,
That the world might hear and comprehend
How rhythm and harmony can mend
The spirits' hurts and ills.
He filled their tiny bodies with fire,
He taught them love for their chief desire,
And gave them the magic of wings to be
His celebrants over land and sea,
Wherever man might dwell.
And to each he apportioned a fragment of song—
Those broken melodies that belong
To the seraphs' chorus, that we might learn
The healing of gladness and discern
In beauty how all is well.
So music dwells in the glorious throats
Forever, and the enchanted notes
Fall with rapture upon our ears,
Moving our hearts to joy and tears
For things we cannot say.
In the wilds the whitethroat sings in the rain
His pure, serene, half-wistful strain;
And when twilight falls the sleeping hills
Ring with the cry of the whippoorwills
In the blue dusk far away.
In the great white heart of the winter storm
The chickadee sings, for his heart is warm,
And his note is brave to rally the soul
From doubt and panic to self-control
And elation that knows no fear.
The bluebird comes with the winds of March,
Like a shred of sky on the naked larch;
The redwing follows the April rain
To whistle contentment back again
With his sturdy call of cheer.
The orioles revel through orchard boughs
In their coats of gold for spring's carouse;
In shadowy pastures the bobwhites call,
And the flute of the thrush has a melting fall
Under the evening star.
On the verge of June when peonies blow
And joy comes back to the world we know,
The bobolinks fill the fields of light
With a tangle of music silver-bright
To tell how glad they are.
The tiny warblers fill summer trees
With their exquisite lesser litanies;
The tanager in his scarlet coat
In the hemlock pours from a vibrant throat
His canticle of the sun.
The loon on the lake, the hawk in the sky,
And the sea-gull—each has a piercing cry,
Like outposts set in the lonely vast
To cry "all's well" as Time goes past
And another hour is gone.
But of all the music in God's plan
Of a mystical symphony for man,
I shall remember best of all—
Whatever hereafter may befall
Or pass and cease to be—
The hermit's hymn in the solitudes
Of twilight through the mountain woods,
And the field-larks crying about our doors
On the soft sweet wind across the moors
At morning by the sea.
The Weed's Counsel
Said a traveller by the way
Pausing, "What hast thou to say,
Flower by the dusty road,
That would ease a mortal's load?"
Traveller, hearken unto me!
I will tell thee how to see
Beauties in the earth and sky
Hidden from the careless eye.
I will tell thee how to hear
Nature's music wild and clear,—
Songs of midday and of dark
Such as many never mark,
Lyrics of creation sung
Ever since the world was young.
And thereafter thou shalt know
Neither weariness nor woe.
Thou shalt see the dawn unfold
Artistries of rose and gold,
And the sunbeams on the sea
Dancing with the wind for glee.
The red lilies of the moors
Shall be torches on the floors,
Where the field-lark lifts his cry
To rejoice the passer-by,
In a wide world rimmed with blue
Lovely as when time was new.
And thereafter thou shalt fare
Light of foot and free from care.
I will teach thee how to find
Lost enchantments of the mind
All about thee, never guessed
By indifferent unrest.
Thy distracted thought shall learn
Patience from the roadside fern,
And a sweet philosophy
From the flowering locust tree,—
While thy heart shall not disdain
The consolation of the rain.
Not an acre but shall give
Of its strength to help thee live.
With the many-wintered sun
Shall thy hardy course be run.
And the bright new moon shall be
A lamp to thy felicity.
When green-mantled spring shall come
Past thy door with flute and drum,
And when over wood and swamp
Autumn trails her scarlet pomp,
No misgiving shalt thou know,
Passing glad to rise and go.
So thy days shall be unrolled
Like a wondrous cloth of gold.
When gray twilight with her star
Makes a heaven that is not far,
Touched with shadows and with dreams,
Thou shalt hear the woodland streams
Singing through the starry night
Holy anthems of delight.
So the ecstasy of earth
Shall refresh thee as at birth,
And thou shalt arise each morn
Radiant with a soul reborn.
And this wisdom of a day
None shall ever take away.
What the secret, what the clew
The wayfarer must pursue?
Only one thing he must have
Who would share these transports brave.
Love within his heart must dwell
Like a bubbling roadside well,
For a spring to quicken thought,
Else my counsel comes to naught.
For without that quickening trust
We are less than roadside dust.
This, O traveller, is my creed,—
All the wisdom of the weed!
Then the traveller set his pack
Once more on his dusty back,
And trudged on for many a mile
Fronting fortune with a smile.
The Blue Heron
I see the great blue heron
Rising among the reeds
And floating down the wind,
Like a gliding sail
With the set of the stream.
I hear the two-horse mower
Clacking among the hay,
In the heat of a July noon,
And the driver's voice
As he turns his team.
I see the meadow lilies
Flecked with their darker tan,
The elms, and the great white clouds;
And all the world
Is a passing dream.
Woodland Rain
Shining, shining children
Of the summer rain,
Racing down the valley,
Sweeping o'er the plain!
Rushing through the forest,
Pelting on the leaves,
Drenching down the meadow
With its standing sheaves;
Robed in royal silver,
Girt with jewels gay,
With a gust of gladness
You pass upon your way.
Fresh, ah, fresh behind you,
Sunlit and impearled,
As it was in Eden,
Lies the lovely world!
Summer Storm
The hilltop trees are bowing
Under the coming of storm.
The low, gray clouds are trailing
Like squadrons that sweep and form,
With their ammunition of rain.
Then the trumpeter wind gives signal
To unlimber the viewless guns;
The cattle huddle together;
Indoors the farmer runs;
And the first shot lashes the pane.
They charge through the quiet orchard;
One pear tree is snapped like a wand;
As they sweep from the shattered hillside,
Ruffling the blackened pond,
Ere the sun takes the field again.
Dance of the Sunbeams
When morning is high o'er the hilltops,
On river and stream and lake,
Wherever a young breeze whispers,
The sun-clad dancers wake.
One after one up-springing,
They flash from their dim retreat.
Merry as running laughter
Is the news of their twinkling feet.
Over the floors of azure
Wherever the wind-flaws run,
Sparkling, leaping, and racing,
Their antics scatter the sun.
As long as water ripples
And weather is clear and glad,
Day after day they are dancing,
Never a moment sad.
But when through the field of heaven
The wings of storm take flight,
At a touch of the flying shadows
They falter and slip from sight.
Until at the gray day's ending,
As the squadrons of cloud retire,
They pass in the triumph of sunset
With banners of crimson fire.