Poems

But when the day was done, she said,

“I wish that he would come!

Remember, Mary, if he calls

To-night––I’m not at home.”

So when he rang, she went––the elf!––

She went and let him in herself.

III.

They sang full long together

Their songs love-sweet, death-sad;

The robin woke from his slumber,

And rang out, clear and glad.

“Now go!” she coldly said; “’tis late;”

And followed him––to latch the gate.

He took the rosebud from her hair,

While, “You shall not!” she said;

He closed her hand within his own,

And, while her tongue forbade,

Her will was darkened in the eclipse

Of blinding love upon his lips.

I hear the music that was played,––

The songs that silence knows by heart!––

I see sweet burlesque feigning art,

The careless grace that curved and swayed

Through dances and through breezy walks;

I feel once more the eyes that smiled,

And that dear presence that beguiled

The pauses of the foolish talks,

When this poor phantom of perfume

Was the Sweet Clover’s living soul,

And breathed from her as if it stole,

Ah, heaven! from her heart in bloom!

II.

We have not many ways with pain:

We weep weak tears, or else we laugh;

I doubt, not less the cup we quaff,

And tears and scorn alike are vain.

But let me live my quiet life;

I will not vex my calm with grief,

I only know the pang was brief,

And there an end of hope and strife.

And thou? I put the letters by:

In years the sweetness shall not pass;

More than the perfect blossom was

I count its lingering memory.

Alas! with Time dear Love is dead,

And not with Fate. And who can guess

How weary of our happiness

We might have been if we were wed?

He must have been a king in his day

’Twere well to pleasure in work and sport:

One of the heaven-anointed sort

Who ruled his people with iron sway,

And knew that, through good and evil report,

God meant him to rule and them to obey.

There are many other likenesses

Of the king in his royal palace there;

You find him depicted everywhere,––

In his robes of state, in his hunting-dress,

In his flowing wig, in his powdered hair,––

A king in all of them, none the less;

But most himself in this on the wall

Over against his consort, whose

Laces, and hoops, and high-heeled shoes

Make her the finest lady of all

The queens or courtly dames you choose,

In the ancestral portrait hall.

A glorious blonde: a luxury

Of luring blue and wanton gold,

Of blanchéd rose and crimson bold,

Of lines that flow voluptuously

In tender, languorous curves to fold

Her form in perfect symmetry.

She might have been false. Of her withered dust

There scarcely would be enough to write

Her guilt in now; and the dead have a right

To our lenient doubt if not to our trust:

So if the truth cannot make her white,

Let us be as merciful as we––must.

II.

The queen died first, the queen died young,

But the king was very old when he died,

Rotten with license, and lust, and pride;

And the usual Virtues came and hung

Their cypress wreaths on his tomb, and wide

Throughout his kingdom his praise was sung.

How the queen died is not certainly known,

And faithful subjects are all forbid

To speak of the murder which some one did

One night while she slept in the dark alone:

History keeps the story hid,

And Fear only tells it in undertone.

Up from your startled feet aloof,

In the famous Echo-Room, with a bound

Leaps the echo, and round and round

Beating itself against the roof,––

A horrible, gasping, shuddering sound,––

Dies ere its terror can utter proof

Of that it knows. A door is fast,

And none is suffered to enter there.

His sacred majesty could not bear

To look at it toward the last,

As he grew very old. It opened where

The queen died young so many years past.

III.

How the queen died is not certainly known;

But in the palace’s solitude

A harking dread and horror brood,

And a silence, as if a mortal groan

Had been hushed the moment before, and would

Break forth again when you were gone.

The present king has never dwelt

In the desolate palace. From year to year

In the wide and stately garden drear

The snows and the snowy blossoms melt

Unheeded, and a ghastly fear

Through all the shivering leaves is felt.

By night the gathering shadows creep

Along the dusk and hollow halls,

And the slumber-broken palace calls

With stifled moans from its nightmare sleep;

And then the ghostly moonlight falls

Athwart the darkness brown and deep.

At early dawn the light wind sighs,

And through the desert garden blows

The wasted sweetness of the rose;

At noon the feverish sunshine lies

Sick in the walks. But at evening’s close,

When the last, long rays to the windows rise,

And with many a blood-red, wrathful streak

Pierce through the twilight glooms that blur

His cruel vigilance and her

Regard, they light fierce looks that wreak

A hopeless hate that cannot stir,

A voiceless hate that cannot speak

In the awful calm of the sleepless eyes;

And as if she saw her murderer glare

On her face, and he the white despair

Of his victim kindle in wild surmise,

Confronted the conscious pictures stare,––

And their secret back into darkness dies.

And by my hearthstone gay, as now sad in my garden, thou creakest,––

Thou wilt again give me all,––dew and fragrance and bloom?

Nay, little poet! full many a cricket I have that is willing,

If I but take him down out of his place on my shelf,

Me blither lays to sing than the blithest known to thy shrilling,

Full of the rapture of life, May, morn, hope, and––himself:

Leaving me only the sadder; for never one of my singers

Lures back the bee to his feast, calls back the bird to his tree.

Hast thou no art can make me believe, while the summer yet lingers,

Better than bloom that has been red leaf and sere that must be?

II.

O, I mind the tree in the meadow stood

By the road near the hill: when I clomb aloof

On its branches, this side of the girdled wood,

I could see the top of our cabin roof.

And, looking westward, could sweep the shores

Of the river where we used to swim

Under the ghostly sycamores,

Haunting the waters smooth and dim;

And eastward athwart the pasture-lot

And over the milk-white buckwheat field

I could see the stately elm, where I shot

The first black squirrel I ever killed.

And southward over the bottom-land

I could see the mellow breadths of farm

From the river-shores to the hills expand,

Clasped in the curving river’s arm.

In the fields we set our guileless snares

For rabbits and pigeons and wary quails,

Content with the vaguest feathers and hairs

From doubtful wings and vanished tails.

And in the blue summer afternoon

We used to sit in the mulberry-tree:

The breaths of wind that remembered June

Shook the leaves and glittering berries free;

And while we watched the wagons go

Across the river, along the road,

To the mill above, or the mill below,

With horses that stooped to the heavy load,

We told old stories and made new plans,

And felt our hearts gladden within us again,

For we did not dream that this life of a man’s

Could ever be what we know as men.

We sat so still that the woodpeckers came

And pillaged the berries overhead;

From his log the chipmonk, waxen tame,

Peered, and listened to what we said.

III.

One of us long ago was carried

To his grave on the hill above the tree;

One is a farmer there, and married;

One has wandered over the sea.

And, if you ask me, I hardly know

Whether I’d be the dead or the clown,––

The clod above or the clay below,––

Or this listless dust by fortune blown

To alien lands. For, however it is,

So little we keep with us in life:

At best we win only victories,

Not peace, not peace, O friend, in this strife.

But if I could turn from the long defeat

Of the little successes once more, and be

A boy, with the whole wide world at my feet,

Under the shade of the mulberry-tree,––

From the shame of the squandered chances, the sleep

Of the will that cannot itself awaken,

From the promise the future can never keep,

From the fitful purposes vague and shaken,––

Then, while the grasshopper sang out shrill

In the grass beneath the blanching thistle,

And the afternoon air, with a tender thrill,

Harked to the quail’s complaining whistle,––

Ah me! should I paint the morrows again

In quite the colors so faint to-day,

And with the imperial mulberry’s stain

Re-purple life’s doublet of hodden-gray?

Know again the losses of disillusion?

For the sake of the hope, have the old deceit?––

In spite of the question’s bitter infusion,

Don’t you find these mulberries over-sweet?

All our atoms are changed, they say;

And the taste is so different since then;

We live, but a world has passed away

With the years that perished to make us men.

“Ah, if beyond this gate the path united

Our steps as far as death,

And I might open it!––” His voice, affrighted

At its own daring, faltered under his breath.

Then she––whom both his faith and fear enchanted

Far beyond words to tell,

Feeling her woman’s finest wit had wanted

The art he had that knew to blunder so well––

Shyly drew near, a little step, and mocking,

“Shall we not be too late

For tea?” she said. “I’m quite worn out with walking:

Yes, thanks, your arm. And will you––open the gate?”

When the pheasant booms from your stealthy foot in the cornfield,

And the wild-pigeons feed, few and shy, in the scoke-berry bushes;

When the weary land lies hushed, like a seer in a vision,

And your life seems but the dream of a dream which you cannot remember,––

Broken, bewildering, vague, an echo that answers to nothing!

That time of year, you know. They stood by the gate in the meadow,

Fronting the sinking sun, and the level stream of its splendor

Crimsoned the meadow-slope and woodland with tenderest sunset,

Made her beautiful face like the luminous face of an angel,

Smote through the painéd gloom of his heart like a hurt to the sense, there.

Languidly clung about by the half-fallen shawl, and with folded

Hands, that held a few sad asters: “I sigh for this idyl

Lived at last to an end; and, looking on to my prose-life,”

With a smile, she said, and a subtle derision of manner,

“Better and better I seem, when I recollect all that has happened

Since I came here in June: the walks we have taken together

Through these darling meadows, and dear, old, desolate woodlands;

All our afternoon readings, and all our strolls through the moonlit

Village,––so sweetly asleep, one scarcely could credit the scandal,

Heartache, and trouble, and spite, that were hushed for the night, in its silence.

Yes, I am better. I think I could even be civil to him for his kindness,

Letting me come here without him.... But open the gate, Cousin Clement;

Seems to me it grows chill, and I think it is healthier in-doors.

––No, then I you need not speak, for I know well enough what is coming:

Bitter taunts for the past, and discouraging views of the future?

Tragedy, Cousin Clement, or comedy,––just as you like it;––

Only not here alone, but somewhere that people can see you.

Then I’ll take part in the play, and appear the remorseful young person

Full of divine regrets at not having smothered a genius

Under the feathers and silks of a foolish, extravagant woman.

O you selfish boy! what was it, just now, about anguish?

Bills would be your talk, Cousin Clement, if you were my husband.”

Then, with her summer-night glory of eyes low-bending upon him,

Dark’ning his thoughts as the pondered stars bewilder and darken,

Tenderly, wistfully drooping toward him, she faltered in whisper,––

All her mocking face transfigured,––with mournful effusion:

“Clement, do not think it is you alone that remember,––

Do not think it is you alone that have suffered. Ambition,

Fame, and your art,––you have all these things to console you.

I––what have I in this world? Since my child is dead––a bereavement.”

Sad hung her eyes on his, and he felt all the anger within him

Broken, and melting in tears. But he shrank from her touch while he answered

(Awkwardly, being a man, and awkwardly, being a lover),

“Yes, you know how it is done. You have cleverly fooled me beforetime,

With a dainty scorn, and then an imploring forgiveness!

Yes, you might play it, I think,––that rôle of remorseful young person,

That, or the old man’s darling, or anything else you attempted.

Even your earnest is so much like acting I fear a betrayal,

Trusting your speech. You say that you have not forgotten. I grant you––

Not, indeed, for your word––that is light––but I wish to believe you.

Well, I say, since you have not forgotten, forget now, forever!

I––I have lived and loved, and you have lived and have married.

Only receive this bud to remember me when we have parted,––

Thorns and splendor, no sweetness, rose of the love that I cherished!”

There he tore from its stalk the imperial flower of the thistle,

Tore, and gave to her, who took it with mocking obeisance,

Twined it in her hair, and said, with her subtle derision:

“You are a wiser man than I thought you could ever be, Clement,––

Sensible, almost. So! I’ll try to forget and remember.”

Lightly she took his arm, but on through the lane to the farm-house,

Mutely together they moved through the lonesome, odorous twilight.

II.

High on the farm-house hearth, the first autumn fire was kindled;

Scintillant hickory bark and dryest limbs of the beech-tree

Burned, where all summer long the boughs of asparagus flourished.

Wild were the children with mirth, and grouping and clinging together,

Danced with the dancing flame, and lithely swayed with its humor;

Ran to the window-panes, and peering forth into the darkness,

Saw there another room, flame-lit, and with frolicking children.

(Ah! by such phantom hearths, I think that we sit with our first-loves!)

Sometimes they tossed on the floor, and sometimes they hid in the corners,

Shouting and laughing aloud, and never resting a moment,

In the rude delight, the boisterous gladness of childhood,––

Cruel as summer sun and singing-birds to the heartsick.

Clement sat in his chair unmoved in the midst of the hubbub,

Rapt, with unseeing eyes; and unafraid in their gambols,

By his tawny beard the children caught him, and clambered

Over his knees, and waged a mimic warfare across them,

Made him their battle-ground, and won and lost kingdoms upon him.

Airily to and fro, and out of one room to another

Passed his cousin, and busied herself with things of the household,

Nonchalant, debonair, blithe, with bewitching housewifely importance,

Laying the cloth for the supper, and bringing the meal from the kitchen;

Fairer than ever she seemed, and more than ever she mocked him,

Coming behind his chair, and clasping her fingers together

Over his eyes in a girlish caprice, and crying, “Who is it?”

Vexed his despair with a vision of wife and of home and of children,

Calling his sister’s children around her, and stilling their clamor,

Making believe they were hers. And Clement sat moody and silent,

Blank to the wistful gaze of his mother bent on his visage

With the tender pain, the pitiful, helpless devotion

Of the mother that looks on the face of her son in his trouble,

Grown beyond her consoling, and knows that she cannot befriend him.

Then his cousin laughed, and in idleness talked with the children;

Sometimes she turned to him, and then when the thistle was falling,

Caught it and twined it again in her hair, and called it her keepsake,

Smiled, and made him ashamed of his petulant gift there, before them.

But, when the night was grown old and the two by the hearthstone together

Sat alone in the flickering red of the flame, and the cricket

Carked to the stillness, and ever, with sullen throbs of the pendule

Sighed the time-worn clock for the death of the days that were perished,––

It was her whim to be sad, and she brought him the book they were reading.

“Read it to-night,” she said, “that I may not seem to be going.”

Said, and mutely reproached him with all the pain she had wrought him.

From her hand he took the volume and read, and she listened,––

All his voice molten in secret tears, and ebbing and flowing,

Now with a faltering breath, and now with impassioned abandon,––

Read from the book of a poet the rhyme of the fatally sundered,

Fatally met too late, and their love was their guilt and their anguish,

But in the night they rose, and fled away into the darkness,

Glad of all dangers and shames, and even of death, for their love’s sake.

Then, when his voice brake hollowly, falling and fading to silence,

Thrilled in the silence they sat, and durst not behold one another,

Feeling that wild temptation, that tender, ineffable yearning,

Drawing them heart to heart. One blind, mad moment of passion

With their fate they strove; but out of the pang of the conflict,

Through such costly triumph as wins a waste and a famine,

Victors they came, and Love retrieved the error of loving.

So, foreknowing the years, and sharply discerning the future,

Guessing the riddle of life, and accepting the cruel solution,––

Side by side they sat, as far as the stars are asunder.

Carked the cricket no more, but while the audible silence

Shrilled in their ears, she, suddenly rising and dragging the thistle

Out of her clinging hair, laughed mockingly, casting it from her:

“Perish the thorns and splendor,––the bloom and the sweetness are perished.

Dreary, respectable calm, polite despair, and one’s Duty,––

These and the world, for dead Love!––The end of these modern romances!

Better than yonder rhyme?... Pleasant dreams and good night, Cousin Clement.”