Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete / Volume II of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier

     A sound as if from bells of silver,
     Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
     Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.

     A brightness which outshines the morning,
     A splendor brooking no delay,
     Beckons and tempts my feet away.

     I leave the trodden village highway
     For virgin snow-paths glimmering through
     A jewelled elm-tree avenue;

     Where, keen against the walls of sapphire,
     The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed,
     Hold up their chandeliers of frost.

     I tread in Orient halls enchanted,
     I dream the Saga's dream of caves
     Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves!

     I walk the land of Eldorado,
     I touch its mimic garden bowers,
     Its silver leaves and diamond flowers!

     The flora of the mystic mine-world
     Around me lifts on crystal stems
     The petals of its clustered gems!

     What miracle of weird transforming
     In this wild work of frost and light,
     This glimpse of glory infinite!

     This foregleam of the Holy City
     Like that to him of Patmos given,
     The white bride coming down from heaven!

     How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders,
     Through what sharp-glancing spears of reeds
     The brook its muffled water leads!

     Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb,
     Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire
     Rays out from every grassy spire.

     Each slender rush and spike of mullein,
     Low laurel shrub and drooping fern,
     Transfigured, blaze where'er I turn.

     How yonder Ethiopian hemlock
     Crowned with his glistening circlet stands!
     What jewels light his swarthy hands!

     Here, where the forest opens southward,
     Between its hospitable pines,
     As through a door, the warm sun shines.

     The jewels loosen on the branches,
     And lightly, as the soft winds blow,
     Fall, tinkling, on the ice below.

     And through the clashing of their cymbals
     I hear the old familiar fall
     Of water down the rocky wall,

     Where, from its wintry prison breaking,
     In dark and silence hidden long,
     The brook repeats its summer song.

     One instant flashing in the sunshine,
     Keen as a sabre from its sheath,
     Then lost again the ice beneath.

     I hear the rabbit lightly leaping,
     The foolish screaming of the jay,
     The chopper's axe-stroke far away;

     The clamor of some neighboring barn-yard,
     The lazy cock's belated crow,
     Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow.

     And, as in some enchanted forest
     The lost knight hears his comrades sing,
     And, near at hand, their bridles ring,—

     So welcome I these sounds and voices,
     These airs from far-off summer blown,
     This life that leaves me not alone.

     For the white glory overawes me;
     The crystal terror of the seer
     Of Chebar's vision blinds me here.

     Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven!
     Thou stainless earth, lay not on me,
     Thy keen reproach of purity,

     If, in this August presence-chamber,
     I sigh for summer's leaf-green gloom
     And warm airs thick with odorous bloom!

     Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble,
     And let the loosened tree-boughs swing,
     Till all their bells of silver ring.

     Shine warmly down, thou sun of noontime,
     On this chill pageant, melt and move
     The winter's frozen heart with love.

     And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing,
     Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze
     Thy prophecy of summer days.

     Come with thy green relief of promise,
     And to this dead, cold splendor bring
     The living jewels of the spring!

     1869.

     The time of gifts has come again,
     And, on my northern window-pane,
     Outlined against the day's brief light,
     A Christmas token hangs in sight.

     The wayside travellers, as they pass,
     Mark the gray disk of clouded glass;
     And the dull blankness seems, perchance,
     Folly to their wise ignorance.

     They cannot from their outlook see
     The perfect grace it hath for me;
     For there the flower, whose fringes through
     The frosty breath of autumn blew,
     Turns from without its face of bloom
     To the warm tropic of my room,
     As fair as when beside its brook
     The hue of bending skies it took.

     So from the trodden ways of earth,
     Seem some sweet souls who veil their worth,
     And offer to the careless glance
     The clouding gray of circumstance.
     They blossom best where hearth-fires burn,
     To loving eyes alone they turn
     The flowers of inward grace, that hide
     Their beauty from the world outside.

     But deeper meanings come to me,
     My half-immortal flower, from thee!
     Man judges from a partial view,
     None ever yet his brother knew;
     The Eternal Eye that sees the whole
     May better read the darkened soul,
     And find, to outward sense denied,
     The flower upon its inmost side

     1872.

     The river hemmed with leaning trees
     Wound through its meadows green;
     A low, blue line of mountains showed
     The open pines between.

     One sharp, tall peak above them all
     Clear into sunlight sprang
     I saw the river of my dreams,
     The mountains that I sang!

     No clue of memory led me on,
     But well the ways I knew;
     A feeling of familiar things
     With every footstep grew.

     Not otherwise above its crag
     Could lean the blasted pine;
     Not otherwise the maple hold
     Aloft its red ensign.

     So up the long and shorn foot-hills
     The mountain road should creep;
     So, green and low, the meadow fold
     Its red-haired kine asleep.

     The river wound as it should wind;
     Their place the mountains took;
     The white torn fringes of their clouds
     Wore no unwonted look.

     Yet ne'er before that river's rim
     Was pressed by feet of mine,
     Never before mine eyes had crossed
     That broken mountain line.

     A presence, strange at once and known,
     Walked with me as my guide;
     The skirts of some forgotten life
     Trailed noiseless at my side.

     Was it a dim-remembered dream?
     Or glimpse through aeons old?
     The secret which the mountains kept
     The river never told.

     But from the vision ere it passed
     A tender hope I drew,
     And, pleasant as a dawn of spring,
     The thought within me grew,

     That love would temper every change,
     And soften all surprise,
     And, misty with the dreams of earth,
     The hills of Heaven arise.

     1873.

     We saw the slow tides go and come,
     The curving surf-lines lightly drawn,
     The gray rocks touched with tender bloom
     Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn.

     We saw in richer sunsets lost
     The sombre pomp of showery noons;
     And signalled spectral sails that crossed
     The weird, low light of rising moons.

     On stormy eves from cliff and head
     We saw the white spray tossed and spurned;
     While over all, in gold and red,
     Its face of fire the lighthouse turned.

     The rail-car brought its daily crowds,
     Half curious, half indifferent,
     Like passing sails or floating clouds,
     We saw them as they came and went.

     But, one calm morning, as we lay
     And watched the mirage-lifted wall
     Of coast, across the dreamy bay,
     And heard afar the curlew call,

     And nearer voices, wild or tame,
     Of airy flock and childish throng,
     Up from the water's edge there came
     Faint snatches of familiar song.

     Careless we heard the singer's choice
     Of old and common airs; at last
     The tender pathos of his voice
     In one low chanson held us fast.

     A song that mingled joy and pain,
     And memories old and sadly sweet;
     While, timing to its minor strain,
     The waves in lapsing cadence beat.

            .     .     .     .     .

     The waves are glad in breeze and sun;
     The rocks are fringed with foam;
     I walk once more a haunted shore,
     A stranger, yet at home,
     A land of dreams I roam.

     Is this the wind, the soft sea wind
     That stirred thy locks of brown?
     Are these the rocks whose mosses knew
     The trail of thy light gown,
     Where boy and girl sat down?

     I see the gray fort's broken wall,
     The boats that rock below;
     And, out at sea, the passing sails
     We saw so long ago
     Rose-red in morning's glow.

     The freshness of the early time
     On every breeze is blown;
     As glad the sea, as blue the sky,—
     The change is ours alone;
     The saddest is my own.

     A stranger now, a world-worn man,
     Is he who bears my name;
     But thou, methinks, whose mortal life
     Immortal youth became,
     Art evermore the same.

     Thou art not here, thou art not there,
     Thy place I cannot see;
     I only know that where thou art
     The blessed angels be,
     And heaven is glad for thee.

     Forgive me if the evil years
     Have left on me their sign;
     Wash out, O soul so beautiful,
     The many stains of mine
     In tears of love divine!

     I could not look on thee and live,
     If thou wert by my side;
     The vision of a shining one,
     The white and heavenly bride,
     Is well to me denied.

     But turn to me thy dear girl-face
     Without the angel's crown,
     The wedded roses of thy lips,
     Thy loose hair rippling down
     In waves of golden brown.

     Look forth once more through space and time,
     And let thy sweet shade fall
     In tenderest grace of soul and form
     On memory's frescoed wall,
     A shadow, and yet all!

     Draw near, more near, forever dear!
     Where'er I rest or roam,
     Or in the city's crowded streets,
     Or by the blown sea foam,
     The thought of thee is home!

            .     .     .    .    .

     At breakfast hour the singer read
     The city news, with comment wise,
     Like one who felt the pulse of trade
     Beneath his finger fall and rise.

     His look, his air, his curt speech, told
     The man of action, not of books,
     To whom the corners made in gold
     And stocks were more than seaside nooks.

     Of life beneath the life confessed
     His song had hinted unawares;
     Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed,
     Of human hearts in bulls and bears.

     But eyes in vain were turned to watch
     That face so hard and shrewd and strong;
     And ears in vain grew sharp to catch
     The meaning of that morning song.

     In vain some sweet-voiced querist sought
     To sound him, leaving as she came;
     Her baited album only caught
     A common, unromantic name.

     No word betrayed the mystery fine,
     That trembled on the singer's tongue;
     He came and went, and left no sign
     Behind him save the song he sung.

     1874.

     The summer warmth has left the sky,
     The summer songs have died away;
     And, withered, in the footpaths lie
     The fallen leaves, but yesterday
     With ruby and with topaz gay.

     The grass is browning on the hills;
     No pale, belated flowers recall
     The astral fringes of the rills,
     And drearily the dead vines fall,
     Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall.

     Yet through the gray and sombre wood,
     Against the dusk of fir and pine,
     Last of their floral sisterhood,
     The hazel's yellow blossoms shine,
     The tawny gold of Afric's mine!

     Small beauty hath my unsung flower,
     For spring to own or summer hail;
     But, in the season's saddest hour,
     To skies that weep and winds that wail
     Its glad surprisals never fail.

     O days grown cold! O life grown old
     No rose of June may bloom again;
     But, like the hazel's twisted gold,
     Through early frost and latter rain
     Shall hints of summer-time remain.

     And as within the hazel's bough
     A gift of mystic virtue dwells,
     That points to golden ores below,
     And in dry desert places tells
     Where flow unseen the cool, sweet wells,

     So, in the wise Diviner's hand,
     Be mine the hazel's grateful part
     To feel, beneath a thirsty land,
     The living waters thrill and start,
     The beating of the rivulet's heart!

     Sufficeth me the gift to light
     With latest bloom the dark, cold days;
     To call some hidden spring to sight
     That, in these dry and dusty ways,
     Shall sing its pleasant song of praise.

     O Love! the hazel-wand may fail,
     But thou canst lend the surer spell,
     That, passing over Baca's vale,
     Repeats the old-time miracle,
     And makes the desert-land a well.

     1874.

     A gold fringe on the purpling hem
     Of hills the river runs,
     As down its long, green valley falls
     The last of summer's suns.

     Along its tawny gravel-bed
     Broad-flowing, swift, and still,
     As if its meadow levels felt
     The hurry of the hill,
     Noiseless between its banks of green
     From curve to curve it slips;
     The drowsy maple-shadows rest
     Like fingers on its lips.

     A waif from Carroll's wildest hills,
     Unstoried and unknown;
     The ursine legend of its name
     Prowls on its banks alone.
     Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn
     As ever Yarrow knew,
     Or, under rainy Irish skies,
     By Spenser's Mulla grew;
     And through the gaps of leaning trees
     Its mountain cradle shows
     The gold against the amethyst,
     The green against the rose.

     Touched by a light that hath no name,
     A glory never sung,
     Aloft on sky and mountain wall
     Are God's great pictures hung.
     How changed the summits vast and old!
     No longer granite-browed,
     They melt in rosy mist; the rock
     Is softer than the cloud;
     The valley holds its breath; no leaf
     Of all its elms is twirled
     The silence of eternity
     Seems falling on the world.

     The pause before the breaking seals
     Of mystery is this;
     Yon miracle-play of night and day
     Makes dumb its witnesses.
     What unseen altar crowns the hills
     That reach up stair on stair?
     What eyes look through, what white wings fan
     These purple veils of air?
     What Presence from the heavenly heights
     To those of earth stoops down?
     Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods
     On Ida's snowy crown!

     Slow fades the vision of the sky,
     The golden water pales,
     And over all the valley-land
     A gray-winged vapor sails.
     I go the common way of all;
     The sunset fires will burn,
     The flowers will blow, the river flow,
     When I no more return.
     No whisper from the mountain pine
     Nor lapsing stream shall tell
     The stranger, treading where I tread,
     Of him who loved them well.

     But beauty seen is never lost,
     God's colors all are fast;
     The glory of this sunset heaven
     Into my soul has passed,
     A sense of gladness unconfined
     To mortal date or clime;
     As the soul liveth, it shall live
     Beyond the years of time.
     Beside the mystic asphodels
     Shall bloom the home-born flowers,
     And new horizons flush and glow
     With sunset hues of ours.

     Farewell! these smiling hills must wear
     Too soon their wintry frown,
     And snow-cold winds from off them shake
     The maple's red leaves down.
     But I shall see a summer sun
     Still setting broad and low;
     The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom,
     The golden water flow.
     A lover's claim is mine on all
     I see to have and hold,—
     The rose-light of perpetual hills,
     And sunsets never cold!

     1876

     They left their home of summer ease
     Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
     To seek, by ways unknown to all,
     The promise of the waterfall.

     Some vague, faint rumor to the vale
     Had crept—perchance a hunter's tale—
     Of its wild mirth of waters lost
     On the dark woods through which it tossed.

     Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere
     Whirled in mad dance its misty hair;
     But who had raised its veil, or seen
     The rainbow skirts of that Undine?

     They sought it where the mountain brook
     Its swift way to the valley took;
     Along the rugged slope they clomb,
     Their guide a thread of sound and foam.

     Height after height they slowly won;
     The fiery javelins of the sun
     Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade
     With rock and vine their steps delayed.

     But, through leaf-openings, now and then
     They saw the cheerful homes of men,
     And the great mountains with their wall
     Of misty purple girdling all.

     The leaves through which the glad winds blew
     Shared the wild dance the waters knew;
     And where the shadows deepest fell
     The wood-thrush rang his silver bell.

     Fringing the stream, at every turn
     Swung low the waving fronds of fern;
     From stony cleft and mossy sod
     Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod.

     And still the water sang the sweet,
     Glad song that stirred its gliding feet,
     And found in rock and root the keys
     Of its beguiling melodies.

     Beyond, above, its signals flew
     Of tossing foam the birch-trees through;
     Now seen, now lost, but baffling still
     The weary seekers' slackening will.

     Each called to each: "Lo here! Lo there!
     Its white scarf flutters in the air!"
     They climbed anew; the vision fled,
     To beckon higher overhead.

     So toiled they up the mountain-slope
     With faint and ever fainter hope;
     With faint and fainter voice the brook
     Still bade them listen, pause, and look.

     Meanwhile below the day was done;
     Above the tall peaks saw the sun
     Sink, beam-shorn, to its misty set
     Behind the hills of violet.

     "Here ends our quest!" the seekers cried,
     "The brook and rumor both have lied!
     The phantom of a waterfall
     Has led us at its beck and call."

     But one, with years grown wiser, said
     "So, always baffled, not misled,
     We follow where before us runs
     The vision of the shining ones.

     "Not where they seem their signals fly,
     Their voices while we listen die;
     We cannot keep, however fleet,
     The quick time of their winged feet.

     "From youth to age unresting stray
     These kindly mockers in our way;
     Yet lead they not, the baffling elves,
     To something better than themselves?

     "Here, though unreached the goal we sought,
     Its own reward our toil has brought:
     The winding water's sounding rush,
     The long note of the hermit thrush,

     "The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of pond
     And river track, and, vast, beyond
     Broad meadows belted round with pines,
     The grand uplift of mountain lines!

     "What matter though we seek with pain
     The garden of the gods in vain,
     If lured thereby we climb to greet
     Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet?

     "To seek is better than to gain,
     The fond hope dies as we attain;
     Life's fairest things are those which seem,
     The best is that of which we dream.

     "Then let us trust our waterfall
     Still flashes down its rocky wall,
     With rainbow crescent curved across
     Its sunlit spray from moss to moss.

     "And we, forgetful of our pain,
     In thought shall seek it oft again;
     Shall see this aster-blossomed sod,
     This sunshine of the golden-rod,

     "And haply gain, through parting boughs,
     Grand glimpses of great mountain brows
     Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen
     Of lakes deep set in valleys green.

     "So failure wins; the consequence
     Of loss becomes its recompense;
     And evermore the end shall tell
     The unreached ideal guided well.

     "Our sweet illusions only die
     Fulfilling love's sure prophecy;
     And every wish for better things
     An undreamed beauty nearer brings.

     "For fate is servitor of love;
     Desire and hope and longing prove
     The secret of immortal youth,
     And Nature cheats us into truth.

     "O kind allurers, wisely sent,
     Beguiling with benign intent,
     Still move us, through divine unrest,
     To seek the loveliest and the best!

     "Go with us when our souls go free,
     And, in the clear, white light to be,
     Add unto Heaven's beatitude
     The old delight of seeking good!"

     1878.

     I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made
     Against the bitter East their barricade,
     And, guided by its sweet
     Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,
     The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell
     Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.

     From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines
     Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines
     Lifted their glad surprise,
     While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees
     His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze,
     And snow-drifts lingered under April skies.

     As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent,
     I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,
     Which yet find room,
     Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
     To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day
     And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.

     1879.

     Though flowers have perished at the touch
     Of Frost, the early comer,
     I hail the season loved so much,
     The good St. Martin's summer.

     O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn,
     And thin moon curving o'er it!
     The old year's darling, latest born,
     More loved than all before it!

     How flamed the sunrise through the pines!
     How stretched the birchen shadows,
     Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines
     The westward sloping meadows!

     The sweet day, opening as a flower
     Unfolds its petals tender,
     Renews for us at noontide's hour
     The summer's tempered splendor.

     The birds are hushed; alone the wind,
     That through the woodland searches,
     The red-oak's lingering leaves can find,
     And yellow plumes of larches.

     But still the balsam-breathing pine
     Invites no thought of sorrow,
     No hint of loss from air like wine
     The earth's content can borrow.

     The summer and the winter here
     Midway a truce are holding,
     A soft, consenting atmosphere
     Their tents of peace enfolding.

     The silent woods, the lonely hills,
     Rise solemn in their gladness;
     The quiet that the valley fills
     Is scarcely joy or sadness.

     How strange! The autumn yesterday
     In winter's grasp seemed dying;
     On whirling winds from skies of gray
     The early snow was flying.

     And now, while over Nature's mood
     There steals a soft relenting,
     I will not mar the present good,
     Forecasting or lamenting.

     My autumn time and Nature's hold
     A dreamy tryst together,
     And, both grown old, about us fold
     The golden-tissued weather.

     I lean my heart against the day
     To feel its bland caressing;
     I will not let it pass away
     Before it leaves its blessing.

     God's angels come not as of old
     The Syrian shepherds knew them;
     In reddening dawns, in sunset gold,
     And warm noon lights I view them.

     Nor need there is, in times like this
     When heaven to earth draws nearer,
     Of wing or song as witnesses
     To make their presence clearer.

     O stream of life, whose swifter flow
     Is of the end forewarning,
     Methinks thy sundown afterglow
     Seems less of night than morning!

     Old cares grow light; aside I lay
     The doubts and fears that troubled;
     The quiet of the happy day
     Within my soul is doubled.

     That clouds must veil this fair sunshine
     Not less a joy I find it;
     Nor less yon warm horizon line
     That winter lurks behind it.

     The mystery of the untried days
     I close my eyes from reading;
     His will be done whose darkest ways
     To light and life are leading!

     Less drear the winter night shall be,
     If memory cheer and hearten
     Its heavy hours with thoughts of thee,
     Sweet summer of St. Martin!

     1880.

     A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw
     On Carmel prophesying rain, began
     To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan,
     Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw

     Of chill wind menaced; then a strong blast beat
     Down the long valley's murmuring pines, and woke
     The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and broke
     Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains' feet.

     Thunderous and vast, a fire-veined darkness swept
     Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam range;
     A wraith of tempest, wonderful and strange,
     From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped.

     One moment, as if challenging the storm,
     Chocorua's tall, defiant sentinel
     Looked from his watch-tower; then the shadow fell,
     And the wild rain-drift blotted out his form.

     And over all the still unhidden sun,
     Weaving its light through slant-blown veils of rain,
     Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on pain;
     And, when the tumult and the strife were done,

     With one foot on the lake and one on land,
     Framing within his crescent's tinted streak
     A far-off picture of the Melvin peak,
     Spent broken clouds the rainbow's angel spanned.

     1882.

     To kneel before some saintly shrine,
     To breathe the health of airs divine,
     Or bathe where sacred rivers flow,
     The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go.
     I too, a palmer, take, as they
     With staff and scallop-shell, my way
     To feel, from burdening cares and ills,
     The strong uplifting of the hills.

     The years are many since, at first,
     For dreamed-of wonders all athirst,
     I saw on Winnipesaukee fall
     The shadow of the mountain wall.
     Ah! where are they who sailed with me
     The beautiful island-studded sea?
     And am I he whose keen surprise
     Flashed out from such unclouded eyes?

     Still, when the sun of summer burns,
     My longing for the hills returns;
     And northward, leaving at my back
     The warm vale of the Merrimac,
     I go to meet the winds of morn,
     Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born,
     Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy
     The hunger of a lowland eye.

     Again I see the day decline
     Along a ridged horizon line;
     Touching the hill-tops, as a nun
     Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun.
     One lake lies golden, which shall soon
     Be silver in the rising moon;
     And one, the crimson of the skies
     And mountain purple multiplies.

     With the untroubled quiet blends
     The distance-softened voice of friends;
     The girl's light laugh no discord brings
     To the low song the pine-tree sings;
     And, not unwelcome, comes the hail
     Of boyhood from his nearing sail.
     The human presence breaks no spell,
     And sunset still is miracle!

     Calm as the hour, methinks I feel
     A sense of worship o'er me steal;
     Not that of satyr-charming Pan,
     No cult of Nature shaming man,
     Not Beauty's self, but that which lives
     And shines through all the veils it weaves,—
     Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood,
     Their witness to the Eternal Good!

     And if, by fond illusion, here
     The earth to heaven seems drawing near,
     And yon outlying range invites
     To other and serener heights,
     Scarce hid behind its topmost swell,
     The shining Mounts Delectable
     A dream may hint of truth no less
     Than the sharp light of wakefulness.

     As through her vale of incense smoke.
     Of old the spell-rapt priestess spoke,
     More than her heathen oracle,
     May not this trance of sunset tell
     That Nature's forms of loveliness
     Their heavenly archetypes confess,
     Fashioned like Israel's ark alone
     From patterns in the Mount made known?

     A holier beauty overbroods
     These fair and faint similitudes;
     Yet not unblest is he who sees
     Shadows of God's realities,
     And knows beyond this masquerade
     Of shape and color, light and shade,
     And dawn and set, and wax and wane,
     Eternal verities remain.

     O gems of sapphire, granite set!
     O hills that charmed horizons fret
     I know how fair your morns can break,
     In rosy light on isle and lake;
     How over wooded slopes can run
     The noonday play of cloud and sun,
     And evening droop her oriflamme
     Of gold and red in still Asquam.

     The summer moons may round again,
     And careless feet these hills profane;
     These sunsets waste on vacant eyes
     The lavish splendor of the skies;
     Fashion and folly, misplaced here,
     Sigh for their natural atmosphere,
     And travelled pride the outlook scorn
     Of lesser heights than Matterhorn.

     But let me dream that hill and sky
     Of unseen beauty prophesy;
     And in these tinted lakes behold
     The trailing of the raiment fold
     Of that which, still eluding gaze,
     Allures to upward-tending ways,
     Whose footprints make, wherever found,
     Our common earth a holy ground.

     1883.

     The subtle power in perfume found
     Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned;
     On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound
     No censer idly burned.

     That power the old-time worships knew,
     The Corybantes' frenzied dance,
     The Pythian priestess swooning through
     The wonderland of trance.

     And Nature holds, in wood and field,
     Her thousand sunlit censers still;
     To spells of flower and shrub we yield
     Against or with our will.

     I climbed a hill path strange and new
     With slow feet, pausing at each turn;
     A sudden waft of west wind blew
     The breath of the sweet fern.

     That fragrance from my vision swept
     The alien landscape; in its stead,
     Up fairer hills of youth I stepped,
     As light of heart as tread.

     I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine
     Once more through rifts of woodland shade;
     I knew my river's winding line
     By morning mist betrayed.

     With me June's freshness, lapsing brook,
     Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call
     Of birds, and one in voice and look
     In keeping with them all.

     A fern beside the way we went
     She plucked, and, smiling, held it up,
     While from her hand the wild, sweet scent
     I drank as from a cup.

     O potent witchery of smell!
     The dust-dry leaves to life return,
     And she who plucked them owns the spell
     And lifts her ghostly fern.

     Or sense or spirit? Who shall say
     What touch the chord of memory thrills?
     It passed, and left the August day
     Ablaze on lonely hills.

     From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
     From Mad to Saco river,
     For patriarchs of the primal wood
     We sought with vain endeavor.

     And then we said: "The giants old
     Are lost beyond retrieval;
     This pygmy growth the axe has spared
     Is not the wood primeval.

     "Look where we will o'er vale and hill,
     How idle are our searches
     For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,
     Centennial pines and birches.

     "Their tortured limbs the axe and saw
     Have changed to beams and trestles;
     They rest in walls, they float on seas,
     They rot in sunken vessels.

     "This shorn and wasted mountain land
     Of underbrush and boulder,—
     Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
     Must live a century older."

     At last to us a woodland path,
     To open sunset leading,
     Revealed the Anakim of pines
     Our wildest wish exceeding.

     Alone, the level sun before;
     Below, the lake's green islands;
     Beyond, in misty distance dim,
     The rugged Northern Highlands.

     Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill
     Of time and change defiant
     How dwarfed the common woodland seemed,
     Before the old-time giant!

     What marvel that, in simpler days
     Of the world's early childhood,
     Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and praise
     Such monarchs of the wild-wood?

     That Tyrian maids with flower and song
     Danced through the hill grove's spaces,
     And hoary-bearded Druids found
     In woods their holy places?

     With somewhat of that Pagan awe
     With Christian reverence blending,
     We saw our pine-tree's mighty arms
     Above our heads extending.

     We heard his needles' mystic rune,
     Now rising, and now dying,
     As erst Dodona's priestess heard
     The oak leaves prophesying.

     Was it the half-unconscious moan
     Of one apart and mateless,
     The weariness of unshared power,
     The loneliness of greatness?

     O dawns and sunsets, lend to him
     Your beauty and your wonder!
     Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song
     His solemn shadow under!

     Play lightly on his slender keys,
     O wind of summer, waking
     For hills like these the sound of seas
     On far-off beaches breaking,

     And let the eagle and the crow
     Find shelter in his branches,
     When winds shake down his winter snow
     In silver avalanches.

     The brave are braver for their cheer,
     The strongest need assurance,
     The sigh of longing makes not less
     The lesson of endurance.

     1885.

     Talk not of sad November, when a day
     Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,
     And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,
     Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

     On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines
     Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,
     Singing a pleasant song of summer still,
     A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.

     Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees,
     In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more;
     But still the squirrel hoards his winter store,
     And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.

     Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high
     Above, the spires of yellowing larches show,
     Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow
     And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat defy.

     O gracious beauty, ever new and old!
     O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear
     When the low sunshine warns the closing year
     Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold!

     Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing
     The sweet day yields; and, not disconsolate,
     With the calm patience of the woods I wait
     For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring!

     29th, Eleventh Month, 1886.

     A beautiful and happy girl,
     With step as light as summer air,
     Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl,
     Shadowed by many a careless curl
     Of unconfined and flowing hair;
     A seeming child in everything,
     Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms,
     As Nature wears the smile of Spring
     When sinking into Summer's arms.

     A mind rejoicing in the light
     Which melted through its graceful bower,
     Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright,
     And stainless in its holy white,
     Unfolding like a morning flower
     A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute,
     With every breath of feeling woke,
     And, even when the tongue was mute,
     From eye and lip in music spoke.

     How thrills once more the lengthening chain
     Of memory, at the thought of thee!
     Old hopes which long in dust have lain
     Old dreams, come thronging back again,
     And boyhood lives again in me;
     I feel its glow upon my cheek,
     Its fulness of the heart is mine,
     As when I leaned to hear thee speak,
     Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.

     I hear again thy low replies,
     I feel thy arm within my own,
     And timidly again uprise
     The fringed lids of hazel eyes,
     With soft brown tresses overblown.
     Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
     Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
     Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves,
     And smiles and tones more dear than they!

     Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled
     My picture of thy youth to see,
     When, half a woman, half a child,
     Thy very artlessness beguiled,
     And folly's self seemed wise in thee;
     I too can smile, when o'er that hour
     The lights of memory backward stream,
     Yet feel the while that manhood's power
     Is vainer than my boyhood's dream.

     Years have passed on, and left their trace,
     Of graver care and deeper thought;
     And unto me the calm, cold face
     Of manhood, and to thee the grace
     Of woman's pensive beauty brought.
     More wide, perchance, for blame than praise,
     The school-boy's humble name has flown;
     Thine, in the green and quiet ways
     Of unobtrusive goodness known.

     And wider yet in thought and deed
     Diverge our pathways, one in youth;
     Thine the Genevan's sternest creed,
     While answers to my spirit's need
     The Derby dalesman's simple truth.
     For thee, the priestly rite and prayer,
     And holy day, and solemn psalm;
     For me, the silent reverence where
     My brethren gather, slow and calm.

     Yet hath thy spirit left on me
     An impress Time has worn not out,
     And something of myself in thee,
     A shadow from the past, I see,
     Lingering, even yet, thy way about;
     Not wholly can the heart unlearn
     That lesson of its better hours,
     Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn
     To common dust that path of flowers.

     Thus, while at times before our eyes
     The shadows melt, and fall apart,
     And, smiling through them, round us lies
     The warm light of our morning skies,—
     The Indian Summer of the heart!
     In secret sympathies of mind,
     In founts of feeling which retain
     Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find
     Our early dreams not wholly vain

     1841.