Shapes and Shadows

The blackened walnut in its spicy hull
Rots where it fell;
And, in the orchard, where the trees stand full,
The pear's ripe bell
Drops; and the log-house in the bramble lane,
From whose low door
Stretch yellowing acres of the corn and cane,
He sees once more.

The cat-bird sings upon its porch of pine;
And o'er its gate,
All slender-podded, twists the trumpet-vine,
A leafy weight;
And in the woodland, by the spring, mayhap,
With eyes of joy
Again he bends to set a rabbit-trap,
A brown-faced boy.

Then, whistling, through the underbrush he goes,
Out of the wood,
Where, with young cheeks, red as an Autumn rose,
Beneath her hood,
His sweetheart waits, her school-books on her arm;
And now it seems
Beside his chair he sees his wife's fair form—
The old man dreams.

Since Then.

I found myself among the trees
What time the reapers ceased to reap;
And in the berry blooms the bees
Huddled wee heads and went to sleep,
Rocked by the silence and the breeze.

I saw the red fox leave his lair,
A shaggy shadow, on the knoll;
And, tunnelling his thoroughfare
Beneath the loam, I watched the mole—
Stealth's own self could not take more care.

I heard the death-moth tick and stir,
Slow-honeycombing through the bark;
I heard the crickets' drowsy chirr,
And one lone beetle burr the dark—
The sleeping woodland seemed to purr.

And then the moon rose; and a white
Low bough of blossoms—grown almost
Where, ere you died, 'twas our delight
To tryst,—dear heart!—I thought your ghost....
The wood is haunted since that night.

Comrades.

Down through the woods, along the way
That fords the stream; by rock and tree,
Where in the bramble-bell the bee
Swings; and through twilights green and gray
The red-bird flashes suddenly,
My thoughts went wandering to-day.

I found the fields where, row on row,
The blackberries hang black with fruit;
Where, nesting at the elder's root,
The partridge whistles soft and low;
The fields, that billow to the foot
Of those old hills we used to know.

There lay the pond, still willow-bound,
On whose bright surface, when the hot
Noon burnt above, we chased the knot
Of water-spiders; while around
Our heads, like bits of rainbow, shot
The dragonflies without a sound.

The pond, above which evening bent
To gaze upon her rosy face;
Wherein the twinkling night would place
A vague, inverted firmament,
In which the green frogs tuned their bass,
And firefly sparkles came and went.

The oldtime woods we often ranged,
When we were playmates, you and I;
The oldtime fields, with boyhood's sky
Still blue above them!—Naught was changed!
Nothing!—Alas, then tell me why
Should we be? whom long years estranged.

Waiting.

Come to the hills, the woods are green—
The heart is high when Love is sweet—
There is a brook that flows between
Two mossy trees where we can meet,
Where we can meet and speak unseen.

I hear you laughing in the lane—
The heart is high when Love is sweet—
The clover smells of sun and rain
And spreads a carpet for our feet,
Where we can sit and dream again.

Come to the woods, the dusk is here—
The heart is high when Love is sweet—
A bird upon the branches near
Sets music to our hearts' glad beat,
Our hearts that beat with something dear.

I hear your step; the lane is passed;—
The heart is high when Love is sweet—
The little stars come bright and fast,
Like happy eyes to see us greet,
To see us greet and kiss at last.

Contrasts.

No eve of summer ever can attain
The gladness of that eve of late July,
When 'mid the roses, filled with musk and rain,
Against the wondrous topaz of the sky,
I met you, leaning on the pasture bars,—
While heaven and earth grew conscious of the stars.

No night of blackest winter can repeat
The bitterness of that December night,
When at your gate, gray-glittering with sleet,
Within the glimmering square of window-light,
We parted,—long you clung unto my arm,—
While heaven and earth surrendered to the storm.

In June.

Deep in the West a berry-coloured bar
Of sunset gleams; against which one tall fir
Is outlined dark; above which—courier
Of dew and dreams—burns dusk's appointed star.
And flash on flash, as when the elves wage war
In Goblinland, the fireflies bombard
The stillness; and, like spirits, o'er the sward
The glimmering winds bring fragrance from afar.
And now withdrawn into the hill-wood belts
A whippoorwill; while, with attendant states
Of purple and silver, slow the great moon melts
Into the night—to show me where she waits,—
Like some slim moonbeam,—by the old beech-tree,
Who keeps her lips, fresh as a flower, for me.

After long Grief and Pain.

There is a place hung o'er with summer boughs
And drowsy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps;
Where waters flow, within whose lazy deeps,
Like silvery prisms that the winds arouse,
The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows
Tinkle the stillness, and the bob-white keeps
Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps,
And children's laughter haunts an old-time house;
A place where life wears ever an honest smell
Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom—
Like some dear, modest girl—within her hair:
Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell
Far from the city's strife whose cares consume—
Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.

Can I Forget?

Can I forget how Love once led the ways
Of our two lives together, joining them;
How every hour was his anadem,
And every day a tablet in his praise!
Can I forget how, in his garden place,
Among the purple roses, stem to stem,
We heard the rumour of his robe's bright hem,
And saw the aureate radiance of his face!—
Though I behold my soul's high dreams down-hurled,
And Falsehood sit where Truth once towered white,
And in Love's place, usurping lust and shame....
Though flowers be dead within the winter world,
Are flowers not there? and starless though the night,
Are stars not there, eternal and the same?

The House of Fear.

Vast are its halls, as vast the halls and lone
Where Death stalks listening to the wind and rain;
And dark that house, where I shall meet again
My long-dead Sin in some dread way unknown;
For I have dreamed of stairs of haunted stone,
And spectre footsteps I have fled in vain;
And windows glaring with a blood-red stain,
And horrible eyes, that burn me to the bone,
Within a face that looks as that black night
It looked when deep I dug for it a grave,—
The dagger wound above the brow, the thin
Blood trickling down slantwise the ghastly white;—
And I have dreamed not even God can save
Me and my soul from that risen Sin.

At Dawn.

Far off I heard dark waters rush;
The sky was cold; the dawn broke green;
And wrapped in twilight and strange hush
The gray wind moaned between.

A voice rang through the House of Sleep,
And through its halls there went a tread;
Mysterious raiment seemed to sweep
Around the pallid dead.

And then I knew that I had died,
I, who had suffered so and sinned—
And 't was myself I stood beside
In the wild dawn and wind.

Storm.

I looked into the night and saw
God writing with tumultuous flame
Upon the thunder's front of awe,—
As on sonorous brass,—the Law,
Terrific, of His judgement name.

Weary of all life's best and worst,
With hands of hate, I—who had pled,
I, who had prayed for death at first
And had not died—now stood and cursed
God, yet he would not strike me dead.

Memories.

Here where Love lies perishèd,
Look not in upon the dead;
Lest the shadowy curtains, shaken
In my Heart's dark chamber, waken
Ghosts, beneath whose garb of sorrow
Whilom gladness bows his head:
When you come at morn to-morrow,
Look not in upon the dead,
Here where Love lies perishèd.

Here where Love lies cold interred,
Let no syllable be heard;
Lest the hollow echoes, housing
In my Soul's deep tomb, arousing
Wake a voice of woe, once laughter
Claimed and clothed in joy's own word:
When you come at dusk or after,
Let no syllable be heard,
Here where Love lies cold interred.

Which?

The wind was on the forest,
And silence on the wold;
And darkness on the waters,
And heaven was starry cold;
When Sleep, with mystic magic,
Bade me this thing behold:

This side, an iron woodland;
That side, an iron waste;
And heaven, a tower of iron,
Wherein the wan moon paced,
Still as a phantom woman,
Ice-eyed and icy-faced.

And through the haunted tower
Of silence and of night,
My Soul and I went only,
My Soul, whose face was white,
Whose one hand signed me listen,
One bore a taper-light.

For, lo! a voice behind me
Kept sighing in my ear
The dreams my flesh accepted,
My mind refused to hear—
Of one I loved and loved not,
Whose spirit now spake near.

And, lo! a voice before me
Kept calling constantly
The hopes my mind accepted,
My flesh refused to see—
Of one I loved and loved not,
Whose spirit spake to me.

This way the one would bid me;
This way the other saith:—
Sweet is the voice behind me
Of Life that followeth;
And sweet the voice before me
Of Life whose name is Death.

Sunset in Autumn.

Blood-coloured oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass;
Gaunt slopes, on which the bleak leaves glow of brier and sassafras,
And broom-sedge strips of smoky pink and pearl-gray clumps of grass,
In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain-pools gleam like glass.

From West to East, from wood to wood, along the forest-side,
The winds,—the sowers of the Lord,—with thunderous footsteps stride;
Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed,
Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide.

The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds rings a faint fairy bell;
And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed's windy shell
Glimmers; while wrapped in withered dreams, the wet autumnal smell
Of loam and leaf, like some sad ghost, steals over field and dell.

The oaks against a copper sky—o'er which, like some black lake
Of Dis, dark clouds, like surges fringed with sullen fire, break—
Loom sombre as Doom's citadel above the vales, that make
A pathway to a land of mist the moon's pale feet shall take.

Now, dyed with burning carbuncle, a Limbo-litten pane,
Within its wall of storm, the West opens to hill and plain,
On which the wild geese ink themselves, a far triangled train;
And then the shuttering clouds close down—and night is here again.

The Legend of the Stone.

The year was dying, and the day
Was almost dead;
The West, beneath a sombre gray,
Was sombre red.
The gravestones in the ghostly light,
'Mid trees half bare,
Seemed phantoms, clothed in glimmering white,
That haunted there.

I stood beside the grave of one,
Who, here in life,
Had wronged my home; who had undone
My child and wife.
I stood beside his grave until
The moon came up—
As if the dark, unhallowed hill
Lifted a cup.

No stone was there to mark his grave,
No flower to grace—
'T was meet that weeds alone should wave
In such a place.
I stood beside his grave until
The stars swam high,
And all the night was iron still
From sky to sky.

What cared I if strange eyes seemed bright
Within the gloom!
If, evil blue, a wandering light
Burnt by each tomb!
Or that each crookèd thorn-tree seemed
A witch-hag cloaked!
Or that the owl above me screamed,
The raven croaked!

For I had cursed him when the day
Was sullen red;
Had cursed him when the West was gray,
And day was dead;
And now when night made dark the pole,
Both soon and late
I cursed his body, yea, and soul,
With the hate of hate.

Once in my soul I seemed to hear
A low voice say,—
'T were better to forgive,—and fear
Thy God,—and pray.
I laughed; and from pale lips of stone
On sculptured tombs
A mocking laugh replied alone
Deep in the glooms.

And then I felt, I felt—as if
Some force should seize
The body; and its limbs stretch stiff,
And, fastening, freeze
Down, downward deeper than the knees
Into the earth—
While still among the twisted trees
That voice made mirth.

And in my Soul was fear, despair,—
Like lost ones feel,
When knotted in their pitch-stiff hair,
They feel the steel
Of devils' forks lift up, through sleet
Of hell's slant fire,
Then plunge,—as white from head to feet
I grew entire.

A voice without me, yet within,
As still as frost,
Intoned: Thy sin is thrice a sin,
Thrice art thou lost.
Behold, how God would punish thee!
For this thy crime—
Thy crime of hate and blasphemy—
Through endless time!

O'er him, whom thou wouldst not forgive,
Record what good
He did on earth! and let him live
Loved, understood!
Be memory thine of all the worst
He did thine own!
There at the head of him I cursed
I stood—a stone.

Time and Death and Love.

Last night I watched for Death—
So sick of life was I!—
When in the street beneath
I heard his watchman cry
The hour, while passing by.

I called. And in the night
I heard him stop below,
His owlish lanthorn's light
Blurring the windy snow—
How long the time and slow!

I said, Why dost thou cower
There at my door and knock?
Come in! It is the hour!
Cease fumbling at the lock!
Naught's well! 'Tis no o'clock!

Black through the door with him
Swept in the Winter's breath;
His cloak was great and grim—
But he, who smiled beneath,
Had the face of Love not Death.

Passion.

The wine-loud laughter of indulged Desire
Upon his lips, and, in his eyes, the fire
Of uncontrol, he takes in reckless hands,—
And interrupts with discords,—the sad lyre
Of Love's deep soul, and never understands.

When the Wine-Cup at the Lip.

When the wine-cup at the lip
Slants its sparkling fire,
O'er its level, while you sip,
Have you marked the finger-tip
Of the god Desire slip,
Of the god Desire?
Saying—Lo, the hours run!
Live your day before 't is done!

When the empty goblet lies
At the ended revel,
In the glass, the wine-stain dyes,
Have you marked the hollow eyes
Of a mocking Devil rise,
Of a mocking Devil?
Saying—Lo, the day is through!
Look on joy it gave to you!

Art.

[A Phantasy.]

I know not how I found you
With your wild hair a-blow,
Nor why the world around you
Would never let me know:
Perhaps 't was Heaven relented,
Perhaps 't was Hell resented
My dream, and grimly vented
Its hate upon me so.

In Shadowland I met you
Where all dim shadows meet;
Within my heart I set you,
A phantom bitter-sweet:
No hope for me to win you,
Though I with soul and sinew
Strive on and on, when in you
There is no heart or heat!

Yet ever, aye, and ever,
Although I knew you lied,
I followed on, but never
Would your white form abide:
With loving arms stretched meward,
As Sirens beckon seaward
To some fair vessel leeward,
Before me you would glide.

But like an evil fairy,
That mocks one with a light,
Now near, you led your airy,
Now far, your fitful flight:
With red-gold tresses blowing,
And eyes of sapphire glowing,
With limbs like marble showing,
You lured me through the night.

To some unearthly revel
Of mimes, a motley crew,
'Twixt Angel-land and Devil,
You lured me on, I knew,
And lure me still! soft whiling
The way with hopes beguiling,
While dark Despair sits smiling
Behind the eyes of you!

A Song for Old Age.

Now nights grow cold and colder,
And North the wild vane swings,
And round each tree and boulder
The driving snow-storm sings—
Come, make my old heart older,
O memory of lost things!

Of Hope, when promise sung her
Brave songs and I was young,
That banquets now on hunger
Since all youth's songs are sung;
Of Love, who walks with younger
Sweethearts the flowers among.

Ah, well! while Life holds levee,
Death's ceaseless dance goes on.
So let the curtains, heavy
About my couch, be drawn—
The curtains, sad and heavy,
Where all shall sleep anon.

Tristram And Isolt.

Night and vast caverns of rock and of iron;
Voices like water, and voices like wind;
Horror and tempests of hail that environ
Shapes and the shadows of two who have sinned.

Wan on the whirlwind, in loathing uplifting
Faces that loved once, forever they go,
Tristam and Isolt, the lovers, go drifting,
The sullen laughter of Hell below.

The Better Lot.

Her life was bound to crutches: pale and bent,
But smiling ever, she would go and come:
For of her soul God made an instrument
Of strength and comfort to an humble home.

Better a life of toil and slow disease
That Love companions through the patient years,
Than one whose heritage is loveless ease,
That never knows the blessedness of tears.

Dusk in the Woods.

Three miles of hill it is; and I
Came through the woods that waited, dumb,
For the cool Summer dusk to come;
And lingered there to watch the sky
Up which the gradual sunset clomb.

A tree-toad quavered in a tree;
And then a sudden whip-poor-will
Called overhead, so wildly shrill,
The startled woodland seemed to see
How very lone it was and still.

Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight
An owl took; and, at sleepy strife,
The cricket turned its fairy fife;
And through the dead leaves, in the night,
Soft rustlings stirred of unseen life.

And in the punk-wood everywhere
The inserts ticked, or bored below
The rotted bark; and, glow on glow,
The gleaming fireflies here and there
Lit up their Jack-o'-lantern show.

I heard a vesper-sparrow sing,
Withdrawn, it seemed, into the far
Slow sunset's tranquil cinnabar;
The sunset, softly smouldering
Behind gaunt trunks, with its one star.

A dog barked; and down ways, that gleamed,
Through dew and clover faint the noise
Of cow-bells moved. And then a voice,
That sang a-milking, so it seemed,
Made glad my heart as some glad boy's.

And then the lane; and full in view
A farmhouse with a rose-grown gate,
And honeysuckle paths, await
For night's white moon and love and you—
These are the things that made me late.

At the Ferry.

Oh, dim and wan came in the dawn,
And gloomy closed the day;
The killdee whistled among the weeds,
The heron flapped in the river reeds,
And the snipe piped far away.

At dawn she stood—her dark gray hood
Flung back—in the ferry-boat;
Sad were the eyes that watched him ride,
Her raider love, from the riverside,
His kiss on her mouth and throat.

Like some wild spell the twilight fell,
And black the tempest came;
The heavens seemed filled with the warring dead,
Whose batteries opened overhead
With thunder and with flame.

At night again in the wind and rain,
She toiled at the ferry oar;
For she heard a voice in the night and storm,
And it seemed that her lover's shadowy form
Beckoned her to the shore.

And swift to save she braved the wave,
And reached the shore and found
His riderless horse, with head hung low,
A blur of blood on the saddle-bow,
And the empty night around.

Her Violin.

I

Her violin!—Again begin
The dream-notes of her violin;
And dim and fair, with gold-brown hair,
I seem to see her standing there,
Soft-eyed and sweetly slender:
The room again, with strain on strain,
Vibrates to Love's melodious pain,
As, sloping slow, is poised her bow,
While round her form the golden glow
Of sunset spills its splendour.

II

Her violin!—now deep, now thin,
Again I hear her violin;
And, dream by dream, again I seem
To see the love-light's tender gleam
Beneath her eyes' long lashes:
While to my heart she seems a part
Of her pure song's inspirèd art;
And, as she plays, the rosy grays
Of twilight halo hair and face,
While sunset burns to ashes.

III

O violin!—Cease, cease within
My soul, O haunting violin!
In vain, in vain, you bring again
Back from the past the blissful pain
Of all the love then spoken;
When on my breast, at happy rest,
A sunny while her head was pressed—
Peace, peace to these wild memories!
For, like my heart naught remedies,
Her violin lies broken.

Her Vesper Song.

The Summer lightning comes and goes
In one pale cloud above the hill,
As if within its soft repose
A burning heart were never still—
As in my bosom pulses beat
Before the coming of his feet.

All drugged with odorous sleep, the rose
Breathes dewy balm about the place,
As if the dreams the garden knows
Took immaterial form and face—
As in my heart sweet thoughts arise
Beneath the ardour of his eyes.

The moon above the darkness shows
An orb of silvery snow and fire,
As if the night would now disclose
To heav'n her one divine desire—
As in the rapture of his kiss
All of my soul is drawn to his.

The cloud, it knows not that it glows;
The rose knows nothing of its scent;
Nor knows the moon that it bestows
Light on our earth and firmament—
So is the soul unconscious of
The beauties it reveals through Love.

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