| "It Shall go Hard With Him Through Thee, Unconquerable Blade" | Frontispiece |
| PAGE | |
| She Raised Her Oblong Lute and Smote Some Chords (See page 230) | 124 |
| In Her Ecstasy a Lovely Devil (See page 303) | 250 |
| And Grasped of Both Wild Hands, Swung Trenchant (See page 285) | 374 |
LYRICS
Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing
Led me, wrapped in many moods,
Through the green, sonorous woods
Of belated spring.
Till I came where, glad with heat,
Waste and wild the fields were strewn,
Olden as the olden moon,
At my weary feet.
Wild and white with starry bloom,
One far milky-way that dashed,
When some mad wind down it flashed,
Into billowy foam.
I, bewildered, gazed around,
As one on whose heavy dreams
Comes a sudden burst of beams,
Like a mighty sound....
If the grander flowers I sought,
But these berry-blooms to you,
Evanescent as the dew,
Only these I brought.
BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.
THE WOOD GOD
I
What deity for dozing Laziness
Devised the lounging leafiness of this
Secluded nook?—And how!—did I distress
His musing ease that fled but now? or his
Communion with some forest-sister, fair
And shy as is the whippoorwill-flower there,
Did I disturb?—Still is the wild moss warm
And fragrant with late pressure,—as the palm
Of some hot Hamadryad, who, a-nap,
Props her hale cheek upon it, while her arm
Is wildflower-buried; in her hair the balm
Of a whole spring of blossoms and of sap.—
II
See, how the dented moss, that pads the hump
Of these distorted roots, elastic springs
From that god's late reclining! Lump by lump
Its points, impressed, rise in resilient rings,
As stars crowd, qualming through gray evening skies.—
Invisible presence, still I feel thy eyes
Regarding me, bringing dim dreams before
My half-closed gaze, here where great, green-veined leaves
Reach, waving at me, their innumerable hands,
Stretched towards this water where the sycamore
Stands burly guard; where every ripple weaves
A ceaseless, wavy quivering as of bands.
III
Of elfin chivalry, that, helmed with gold,
Invisible march, making a twinkling sound.—
What brought thee here?—this wind, that steals the old
Gray legends from the forests and around
Whispers them now? Or, in those purple weeds
The hermit brook so busy with his beads?—
Lulling the silence with his prayers all day,
Droning soft Aves on his rosary
Of bubbles.—Or, that butterfly didst mark
On yon hag-taper, towering by the way,
A witch's yellow torch?—Or didst, like me,
Watch, drifting by, these curled, brown bits of bark?
IV
Or con the slender gold of this dim, still
Unmoving minnow 'neath these twisted roots,
Thrust o'er the smoky topaz of this rill?—
Or, in this sunlight, did those insect flutes,
Sleepy with summer, drowsily forlorn,
Remind thee of Tithonos and the Morn?
Until thine eyes dropped dew, the dimpled stream
Crinkling with crystal o'er the winking grail?—
Or didst perplex thee with some poet plan
To drug this air with beauty to make dream,—
Presence unseen, still watching in yon vale!—
Me, wildwood-wandered from the haunts of man!
LOVELINESS
I
Now let us forth to find the young witch Spring,
Seated amid her bow'rs and birds and buds,
Busy with loveliness.—And, wandering
Among old forests that the sunlight floods,
Or vales of hermit-holy solitudes,
Dryads shall beckon us from where they cling,
Their limbs an oak-bark brown; their hair—wild woods
Have perfumed—wreathed with earliest leaves: and they,
Regarding us with a dew-sparkling eye,
Shall whispering greet us, as the rain the rye,
Or from wild lips melodious welcome fling,
Like hidden waterfalls with winds at play.
II
Let us surprise the Naiad ere she slips—
Nude at her toilette—in her fountain's glass;
With damp locks dewy and evasive hips,
Cool-dripping, but an instant seen, alas!
When from indented moss and plushy grass—
Fear in her great eyes' rainbow-blue—she dips,
Irised, the cloven water; as we pass
Making a rippled circle that shall hide,
From our exploring eyes, what watery path
She gleaming took; what crystal haunt she hath
In minnowy freshness, where her murmurous lips,
Bubbling, make merry 'neath the rocky tide.
III
Then we may meet the Oread, whose eyes
Are dewdrops where twin heavens shine confessed:
She, all the maiden modesty's surprise
Rosying her temples,—to slim loins and breast
Tempestuous, brown, bewildering tresses pressed,—
Shall stand a moment's moiety in wise
Of some delicious dream, then shrink, distressed,
Like some wild mist that, hardly seen, is gone,
Footing the ferny hillside without sound;
Or, like storm sunlight, her white limbs shall bound,
A thistle's instant, towards a woody rise,
A flying glimmer o'er the dew-drenched lawn.
IV
And we may see the Satyrs in the shades
Of drowsy dells pipe, and, goat-footed, dance;
And Pan himself reel rollicking through the glades;
Or, hidden in bosky bow'rs, the Lust, perchance,
Faun-like, that waits with heated, animal glance
The advent of the Loveliness that wades
Thigh-deep through flowers, naked as Romance,
All unsuspecting, till two hairy arms
Clasp her rebellious beauty, panting white,
Whose tearful terror, struggling into might,
Beats the brute brow resisting, but evades
Not him, for whom the gods designed her charms.
WAITING
Were it but May now, while
Our hearts are yearning,
How they would bound and smile,
The young blood burning!
Around the tedious dial
No slow hands turning.
Were it but May now!—say,
What joy to go,
Your hand in mine all day,
Where blossoms blow!
Your hand, more white than May,
May's flowers of snow.
Were it but May now!—think,
What wealth she has!
The bluet and wild-pink,
Wild flowers,—that mass
About the wood-brook's brink,—
And sassafras.
Nights, that the large stars strew,
Heaven on heaven rolled;
Nights, pearled with stars and dew,
Whose heavens hold
Aromas, and the new
Moon's curve of gold.
So mad, so wild is March!—
I long, oh, long
To see the redbud's torch
Flame far and strong;
Hear, on my vine-climbed porch,
The bluebird's song.
How slow the Hours creep,
Each with a crutch!—
Ah, could my spirit leap
Its bounds and touch
That day, no thing would keep—
Or matter much!
But now, with you away,
Time halts and crawls,
Feet clogged with winter clay,
That never falls,
While, distant still, that day
Of meeting calls.
LONGINGS
Now when the first wild violets peer
All rain-filled at blue April skies,
As on one smiles one's sweetheart dear
With the big teardrops in her eyes:
Now when the May-apples, I wis,
Bloom white along lone, greenwood creeks,
As bashful as the cheeks you kiss,
As waxen as your sweetheart's cheeks:
Within the soul what longings rise
To stamp the town-dust from the feet!
Fare forth to gaze in Spring's clean eyes,
And kiss her cheeks so cool and sweet!
THE SWEET O' THE YEAR
I
How can I help from laughing, while
The daffodillies at me smile?
The dancing dew winks tipsily
In clusters of the lilac-tree,
And crocus' mouths and hyacinths'
Storm through the grassy labyrinths
A mirth of pearl and violet;
While roses, bud by bud,
Laugh from each dainty-lacing net
Red lips of maidenhood.
II
How can I help from singing when
The swallow and the hawk again
Are noisy in the hyaline
Of happy heavens, clear as wine?
The robin, lustily and shrill,
Pipes on the timber-belted hill;
And o'er the fallow skim the bold,
Mad orioles that glow
Like shining shafts of ingot gold
Shot from the morning's bow.
III
How can I help from loving, dear,
Since love is of the sweetened year?—
The very insects feel his power,
And chirr and chirrup hour on hour;
The bee and beetle in the noon,
The cricket underneath the moon:—
What else to do but follow too,
Since youth is on the wing,
Lord Life who follows through the dew
Lord Love a-carolling.
IN MIDDLE SPRING
Now the fields are rolled into turbulent gold,
And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent
With the emerald surges of wood and of wold,
A flower-foam bursting redolent:
Now the dingles and deeps of the woodland old
Are glad with a sibilant life new sent,
Too rare to be told are the manifold,
Sweet fancies that quicken, eloquent,
In the heart that no longer is cold.
How it knows of the wings of the hawk ere it swings
From the drippled dew scintillant seen!
Where the redbird hides, ere it flies or sings,
In melodious quiverings of green!
How the sun to the dogwood such kisses brings
That it laughs into blossoms of wonderful sheen;
While the wind, to the strings of his lute that rings,
Makes love to apple and nectarine,
Till the sap in them rosily springs.
Go seek in the ray for a sworded fay,
The chestnut's buds into blooms that rips;
And look in the brook, that runs laughing gay,
For the Nymph with the laughing lips;
In the brake for the Dryad whose eyes are gray,
From whose bosom the perfume drips;
The Faun hid away, where the branches sway,
Thick ivy low down on his hips,
Pursed lips on a syrinx at play.
So, ho! for the rose, the Romeo rose,
And the lyric it hides in its heart!
And, oh, for the epic the oak-tree knows,
Sonorous as Homer in art!
And it's ho! for the prose of the weed that grows
Green-writing Earth's commonest part!—
What God may propose let us learn of those,
The songs and the dreams that start
In the heart of each blossom that blows.
A SPRING SHOWER
We stood where the fields were beryl,
The redolent woodland was warm;
And the heaven above us, now sterile,
Was alive with the pulse-winds of storm.
We had watched the green wheat brighten
And gloom as it winced at each gust;
And the turbulent maples whiten
As the lane blew gray with dust.
White flakes from the blossoming cherry,
Pink snows of the peaches were blown,
And star-bloom wrecks of the berry
And dogwood petals were sown.
Then instantly heaven was sullied,
And earth was thrilled with alarm,
As a cloud, that the thunder had gullied,
Thrust over the sunlight its arm.
The birds to dry coverts had hurried,
And hid in their leafy-built rooms;
And the bees and the hornets had buried
Themselves in the bells of the blooms.
Then down from the clouds, as from towers,
Rode slant the tall lancers of rain,
And charged the fair troops of the flowers,
And trampled the grass of the plain.
And the armies of blossoms were scattered;
Their standards hung draggled and lank;
And the rose and the lily were shattered,
And the iris lay crushed on its bank.
But high in the storm was the swallow,
And the rock-loud voice of the fall,
From its ramparts of forest, rang hollow
Defiance and challenge o'er all.
But the storm and its clouds passed over,
And left but one cloud in the west,
Wet wafts that were fragrant with clover,
And the sun slow-sinking to rest.
Rain-drippings and rain in the poppies,
And scents as of honey and bees;
A touch of wild light on the coppice,
That turned into flames the drenched trees.
Then the cloud in the sunset was riven,
And bubbled and rippled with gold,
And over the gorges of heaven,
Like a gonfalon vast was unrolled.
HEPATICAS
In the frail hepaticas—
That the early Springtide tossed,
Sapphire-like, along the ways
Of the woodlands that she crossed—
I behold, with other eyes,
Footprints of a dream that flies.
One who leads me; whom I seek:
In whose loveliness there is
All the glamour that the Greek
Knew as wind-borne Artemis.—
I am mortal. Woe is me!
Her sweet immortality!
Spirit, must I always fare,
Following thy averted looks?
Now thy white arm, now thy hair,
Glimpsed among the trees and brooks?
Thou who hauntest, whispering,
All the slopes and vales of Spring.
SPIRITS OF SPRING
I
Over the summer seas,
From the Hesperides,
Warm as the southern breeze,
Gather the Spirits,
Clad on with sun and rain,
Fire in each ardent vein,
Who, with a wild refrain,
Waken the germs that the Season inherits.
II
See, where they come, like mist,
Gleaming with amethyst,
Trailing the light that kissed
Vine-tangled mountains
Looming o'er tropic lakes,
Where every wind, that shakes
Tamarisk coverts, makes
Music that haunts like the falling of fountains.
You may behold the beat
Of their wild hearts of heat,
And their rose-flashing feet
Flying before us:
Hear them among the trees
Whispering like far-off seas,
Waking the drowsy bees,
Wild-birds and flowers and torrents sonorous.
IV
You may behold their eyes,
Star-like, that sapphire dyes,
To which the blossoms rise
Star-like; and shadows
Flee from: and, golden deep,
As through the woods they sweep,
See their wild curls that keep
Asphodel memories that kindle the meadows.
V
Music of forest-streams,
Fragrance and dewy gleams,
Daybreak and dawn and dreams,
High things and lowly,
Mix in their limbs of light,
Which, what they touch of blight,
Quicken to blossom white,
Raise to be beautiful, perfect, and holy.
VI
Come! do not sit and wait
Now that once desolate
Fields are intoxicate
With birds and flowers!
And all the woods are rife
With resurrected life,
Passion and purple strife
Of the warm winds and the turbulent showers.
VII
Come! let us lie and dream
Here by the wildwood stream,
Where many a twinkling gleam
Falls on the rooty
Banks; and the forest glooms
Rain down their redbud blooms,
Armfuls of wild perfumes—
Winds! or Auloniads busy with beauty.
MIRABILE DICTU
I
There dwells a goddess in the West,
An Island in death-lonesome seas;
No towered towns are hers confessed,
No castled forts or palaces;
Hers, simple worshipers at best,
The buds, the birds, the bees.
II
And she hath wonder-words of song,
So heavenly beautiful and shed
So sweetly from her honeyed tongue,
The savage creatures, it is said,
Hark, marble-still, their wilds among,
And nightingales fall dead.
III
I know her not, nor have I known:
I only feel that she is there:
For when my heart is most alone,
Her deep communion fills the air,—
Her influence calls me from my own,—
Miraculously fair.
IV
Then fain am I to sing and sing,
And then again to fly and fly,
Beyond the flight of cloud or wing,
Far under azure arcs of sky;
My love at her chaste feet to fling,
Behold her face and—die.
A DREAMER OF DREAMS
He lived beyond men, and so stood
Admitted to the brotherhood
Of beauty; dreams, with which he trod
Companioned as some sylvan god.
And oft men wondered, when his thought
Made all their knowledge seem as naught,
If he, like Uther's mystic son,
Had not been born for Avalon.
When wandering 'mid the whispering trees,
His soul communed with every breeze;
Heard voices calling from the glades,
Bloom-words of the Leimoniads;
Or Dryads of the ash and oak,
Who syllabled his name and spoke
With him of presences and powers
That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.
By every violet-hallowed brook,
Where every bramble-matted nook
Rippled and laughed with water sounds,
He walked like one on sainted grounds,
Fearing intrusion on the spell
That kept some fountain-spirit's well,
Or woodland genius, sitting where
Red, racy berries kissed his hair.
Once when the wind, far o'er the hill,
Had fall'n and left the wildwood still
For Dawn's dim feet to glide across,—
Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss,
The air around him golden ripe
With daybreak,—there, with oaten pipe,
His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan,
Goat-bearded, and half-brute, half-man;
Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme
Blew in his reed to rudest time;
And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye—
Beneath the slowly silvering sky,
Whose light shone through the forest's roof—
Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof
The branch was snapped, and, interfused
Between great roots, the moss was bruised.
And often when he wandered through
Old forests at the fall of dew—
A new Endymion who sought
A beauty higher than all thought—
Some night, men said, most surely he
Would favored be of deity:
That in the holy solitude
Her sudden presence, long pursued,
Unto his gaze would be confessed;
The awful moonlight of her breast
Come, high with majesty, and hold
His heart's blood till his heart were cold,
Unpulsed, unsinewed, and undone,
And snatch his soul to Avalon.
PAN
I
Haunter of green intricácies
Where the sunlight's amber laces
Deeps of darkest violet;
Where the shaggy Satyr chases
Nymphs and Dryads, fair as Graces,
Whose white limbs with dew are wet:
Piper in hid mountain places,
Where the blue-eyed Oread braces
Winds which in her sweet cheeks set
Of Aurora rosy traces;
While the Faun from myrtle mazes
Watches with an eye of jet:
What art thou and these dim races,
Thou, O Pan, of many faces,
Who art ruler yet?
II
Tell me, piper, have I ever
Heard thy hollow syrinx quiver
Trickling music in the trees?
Where the hazel copses shiver,
Have I heard its dronings sever
The warm silence, or the bees?
Ripple murmurings that never
Could be born of fall or river,
Or the whispering breeze.
III
Once in tempest it was given
Me to see thee,—where the leven
Lit the craggy wood with glare,—
Dancing, while,—like wedges driven,—
Thunder split the deeps of heaven,
And the wild rain swept thy hair.—
What art thou, whose presence, even
While with fear my heart was riven,
Healed it as with prayer?
A STORMY SUNSET
I
Soul of my body! what a death
For such a day of grief and gloom,
Unbroken sorrow of the sky!—
'Tis as if God's own loving breath
Had swept the piled-up thunder by,
And, bursting through the tempest's sheath,
Cleft from its pod a giant bloom.
II
See how the glory grows! unrolled,
Expanding length on radiant length
Of cloud-wrought petals.—Vast, a rose
The western heavens of flame unfold,
Where, sparkling thro' the splendor, glows
The evening star, fresh-faced with strength—
A raindrop in its heart of gold.
A WOODLAND GRAVE
White moons may come, white moons may go,
She sleeps where early blossoms blow;
Knows nothing of the leafy June,
That leans above her, night and noon,
Crowned now with sunbeam, now with moon,
Watching her roses grow.
The downy moth at evening comes
And flutters round their honeyed blooms:
Long, languid clouds, like ivory,
That isle the blue lagoons of sky,
Grow red as molten gold and dye
With flame the pine-dark glooms.
Dew, dripping from wet fern and leaf;
The wind, that shakes the blossom's sheaf;
The slender sound of water lone,
That makes a harp-string of some stone,
And now a wood-bird's twilight moan,
Seem whisp'rings there of grief.
Her garden, where the lilacs grew,
Where, on old walls, old roses blew,
Head-heavy with their mellow musk,
Where, when the beetle's drone was husk,
She lingered in the dying dusk,
No more shall know that knew.
Her orchard,—where the Spring and she
Stood listening to each bird and bee,—
That, from its fragrant firmament,
Snowed blossoms on her as she went,
(A blossom with their blossoms blent)
No more her face shall see.
White moons may come, white moons may go,
She sleeps where early blossoms blow;
Around her headstone many a seed
Shall sow itself; and briar and weed
Shall grow to hide it from men's heed,
And none will care or know.
THE OLD BYWAY
Its rotting fence one scarcely sees
Through sumac and wild blackberries.
Thick elder and the bramble-rose,
Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees
Hang droning in repose.
The little lizards lie all day
Gray on its rocks of lichen-gray;
And there, gay Ariels of the sun,
The butterflies make bright its way,
And paths where chipmunks run.
Its lyric there the redbird lifts,
While, overhead, the swallow drifts
'Neath sun-soaked clouds of palest cream,—
In which the wind makes azure rifts,—
And there the wood-doves dream.
The brown grasshoppers rasp and bound
'Mid weeds and briars that hedge it round;
And in its grass-grown ruts,—where stirs
The harmless snake,—mole-crickets sound;
O'erhead the locust whirs.
At evening, when the sad west turns
To lonely night a cheek that burns,
The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing;
And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns
The wind wakes, whispering.
THE WOODPATH
Here Spring her first frail violets blows;
Broadcast her whitest wind-flowers sows
Through starry mosses amber-fair,
And fronded ferns and briar-rose,
Hart's-tongue and maidenhair.
Here fungus life is beautiful;
Slim mushroom and the thick toadstool,—
As various colored as are blooms,—
Dot their damp cones through shadows cool,
And breathe forth rain perfumes.
Here stray the wandering cows to rest;
The calling cat-bird builds its nest
In spicewood bushes dark and deep;
Here raps the woodpecker its best,
And here young rabbits leap.
Beech, oak, and cedar; hickories;
The pawpaw and persimmon trees;
And tangled vines and sumac-brush,
Make dark the daylight, where the bees
Drone, and the wood-springs gush.
Here to pale melancholy moons,
In haunted nights of dreamy Junes,
Wails wildly the weird whippoorwill,
Whose strains, like those the owlet croons,
Wild woods with phantoms fill.
THE SOUND OF THE SAP
When the ice was thick on the flower-beds,
And the sleet was caked on the briar;
When the frost was down in the brown bulb's heads,
And the ways were clogged with mire:
When the snow on syringa and spiræa-tree
Seemed the ghosts of perished flowers;
And the days were sorry as sorry could be,
And Time limped, cursing his fardel of hours:
Heigh-ho! had I not a book and the logs,
That chirped with the sap in the burning?—
Or was it the frogs in the far-off bogs?
Or the bush-sparrow's song at the turning?
And I strolled by ways that the Springtime knows,
In her mossy dells, and her ferny passes;
Where the earth was holy with lily and rose,
And the myriad life of the grasses.
And I spoke with the Spring as a lover, who speaks
To his sweetheart; to whom he has given
A kiss that has kindled the rose of her cheeks,
And her eyes with the laughter of heaven.
The sound of the sap!—What a simple thing!—
But the sound of the sap had the power
To make the song-sparrow come and sing,
And the winter woodlands flower!
THE DRYAD
I have seen her limpid eyes,
Large with gradual laughter, rise
In the wild-rose nettles;
Slowly, like twin flowers, unfold,
Smiling,—when the wind, behold!
Whisked them into petals.
I have seen her hardy cheek,
Like a molten coral, leak
Through the leaves around it
Of thick Chickasaws; but so,
When I made more certain, lo!
A red plum I found it.
I have found her racy lips,
And her roguish finger-tips,
But a haw or berry;
Glimmers of her there and here,
Just, forsooth, enough to cheer,
And to make me merry.
Often from the ferny rocks
Dazzling rimples of her locks
At me she hath shaken;
And I've followed—but in vain!—
They had trickled into rain,
Sunlit, on the braken.
Once her full limbs flashed on me,
Naked, where a royal tree
Checkered mossy places
With soft sunlight and dim shade,—
Such a haunt as myths have made
For the Satyr races.
There, it seemed, hid amorous Pan;
For a sudden pleading ran
Through the thicket, wooing
Me to search and, suddenly,
From the swaying elder-tree,
Flew a wild-dove, cooing.