I
Tempest
Wrapped round of the night, as a monster is wrapped of the ocean,
Down, down through vast storeys of darkness, behold, in the tower
Of the heaven, the thunder! on stairways of cloudy commotion,
Colossal of tread, like a giant, from echoing hour to hour
Goes striding in rattling armor....
The Nymph, at her billow-roofed dormer
Of foam; and the Sylvan—green-housed—at her window of leaves appears;
—As a listening woman, who hears
The approach of her lover, who comes to her arms in the night;
And, loosening the loops of her locks,
With eyes full of love and delight,
From the couch of her rest in ardor and haste arises.—
The Nymph, as if born of the tempest, like fire surprises
The riotous bands of the rocks,
That face, with a roar, the shouting charge of the seas.
The Sylvan,—through troops of the trees,
Whose clamorous clans with gnarly bosoms keep hurling
Themselves on the guns of the wind,—goes wheeling and whirling.
The Nymph, of the waves' exultation upheld, her green tresses
Knotted with flowers of the hollow white foam, dives screaming;
Then bounds to the arms of the storm, who boisterously presses
Her hair and wild form to his breast that is panting and streaming.
The Sylvan,—hard-pressed by the wind, the Pan-footed air,—
On the violent backs of the hills,—
Like a flame that tosses and thrills
From crag to crag when the world of spirits is out,—
Is borne, as her rapture wills,
With glittering gesture and shout.
Now here in the darkness, now there,
From the rain-wild sweep of her hair,—
Bewilderingly volleyed o'er eyes and o'er lips,—
To the lambent swell of her limbs, her breasts and her hips,
She flashes her beautiful nakedness out in the glare
Of the tempest that bears her away,—
That bears me away!
Away, over forest and foam, over tree and spray,
Far swifter than thought, far swifter than sound or than flame;
Over ocean and pine,
In arms of tumultuous shadow and shine.—
Though Sylvan and Nymph do not
Exist, and only what
Of terror and beauty I feel and I name
As parts of the storm, the awe and the rapture divine
That here in the tempest are mine,—
The two are the same, the two are forever the same.
Calm
Beautiful-bosomed, O night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! bearing, as lightly
As a singer may bear the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.—
Is it the melody mute of bourgeoning leaf and of bloom?
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,
That I hear, that I hear?
With their sighs of silver and pearl?
Invisible ghosts,—
Each one a beautiful girl,—
Who whisper in leaves and glimmer in blossoms and hover
In color and fragrance and loveliness, breathed from the deep
World-soul of the mother,
Nature;—who, over and over,
Both sweetheart and lover,
Goes singing her songs from one sweet month to the other,—
That appear, that appear?
In forest and field, on hill-land and lea,
As crystallized harmony,
Materialized melody,
An uttered essence peopling far and near
The hyaline atmosphere?...
Behold how it sprouts from the grass and blooms from flower and tree!
In waves of diaphanous moonlight and mist,
In fugue upon fugue of gold and of amethyst,
Around me, above me it spirals; now slower, now faster,
Like symphonies born of the thought of a musical master.—
O music of Earth! O God, who the music inspired!
Let me breathe of the life of thy breath!
And so be fulfilled and attired
In resurrection, triumphant o'er time and o'er death!
HYMN TO DESIRE
I
Mother of visions, with lineaments dulcet as numbers
Breathed on the eyelids of love by music that slumbers,
Secretly, sweetly, O presence of fire and snow,
Thou comest mysterious,
In beauty imperious,
Clad on with dreams and the light of no world that we know,
Deep to my innermost soul am I shaken,
Helplessly shaken and tossed,
And of thy tyrannous yearnings so utterly taken,
My lips, unsatisfied, thirst;
Mine eyes are accurst
With longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken;
And mine ears, in listening lost,
Yearn, yearn for the note of a chord that will never awaken.
Like palpable music thou comest, like moon-light; and far,—
Resonant bar upon bar,—
The vibrating lyre
Of the spirit responds with melodious fire,
As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake,
With flame and with flake,
The chords of existence, the instrument star-sprung,
Whose frame is of clay, so wonderfully molded from mire.
III
Vested with vanquishment, come, O Desire, Desire!
Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of love!
Make of my heart an Israfel burning above,
A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal, but stammer!
Smite every rapturous wire
With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor,
Crying—"Awake! awake!
Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour,
With its mountains of magic, its fountains of faery, the spar-sprung,
Hast thou wandered away, O Heart!
Come, oh, come and partake
Of necromance banquets of beauty; and slake
Thy thirst in the waters of Art,
That are drawn from the streams
Of love and of dreams.
IV
"Come, oh come!
No longer shall language be dumb!
Thy vision shall grasp—
As one doth the glittering hasp
Of a dagger made splendid with gems and with gold—
The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of it merely.
And out of the stark
Eternity, awful and dark,
Immensity silent and cold,—
Universe-shaking as trumpets, or thunderous metals
That cymbal; yet pensive and pearly
And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals,
Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too early,—
The majestic music of Death, where he plays
On the organ, eternal and vast, of eons and days."
NYMPH AND FAUN
With her soft face half turned to me
Like an arrested moonbeam, she
Stood in the cirque of that deep tree.
I took her by the hands; she raised
Her face to mine; and, half amazed,
I kissed her; and we stood and gazed.
How good to kiss her throat and hair,
And say no word!—Her throat was bare,
And, as the slim moon, young and fair.—
Had God not given us life for this?
The world-old, amorous happiness
Of arms that clasp, and lips that kiss.
O eloquence of limbs and arms!
O rhetoric of breasts, whose charms
Say to the sluggish blood what warms!
Had God not smiled upon this hour
That bloomed,—where love had all of power,—
The senses' aphrodisiac flower?
The dawn was far away: the night
Hung savage stars of sultry white,
Lamp-like, above to give us light.
Night, night, who led us each to each,
Where heart with heart could hold sweet speech,
With life's best gift within our reach.
And here it was—between the goals
Of flesh and spirit, sex controls—
Took place the marriage of our souls.
PARTING OF LEANDER AND HERO
I
Brows pale through blue-black tresses
Wet with the rain's cold kisses;
Hair that the sea-wind tosses,
Wild as wild wings in flight;
Pale brows, some sad thought crosses,
One kiss and then—good night.
II
Nay, love! thou wilt undo me
When in the heavy waves!—
Come, smile! and make unto me
The billows' backs as slaves
To bear me and indue me
With strength o'er ocean's graves.
III
Weep not, as heavy-hearted
Before I go! lest thou
Shouldst follow as we parted.—
Come, gaze at me glad-hearted!
Not with sweet lips distorted
With fear; and eyes tear-smarted!—
Let me remember how
Thy face looks when thou smilest
And with soft words beguilest
My soul.—From feet to brow,
Come, strengthen thy strong lover
To breast the waves that cover
Deep caves where sea-nymphs hover,
Eager to seize him now.
IV
Thy image, love, shall follow
With breast pressed close to mine:
With arms from out whose hollow
No death can tear me. Follow,
Come, light me through the brine,
Dark eyes, fixed bright on mine,
And mouth as red as wine!—
Yea, give me wine of kisses,
Whose fire shall help me home,
Sweetheart, through foam that hisses,
The long wild miles of foam.
Sweet! cease thy sighs and weeping!
'Tis time for rest and sleeping,
And Venus-vestured dreams,
Where thy Leander, stooping,
Thou'lt see as now, undrooping,
With eyes all unaccusing:
Not as thou saw'st, it seems,
In sleep last night, in dreams,
His curls with ocean oozing,
And wan of cheek and brow:
But, Hero, even as now,
Fair-favored as can make him
Thy smile, which is a might,
A hope, a god, to take him
Safe through this hell of night.
VI
Here in thy throat's white hollow
One last long kiss.—I go.—
Ah, Sweet! a kiss to follow
Down from thy throat's white hollow
Unto thy breast that's whiter:—
Thine arms, that clasp me tighter;
One kiss then on thy mouth,
Warmer than all the South;
And eyes, than waters brighter
Wherein the far stars glow.
Smile on me now I leave thee!—
And kiss me on the brow!—
Smile on me, love, nor grieve thee!
No thing can harm me now!
THE SPIRIT OF THE FOREST SPRING
Over the rocks she trails her locks,
Her mossy locks that drip, drip, drip:
Her sparkling eyes smile at the skies
In friendship-wise and fellowship:
While the gleam and glance of her countenance
Lull into trance the woodland places,
As over the rocks she trails her locks,
Her dripping locks that the long fern graces.
She pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse,
Its crystal cruse that drips, drips, drips:
And all the day its crystal spray
Is heard to play from her finger-tips:
And the slight, soft sound makes haunted ground
Of the woods around that the sunlight laces,
As she pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse,
Its dripping cruse that no man traces.
She swims and swims with glimmering limbs,
With lucid limbs that drip, drip, drip:
Where beechen boughs build a leafy house,
Where her form may drowse or her feet may trip;
And the liquid beat of her rippling feet
Makes three times sweet the forest mazes,
As she swims and swims with glimmering limbs,
With dripping limbs through the twilight's hazes.
Then wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps,
She whispering sleeps and drips, drips, drips:
Where moon and mist wreathe neck and wrist,
And, starry-whist, through the night she slips:
While the heavenly dream of her soul makes gleam
The falls that stream and the foam that races,
As wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps,
She dripping sleeps or starward gazes.
TO A PANSY-VIOLET
Found Solitary Among the Hills
I
O pansy-violet,
With early April wet,
How frail and lone you look
Lost in this sylvan nook
Of heaven-holding hills:
Down which the hurrying rills
Fling scrolls of melodies;
O'er which the birds and bees
Weave gossamers of song,
Invisible, but strong:
Sweet music-webs they spin
To snare the spirit in.
II
O pansy-violet,
Unto your face I set
My lips, and—do you speak?
Or is it but some freak
Of fancy, love imparts
Through you unto the heart's
Desire? whispering low
A secret none may know
But me, who sit and dream
Here by this forest-stream.
III
O pansy-violet,
O wilding floweret,
Hued like some dædal gem
Starring the diadem
Of fay or sylvan sprite,
Who, in the woods, all night
Is busy with the blooms,
Young leaves and wild perfumes,
Through you I seem t' have seen
All that our dreams may mean.
IV
O pansy-violet,
Long, long ago we met—
'Twas in a Fairy tale:
Two children in a vale
Sat underneath the stars,
Far from the world of wars:
Each loved the other well:
Her eyes were like the spell
Of dusk and dawning skies—
The purple dark that dyes
The midnight: his were blue
As heaven the day shines through.
V
O pansy-violet,
What is this vague regret,
This yearning, so like tears,
That touches me through years
Long past, when myth and fable
In all strange things were able
To beautify the Earth,
Things of immortal worth?—
This longing, that to me
Is like a memory,
Lived long ago, of two
Fair forest children who
Loved with no mortal love;
Whom heaven smiled above,
Fostering; and when they died
Laid side by loving side.
O pansy-violet,
Do you remember yet
That wood-god-guarded tomb,
Out of whose moss your bloom
Sprang, with three petals wan
As are the eyes of dawn;
And two as darkly deep
As are the eyes of sleep?
VII
O flower,—that seems to hold
Some memory of old,
A hope, a happiness,
At which I can but guess,—
You are a sign to me
Of immortality:
Through you my spirit sees
The deathless purposes
Of death, that still evolves
The beauty it resolves;
The change that still fulfils
Life's meaning as God wills.
PAGAN
The gods, who could loose and bind
In the long ago,
The gods, who were stern and kind
To men below,
Where shall we seek and find,
Or, finding, know?
Where Greece, with king on king,
Dreamed in her halls;
Where Rome kneeled worshiping,
The owl now calls,
And clambering ivies cling,
And the moonbeam falls.
They have served, and passed away
From the earth and sky,
And their creeds are a record gray,
Where the passer-by
Reads, "Live and be glad to-day,
For to-morrow ye die."
BEAUTY AND ART
The gods are dead; but still for me
Lives on in wildwood brook and tree
Each myth, each old divinity.
For me still laughs among her rocks
The Naiad; and the Dryad's locks
Drop perfume on the wildflower flocks.
The Satyr's hoof still prints the loam;
And, whiter than the wind-blown foam,
The Oread haunts her mountain home.
To him, whose mind is fain to dwell
With loveliness no time can quell,
All things are real, imperishable.
To him—whatever facts may say—
Who sees the soul beneath the clay,
Is proof of a diviner day.
The very stars and flowers preach
A gospel old as God, and teach
Philosophy a child may reach;
That can not die; that shall not cease;
That lives through idealities
Of Beauty, ev'n as Rome and Greece:
That lifts the soul above the clod,
And, working out some period
Of art, is part and proof of God.
THE OLD WATER-MILL
Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise,
Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skies
Pilot great clouds like towering argosies,
And hawk and buzzard breast the azure breeze.
With many a foaming fall and glimmering reach
Of placid murmur, under elm and beech,
The creek goes twinkling through long gleams and glooms
Of woodland quiet, summered with perfumes:
The creek, in whose clear shallows minnow-schools
Glitter or dart; and by whose deeper pools
The blue kingfishers and the herons haunt;
That, often startled from the freckled flaunt
Of blackberry-lilies—where they feed and hide—
Trail a lank flight along the forestside
With eery clangor. Here a sycamore,
Smooth, wave-uprooted, builds from shore to shore
A headlong bridge; and there, a storm-hurled oak
Lays a long dam, where sand and gravel choke
The water's lazy way. Here mistflower blurs
Its bit of heaven; there the oxeye stirs
Its gloaming hues of pearl and gold; and here,
A gray, cool stain, like dawn's own atmosphere,
The dim wild-carrot lifts its crumpled crest:
And over all, at slender flight or rest,
The dragon-flies, like coruscating rays
Of lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase,
Drowsily sparkle through the summer days:
And, dewlap-deep, here from the noontide heat
The bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat;
And through the willows girdling the hill,
Now far, now near, borne as the soft winds will,
Comes the low rushing of the water-mill.
Ah, lovely to me from a little child,
How changed the place! wherein once, undefiled,
The glad communion of the sky and stream
Went with me like a presence and a dream.
Where once the brambled meads and orchard-lands
Poured ripe abundance down with mellow hands
Of summer; and the birds of field and wood
Called to me in a tongue I understood;
And in the tangles of the old rail-fence
Even the insect tumult had some sense,
And every sound a happy eloquence:
And more to me than wisest books can teach
The wind and water said; whose words did reach
My soul, addressing their magnificent speech,—
Raucous and rushing,—from the old mill-wheel,
That made the rolling mill-cogs snore and reel,
Like some old ogre in a fairy tale
Nodding above his meat and mug of ale.
How memory takes me back the ways that lead—
As when a boy—through woodland and through mead!
To orchards fruited; or to fields in bloom;
Or briery fallows, like a mighty room,
Through which the winds swing censers of perfume,
And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit;—
A splendid feast, that stayed the ploughboy's foot
When to the tasseling acres of the corn
He drove his team, fresh in the primrose morn;
And from the liberal banquet, nature lent,
Took dewy handfuls as he whistling went.—
A boy once more, I stand with sunburnt feet
And watch the harvester sweep down the wheat;
Or laze with warm limbs in the unstacked straw
Nearby the thresher, whose insatiate maw
Devours the sheaves, hot drawling out its hum—
Like some great sleepy bee, above a bloom,
Made drunk with honey—while, grown big with grain,
The bulging sacks receive the golden rain.
Again I tread the valley, sweet with hay,
And hear the bob-white calling far away,
Or wood-dove cooing in the elder-brake;
Or see the sassafras bushes madly shake
As swift, a rufous instant, in the glen
The red fox leaps and gallops to his den;
Or, standing in the violet-colored gloam,
Hear roadways sound with holiday riding home
From church, or fair, or county barbecue,
Which the whole country to some village drew.
How spilled with berries were its summer hills,
And strewn with walnuts all its autumn rills—
And chestnuts, burring from the spring's long flowers!—
When from their tops the trees seemed streaming showers
Of slender silver, cool, crepuscular,
And like a nebulous radiance shone afar.—
And maples! how their sappy hearts would gush
Rude troughs of syrup, when the winter bush
Steamed with the sugar-kettle, day and night,
And, red, the snow was streaked with fire-light.
Then was it glorious! the mill-dam's edge,
One slope of frosty crystal, laid a ledge
Of pearl across; above which, sleeted trees
Tossed arms of ice, that, clashing in the breeze,
Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles,
Thin as the peal of far-off Elfland bells:
A sound that in my city dreams I hear,
That brings before me, under skies that clear,
The old mill in its winter garb of snow,
Its frozen wheel like a hoar beard below,
And its west windows, two deep eyes aglow.
Ah, ancient mill, still do I picture o'er
Thy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor;
Thy door,—like some brown, honest hand of toil,
And honorable with labor of the soil,—
Forever open; through which, on his back
The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack,
And while the miller measures out his toll,
Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,—
That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,—
The harmless gossip of the passing day:
Good country talk, that tells how so-and-so
Has died or married; how curculio
And codling-moth have ruined half the fruit,
And blight plays mischief with the grapes to boot;
Or what the news from town; next county fair;
How well the crops are looking everywhere:
Now this, now that, on which their interests fix,
Prospects for rain or frost, and politics.
While all around, the sweet smell of the meal
Filters, warm-pouring from the grinding wheel
Into the bin; beside which, mealy white,
The miller looms, dim in the dusty light.
Again I see the miller's home, between
The crinkling creek and hills of beechen green:
Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown,
Who oft o'erawed my youth with gray-browed frown
And rugged mien: again he tries to reach
My youthful mind with fervid scriptural speech.—
For he, of all the country-side confessed,
The most religious was and goodliest;
A Methodist, and one whom faith still led,
No books except the Bible had he read—
At least so seemed it to my younger head.—
All things in Earth and Heav'n he'd prove by this,
Be it a fact or mere hypothesis;
For to his simple wisdom, reverent,
"The Bible says" was all of argument.—
God keep his soul! his bones were long since laid
Among the sunken gravestones in the shade
Of those black-lichened rocks, that wall around
The family burying-ground with cedars crowned;
Where bristling teasel and the brier combine
With clambering wood-rose and the wild-grape vine
To hide the stone whereon his name and dates
Neglect, with mossy hand, obliterates.
THE RAIN-CROW
I
Can freckled August,—drowsing warm and blond
Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead,
In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,—
O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed
To thee? when no plumed weed, no feather'd seed
Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond,
That gleams like flint within its rim of grasses,
Through which the dragon-fly forever passes
Like splintered diamond.
II
Drouth weights the trees, and from the farm-house eaves
The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,
Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves
Limp with the heat—a league of rutty way—
Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay
Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves—
Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain,
In thirsty heaven or on burning plain,
That thy keen eye perceives?
III
But thou art right. Thou prophesiest true.
For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting,
When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue,
Great water-carrier winds their buckets bring
Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring
And flash and rumble! lavishing large dew
On corn and forestland, that, streaming wet,
Their hilly backs against the downpour set,
Like giants, loom in view.
IV
The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower,
Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art;
The bumblebee, within the last half-hour,
Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart;
While in the barnyard, under shed and cart,
Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power,
Barometer of the birds,—like August there,—
Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair,
Like some drenched truant, cower.
THE HARVEST MOON
I
Globed in Heav'n's tree of azure, golden mellow
As some round apple hung
High on Hesperian boughs, thou hangest yellow
The branch-like clouds among:
Within thy light a sunburnt youth, named Health,
Rests 'mid the tasseled shocks, the tawny stubble;
And by his side, clad on with rustic wealth
Of field and farm, beneath thy amber bubble,
A nut-brown maid, Content, sits smiling still:
While through the quiet trees,
The mossy rocks, the grassy hill,
Thy silvery spirit glides to yonder mill,
Around whose wheel the breeze
And shimmering ripples of the water play,
As, by their mother, little children may.
Sweet Spirit of the Moon, who walkest,—lifting,
Exhaustless on thy arm,
A vase of pearly fire,—through the shifting
Cloud-halls of calm and storm,
Pour down thy blossoms! let me hear them come,
Pelting with noiseless light the twinkling thickets,
Making the darkness audible with the hum
Of many insect creatures, grigs and crickets:
Until it seems the elves hold revelries
By haunted stream and grove;
Or, in the night's deep peace,
The young-old presence of Earth's full increase
Seems telling thee her love,
Ere, lying down, she turns to rest, and smiles,
Hearing thy heart beat through the myriad miles.
FIELD AND FOREST CALL
There is a field, that leans upon two hills,
Foamed o'er of flowers and twinkling with clear rills;
That in its girdle of wild acres bears;
The anodyne of rest that cures all cares;
Wherein soft wind and sun and sound are blent
And fragrance—as in some old instrument
Sweet chords—calm things, that nature's magic spell
Distils from heaven's azure crucible,
And pours on Earth to make the sick mind well.
There lies the path, they say—
Come, away! come, away!
There is a forest, lying 'twixt two streams,
Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams;
That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf
Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief;
Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things,
Vague, whispering touches, gleams and twitterings,
Dews and cool shadows—that the mystic soul
Of nature permeates with suave control,
And waves o'er Earth to make the sad heart whole.
There lies the road, they say—
Come, away! come, away!
OLD HOMES
Old homes among the hills! I love their gardens,
Their old rock-fences, that our day inherits;
Their doors, round which the great trees stand like wardens;
Their paths, down which the shadows march like spirits;
Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens.
I see them gray among their ancient acres,
Severe of front, their gables lichen-sprinkled,—
Like gentle-hearted, solitary Quakers,
Grave and religious, with kind faces wrinkled,—
Serene among their memory-hallowed acres.
Their gardens, banked with roses and with lilies—
Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers—
Where Springtime mints her gold in daffodillies,
And Autumn coins her marigolds in showers,
And all the hours are toilless as the lilies.
I love their orchards where the gay woodpecker
Flits, flashing o'er you, like a wingéd jewel;
Their woods, whose floors of moss the squirrels checker
With half-hulled nuts; and where, in cool renewal,
The wild brooks laugh, and raps the red woodpecker.
Old homes! old hearts! Upon my soul forever
Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter;
Like love they touch me, through the years that sever,
With simple faith; like friendship, draw me after
The dreamy patience that is theirs forever.