I
The leaves are shivering on the thorn,
Drearily;
And sighing wakes the sad-eyed morn,
Wearily.
I press my thin face to the pane,
Drearily;
But never will he come again.
Wearily.
The rain hath sicklied day with haze,
Drearily;
My tears run downward as I gaze,
Wearily.
The mist and morn spake unto me,
Drearily:—
"What is this thing God gives to thee,
Wearily?"
The morn and mist spake unto me,
Drearily:—
"What is this thing which thou dost see,
Wearily?"
I said unto the mist and morn,
Drearily:—
"The shame of man and woman's scorn,
Wearily."
"He loved thee not," they made reply,
Drearily.—
I said, "Would God had let me die!"
Wearily.
II
My hopes are as a closed-up book,
Drearily,
Upon whose clasp of love I look
Wearily.
I heard the wind sweep wild and wide,
Drearily;
And turned upon my face and sighed
Wearily.
The wind and rain spake unto me,
Drearily:—
"What is this thing God takes from thee,
Wearily?"
I said unto the rain and wind,
Drearily:—
"The love, for which my body sinned,
Wearily."
The rain and wind spake unto me,
Drearily:—
"What are these things that burden thee,
Wearily?"
I said unto the wind and rain,
Drearily:—
"Past joys, and dreams whose ghosts remain,
Wearily."
KU KLUX
We have sent him seeds of the melon's core,
And nailed a warning upon his door:
By the Ku Klux laws we can do no more.
Down in the hollow, 'mid crib and stack,
The roof of his low-porched house looms black;
Not a line of light at the door-sill's crack.
Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
The clouds blow heavy toward the moon.
The edge of the storm will reach it soon.
The kildee cries and the lonesome loon.
The clouds shall flush with a wilder glare
Than the lightning makes with its angled flare,
When the Ku Klux verdict is given there.
In the pause of the thunder rolling low,
A rifle's signal—who shall know
From the wind's fierce hurl and the rain's black blow?
Only the signature, written grim
At the end of the message brought to him—
A hempen rope and a twisted limb.
So arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
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 one lying dead.
And then I knew that I had died,
I, who had suffered so and sinned—
And 'twas myself I stood beside
In the gray dawn and wind.
PRÆTERITA
I
Low belts of rushes ragged with the blast;
Lagoons of marish reddening with the west;
And o'er the marsh the water-fowl's unrest
While daylight dwindles and the dusk falls fast.
Set in sad walls, all mossy with the past,
An old stone gateway with a crumbling crest;
A garden where death drowses manifest;
And in gaunt yews the shadowy house at last.
Here, like an unseen spirit, silence talks
With echo and the wind in each gray room
Where melancholy slumbers with the rain:
Or, like some gentle ghost, the moonlight walks
In the dim garden, which her smile makes bloom
With all the old-time loveliness again.
II
When slow the twilight settles o'er its roof,
And from the haggard oaks unto its door
The rain comes, wild as one who rides before
His enemies that follow, hoof to hoof;
And in each window's gusty curtain-woof
The rain-wind sighs, like one who mutters o'er
Some tale of love and crime; and, on the floor,
The sunset spreads red stains as bloody proof:—
From hall to hall and haunted stair to stair,
Through all the house, a dread, that drags me to'ard
The ancient dusk of that avoided room,
Wherein she sits with ghostly golden hair,
And eyes that gaze beyond her soul's sad doom,
Waking the ghost of that old harpsichord.
IN SHADOW
I
A moth sucks at a flaming flower:
The moon beams on the old church-tower:
I watched the moth and rising moon,
One silver tip
Of glimmer, slip
Through ghostly tree-tops, deep with June,
To dream above the church an hour.
II
The gray moth on the dewy pod
Dreams; and the sleepy poppies nod
Their drugged heads in the languid breeze,
That whispers low
Of some dim woe,
And spirit-like among the trees,
Strews snowy petals on the sod.
My soul dreams at life's blood-red heart
Of that thou art: of thee, who art
All silence: saying something fair
As phantoms know
When moon-flowers blow
And spirits meet: the beauty rare
Of which thou, too, hast grown a part.
IV
My heart, behold, is but a bloom
A pale thought clings to by a tomb,
A tomb that holds the one I love,
All wan of cheek,
Whom, wild and weak,
My heart bows down and breaks above,
Grief-haunted in the moonlit gloom.
IN THE OWL-LIGHT
I
Uplifted darkness and the owl-light breaks,
Scuds the wild land, pursuing patch with patch,
As when deep daisy fields a swift wind shakes.—
How clumsily I raised the crazy latch!...
So.—When yon black cloud, light-absorbing, rakes
Again the moon's bald disk—
Out! and the storm will snatch
Again my hair, made lank with wind and rain
Two hours since.... There! from the ragged plain
A great cloud-besom sweeps the beams again!—
Out! out!... No fear of risk?...
II
First, past the fellside, where the bramble-hollow
Whines, wolf-like, with the wind; gaunt wind, that grieves
Through the one sickly ash, whose withered leaves
Worry and mutter, shriveled as the lips
Of bent hags kissing. Then—the slope that whips
The face with brush; and where a gnarled vine slips,
Snake-like, from off a rock, that seems to wallow,—
One mass of briers,—a humpbacked hulk of hair,
A gorgon head of writhings, huge, that heaves,
When, heaped abruptly on it, flare!
Burst rain and tempest-glare.—
This passed, I follow
A thorny slip of path until
I reach the storm-scarred summit of the hill.
III
Let me not think of it!—as I go thence,—
That thought I can not kill!
Ungovernable! that dogs my footsteps still,
Like something real and living; which my will
Is powerless against.—Ah! when that fence,
Dividing the dark ridges of the hill,
Is passed, shall I not then be breathless? ill
With sinking sense
Of ghastly things to come?—Some sterner strength
Sustain my soul!—Beyond the hill the dense
Dead wood's to pass, and then ... that livid length
Of mooning water, spectral and immense
With sullen storm and night....
There, if the ghoulish wind,—
That knows well as I know how I have sinned,—
Will cease to curse me in its hag-like spite,
Alone with all the horror of my soul,
I shall behold,
Now this way, and now that way rolled,
Lifeless, among cramped reeds, the storm has thinned,—
With wide, white eyes, metallic in the light
Of the impassive moon:—in gusty roll
Of washing ripples, webby, slippery locks
Dabbling and dark; and,—wedged between sharp rocks,—
Two rocks, two iron fangs,
Whereon the lake's mad lip, pale-foaming clangs,—
Wild-pinched and water-strangled white,
His murdered face! that mocks.
ASHLY MERE
Come! look in the shadowy water here,
The stagnant water of Ashly Mere:
Where the stirless depths are dark but clear,
What is the thing that lies there?—
A lily-pod, half-sunk from sight?
Or spawn of the toad, all water-white?
Or ashen blur of the moon's wan light?
Or a woman's face and eyes there?
Now lean to the water a listening ear,
The haunted water of Ashly Mere:
What is the sound that you seem to hear
In the ghostly hush of the deeps there?—
A withered reed, that the ripple lips?
Or a night-bird's wing, that the surface whips?
Or the rain in a leaf that drips and drips?
Or a woman's voice that weeps there?
Now look and listen! but not too near
The lonely water of Ashly Mere!—
For so it happens this time each year
As you lean by the Mere and listen:
And the moaning voice I understand,—
For oft I have watched it draw to land,
And lift from the water a ghastly hand
And a face whose dead eyes glisten.
And this is the reason why every year
To the hideous water of Ashly Mere
I come when the woodland leaves are sear,
And the autumn moon hangs hoary:
For here by the Mere was wrought a wrong
But the old, old story is overlong—
And woman is weak and man is strong,
And the Mere's and mine is the story.
THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN
On the black road through the wood,
As I rode,
There the Headless Horseman stood,
By the dark pool in the wood,
As I rode.
From the shadow of an oak,
As I rode,
Demon steed and rider broke;
By the thunder-riven oak,
As I rode.
On the wild way through the plain,
As I rode,
At my back he whirled like rain;
On the tempest-blackened plain,
As I rode.
Four black hoofs shod red with fire,
As I rode,
Woke the wild rocks, dark and dire;
Eyes and nostrils streaming fire,
As I rode.
On the deep path through the rocks,
As I rode,
I could touch his horse's locks;
Through the echo-hurling rocks,
As I rode.
And again I looked behind,
As I rode—
Dark as night and swift as wind,
Towering, he rode behind,
As I rode.
On the steep road through the dell,
As I rode,
Far away I heard a bell,
In the church beyond the dell,
As I rode.
And my soul cried out in prayer,
As I rode—
Lo! the demon went in air,
When my soul called out in prayer,
As I rode.
THE WEREWOLF
She
Nay; still amort, my love?—Why dost thou lag?
He
The strix-owl cried.
She
Nay! 'twas yon stream that leaps
Hoarse from the black pines of the Hakel steeps;
Its moon-wild water glittering down the crag.—
Why so aghast, sweetheart? Why dost thou stop?
He
The Demon Huntsman passed with hooting horn!
She
He
My limbs are cold.
She
Come! warm thee in my arms.
He
My eyes are weary.
She
Rest, them, love, on mine.
He
I am athirst.
She
Quench, on my lips, thy thirst.—
O dear belovéd, how thy last kiss warms
My blood again!
He
Off!... How thy eyeballs shine!—
Thou beast!... thou—Ah!... thus do
I die, accursed!
THE SEA SPIRIT
Ah me! I shall not waken soon
From dreams of such divinity!
A spirit singing 'neath the moon
To me.
Wild sea-spray driven of the storm
Is not so wildly white as she,
Who beckoned with a foam-white arm
To me.
With eyes dark green, and golden-green
Long locks, that sparkled drippingly,
Out of the green wave she did lean
To me.
And sang; till Earth and Heaven were
A far, forgotten memory;
Till more than Heaven seemed in her
To me:—
Sleep, sweeter than love's face or home,
And death's immutability,
And music of the plangent foam,
Ah me!
Sweep over her with all thy ships,
With all thy stormy tides, O sea!
The memory of immortal lips,
And me!
THE VAMPIRE
A lily in a twilight place?
Or moonflower in the lonely night?—
Strange beauty of a woman's face
Of wildflower-white!
The rain that hangs a star's green ray
Slim on a leaf-point's restlessness,
Is not so glimmering green and gray
As was her dress.
I drew her dark hair from her eyes,
And in their deeps beheld a while
Such shadowy moonlight as the skies
Of Hell may smile.
She held her mouth up, redly wan
And burning cold:—I bent and kissed
Such rosy snow as some wild dawn
Makes of a mist.
God shall not take from me that hour,
When round my neck her white arms clung!
When 'neath my lips, like some fierce flower,
Her white throat swung!
Nor words she murmured while she leaned!
Witch-words, she holds me softly by,—
The spell that binds me to a fiend
Until I die.
WILL-O'-THE-WISP
I
There in the calamus he stands
With frog-webbed feet and bat-winged hands;
His glow-worm garb glints goblin-wise;
And elfishly, and impishly,
Above the gleam of owlet eyes,
A death's-head cap of downy dyes
Nods out at me, and beckons me.
II
Now in the reeds his face looks white
As witch-down on a witches' night;
Now through the dark, old, haunted mill,
All eerily, all flickeringly
He flits; and with a whippoorwill
Mouth calls, and seems to syllable,
"Come follow me! oh, follow me!"
Now o'er the sluggish stream he wends,
A slim light at his fingers' ends;
The spotted spawn, the toad hath clomb,
Slips oozily, sucks slimily;
His easy footsteps seem to come—
Like bubble-gaspings of the scum—
This side of me; that side of me.
IV
There by the stagnant pool he stands,
A foxfire lamp in flickering hands;
The weeds are slimy to the tread,
And mockingly, and gloatingly,
With slanted eyes and pointed head,
He leans above a face long dead,—
The face of me! of me! of me!
REVISITED
It was beneath a waning moon when all the woods were sear,
And winds made eddies of the leaves that whispered far and near,
I met her on the bramble bridge we parted at last year.
At first I deemed her but a mist that faltered in that place,
An autumn mist beneath the trees the moon's thin beams did lace,
Until I neared and in the moon beheld her face to face.
The crinkle of the summer heat above the drouth-burnt leas;
The shimmer of the thistle-drift adown the silences;
The gliding of the fairy-fire between the swamp and trees:
All qualified her presence as a sorrow may a dream—
The vague suggestion of a self; the glimmer of a gleam;
The actual and unreal of the things that are and seem.
Where once she came with welcome and glad eyes, all loving-wise,
She passed, and gave no greeting that my heart could recognize,
With far, set face, unseeing, and sad, unremembering eyes.
It was beneath a waning moon when woods were bleak and sear,
And winds made whispers of the leaves that eddied far and near,
I met her ghost upon the bridge we parted at last year.
THE OLD HOUSE
Quaint and forgotten, by an unused road,
An old house stands: around its doors the dense
Rank ironweeds grow high;
The chipmunks make a highway of its fence;
And on its sunken flagstones newt and toad
As still as lichens lie.
The timid snake upon its hearth's cool sand
Sleeps undisturbed; the squirrel haunts its roof;
And in the clapboard sides
Of closets,—dim with many a spider woof,—
Like the uncertain tapping of a hand,
The beetle-borer hides.
Above its lintel, under mossy eaves,
The mud-wasps build their cells; and in the floor
Of its neglected porch
The black bees nest: through each deserted door,
Vague as faint, phantom footsteps, steal the leaves
And dropped cones of the larch.
But come with me when sunset's magic old
Transforms this ruin—yea! transmutes this house:
When windows, one by one,—
Like Age's eyes, that Youth's love-dreams arouse,—
Grow lairs of fire; and a mouth of gold
Its wide door towards the sun.
Or let us wait until each rain-stained room
Is carpeted with moonlight, patterned oft
With shadow'd boughs o'erhead;
And through the house the wind goes rustling soft,
As might the ghost—a whisper of perfume—
Of some sweet girl long dead.
THE FOREST OF DREAMS
I
Where was I last Friday night?—
Within the Forest of dark Dreams
Following the blur of a goblin light,
That led me over dreadful streams,
Whereon the scum of the spawn was spread,
And the blistered slime, in stagnant seams;
Where the weed and the moss swam black and dead,
Like a drowned girl's hair, in the ropy ooze:
And the jack-o'-lantern light that led
Flickered the foxfire trees o'erhead,
And the owl-like things at airy cruise.
II
Where was I last Friday night?—
Within the Forest of dark Dreams
Following a form of shadowy white
With my own wild face it seems.—
Did a raven's wing just fan my hair?
Or a web-winged bat brush by my face?
Or the hand of—something I did not dare
Look round to see in that obscene place!
Where the boughs, with their leaves a-devil's-dance,
And the thorn-tree bush, where the wind made moan,
Had more than a strange significance
Of life and of evil not their own.
III
Where was I last Friday night?—
Within the Forest of dark Dreams
Seeing the mists rise left and right,
Like the leathery fog that heaves and steams
From the rolling horror of Hell's red streams:
While the wind, that tossed in the tattered tree,
And danced alone with the last mad leaf—
Or was it the wind?... kept whispering me,
"Come! bury it here with its own black grief,
And its heart of fire that naught can save!"—
And there in the darkness I seemed to see
My own self digging my soul a grave.
THE CITY OF DARKNESS
Wide-walled it stands in heathen lands
Beside a mystic sea,
Its streets strange-trod of many a god
And templed blasphemy.
Far through the night, with light on light,
It flames beside the sea;
While overhead an unseen dread
Impends eternally.
There is a sound above, around,
Of music by the sea;
And weird and wide the torches glide
Of pagan revelry.
There is a noise as of a voice
That calls beneath the sea;
And all the deep heaves, as in sleep,
With vague expectancy.
Then slowly up—as in a cup
Seethes poison—swells the sea;
As through black glass, wild mass on mass,
The town glows fiery.
Red-lit it glowers, like Hell's dark towers,
Closed in the iron sea;
And monster forms in awful swarms
Wing round it cloudily.
Still overhead the unseen dread,
Whose shadow dyes the sea,
At wrath-winged wait behind its gate
Till God shall set it free.
An earthquake crash; a taloned flash—
And, lo! from sky to sea
A sworded Doom that stalks the gloom,
Crowned with Death's agony.
And where it burned, a flame inurned,
Blood-red within the sea,
The phantasm of the dread above
Sits in immensity.
UNDER DARK SKIES
I
Hills rolled in woods, that lair the lynx and fox;
Harsh fields, that lean before the woods' advance
As wild-men fly from hunters, tossing locks
Through which their eyes of yellow fire glance;
Great blurs of briers and lugubrious rocks,—
A bristling blackness,—with a pool beneath,
Whereo'er the wisps, like something evil, dance;
And then a house like the wrecked face of death.
II
There where the moon hangs sinister, o'er parched
And haggard thorns,—a golden battle-bow,
Or shield of bronze, old wars have scarred and scorched,—
What crime hath cursed it ... who shall ever know?—
Night only! Night, with flickering flame, who torched
That moment when blood branded black its sod,
And in the pool a ghastly face sank slow
Beneath the storm and rushing fire of God.
REMBRANDTS
I
I shall not soon forget her and her eyes,
The haunts of hate, where suffering seemed to write
Its stealthy name, whose syllables are sighs,
In strange and starless night.
I shall not soon forget her and her face,
So quiet, yet uneasy as a dream
That stands on tip-toe in a haunted place
And listens for a scream.
She made me feel as one, alone, may feel
In some grand, ghostly mansion of old time,
The presence of a treasure, walls conceal,
And secret of a crime.
II
With lambent faces, mimicking the moon,
The water lilies lie;
Dotting the darkness of the long lagoon
As stars, the sky.
A face, the whiteness of a water-flower,
With pollen-golden hair,
In shadow half, half in the moonlight's glower,
Lifts slowly there.
A young girl's face, death makes mute marble of,
Turned to the moon and me,
Sad with the pathos of unspeakable love,
Floating to sea.
III
One listening bent, in dread of something coming
He can not flee nor balk—
A phantom footstep, in the ghostly gloaming,
That haunts a ruined walk.
Long has he given his whole heart's hard endeavor
To labor, dark and dawn,
Dreaming that Love still watched his toil and ever
Turned kindly eyes thereon.
Now in his life, he feels, there nears an hour,
Inevitable, alas!
When in the darkness he shall cringe and cower,
And see his dead self pass.
GHOSTS
Was it the strain of the waltz that, repeating
Love, so bewitched me? or only the gleam
There of the lustres, that set my heart beating,
Feeling your presence as one feels a dream?
For, on a sudden, the woman of fashion,
Soft at my side in her diamonds and lace,
Vanished, and pale with reproach or with passion,
You, my dead sweetheart, looked up in my face.
Music, the nebulous lights, and the sifting
Fragrance of women made amorous the air;
Born of these three and my thoughts you came drifting,
Clad in dim muslin, a rose in your hair.
There in the waltz, that followed the lancers,
Hard to my breast did I crush you and hold;
Far through the stir and the throng of the dancers
Onward I bore you as often of old.
Pale were your looks; and the rose in your tresses
Paler of hue than the dreams we have lost;—
"Who," then I said, "is it sees or who guesses,
Here in the hall, that I dance with a ghost?"
Gone!—And the dance and the music are ended.
Gone!—And the rapture is turned into sighs.
And, on my arm, in her elegance splendid,
The woman of fashion smiles up in my eyes.
Had I forgotten? and did she remember?—
She who is dead, whom I can not forget:
She, for whose sake all my heart is an ember
Covered with ashes of dreams and regret.
AT MIDNIGHT
At midnight in the trysting wood
I wandered by the waterside,
When, soft as mist, before me stood
My sweetheart who had died.
But so unchanged was she, meseemed
That I had only dreamed her dead;
Glad in her eyes the lovelight gleamed;
Her lips were warm and red.
What though the stars shone shadowy through
Her form as by my side she went,
And by her feet no drop of dew
Was stirred, no blade was bent!
What though through her white loveliness
The wildflower dimmed, the moonlight paled,
Real to my touch she was; no less
Than when the earth prevailed.
She took my hand. My heart beat wild.
She kissed my mouth. I bowed my head.
Then, gazing in my eyes, she smiled:
"When did'st thou die?" she said.
THAT NIGHT
That night I sat listening, as in a swoon,
With half-closed eyes,
To far-off bells, low-lulling as a tune
That drifts and dies
Beneath the flowery fingers of the June
Harping to summer skies.
And then I dreamed the world I knew was gone,
And some one brought,—
Leading me far o'er sainted hill and lawn,
In heavenly thought,—
My soul where well the sources of the dawn
With dew and fire fraught.
Above me the majestic dome of night,
With star on star,
Sparkled; in which one star shone blinding bright;
Radiant as spar
That walls the halls of morning, pearly white
Around her golden car.
About me temples, vast in desert seas,
Columned a land
Of ruins—bones of old monstrosities
God's awful hand
Had smitten; homes of dead idolatries,
O'erwhelmed with dust and sand.
Their bestial gods, caked thick with gems and gold,
Their blasphemies
Of beauty, rent; 'mid ruined altars rolled;
Their agonies
And rites abolished; and their priests of old—
Dust on the desert breeze.
Then Syrian valleys, purple with veiling mist,
Meseemed I trailed,
Where the frail floweret, by the dewdrop kissed,
Soft-blushing, quailed;
And drowned in dingled deeps of amethyst
The moon-mad bulbul wailed.
On glimmering wolds I seemed to hear the bleat
Of folded flocks:
Then shepherds passed me, bare of head and feet;
And then an ox
Lowed; and, above me, swept the solemn beat
Of angel wings and locks.
A manger then I seemed to see where bent,
In adoration,
Above a babe, Men of the Orient,
Where, low of station,
His mother lay, while round them swam sweet scent
And sounds of jubilation.
And then I woke. The rose-white moon above
Bloomed on my sight;—
And in her train the stars of winter drove,
Light upon light;
While Yuletide bells rocked, pealing "peace and love"
Down all the aisles of night.