A HOLIDAY ECLOGUE
ABOVE
First Mason:
Tink-a-link! Tink-a-link! Hear the trowels ring;
Feel the merry breezes make the scaffold swing;
See the skimming swallow brush us with her wing:—
Go it with your hammers, boys; time us while we sing.
BELOW.
First Student:
See the yellow sparkle of the Neckar in the glass,
And through the cedar branches sparkles blue the sea;
Hear the sweet piano—hear the German lass
Sing Freut" euch des Lebens—Oh! "I love I love the free!"
Second Student:
I like the canary better;
Look, how he swells his throttle!
He gurgles like musical water
That dances and sings in a bottle.
ABOVE.
Second Mason:
D'ye mind the students down in the grove
Drinking their wine and beer?
That's an easy life they lead.
First Mason:
So do we up here
When the weathercock points west
And the look-off's clear.
Third Mason:
House-top Jim's the boy for work!
First Mason:
True for you, my dear.
(Whistles "The Girl I Left Behind me.")
BELOW.
First Student:
See the Dutchmen on those settees:
Isn't it like the Rhine?
And the old church-tower up over the trees—
Kellner! Noch ein Stein!
Third Student:
I'd like to work with those masons there
Half way up the sky.
The air is sweet where the pigeons build,
And the world is all in their eye.
Second Student:
But "Love is of the valley:" the Gretchen and the Kellner
Haunt the cheerful levels of the lower story.
Glory in the garret—comfort in the cellar:
I will keep the comfort—you may take the glory.
ABOVE.
First Mason:
Look up at the pointers: they 're drawing close together;
'T is here we get the earliest news of sun, and moon, and weather;
We can hear time's pulse a-ticking, with the whistling weathercock.
Drop your mortar-boards, my lads, it's coming twelve o'clock.
Third Mason:
Oh! it's hungry that I am with working in the wind,
But there's a shawl and bonnet—below there: do you mind?
It's Molly with the dinner-pail: she's coming in the door.
Faith, my belly thinks my throat is cut this half an hour and more.
(The church clock strikes the noon.)
A MEMORY
I came across the marsh to-night,
And though the wind was cold,
I stayed a moment on the bridge
To note the paly gold
That lingered on the darkening bay;
The creek which ran below
Was frozen dumb; the dreary flats
Were overspread with snow.
The college bell began to ring,
And as the north wind blew
Its distant janglings out to sea,
I thought, dear Friend, of you;
And how one warm September day,
While yet the woods were green,
We strayed across the happy hills
And this wide marsh between.
The hay-stacks dotted here and there
The water-meadows wide:
The even lines of sluices black
Were filling with the tide.
Then this salt stream, now winter bound,
Fled softly through the sedge,
Retreating from the sparkling Sound;
And there along its edge
We strolled, and marked the far-off sloops,
And watched the cattle graze.
O'erhead the swallows rushed in troops,
While bright with purple haze,
West Rock looked down the winding plain—
Ah! this was long ago;
The summer's gone, and you are gone,
As everything must go.
AMOURS PASSAGÈRES
Light loves and soon forgotten hates,
Heat-lightnings of the brooding summer sky—
Ye too bred of the summer's heat,
Ye too, like summer, fleet—
Ye have gone by.
Walks in the woods and whispers over gates,
Gay rivalries of tennis and croquet—
Gone with the summer sweet,
Gone with the swallow fleet
Southward away!
Breath of the rose, laughter of maids
Kissed into silence by the setting moon;
Wind of the morn that wakes and blows,
And hastening night that goes
Too soon—too soon!
Meetings and partings, tokens, serenades,
Tears—idle tears—and coy denials vain;
Flower of the summer's rose,
Say, will your leaves unclose
Ever again?
ON A MINIATURE
Thine old-world eyes—each one a violet
Big as the baby rose that is thy mouth—
Set me a dreaming. Have our eyes not met
In childhood—in a garden of the South?
Thy lips are trembling with a song of France,
My cousin, and thine eyes are dimly sweet;
'Wildered with reading in an old romance
All afternoon upon the garden seat.
The summer wind read with thee, and the bees
That on the sunny pages loved to crawl:
A skipping reader was the impatient breeze,
And turned the leaves, but the slow bees read all.
And now thy foot descends the terrace stair:
I hear the rustle of thy silk attire;
I breathe the musky odors of thy hair
And airs that from thy painted fan respire.
Idly thou pausest in the shady walk,
Thine ear attentive to the fountain's fall:
Thou mark'st the flower-de-luce sway on her stalk,
The speckled vergalieus ripening on the wall.
Thou hast the feature of my mother's race,
The gilded comb she wore, her smile, her eye:
The blood that flushes softly in thy face
Crawls through my veins beneath this northern sky.
As one disherited, though next of kin,
Who lingers at the barred ancestral gate,
And sadly sees the happy heir within
Stroll careless through his forfeited estate;
Even so I watch thy southern eyes, Lisette,
Lady of my lost paradise and heir
Of summer days there were my birthright. Yet
Beauty like thine makes usurpation fair.
IM SCHWARZWALD
The winter sunset, red upon the snow,
Lights up the narrow way that I should go;
Winding o'er bare white hilltops, whereon lie
Dark churches and the holy evening sky.
That path would lead me deep into the west,
Even to the feet of her I love the best.
But this scarce broken track in which I stand
Runs east, up through the tan-wood's midnight land;
Where now the newly risen moon doth throw
The shadows of long stems across the snow.
This path would take me to the Jäger's Tree
Where stands the Swabian girl and waits for me.
Her eyes are blacker than the woods at night
And witching as the moon's uncertain light;
And there are tones in that low voice of hers
Caught from the wind among the Schwarzwald firs,
And from the Gutach's echoing waters, when
Still evening listens in the Forsthaus glen.
I must—I must! Thou wilt forgive me, sweet;
My heart flies west but eastward move my feet;
The mad moon brightens as the sunset dies,
And yonder hexie draws me with her eyes.
Ruck, ruck an meine grüne Seit! she sings
And with her arms the frozen trunk enrings,
And lays upon its bark her little face.
How canst thou be so dead in her embrace—
So cold against her kisses, happy tree?
Thou hast no love beyond the western sea.
Methinks that at the lightest touch of her
Thy wooden trunk should tremble, thy boughs stir:
But at the pressure of her tender form
Thy inmost pith should feel her and grow warm:
The torpid sap should race along the vein;
The resinous buds should swell, and once again
Fresh needles shoot, as though the breeze of spring
Already through the woods came whispering.
WAITING FOR WINTER
What honey in the year's last flowers can hide,
These little yellow butterflies may know:
With falling leaves they waver to and fro,
Or on the swinging tops of asters ride.
But I am weary of the summer's pride
And sick September's simulated show:
Why do the colder winds delay to blow
And bring the pleasant hours that we abide;
To curtained alcove and sweet household talks,
Or sweeter silence by our flickering Lars,
Returning late from autumn evening walks
Upon the frosty hills, while reddening Mars
Hangs low between the withered mullein stalks,
And upward throngs the host of winter stars?
[Greek: Tò Pan]
The little creek which yesterday I saw
Ooze through the sedges, and each brackish vein
That sluiced the marsh, now filled and then again
Sucked dry to glut the sea's unsated maw,
All ebb and flow by the same rhythmic law
That times the beat of the Atlantic main—
They also fastened to the swift moon's train
By unseen cords that no less strongly draw.
So, poet, may thy life's small tributary
Threading some bitter marsh, obscure, alone,
Feel yet one pulse with the broad estuary
That bears an emperor's fleets through half a zone:
May wait upon the same high luminary
And pitch its voice to the same ocean's tone.
THE SINGER OF ONE SONG
He sang one song and died—no more but that:
A single song and carelessly complete.
He would not bind and thresh his chance-grown wheat,
Nor bring his wild fruit to the common vat,
To store the acid rinsings, thin and flat,
Squeezed from the press or trodden under feet.
A few slow beads, blood-red and honey sweet,
Oozed from the grape, which burst and spilled its fat.
But Time, who soonest drops the heaviest things
That weight his pack, will carry diamonds long.
So through the poet's orchestra, which weaves
One music from a thousand stops and strings,
Pierces the note of that immortal song:—
"High over all the lonely bugle grieves."
POSTHUMOUS
Put them in print?
Make one more dint
In the ages' furrowed rock? No, no!
Let his name and his verses go.
These idle scraps, they would but wrong
His memory, whom we honored long;
And men would ask: "Is this the best—
Is this the whole his life expressed?"
Haply he had no care to tell
To all the thoughts which flung their spell
Around us when the night grew deep,
Making it seem a loss to sleep,
Exalting the low, dingy room
To some high auditorium.
And when we parted homeward, still
They followed us beyond the hill.
The heaven had brought new stars to sight,
Opening the map of later night;
And the wide silence of the snow,
And the dark whispers of the pines,
And those keen fires that glittered slow
Along the zodiac's wintry signs,
Seemed witnesses and near of kin
To the high dreams we held within.
Yet what is left
To us bereft,
Save these remains,
Which now the moth
Will fret, or swifter fire consume?
These inky stains
On his table-cloth;
These prints that decked his room;
His throne, this ragged easy-chair;
This battered pipe, his councillor.
This is the sum and inventory.
No son he left to tell his story,
No gold, no lands, no fame, no book.
Yet one of us, his heirs, who took
The impress of his brain and heart
May gain from Heaven the lucky art
His untold meanings to impart
In words that will not soon decay.
Then gratefully will such one say:
"This phrase, dear friend, perhaps, is mine;
The breath that gave it life was thine."
HUGH LATIMER
His lips amid the flame outsent
A music strong and sweet,
Like some unearthly instrument
That's played upon by heat.
As spice-wood tough, laid on the coal,
Sets all its perfume free,
The incense of his hardy soul
Rose up exceedingly.
To open that great flower, too cold
Were sun and vernal rain;
But fire has forced it to unfold,
Nor will it shut again.
CARÇAMON
His steed was old, his armor worn,
And he was old and worn and gray:
The light that lit his patient eyes
It shone from very far away.
Through gay Provence he journeyed on;
To one high quest his life was true,
And so they called him Carçamon—
The knight who seeketh the world through.
A pansy blossomed on his shield;
"A token 'tis," the people say,
"That still across the world's wide field
He seeks la dame de ses pensées."
For somewhere on a painted wall,
Or in the city's shifting crowd,
Or looking from a casement tall,
Or shaped of dream or evening cloud—
Forgotten when, forgotten where—
Her face had filled his careless eye
A moment ere he turned and passed,
Nor knew it was his destiny.
But ever in his dreams it came
Divine and passionless and strong,
A smile upon the imperial lips
No lover's kiss had dared to wrong.
He took his armor from the wall—
Ah! gone since then was many a day—
He led his steed from out the stall
And sought la dame de ses pensées.
The ladies of the Troubadours
Came riding through the chestnut grove
"Sir Minstrel, string that lute of yours
And sing us a gay song of love."
"O ladies of the Troubadours,
My lute has but a single string;
Sirventes fit for paramours,
My heart is not in tune to sing.
"The flower that blooms upon my shield
It has another soil and spring
Than that wherein the gaudy rose
Of light Provence is blossoming.
"The lady of my dreams doth hold
Such royal state within my mind,
No thought that comes unclad in gold
To that high court may entrance find."
So through the chestnut groves he passed,
And through the land and far away;
Nor know I whether in the world
He found la dame de ses pensées.
Only I know that in the South
Long to the harp his tale was told;
Sweet as new wine within the mouth
The small, choice words and music old.
To scorn the promise of the real;
To seek and seek and not to find;
Yet cherish still the fair ideal—
It is thy fate, O restless Mind!
ECCE IN DESERTO
The wilderness a secret keeps
Upon whose guess I go:
Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard;
And yet I know, I know,
Some day the viewless latch will lift,
The airy door swing wide
To one lost chamber of the wood
Where those shy mysteries hide,—
One yet unfound, receding depth,
From which the wood-thrush sings,
Still luring in to darker shades,
In—in to colder springs.
There is no wind abroad to-day.
But hark!—the pine-tops' roar,
That sleep and in their dreams repeat
The music of the shore.
What wisdom in their needles stirs?
What song is that they sing?
Those airs that search the forest's heart,
What rumor do they bring?
A hushed excitement fills the gloom,
And, in the stillness, clear
The vireo's tell-tale warning rings:
"'Tis near—'tis near—'tis near!"
As, in the fairy-tale, more loud
The ghostly music plays
When, toward the enchanted bower, the prince
Draws closer through the maze.
Nay—nay. I track a fleeter game,
A wilder than ye know,
To lairs beyond the inmost haunt
Of thrush or vireo.
This way it passed: the scent lies fresh;
The ferns still lightly shake.
Ever I follow hard upon,
But never overtake.
To other woods the trail leads on,
To other worlds and new,
Where they who keep the secret here
Will keep the promise too.
TO IMOGEN AT THE HARP
Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen:
Dein Sinn ist zu—dein Herz ist todt.
Auf, bade, Schüler, unrerdrossen
Die ird'sche Brust im Morgenroth!
FAUST.
Hast thou seen ghosts? Hast thou at midnight heard
In the wind's talking an articulate word?
Or art thou in the secret of the sea,
And have the twilight woods confessed to thee?
So wild thy song, thy smile so faint, so far
Thine absent eyes from earthly vision are.
Thy song is done: why art thou listening?
Spent is the last vibration of the string
Along the waves of sound. Oh, doth thine ear
Pursue the ebbing chord in some fine sphere,
Where wraiths of vanished echoes live and roam,
And where thy thoughts, here strangered, find a home?
Teach me the path to that uncharted land;
Discovery's keel hath never notched its strand,
No passport may unbar its sealed frontier,—
Too far for utmost sight, for touch too near.
Subtler than light, yet all opaque, the screen
Which shuts us from that world, outspread between
The shows of sense; like as an ether thin
Fills the vast microscopic space wherein
The molecules of matter lie enisled.
A world whose sound our silence is; too wild
Its elfin music beats, too shrill, too rare,
To stir the slow pulse of our thicker air.
A world whose light our darkness is; that lies
With its sharp edges turned toward mortal eyes,
Like figures painted on a folded fan—
The broken colors of some hidden plan.
The few who but an instant's look have had
At the spread pattern broadwise have gone mad.
As in a high-walled oriental street
A sudden door flies open, and a fleet
Departing dream the thirsty traveler sees
Of fountains leaping in the shade of trees,
So they who once have caught the glimpse divine:
They have but wet their lips with goblins' wine,
And, plagued with thirst immortal, must endure
The visions of the heavenly calenture,—
Of springs and dewy evening meadows rave,
While hotly round them shines the tropic wave,
And the false islands of mirage appear,
Uplifted from some transcendental sphere
Far down below the blue horizon line.
And thirst like theirs is nursed by songs like thine.
For thou, in some crepscular dim hour,
When the weak umber moon had hardly power
To cast a shadow, and a wind, half-spent,
Creeping among the way-side bushes went,
Hast seen a cobweb spun across the moon,
A faint eclipse, penumbral, gone full soon,
Yet marking on the planet's smoky ring
A silhouette as of a living thing.
Or on the beach making thy lonely range,
Close upon sunset, when the light was strange
And the low wind had meanings, thou hast known
A presence nigh, betrayed by shadows thrown
On the red sand from bodies out of sight;
Even as, by the shell of curving light
Pared from the dark moon's edge, the eye can tell
Where her full circle rounds invisible.
Teach me the path into that silent land.
Take once again the haunted wires in hand,
And pour the strain which, waking, thou hast heard
Whistled when night was deep by some lone bird
Hid in the dark and dewy sycamore,—
When thou hast risen and unbarred the door
And walked the garden paths till night was flown,
Listening the message sent to thee alone.
Ah! once again thy harp, thy voice once more,
Fling back the refluent tide upon the shore.
All nature grows unearthly; all things seem
To break and waver off in shapes of dream,
And through the chinks of matter steals the dawn
Of skies beyond the solar road withdrawn.
Oh, flood my soul with that pure morning-red!
It is the sense that's shut, the heart that's dead:
All open still the world of spirits lies
Would we but bathe us in its red sunrise.
THE IDEAS OF THE PURE REASON
I saw in dreams a constellation strange,
Thwarting the night; its big stars seemed to range
Northward across the zenith, and to keep
Calm footing along heaven's ridge-pole high,
While round the pole the sullen Bear did creep
And dizzily the wheeling spheres went by.
They from their watch-towers in the topmost sky
Looked down upon the rest,
Nor eastward swerved nor west,
Though Procyon's candle dipped below the verge,
And the great twins of Leda 'gan decline
Toward the horizon line,
And prone Orion, sprawling headlong, urge
His flight into the far Pacific surge.
I heard a voice which said: "Those wonders bright
Are hung not on the hinges of the night;
But set to vaster harmonies, they run
Straight on, and turn not with the turning sphere,
Nor make an orbit about any sun.
No glass can track the courses that they steer,
By what dark paths they vanish and appear.
The starry flocks that still
Are climbing heaven's hill
Will pasture westward down its sloping lawn;
But yon wild herd of planets,—who can say
Through what far fields they stray,
Around what focus their ellipse is drawn,
Whose shining makes their transcendental dawn?"
I told my vision to a learned man,
Who said: "On no celestial globe or plan
Can those unset, unrisen stars be found.
How might such uncomputed motions be
Among the ordered spheres? Heaven's clock is wound
To keep one time. Idle our dreams, and we,
Blown by the wind, as the light family
Of leaves." But still I dream,
And still those planets seem
Through heaven their high, unbending course to take;
And a voice cries: "Freedom and Truth are we,
And Immortality:
God is our sun." And though the morning break,
Across my soul still plays their shimmering wake.
ON GUARD
O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after.—Romeo and Juliet.
He has chosen the death that is easy
And left me the life that is hard.
He has emptied the cup to the lees, he
Has left me alone to keep guard.
Remains not a drop in the beaker
Of the bitter-sweet cordial he quaffed:
The strong has forsaken his weaker
And stolen his anodyne draught.
The cause that he taught me to cherish,
The weapons he trained me to wield,
He has given it over to perish
And thrown down the sword and the shield.
O how shall the coward persever
When the hero slinks out of the fight;
Or weakness keep up the endeavor
Abandoned by desperate might?
The hour of stern trial has found me:
The sentinel fires are burnt low,
And I hear in the shadows around me
The stealthy approach of the foe.
Be it so then, my master, my leader:
These helpless ones, dear to you, these
Will I fend while I may, though I bleed, or
Am beaten with blows to my knees.
Lo here, where your body lies fallen,
I draw from its scabbard the sword
And raise it—how feebly!—and call on
Your spirit, my captain, my lord.
The watch-fire is sunken to embers,
With signals the darkness is starred.
Let them come! There is one who remembers—
There is one who will stand upon guard.
SURSUM CORDA
Take courage, heart. Why dost thou faint and falter?
Why is thy light turned darkness ere the noon?
The wind blows west, no clouds the heaven alter,
Night comes not yet; with night, too, comes the moon.
"Alas, alas! the dewy morwing weather,
The tender light that on the meadows lay,
When Youth and Hope and I set out together,—
Light Youth, false Hope, that left me on the way!"
Take courage yet; thou are not unattended:
See Love and Peace keep step on either hand.
How green the vales! The sky how blue! How splendid
The strong white sunshine sleeps across the land!
"Alas the thrushes' song hath long had ending
I heard at dawn among the pine woods cool.
The brook is still, whose rocky stair descending,
I drank at sunrise from each rosy pool."
The noon is still; the songs of dawn are over;
Yet turn not back to prove thy memories vain.
The mist upon the hills canst thou recover,
Or bring to eastern skies the bloom again?
But courage still! Without return or swerving,
Across the globe's huge shadow keep the track,
Till, unperceived, the slow meridian's curving,
That leads thee onward, yet shall lead thee back,
To stand again with daybreak on the mountains,
And, where the paths of night and morning meet,
To drink once more of youth's forgotten fountains,
When thou hast put the world between thy feet.
LOVE, DEATH AND LIFE
The warm wind comes in rushes,
The night is thick and sweet:
I cannot see the bushes—
The tall syringa bushes
Above the gate that meet,
Whose fallen blooms she crushes
Under her heedless feet;
But their heavy, rich perfume
Is round us in the gloom
Which lends its friendly cover
To bashful maid and lover:
Which cheats me of her blushes
But makes her kiss complete.
'Way down the village street
A lantern swings and dances
In front of the old church porch,
And throws its telltale glances
On the puddles and the plashes,
And flares in the wind like a torch,
And scatters sudden flashes
On the elm leaves overhead.
But you need have no dread
Of that harmless, far-off spark;
For the night is thick and dark,
O the dark is thick and sweet!
So, closer: let the beat
Of your heart encounter mine.
(How you tremble—like a leaf!)
O you do not need to fear
Any shame or any grief
While my arms around you twine
And the night wind pours its wine.
Come nearer, still more near;
Press closer, closer yet.
Your cheeks are warm and wet,
Like this wind from out the south,
And warm and wet your mouth;
And yon lantern won't discover
The maiden and her lover.
'Tis only the sexton, nothing more—
There was a funeral to-day—
The sexton locking the church door,
Locking it up and going away.
Why should it fall on a day like this?
What has death to do in a world of bliss?
O passionate black night!
O rush of the southern breeze,
Laden with blossoms and rain,
Asserter of life and its right,
Cherisher, breeder of things,
Swelling the sap in the trees,
Swelling the blood in the vein,
Filling the rivers and springs:
Whisper the girl at my side,
Quicken her pulse with thy breath,
Teach her the way of a bride,
Teach her to take and to give.
What hast thou to do with us, Death?
By God, we live!
THE DYING PANTHEIST TO THE PRIEST
Take your ivory Christ away:
No dying god shall have my knee,
While live gods breathe in this wild wind
And shout from yonder dashing sea.
When March brings back the Adonis flower
No more the white processions meet,
With incense to the risen lord,
About the pillared temple's feet.
From tusk of boar, from thrust of spear
The dead rise not. At Eastertide
The same sun dances on their graves—
Love's darling and the Crucified.
Yet still the year's returning tide
Flows greenly round each ruined plinth,
Breaking on fallen shafts in foam
Of crocus and of hyacinth:
Tossing a spray of swallows high,
To flutter lightly on the breeze
And fleck with tiny spots of shade
The sunshine on the broken frieze.
I know the gray-green asphodels
Still sheet the dim Elysian mead,
And ever by dark Lethe's wells
The poppy sheds her ghostly seed.
And once—O once!—when sunset lay
Blood red across the winter sea,
Where on the sands we drained our flasks
And danced and cried our Evoe!
Among the tossing cakes of ice
And spouting of the frozen spray,
We saw their white limbs twist and whirl—
The ancient sea-gods at their play.
The gold-brown liquor burned my heart,
The icy tempest stung my brow:
The twanging of Apollo's lyre—
I heard it as I hear it now.
O no, the old gods are not dead:
I think that they will never die;
But, I, who lie upon this bed
In mortal anguish—what am I?
A wave that rises with a breath
Above the infinite watery plain,
To foam and sparkle in the sun
A moment ere it sink again.
The eternal undulation runs:
A man, I die: perchance to be,
Next life, a white-throat on the wind,
A daffodil on Tempe's lea.
They lied who said that Pan was dead:
Life was, life is, and life shall be.
So take away your crucifix—
The everliving gods for me!