Thou sit’st among the sunny silences
 Of terraced hills and woodland galleries,
 Thou utterance of all calm melodies,
 Thou lutanist of Earth’s most fecund lute,—
 Where no false note intrudes
 To mar the silent music,—branch and root,
 Playing the fields ripe, orchards and deep woods,
 To song similitudes
 Of flower and seed and fruit.

II

Oft have I felt thee, in some sensuous air,
 Bewitch the wide wheat-acres everywhere
 To imitated gold of thy rich hair:
 The peach, by thy red lips’ delicious trouble,
 Blown into gradual dyes
 Of crimson, have I seen: have watched thee double—
 With interluded music of thine eyes—
 The grapes’ rotundities,
 Bubble by purple bubble.

III

Deliberate uttered into life intense,
 Out of thy song’s melodious eloquence
 Beauty evolves its just preëminence:
 The lily, from some pensive-smitten chord
 Drawing significance
 Of purity, a visible hush stands: starred
 With splendor, from thy passionate utterance,
 The rose tells its romance
 In blushing word on word.

IV

As star by star day harps in evening,
 The inspiration of all things that sing
 Is in thy hands and from their touch takes wing:
 All brooks, all birds,—whom song can never sate,—
 Even the wind and rain,
 And frogs and insects, singing soon and late,
 Thy sympathies inspire, thy heart’s refrain,
 Whose sounds invigorate
 With rest life’s weary brain.

V

And as the night, like some mysterious rune,
 Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon,
 Thou lutest us no immaterial tune:
 But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn,
 By thy still strain made strong,
 Earth’s awful avatar,—in whom is born
 Thy own deep music,—labors all night long
 With growth, assuring morn
 Assumes like onward song.

A GRAY DAY

I

Long volleys of wind and of rain,
 And the rain on the drizzled pane,
 And the day ends chill and murk;
 But on yesterday’s eve, I trow,
 The new-moon’s thorn-thin bow
 Stabbed rosy through gold and through glow,
 Like a rich, barbaric dirk.

II

The throats of the snapdragons,—
 Cool-colored with gold like the dawns
 That come with spring o’er the hills,—
 Are filled with a sweet rain, fine,
 Of starry, scintillant shine,
 A faery vat of thin wine,
 That the rain for the elfins fills.

III

Dabbled the poppies shrink,
 And the coxcomb and the pink;
 And the candytuft’s damp crown
 Droops, dribbled, low bowed i’ the wet;
 And rows of the mignonette
 Little musk-sacks open set,
 Which the weight o’ the dew drags down.

IV

Stretched taunt ’twixt the blades of grass,
 A gossamer-fibered glass,
 That the garden-spider spun,
 The web, where the round rain clings
 In the sag o’ its middle, swings—
 A hammock for elfin things
 When the stars succeed the sun.

V

And, mark, where the pale gourd grows
 As high as the climbing rose,
 How the tiger-moth is pressed
 To that wide leaf’s under side.—
 And I know where the red wasps hide,
 And the brown bees,—that defied
 The first strong gusts,—distressed.

VI

Yet I feel that the gray will blow
 Aside for an afterglow;
 And the wind, on a sudden, toss
 Drenched boughs; a pattering shower
 Athwart the red dusk in a glower,
 Big drops heard hard on each flower,
 The grass and the flowering moss.

VII

And then for a minute, may be,—
 A pearl, hollow-worn, of the sea,—
 A glimmer of moon will smile,
 And a star, rinsed clean, through the dusk:
 And a freshness of moonlit musk
 O’er the showery lawns blow brusque
 As spice from an Indian Isle.

THE MOOD O’ THE EARTH

My heart is high as the day is clear,
 As the wind in the wood that blows;
 My heart is high with a mood that’s cheer,
 And glows like a sun-blown rose.
My heart is high, and up and away
 Like a bird in the skies’ deep blue;
 My heart goes singing through the day,
 As glad as a bee i’ the dew.
My heart, my heart is high; its beat
 Is wild as the scent o’ the wood,
 The wild sweet wind, with its pulse of heat,
 And its musk of blossom and bud.
My heart is high; and it leads my feet
 Where the sense of summer is full,
 To woods and waters where lovers meet
 To hills where the creeks run cool.
My heart is one, is one with the heart,
 With the joy o’ the bee that comes
 And sucks i’ the flowers, that dip apart
 For his dusty body that hums.
My heart is glad as the glad redstart,
 The flame-flecked bird, the spotted bird,
 Whose lilt my soul has got by heart,
 Fitting each note with a word.
God’s love! I tread the wind and air!
 Am one with the hoiden wind;
 And the stars that swim in the blue, I swear,
 Right soon in my hair I’ll find.
To live high up, a life o’ the mist,
 With the cloud-things in white skies,—
 With their limbs of pearl and of amethyst,—
 That laugh cerulean eyes!
To creep and to suck, like an elfin thing,
 In the aching heart of a rose;
 In the bluebell’s ear to cling and swing,
 And whisper what no one knows!
To live on wild-honey, as fresh, as thin
 As the rain that’s left in a flower!
 And roll forth, golden from feet to chin,
 In the pollen’s Danaë-shower!
Or free, bird-hearted, bend back the throat,
 With a vigorous look at the blue,
 And launch from my soul one wild, true note,
 Is the thing that my heart would do!
God’s life! the blood o’ the earth is mine!
 And the mood o’ the earth I’ll take,
 And brim my soul with her wonderful wine,
 And sing till my heart doth break!

NOONING

I

Weak winds that make the waters wink;
 White clouds that sail from lands of Fable
 To white Utopias, vague, that brink
 Sky-gulfs of blue unfathomable:
 Their rolling shadows, drifting
 O’er hills of forest, lifting
 Wild peaks of purple range, that loom and sink.

II

Warm knolls, whereon the Summer dreams;
 And droning dells, where all her brightness
 Lies, lulled with hymns of mountain-streams’
 Far-foaming falls of windy whiteness:
 Where, from the glooming hollow,
 With cawing crows that follow,
 The hunted hawk wings wearily and screams.

III

Dry-buzzing heat and drought that shrills
 With one harsh locust’s lonesome whirring;
 No voice amid the answering hills
 Recedes in echoes far-recurring;
 As when, with twilight wimpled,
 The Morning, rosy dimpled,
 From dewy tops called o’er responding rills.

IV

Wan with sweet summer hangs the deep
 Hot heaven with the high sun hearted—
 A great, wide bluebell bloom asleep
 With golden-pistiled petals parted.—
 So lone, one would not startle
 If from yon wood should dartle
 Some wildwood Dream, some Myth the wildwoods keep.

THE LOG-BRIDGE

I

Last month, where the old log-bridge is laid
 O’er the woodland creek, in the belts o’ the shade,
 To the right and the left, pink-packed, was made
 A gloaming glory of scented tangle
 By the bramble roses there—that wade,
 High-heaped, from the banks—with many a braid
 That, wilting, powdered the ruts, and swayed,
 To the waters beneath, loose loops of spangle;
 Where the breeze that blew and the beam that rayed
 Were murmurous-soft with the bees awrangle.

II

This month—’tis August—the lane that leads
 To the bramble-bridge runs waste with weeds,
 That bloom bright saffron, or satin seeds
Of thistle-fleece blow at you, hazy:
 Starry the lane with the thousand bredes
 Of the yellow daisy, and bud-like beads
 Of marigold eyes, around which speeds
 The butterfly, sumptuous with mottle and lazy;
 Whereunder the pewee picks and pleads,
 On the sumach’s tassel that dips to the daisy.

III

All golden the spot in the noon’s gold shine,
 Where the yellow-bird sits with eyes like wine
 And swings and whistles; where, line on line,
 In coils of warmth the sunbeams nestle;
 Where cool by the pool (where the crawfish, fine
 As a shadow’s shadow, darts dim) to mine
 The wet creek-clay with their peevish whine,
 Come mason-hornets; and roll and wrestle
 With balls of clay they carry, and twine
 In hollow nests on the joists o’ the trestle.

IV

Where the horsemint shoots through the grasses,—high
 On the root-thick rivage that roofs,—a dry
 Gray knob that bristles with pink, the sigh
 Of crickets is heard; and the leaves’ deep bosoms
 Are pierced, at dusk, with a bird’s quick cry,
 A passing bird that twitters by:
 And the frogs’ grave antiphons rise and die;
 And here, to drink, come the wild opossums:
 And here, to-night, will you and I
 Linger and lean while the great moon blossoms.

AMONG THE KNOBS

There is a place embanked with brush
 Three wooded knobs beyond,
 Lost, in a valley, where the lush
 Wild eglantine blows blond.
Where light the dogwoods earliest
 Their torches of white fires,
 And, bee-bewildered, east and west
 The red haws build their spires.
The wild crab-apples’ flowery sprays
 Blur through the pensive gloom
 A fragrant pink; and by lone ways
 The close blackberries bloom.
I love the spot: a shallow brook
 Slips from the forest, near
 A cane-brake and a violet nook;
 Its rustling depths so clear
The minnows glimmer where they glide
 Above its rocky bed:
 A boyhood-haunted brook, not wide,
 That has its sparkling head
Among the rainy hills; and drops
 By five low waterfalls—
 Wild music of a hundred stops—
 Between the forests’ walls:
Down to a water-gate, that hangs
 Across the stream; a dull
 Portcullis rude, whose wooden fangs
 The moss makes beautiful.
The brass-bright dragonflies about
 Its seeding grasses swim;
 The streaked wasps, worrying in and out,
 Dart sleepily and slim.
Here in the moon-gold moss, that glows
 Like pools of moonlight, dies
 The pale anemone; and blows
 The bluet, blue as skies.
And, where in April tenderly
 The wild geranium made
 A thin, peculiar fragrance, we,
 Cool in pellucid shade,
Found wild strawberries just a-bud;
 Wild berries, tart and fresh,—
 Pale scarlet as a wood-bird’s blood,—
 That May’s low vines would mesh.
Once from that hill a farm-house ’mid
 Deep orchards—cozy brown,—
 In lilacs and old roses hid,—
 With picket-fence looked down.
O’er ruins now the roses guard;
 The plum and seckel-pear
 And apricot rot on the sward
 Their wasted ripeness there.
Again when huckleberries blow
 Their waxen bells I’ll tread
 That dear accustomed way; and go
 Adown that orchard; led
To that avoided spot, which seems
 The haunt of vanished springs;
 Lost as the hills in drowsy dreams
 Of visionary things.

THE FALLS OF THE OHIO

Here on this jutting headland, where the trees
 Spread a dusk carpet for the sun to cast
 And count his golden guineas on, we’ll rest.
 Behold th’ Ohio Falls: see how it seethes!
 Though hardly heard from this high, wooded point,
 Yet how it still confuses tongue and ear
 With its subdued and low monotonous roar!
 Not as it did, however, when we stood
 And marked it from the spanning of the bridge
 Rushing beneath, impetuous as a herd,—
 A tameless herd, with manes of flying spray,—
 Between the pillars towering above.
 No more does it confound us and confuse;
 Its clamor here is softened to a sound,
 Incessant and subdued, like that which haunts
 The groves of spring, when, like some dim surprise,
 A wind, precursor of the rain, rides down
 From a gray cloud and sets the leafy tongues
 Cool-gossiping of the approaching shower.
There runs the dam; and where its dark line cuts
 The river’s sheen, already you may see
 The ripples glancing to the summer sun,
 As if a host had couched a thousand spears
 And tossed a thousand plumes of fleecy foam,
 In answer to the challenge of the Falls,
 Blown from his limestone battlements, and cried
 From his wave-builded city’s roaring walls.
 And there, you see, the waves like champions charge;
 Crowding, wild form on form, their foam-hoofs beat
 The ragged rocks that roll them on their way:
 Billowing they come; knight-like, to ringing lists,
 With shout on shout, tossing a thousand plumes,
 A thousand spears in sparkling tournament;
 Lifting, opposing each, a silvery shield
 Or shining pennon, now that sinks or soars,
 And many a glittering sword of twinkling foam,
 And many a helmet, shattered in flakes of froth,
 That, to the trumpeting wind, hisses away:
 While, o’er it all, swell out the rush and roar
 Of onset, as of battle borne afar.—
 On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop!
 On, on, along the sandy banks that fling
 Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay
 Their ruinous rush, the knightly strife of waves,
 Warring, and winding wild their watery horns.
Look, where a thousand oily eddies whirl,
 And turn and turn like wheels of liquid steel
 Below this headland! ’Tis a place that none
 Has bottomed yet with sounding lead and line.
 Like some huge kraken, coiling vast its length,
 The Eddy sleeps; and, bending from the shores,
 The spotted sycamores have gazed and gazed,
 Watching its slumber as gray giants might
 A dragon in the hollow of gaunt hills,
 Its serpent bulk wound round some magic hoard.
 So long they’ve watched, their ancient backs have grown
 Humped, gnarled, and bent, but still they gaze and gaze,
 Leaning above; and from the glassy waves
 Their images stare back their wonderment.
 Haply they see the guardian Genius lie
 At the dark bottom in an oozy cave
 Of coral; webbed, recumbent on his mace
 Of mineral; his locks of dripping green
 Circling a crown of ore; his fishy eyes
 Dull with the aqueous dullness of his realms.
 But when the storm’s abroad and whips the waves
 With stinging lashes of the myriad rain,
 Or scars with thunder some ancestral oak,
 Sire of a forest, then he wakes in wrath,
 And on the dark foundation of the stream
 Rises, a monarch, crowned with iron crown,
 And hurls his challenge upward at the storm,
 And rages through the waters; heaves and breaks
 Through the wild waves, whose round and murky bulks,
 Ribbed white with foam, wallow their monster way,
 Like giant herds, along yon edge of rock
 O’erstrewn with petrifactions of far time;
 Mollusk and trilobite and honeycomb
 Of whitest coral; and with mass on mass
 Of root-like reptiles; writhings turned to rock;
 Huge saurian bulks that, haply, sported there,
 Convolved; and, in a moment, when the change,—
 Which made and unmade continents and seas,
 That teemed and groaned with mammoth and plesiosaur,—
 Came, with upheaval of the universe,
 Thro’ all their monster spines were struck to stone.
There where uprises a wild knoll, o’erstrewn
 With wrecks of ancient forest, in mid-stream
 Once rose an island, green and beautiful
 With willow and beech, poplar and sycamore;
 A river-island where the woodman built,—
 Stream-guarded from the savage-haunted shore,—
 His rude log cabin. Here he sowed his maize;
 Here saw it tassel in the summer heat,
 And glance like ranks of feathered Indians through
 The glimmering vistas of the broken wood;
 Here reaped and sheaved its stalks, all ivory-eared,
 In shocks like wigwam rows, when like a maid,
 An Indian maid, ruddy in dogwood beads,
 The autumn came, soft o’er the sunset hills,
 That blushed for love, and underneath her feet
 Cast untold gold in leaves and yellow fruit.
 Here dwelt the pioneer and here he died,
 And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth
 And loam of what was once an island; now
 A bed of limestone rock and water pools,—
 Where, in the quarry, you may see the blast
 Spout heavenward the dust and dirt and stone,
 And flap and pound its echoes round the hills
 In giant strokes as of some Titan hammer;—
 A mound of stump-pierced soil where once an isle,—
 As rich and fair in forest and in field
 As any isle that rises to a sail
 In tropic seas,—arose to kiss the sun.
There lies the other half of what was once
 Corn Island: broad the channel beats between.
 Lower it lies, and mantled with dwarf brakes
 Of willow and of cottonwood and beech,
 Degenerate offsprings of the mighty boles
 That once o’erbrowed the stream in majesty
 Of tall primeval beauty. In the morn,
 Ere yet the east assumes its faintest blush,
 Here you may hear the melancholy snipe
 Piping, or see her paddling in the pools
 That splash the low bed of the rocky soil.
Here once the Indian stole in natural craft
 From wahoo-bush to bush, from tree to tree,
 His head plumes like a bird, below, above,
 Fluttering and nodding ’mid the undergrowth;
 In his brown hand the pliant, polished bow,
 And at his back his gaudy quiver filled
 With tufted arrows headed blue with flint.
 And while the deep flamingo-colored west
 Flamed on his ruddy cheek, and airy fire
 Struck rosy ’thwart the stream, he, swift as thought,
 Strung his quick bow and through the gray wild goose,
 That rose with clamor from the rushy pool,
 Sent a fleet arrow; crested with the quills
 Which yesterday, perhaps, its mate’s gray wing
 Made beautiful; and plucked to decorate
 The painted shaft that should to-day speed home
 And redden all their white with kindred blood:
 It falling, gasping at his moccasined feet,
 Breathed out its wild life, while the lonely brave
 Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills
 Answered his exultation with a whoop.

1885.

FALL FANCIES

Far off a wind blew, and I heard
 Wild echoes of the woods reply—
 The herald of some royal word,
 With bannered trumpet, blown on high,
 Meseemed, then passed me by:
Who summoned marvels there to meet,
 In pomp, upon a cloth of gold;
 Where berries of the bitter-sweet,
 That, splitting, showed the coals they hold,
 Sowed garnets through the wold:
Where, under tents of maples, seeds
 Of smooth carnelian, oval red,
 The spice-bush spangled: where, like beads,
 The dogwood’s rounded rubies—fed
 With fire—blazed and bled.
And there I saw amid the rout
 Of months, in richness cavalier,
 A minnesinger—lips apout;
 A gypsy face; straight as a spear;
 A rose stuck in his ear:
Eyes, sparkling like old German wine,
 All mirth and moonlight; naught to spare
 Of slender beard, that lent a line
 Unto his lip; October there,
 With chestnut curling hair.
His blue baretta swept its plume
 White through the leaves; his purple hose,
 Puffed at the thighs, made gleam of gloom;
 His tawny doublet, slashed with rose,
 And laced with crimson bows,
Outshone the wahoo’s scarlet pride,
 The haw, in rich vermilion dressed:
 A dagger dangling at his side,
 A slim lute, banded to his breast,
 Whereon his hands did rest,
I saw him come.... And, lo, to hear
 The lilt of his approaching lute,
 No wonder that the regnant Year
 Bent down her beauty, blushing mute,
 Her heart beneath his foot.

LATE OCTOBER

Bulged from its cup the dark brown acorn falls,
 And by its gnarly saucer, in the stream’s
 Clear puddles, swells; the sweet-gum’s spike-crowned balls
 Beside them lie; and, opening all their seams,
 Beneath the chestnut-tree the hurry hulls
 Split, and, within, each nut like copper gleams.
Burst silver white, nods,—an exploded husk
 Of snowy, woolly smoke,—the milk-weed’s puff
 Along the orchard’s fence; where in the dusk
 And ashen weeds,—as some grim Satyr’s rough
 Red, breezy cheeks burn through his beard,—the brusque
 Crab-apples glow, wind-tumbled from above.
And under withered leaves the crickets’ clicks
 Seem some dim dirge sighed into memory’s ears;
One bird sits in the sumach, flits and picks
 Its sour seeds. Thro’ all the wood one hears
 The dropping hickories. Round the hay’s railed ricks,
 Among the fields, gather the lowing steers.
Some slim, bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked,
 Like birds, the flowers, herding from their homes
 To warmer woods and skies. Where once were rocked
 Unnumbered bees within unnumbered blooms,
 One feeble bee clings to one bloom, or, locked
 Within it, dreams of summer’s oozing combs.
Winds shake the maples, and all suddenly
 A storm of leafy stars around you freaks,—
 Some Dryad’s tattered raiment. To her knee
 Wading, the Naiad haunts her stream that streaks
 Through woodland waifs. Hark! Pan for Helike
 Flutes in the forest, while he seeks and seeks.

A NOVEMBER WALK

I

Morning

The hoar frost crisps beneath the feet;
 And, sparkling in the morning’s strength,
 The fence, along its straggling length,
 Gleams as if wrought of virgin sleet.
On broom-sedge fields and sassafras
 Neglectfully the dim wind lifts
 The dead leaves; and around me drifts
 The milkweed, shaken from the grass.
Reluctantly and one by one
 The useless leaves drift slowly down;
 And, seen through woodland vistas, brown
 The nut-tree patters in the sun.
Where pools the brook beneath its fall
 With scales of ice its edge is bound;
 And on the pebbles scattered round
 The ooze is frozen; each a ball,
It seems, of crystal fallen there.
 And now the wind sweeps through the wood
 With sighings, and the solitude
 Seems shaken with a mighty care.
Decay and melancholy drape
 The near-by hills in mysteries
 Of mist, through which the rocks and trees
 Loom, hazy, each a phantom shape.
To sullenness the surly crow
 All his derisive being yields,
 And o’er the barren stubble-fields
 Flaps, cawless, wrapped in hungry woe.

II

Evening

As eve comes on the teasel stoops
 Its spike-crowned cone before the blast:
 The tattered leaves drive whirling past
 In frantic and fantastic troops.
The matted elder-copses sigh;
 Their broad, blue combs, with berries weighed,
 Like heavy pendulums are swayed
 With every gust that wanders by.
Through broken walls of tangled brier,
 That hedge the lane, the sumachs thrust
 Their scarlet torches, red as rust,
 Lit with the sunset’s stolid fire.
The eve is here: Cold, hard, and drear
 The cloudless west with livid white
 Of flaming silver walls the night
 Far as one star’s thin rays appear.
Wedged ’thwart the west’s white luridness
 The wild geese wing; from roseless domes
 The far “honk” of the leader comes
 Lonely and harsh and colorless.
The west dies down; and in its cup,
 Shadow on shadow, pours the night;
 The east glows with a mystic light;
 The stars are keen; the moon comes up.

THE WHITE EVENING

On hills, beneath the steely skies,
 The wind-tossed forests rock and roar:
 Along the river’s ringing shore
 Homeward the skimming skater flies.
On windy meads of icy brakes,
 Where, sheathed in sleet, the haw-tree stands,
 The moon looks down on glistening lands,
 Where with the cold each bramble shakes.
Last night the sleet made white the world:
 All day the wind moaned in the pines:
 Now like a wolf, that whines and whines,
 Like some wild wolf its hate is hurled
Against the hut upon the wold,
 And the one willow by the stream:
 Where, huddled, in the moon’s chill gleam,
 The houseless hare leaps through the cold.
The moon sinks low, the thin new-moon,
 And with it, like a bit of spar,
Sinks down the large white evening-star,
 Beneath which earth seems crystal-hewn.
Slim o’er the tree-tops, weighed with white,
 The country church’s spire doth swell,
 A scintillating icicle;
 While fitfully the village light
Stabs, stains with sallow stars the dark:
 Homeward the creaking wagons strain:
 The smithy glares: the tavern’s vane
 Points northward in its ghostly sark.
And from the north, with stinging lash,
 Driving his herds of snow and sleet,
 Upon his steed of wind, whose feet
 Hurl through the iron woods and crash
Along the hills, with blow on blow,
 The tempest sweeps; before his shout
 The moon and stars are blotted out,
 And fold on fold rolls down the snow.

DREAMS

My thoughts have borne me far away
 To beauties of an older day,
 Where, crowned with roses, stands the Dawn,
 Striking her seven-stringed barbiton
 Of flame, whose chords give being to
 The seven colors, hue for hue;
 The music of the color-dream
 She builds the day from, beam by beam.
My thoughts have borne me far away
 To myths of a diviner day,
 Where, sitting on the mountain, Noon
 Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune
 Of rest and shade and clouds and skies,
 Wherein her calm dreams idealize
 Light as a presence, heavenly fair,
 Sleeping with all her beauty bare.
My thoughts have borne me far away
 To visions of a wiser day,
 Where, stealing through the wilderness,
Night walks, a sad-eyed votaress,
 And prays with mystic words she hears
 Behind the thunder of the spheres,
 The starry utterance that is hers
 With which she fills the universe.

THE BROOK