Kitabı oku: «Accolon of Gaul, with Other Poems», sayfa 3

LATE OCTOBER

 
AH, haughty hills, sardonic solitudes,
What wizard touch hath, crowning you with gold,
Cast Tyrian purple o'er broad-shouldered woods,
And to your pride anointed empire sold
For wan traditioned death, whose misty moods
Shake each huge throne of quarried shadows cold?
 
 
Now where the agate-foliaged forests sleep,
Bleak briars are ruby-berried, and the brush
Flames – when the winds armsful of motion heap
In wincing gusts upon it – amber blush;
The beech an inner beryle breaks from deep
Encrusting topaz of a sullen flush.
 
 
Dead gold, dead bronze, dull amethystine rose,
Rose cameo, in day's gray, somber spar
Of smoky quartz – intaglioed beauty – glows
Luxuriance of color. Trunks that are
Vast organs antheming the winds' wild woes
A faded sun and pale night's paler star.
 
 
Bulged from its cup the dark-brown acorn falls,
And by its gnarly saucer in the streams
Swells plumped; and here the spikey spruce-gum balls
Rust maces of an ouphen host that dreams;
Beneath the chestnut the split burry hulls
Disgorge fat purses of sleek satin 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 thro' his beard, – the brusque
Crab apples laugh, wind-tumbled from above.
 
 
Runs thro' the wasted leaves the crickets' click,
Which saddest coignes of Melancholy cheers;
One bird unto the sumach flits to pick
Red, sour seeds; and thro' the woods one hears
The drop of gummy walnuts; the railed rick
Looms tawny in the field where low the steers.
 
 
Some slim bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked,
The birds to Echo's shores, where flossy foams
Boom low long cream-white cliffs. – Where once buzzed
Unmillioned bees within unmillioned blooms,
One hairy hummer cramps one bloom, frost mocked, – rocked
A miser whose rich hives squeeze oozing combs.
 
 
Twist some lithe maple and right suddenly
A leafy storm of stars about you breaks —
Some Hamadryad's tears: Unto her knee
Wading the Naiad clears her brook that streaks
Thro' wadded waifs: Hark! Pan for Helike
Flutes melancholy by the minty creeks.
 

AN ANEMONE

 
TEACH me the wisdom of thy beauty, pray,
That, being thus wise, I may aspire to see
What beauty is, whence, why, and in what way
Immortal, yet how mortal utterly:
For, shrinking loveliness, thy brow of day
Pleads plaintive as a prayer, anemone.
 
 
"Teach me wood-wisdom, I am petulant:
Thou hast the wildness of a Dryad's eyes,
The shyness of an Oread's, wild plant: —
Behold the bashful goddess where she lies
Distinctly delicate! – inhabitant
Ambrosial-earthed, star-cousin of the skies.
 
 
"Teach me thy wisdom, for, thro' knowing, yet,
When I have drunk dull Lethe till each vein
Thuds full oblivion, I shall not forget; —
For beauty known is beauty; to sustain
Glad memories with life, while mad regret
And sorrow perish, being Lethe slain."
 
 
"Teach thee my beauty being beautiful
And beauty wise? – My slight perfections, whole
As world, as man, in their creation full
As old a Power's cogitation roll.
Teach thee? – Presumption! thought is young and dull —
Question thy God what God is, soul what soul."
 

THE RAIN-CROW

 
THEE freckled August, dozing hot and blonde
Oft 'neath a wheat-stack in the white-topped mead —
In her full hair brown ox-eyed daisies wound —
O water-gurgler, lends a sleepy heed:
Half-lidded eyes a purple iron-weed
Blows slimly o'er; beyond, a path-found pond
Basks flint-bright, hedged with pink-plumed pepper-grasses,
A coigne for vainest dragonflies, which glasses
Their blue in diamond.
 
 
Oft from some dusty locust, that thick weaves
With crescent pulse-pods its thin foliage gray,
Thou, – o'er the shambling lane, which past the sheaves
Of sun-tanned oats winds, red with rutty clay,
One league of rude rail-fence, – some panting day,
When each parched meadow quivering vapor grieves,
Nature's Astrologist, dost promise rain,
In seeping language of the thirsty plain,
Cool from the burning leaves.
 
 
And, in good faith, aye! best of faith, art true;
And welcome that rune-chuckled forecasting,
When up the faded fierceness of scorched blue
Strong water-carrier winds big buckets bring,
Black with stored freshness: how their dippers ring
And flash and rattle! lavishing large dew
On tall, good-humored corn that, streaming wet,
Laughs long; while woods and leas, shut in a net
Of mist, dream vague in view.
 
 
And thou, safe-houséd in some pawpaw bower
Of close, broad, gold-green leaves, contented art
In thy prediction, fall'n within the hour;
While fuss the brown bees hiveward from the heart
Of honey-filtering bloom; beneath the cart
Droop pompous barnyard cocks damped by the shower:
And deep-eyed August, bonnetless, a beech
Hugs in disheveled beauty, safe from reach
On starry moss and flower.
 

LOVELINESS

I

 
WHEN I fare forth to kiss the eyes of Spring,
On ways, which arch gold sunbeams and pearl buds
Embraced, two whispers we search – wandering
By goblin forests and by girlish floods
Deep in the hermit-holy solitudes —
For stalwart Dryads romping in a ring;
Firm limbs an oak-bark-brown, and hair – wild woods
Have perfumed – loops of radiance; and they,
Most coyly pleasant, as we linger by,
Pout dimpled cheeks, more rose than rosiest sky,
Honeyed; and us good-hearted laughter fling
Like far-out reefs that flute melodious spray.
 

II

 
Then we surprise each Naiad ere she slips —
Nude at her toilette – in her fountain's glass,
With damp locks dewy, and large godlike hips
Cool-glittering; but discovered, when – alas!
From green, indented moss and plushy grass, —
Her great eyes' pansy-black reproaching, – dips
She white the cloven waters ere we pass:
And a broad, orbing ripple makes to hide
From our desirous gaze provoked what path
She gleaming took; what haunt she bashful hath
In minnowy freshness, where her murmurous lips
Bubbling make merry 'neath the rocky tide.
 

III

 
Oft do we meet the Oread whose eyes
Are dew-drops where twin heavens shine confessed;
She, all the maiden modesty's surprise
Blushing her temples, – to deep loins and breast
Tempestuous, brown bewildering tresses pressed, —
Stands one scared moment's moiety, in wise
Of some delicious dream, then shrinks distressed,
Like some weak wind that, haply heard, is gone,
In rapport with shy Silence to make sound;
So, like storm sunlight, bares clean limbs to bound
A thistle's flashing to a woody rise,
A graceful glimmer up the ferny lawn.
 

IV

 
Hear Satyrs and Sylvanus in sad shades
Of dozy dells pipe: Pan and Fauns hark dance
With rattling hoofs dim in low, mottled glades:
Hidden in spice-bush-bowered banks, perchance,
Mark Slyness waiting with an animal glance
The advent of some Innocence, who wades
Thro' thigh-deep flowers, naked as Romance,
In braided shadows, when two hairy arms
Hug her unconscious beauty panting white;
Till tearful terror, struggling into might,
Beats the brute brow resisting; yields and fades,
Exhausted, to the grim Lust her rich charms.
 

THE LAST SCION OF THE HOUSE
OF CLARE

Year 13 –

 
BARBICAN, bartizan, battlement,
With the Abergavenny mountains blent,
Look, from the Raglan tower of Gwent,
My lord Hugh Clifford's ancient home
Shows, clear morns of the Spring or Summer,
Thrust out like thin flakes o' a silver foam
From a climbing cloud, for the hills gloom glummer,
Being shaggy with heath, yon. – I was his page;
A favorite then; and he of that age
When a man will love and be loved again,
Or die in the wars or a monastery:
Or toil till he stifle his heart's hard pain,
Or drink, drug his hopes and his lost love bury.
I was his page; and often we fared
Thro' the Clare desmene in Autumn hawking —
If the baron had known how he would have glared
From their bushy brows eyes dark with mocking!
– That of the Strongbows, Richard, I mean —
Had growled to his yeomen, "A score! mount, Keene!
Forth and spit me this Clifford, or hang
With his crop-eared page to the closest oak!"
For he and the Cliffords had ever a fang
In the other's side… but I see him choke
And strangle with wrath when his hawker told —
If he told! – how we met on that flowery wold
His daughter, sweet Hortense of Clare, the day
Her hooded tiercel its brails did burst
To trail with its galling jesses away;
An untrained haggard the falconer cursed,
Vain whistled to lure; when the eyas sped
Slant, low and heavily overhead
By us; and Sir Hugh, – who had just then cast
His peregrine fierce at a heron-quarry, —
In his stirrups rising, thus – as it passed,
By the jesses caught and to her did carry,
Lingering slender and tall by a rose
Whence she pulled the berries – But no two foes
Her eyes and Sir Hugh's! – And I swear each felt
A song in their hearts! – For I heard him quaver
Somewhat and then – by Mary! – he knelt! —
And the Lady herself in her words did waver
And wonder with smiles. Then daintily took
The hawk on her fist where it pruned and shook
Its callowness ragged, as Hugh did seize
Softly the other hand long and white, —
Reached forth to him craving him rise from his knees, —
And mouthed with moist kisses an hundred quite.
Tho' she blushed up burning, no frowned "Beware!"
But seemed so happy! when crushing thro' —
Her sturdy retainer with swarthy stare —
The underwoods burst; and her maiden crew
Drew near them naming her name, and came
With leaves and dim Autumn blossoms aflame. —
"Their words?" I know not! for how should I? —
I paged my master but was no spy.
Nothings, I think, as all lovers', you know;
Yet how should I hear such whispered low,
Quick by the wasted woodland yellow?
When up thro' the brush thrashed that burly fellow
With his ale-coarse face, and so made a pause
In the pulse of their words, there my lord Sir Hugh
Stood with the soil on his knee: No cause
Had he – but his hanger he halfway drew —
Then paused, thrust it clap in its sheath again
And bowed to the Lady and strode away;
Up, vault, on his steed – and we rode amain
Gay to his towers that merry day.
 
 
He loved and was loved, – why, I knew! – for look,
All other sports for the chase he forsook;
To ride in the Raglan marches and hawk
And to hunt and to wander. And found a lair,
In the Strongbow forest, of bush and of rock,
Of moss and thick ferns; where Hortense of Clare,
How often I wis not, met him by chance —
Perhaps! – Sweet sorceress out of romance,
Those tomes of Geoffrey – for she was fair!
Her large, warm eyes and hair… ah, hair,
How may one picture or liken it!
With the golden gloss of its full brown, fit
For the Viviane face of lovable white
Beneath; – like a star that a cloud of night
Stops over to threaten but never will drench
Its tremulous beauty with mists that quench. —
 
 
Heigho! – but they ceased, those meetings. I wot
Watched of the baron, his menial crew;
For she loved too well to have once forgot
The place and the time of their trysting true.
But she came not – ah! and again came not:
"Why and when?" would question Sir Hugh
In his labored scrawls a crevice of rock —
The lovers' post – in its coigne would lock.
Until near Yule Love gat them again
A twilight tryst – by frowardness sure. —
They met. And that day was gray with rain —
Or snow, and the wind did ever endure
A long, bleak moaning thorough the wood,
Smarted the cheek and chapped i' the blood;
And a burne in the forest cried "sob and sob,"
And whimpered forever a chopping throb
Thro' the rope-taunt boughs like a thing pursued.
– And there it was that he learned how she
(My faith! how it makes me burn and quiver
To think what a miserable despot he —
Lord Richard Strongbow, aye and ever
To his daughter was!) forsooth! must wed
With an Eastern Earl – some Lovell: one whom
(That God in His mercy had smote him dead!)
Hortense of Clare – but in baby bloom —
Never had mirrored with maiden eyes.
Sealed over a baby to strengthen some ties —
Of power or wealth – had been bartered then
And sold and purchased, and now … but when
To her lover, the Clifford, she told this – there
He had faced with his love the talons of Death —
Only for her, who did stay with a stare
Of reproach all his heat and say in a breath,
"Is love, that thou sware to me aye and so often,
To live too feeble or – how? – doth it soften
And weaken away and – to die? – why die? —
Live and be strong! and this is why." —
Her words are glued here so!.. I remember
All as well as that sullen December,
That blustered and bullied about them and
Spat stiff its spiteful and cold-cutting snow
Where they talked there dreamily hand in hand,
While the rubbing boughs clashed rattling low.
Her last words these, "By curfew sure
On Christmas eve at the postern door."
 
 
And we were there, and a void horse too:
Armed: for a journey I hardly knew
Whither, but why you well can guess.
I could have uttered a certain name —
Our comrade's sure – of what loveliness!
Waited with love, impatience aflame.
While Raglan bulged its baronial girth
To roar to its battlements Yule and song;
Retainers loud rollicked in wassail and mirth
Where the mistletoe 'round the vast hearths hung,
And holly beberried the elden wall
Of curious oak in the banqueting hall.
And the spits, I trow, by the scullions turned
O'er the snoring logs, rich steamed and burned
With flesh; where the whole wild-boar was roasted
And the dun-deer flanks and the roebuck haunches;
Fat tuns of ale, that the cellars boasted,
Old casks of wine were broached for paunches
Of the vassals that reveled in bower and stall;
Pale pages who diced and bluff henchmen who quarr'led
Or swore in their cups, while lean mastiffs all,
O'er bones of the feast in their kennels snarled;
For Hortense – drink! drink! – by the Virgin's leave,
Were wed to this Lovell this Christmas Eve.
 
 
"Was she long – Did she come?"… By that postern we
Like shadows lurked. Said my lord Sir Hugh:
"Yon tower, remember! – that casement, see! —
When a stealthy light in its slit burns blue
And signals thrice slowly, thus – 'tis she."
And about his person his gaberdine drew,
For the wind it hugged and the snow beat thro'.
Did she come? – We had watched for an hour or twain
Ere that light burned there in the central pane
And was flourished thrice and departed so.
Then closer we packed to the postern portal
Horses and all in the stinging snow.
Stiff with the cold was I. – Immortal
Minutes we waited breath-bated and listened
Shuddering there in the gusty gale.
Whizzing o'er parapets sifted and glistened
Wild drift, thro' battlements hissed in a veil.
Quoth my lord Sir Hugh, for his love was a-heat,
"She feels for the spring in the hidden panel
'Neath the tapestry … ah! thou hast pressed it, sweet!
– How black gulps open the secret channel!
Now cautiously step, and thy bridal garb
Swirled warm with a mantle o' fur … she plants
One foot – then a pause – on the stair – So, Barb,
So! – If the tempest that barks and pants
Would throttle itself with its yelps! then I
Might hear but one footstep echo and sing
Down the ugly … there! 'tis her fingers try
The massy bolts which the rust makes cling."
But ever some whim of the wind that shook
The clanging ring of a creaking hook
In the buttress or wall; and we waited so
Till the East grew gray. Did she come? – ah, no!
 
 
I must tell you why, and enough: 'Tis said
On the eve of the marriage she fled the side
Of the baron, the bridegroom too she fled,
With a mischievous laugh, "I'll hide! I'll hide!
Seek! and be sure to seek well!" and led
A wild chase after her, but defied
All search for – a score and ten more years,
And the laughter of Yule was changed to tears.
But they searched and the snow was bleared with the glare
Of torches that hurried thro' chamber and stair;
And tower and court re-echoed her name,
But she laughed no answer and never came.
 
 
So over the channel to France with his King
And the Black Prince, sailed to the wars – to deaden
The ache of the mystery – Hugh that Spring,
And fell at Poitiers: for his loss lay leaden
On hope, and his life was a weary sadness,
So he flung it away with a very gladness.
And the baron died – and the bridegroom, well, —
Unlucky that bridegroom, sooth! – to tell
Of him there is nothing. The baron died;
The last of the Strongbows he, gramercy!
And the Clare estate with its wealth and its pride
Devolved to the Bloets, Walter or Percy.
 
 
Ten years and a score thereafter. And they
Ransacked the old castle and mark! – one day
In a lonesome tower uprummaged a chest
From Flanders, of sinister ebon, carved
Sardonic with masks 'round an olden crest,
Gargoyle faces distorted and starved:
Fast fixed with a spring which they forced and lo!
When they opened it – ha, Hortense! – or, no! —
Fantastic a skeleton jeweled and wreathed
With flowers of dust, and a minever
About it hugged, which quaint richness sheathed
Of a bridal raiment and lace with fur.
– I'd have given such years of my life – yes, well! —
As were left me then so her lover, Hugh,
For such time breathed as it took one to tell
How she forever, deemed false, was true!
He'd have known how it was, "For, you see, in groping
For the puny spring of that panel – hoping
And fearing as nearer and nearer grew
The boisterous scramble – why, out she blew
Her windy taper and quick – in this chest
Wary would lie for – a minute, mayhap,
Till the hurry all passed; but the death-lock pressed
– Ere her heart was aware – with a hungry snap."
 

ON THE JELLICO-SPUR

To my Friend, John Fox, Jr

 
YOU remember, the deep mist, —
Climbing to the Devil's Den —
Blue beneath us in the glen
And above us amethyst,
Throbbed and circled and away
Thro' the wild-woods opposite,
Torn and shattered, morning-lit,
Scurried up a dewy gray.
Vague as in Romance we saw
From the fog one riven trunk,
Its huge horny talons shrunk,
Thrust a hungry dragon's claw.
And we climbed two hours thro'
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To that wooded rock that shows
Undulating peaks of blue:
The vast Cumberlands that sleep,
Weighed with soaring forests, far
To the concave welkin's bar,
Leagues on leagues of purple sweep.
Range exalted over range
Billowed their enormous spines,
And we heard the priestly pines
Hum the wisdom of their change.
We were sons of Nature then;
She had taken us to her,
Closer drawn by brier and burr,
There on lonely Devil's Den.
We were pupils of her moods:
Taught the beauties of her loins
In those bloom-anointed coignes, —
Love in her eternal woods:
How she bore or flower or bud;
Pithed the wiry sapling-oak;
In the long vine zeal awoke
Aye to climb a leafy flood.
Her waste fantasies of birth:
Sponge-like exudations fair —
Dainty fungi everywhere
Bulging from the loamy earth.
Coral-vegetable things;
Crystals clamily exhaled;
Bulbous, marble-ribbed and scaled,
Vip'rous colored; then close rings
Of the Indian Pipe that cleft
Pink and white the woodland lax, —
Blossoms of a natural wax
The brown mountain-fairies left.
We on that parched precipice,
Stretched beneath the chestnuts' burrs,
Breathed the balsam of the firs,
Felt the blue sky like a kiss.
Soft that heaven; stainless as
The grand woodlands lunging on,
Wound majestic in the sun,
Or as our devotion was!
Freedom sat there cragged we saw,
Freedom whom hoarse forests sang;
Heaven-browed her eyes, whence sprang
Audience august with law.
Wildernesses, from her hips
Sprung the giant forests there,
Tossed the cataracts from her hair,
Thunders lightened from her lips.
Oft some scavenger, with vane
Motionless, above we knew
Wheeled thro' altitudes of blue
By his rapid shadow's stain.
Or some cloud of sunny white, —
Puffed a lazy drift of pearl, —
Balmy breezes o'er would whirl
Shot with coruscating light.
So we dreamed an hour upon
Those warm rocks, dry, lichen-scabbed.
Lounged beneath long leaves that dabbed
At us coins of shade and sun.
Then arose and down some gorge
Made a bowldered torrent broad
The hurled pathway of our road
Tumbled down the mountain large.
At that farm-house, which you know,
Where old-fashioned flowers spun
Gay rag-carpets in the sun,
By green apple-boughs built low,
Rested from our hot descent;
One deep draught of cider cool,
Unctuous, our fierce veins to dull
At old Hix's eloquent…
On Wolf Mountain died the light;
A colossal blossom, rayed
With rent petaled clouds that played
'Round a calyxed fury bright.
Down the moist mint-scented vale
To the mining camp we turned,
Thro' the twilight faint discerned
With its crowded cabins pale.
Ah! those nights! – We wandered forth
On some shadow-haunted path
When the moon was late and rathe
The large stars; sowed south and north,
Clustered bursting heavens down:
And the milky zodiac,
Rolled athwart the belted black,
Myriad-million-moted shone.
And in dreams we sauntered till
In the valley pale beneath,
From a dew-drop's vapored breath
To faint ghosts, there gathered still,
Grave creations weird of mist:
Then we knew the moonrise near,
As with necromance the air
Pulsed to pearl and amethyst.
Shrilled the insects of the dusk,
Grated, buzzed and strident sung
Till each leaf seemed tuned and strung
For high Pixy music brusque.
Stealing steps and stealthy sighs
As of near unhallowed things,
Rustled hair or fluttered wings,
Seemed about us; then the eyes
Of plumed phantom warriors
Burned mesmeric from some bush
Mournful in the goblin hush,
Then materialized to stars.
Mantled mists like ambushed braves,
Chiefed by some swart Blackfoot tall,
Stole along each forest wall —
Phosphorescent moony waves.
Then the moon rose; from some cup
Each hill's bowl, – magnetic shine,
Mist and silence poured like wine, —
Brimmed a monster goblet up.
Ingot from lost orient mines,
Delved by humpbacked gnomes of Night,
Full her orb loomed, nacreous white,
O'er Pine Mountain's druid pines.
As thro' fragmentary fleece
Her circumference polished broke,
Orey-seamed, about us woke
Myths of Italy and Greece.
Then – a chanson serenade —
You, rich-voiced, to your guitar
To our goddess in that star
Sang "Ne Tempo" from the glade.